It seems that the one thing everyone knows about the Eastern
Churches is that "they have married priests." Unfortunately, this often seems
to be the only thing many people know about Eastern Christianity.
What does not seem to be widely understood is that the Eastern Churches have
very distinct theological, liturgical, and spiritual cultures in which the
practice of ordaining married men to the priesthood (but not to the episcopate)
must be understood. If Western Catholics want to use the example of the Eastern
Churches as a guide for their own situation it is imperative that they understand
how a married clergy fits into this unique Church culture.

In the Eastern Christian tradition celibacy is associated
not with the priesthood but with monasticism. Most Eastern Christians expect
their parish clergy to be married family men. But while it is true that Eastern
Christians generally value their married clergy, it is equally true that
a majority of these believers hold monasticism in even greater esteem. Pope
John Paul II emphasized this in his Apostolic Letter Orientale Lumen
when he said that for the Eastern Churches monasticism is seen as the "reference
point" for all Christians. Whatever their pastoral preferences, the
Eastern Churches are very far from seeing marriage as theologically
or spiritually preferable to celibacy.

This is the first and perhaps the most important point
to be made. Eastern Christianity insists that both marriage and celibacy
are necessary for a healthy Church. Eastern Christians do not see these two
vocations as opposed to each other. They would regard it as suicidal to abandon
clerical celibacy in such a way as to imply that the principle of celibacy
no longer has any value.

Celibacy in Eastern Christianity is viewed primarily as
a form of asceticism. Asceticism means, in essence, to live at
the same time on earth and in heaven. It means to understand that everything
we see in this life, everything we touch, taste, think, and feel, is in some
way a revelation of the life to come. This means far more than an understanding
that this life will come to an end and be replaced by another one. It means
that the life we live right now and the life we will live for eternity are
in some mysterious way one and the same. "The darkness is passing away,"
says St. John, "and the true light is already shining" (1 John 2:8).

For an ascetic, time reveals eternity. The ascetic thus
wants to be freed from a merely human way of looking at time as a cycle of
work and rest, life and death. Instead, the ascetic lives in time as though
in the undying freedom of eternity. Therefore the ascetic prays. For an ascetic,
food reveals the heavenly Feast. He is freed from a merely animal attraction
to food and instead tastes only the spiritual promise that lies hidden inside
earthly appetites. Therefore the ascetic fasts. For an ascetic, possessions
reveal the many–mansioned Kingdom of Heaven. The ascetic is freed from the
slavery to things by seeing in everything the Creator of all things. Therefore
the ascetic gives alms.

It is the same with sexuality. For an ascetic, all human
relationships—even the sexual act itself—reveal divine love. Hidden beneath
the surface of all smaller loves lies the immeasurable abyss of God’s love.
The ascetic realizes that what other people give him by way of love finds
its true and deeper meaning in the One who is the source of all love. Celibacy
is the practical recognition of the reality that lies behind the image, of
the prototype behind the icon. Human love without celibacy is at best mere
sentiment, at worst a form of idolatry.

In either case a merely human love is a closed system,
like a river with no outlet to the sea. Face to face, two human beings in
love become locked in an embrace of death. St. Gregory of Nyssa—himself a
married man—writes of this in his treatise On Virginity:

Whenever the husband looks at the beloved face, that moment the
fear of separation accompanies the look. . . . Some day all this beauty will
melt away and become as nothing, turned after all this show into noisome
and unsightly bones, which wear no trace, no memorial, no remnant of that
living bloom.

The tragedy of love and death can only
be overcome by the communion of humanity and divinity in Christ through the
Holy Spirit. Only when two become three, when a couple becomes a trinity,
the third being God, only then can the triumph of death be trampled down
in the resurrection. "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are
of all men most to be pitied, but in fact Christ has been raised from the
dead" (1 Corinthians 15:19–20).

Who then is called to be celibate? Simply
put, every single Christian who is capable of love is called to discipline
that love through the asceticism of celibacy. Just as every Christian is
called to prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, so also every Christian is called
to be celibate. Seen in its true context of asceticism, celibacy ceases to
be a legal requirement for a small section of the Christian faithful and
is revealed instead as an aspect of the universal vocation of all believers.

What does this mean in practice? It means
that we must no longer divide up the Church in our minds and separate the
lay majority who are "allowed" to have sex under certain conditions and the
clerical and religious minority who are "not allowed" to have sex at all.
The difference is nowhere near so stark. It is merely one of degree. For
a legalistic mind, the division between celibate and non–celibate seems vast.
For an ascetical mind, however, the difference is negligible. Both the life
of marriage and the life of celibacy are directed entirely toward God, and
find a common meaning in Him.

It may come as a surprise that I speak
of a universal call to celibacy. This word has largely juridical associations,
especially for Latin Catholics. Chastity is the term used in the more
general sense to speak of the obligation of all Christians to use the gift
of their sexuality in accordance with the divine will. Sexuality is conditioned
in the East according to the principles of asceticism and mysticism, not
legalism. It is precisely because the East does not think in juridical terms
that I have felt free to apply to celibacy a very general meaning, for in
the East there is no other way it can be understood. In this area East and
West think quite differently. We must be wary of a facile assumption that
what works in one tradition will automatically do so in the other.

Looked at from the perspective of the
Eastern Churches, celibacy has very little to do with the sacrament of Holy
Orders. It has everything to do, however, with the sacrament of Holy Baptism.
Through the latter we are born into a new kind of life, into citizenship
in the Kingdom of God. We die to this world in Christ and rise again to eternal
life. And in this resurrection we "neither marry nor are given in marriage,
but are like angels in heaven" (Matthew 22:30).

Once again we see how it is that celibacy
is part of the universal vocation of all Christians. Seen in the light of
eternity, marriage is revealed as having no meaning in itself. Marriage is
honorable not because it "joins two hearts as one," nor because through it
new life comes into the world, nor because it provides for a life of comfort
and security. Marriage is worthy of reverence only because the two hearts
fall into a sacramental embrace with a Third, only because the children born
of the union are born again through baptism into a new life, only because
together the couple apply to their comforts the balm of asceticism that gives
their possessions true and sacramental meaning.

Christian celibacy is marriage baptized.
Christian celibacy is the revelation of the presence of the Kingdom of God
in every relationship. It is the refusal to see other people as things to
be used, even for the sake of romantic love. Celibacy means the willingness
to see in sexuality not something merely animal, or simply useful or enjoyable,
but instead something mystical.

What then of those who commit themselves
to radical celibacy? Herein lies the value of monasticism as a public
vocation in the Church. Radical celibates present to all Christians flesh
and blood tokens of the promise lying mystically beneath every authentic
and holy relationship. Celibacy loses its value when it is seen as the preserve
of an elite. It takes that value up again when it is seen as part of the
common heritage of the entire Church, an asceticism shared by all the baptized.

Here we come to another important insight
within the pastoral tradition of Eastern Christianity. Celibacy is not primarily
an individual calling. In the first place it is a vocation for the whole
Church. Only secondarily is this vocation realized in individual lives. It
follows that celibacy cannot be authentic if it is attempted individually.
Celibacy can only be lived in a real way if it is seen as a shared way of
life. For the Christian East, celibacy is lived corporately and within the
context of communal asceticism.

This is the real meaning behind the combined
tradition of married clergy and celibate monastics in the Eastern Churches.
The proper place for radical celibacy is a life of radical asceticism within
that tradition of mutual support provided within the monastic milieu. For
parish clergy, such radicalism is seen as out of place—neither improper nor
impossible, but immensely difficult. This assessment in no way makes the
life of the parish priest somehow inferior to that of the monk. Both are
called to the same ascetical program, but in different degrees. The tradition
simply recognizes that each must put this program into effect in the real
world he inhabits. Each must rely on the other to supply that kind of holiness
in the other’s own life that he cannot produce in his own. The Church needs
both the holiness of marriage and the holiness of radical celibacy in equal
measure.

To underline this, the canonical tradition
of the Eastern Churches even encourages married couples to regulate their
sexual appetites by fasting from conjugal relations before Holy Communion,
for example, and during Lent. This makes it clear in the most practical way
imaginable that both monk and married person are engaged together in the
same ascetical labor.

For various historical reasons the insights
of the Eastern Christian experience have been mostly ignored in the Western
Church (and, consequently, by the Eastern Catholic Churches who have found
themselves in the West). Celibacy in the West is not seen as related primarily
to monasticism, but rather to priesthood in general. Nevertheless, it is
possible for the West to draw some useful lessons from the Eastern viewpoint.

Unless all Christians accept their vocation
to live the asceticism of celibacy within their own lives it is pointless
to expect a small group of "elite" Christians to live up to this ideal. Not
only is it psychologically difficult to expect one group of men to do this,
it is also extremely bad theology. Celibacy is a common calling, expressing
the faith of the Church in the coming Kingdom. It will only be possible for
this faith to be lived in its most radical way if this life is deeply understood
and valued by the wider community.

To be blunt: it is both psychologically
dangerous and theologically illiterate for a Christian community that values
sexual "freedom," including sex outside of marriage, adultery, abortion,
and the contraceptive mentality, to then demand an entirely different sexual
standard from its priests. Priests do not become celibate merely because
they feel a personal call to a life of sacrifice—at least, they ought not.
Priests accept celibacy because they lead a community that is as a whole
committed to the ascetic discipline necessary to transfigure human sexuality
into an experience of the divine. Celibacy is healthy when it is regarded
as a common labor in which each Christian has a share.

Seen in this way, priests will find their
commitment to celibacy valued, understood, and supported. Celibacy will thus
become a point of communion between priest and congregation. Seen in any
other way, priests will always feel that this commitment sets them apart
from the people they serve. Far from being a source of communion, celibacy
will become a psychological burden and a source of loneliness.

It is also difficult to see how celibacy
can be lived at any level in the Church if it remains cut off from its ascetical
source. As long as the model for Christian life remains legalistic rather
than ascetical the situation looks hopeless. Asceticism, as we have seen,
is the recognition that everything we see and touch is mystically redolent
with unseen and ineffable Divinity. Celibacy should not be undertaken because
it is a legal requirement, but because the celibate is ready to encounter
the Mystery that lies beneath his sexuality and yearns, through the liberating
discipline of asceticism, to live on this mystical level.

This will only happen when that same
person realizes that these same principles must equally apply to every other
aspect of human life and experience as well. It is only when with the eyes
of faith a person is open to the presence of God within all things that he
will see Him in so central a part of his identity as his sexuality. In other
words, a person who is not trained to see Eternity in time, nor the Feast
in food, nor the Kingdom in possessions will not be trained to see the Mystery
in sexuality. A person who is not an ascetic in small things will not be
given the grace of divine vision in greater. "He who despises small things
will fail little by little" (Sirach 19:1).

An essential part of the genius of the
Eastern Churches is that they have always fostered a culture of asceticism.
Long and elaborate services, a discipline of intense fasts and bright feasts,
every kind of authentic self–denial can be found encouraged and celebrated
within the liturgical, theological, and spiritual patrimony of Eastern Christians.
Within this ascetical culture celibacy makes sense, both as a communal task
and as a personal endeavor. Outside of this culture, celibacy seems like
all other merely legal requirements: arbitrary and without meaning.

There is therefore something deeply tragic
in the way the contemporary Church has gradually stripped itself of much
of its traditional asceticism, leaving only a few craggy remnants of this
vanished culture silhouetted against the sky. Of these lonely remains, surely
the most incongruous is clerical celibacy. Until the Church restores the
supporting superstructure of her ascetical tradition, clerical celibacy will
remain a fundamentally meaningless and even dangerous relic of a past long
gone.

It is only because of the loss of this
general ecclesial culture that the loss of the more specific clerical culture
is so serious. Clergy are less and less distinguishable by their dress, their
way of life, how they speak, and how they relate to one another and the hierarchy.
Almost certainly the same was true of the early Church, and even to some
extent the Church of the patristic era. The difference was that in those
days what set the Church apart from the world was its own distinctive ascetical
and mystical ethos. Can we not do more to recover this ethos today?

In short, the laity cannot justly complain
that their priests do not keep the law of celibacy while at the same time
demanding that they themselves be subject to no ascetic discipline. Until
the laity begins to accept the need to fast, to be mindful of what we wear,
how we speak, how we relate to each other—in short, until the laity accepts
its baptismal vocation in all its radical other–worldliness—there is no hope
that the clergy will find the strength to do so. Only a Church of mystics
can realistically expect their clergy to be saints.

Maximos Davies is a monk of Holy Resurrection
Monastery, a monastic community under the jurisdiction of the Byzantine Catholic
(Ruthenian) Eparchy of Van Nuys, California.