Monasticism and the Layperson

It is tempting to imagine that the demanding parts of the Gospel — the Beatitudes, the forgiveness of enemies, purity of heart, constant prayer — are really for monks, while ordinary Christians get a gentler version. The Fathers reject this firmly. St. John Chrysostom told his lay congregation that thinking the Scriptures belong only to monks is exactly "what has ruined all": "you need it much more than they," he said, precisely because those in the world face wounds the monastic is spared. The commandments of Christ are addressed to everyone baptized into Him.

What differs between the monastic and the layperson is circumstance, not the destination. Both are called to the same holiness, the same ascetic struggle against the passions, the same love. The monastery simply strips away marriage, property, and self-direction to pursue that struggle without distraction; the layperson pursues it in and through the very things — spouse, children, job, neighbors — that the monk sets aside.

A great deal of monastic wisdom carries directly into life in the world, scaled to fit it. A rule of prayer — a set portion of morning and evening prayers kept faithfully — gives the day the shape a monk's services give his. The Jesus Prayer can be said on a commute or at a sink as truly as in a cell. Fasting on the Church's days, adapted to one's health and state in life, teaches the same self-mastery. Spiritual reading, an icon corner where the family prays, watchfulness over one's thoughts, honest confession, and generosity to the poor are all monastic instruments handed to everyone.

This is the sense in which the Christian household is called a "little church" (see the home as little church): a place where the same worship, fasting, and forgiveness are lived out on a domestic scale. The layperson borrows the monastery's tools, not its timetable.

Just as important is knowing what should not be copied. A person in the world who imports monastic severity wholesale — extreme fasts, marathon vigils, harsh self-denial undertaken alone — usually harvests pride, exhaustion, or resentment rather than holiness, and the tradition names that ditch spiritual delusion. Monastic obedience to an elder is not the same as the mutual obedience of marriage, where a husband and wife defer to each other and to the needs of their children. St. Paul was frank that the married rightly "careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife" (1 Corinthians 7:33) — and that care is itself a path, not a distraction from one.

So the layperson takes the monastery as inspiration and safeguard, not as a costume to put on. Marriage and family are their own school of dying to self; a spouse and children are, in a real sense, one's daily obediences. The wise course is to adapt the tradition under a spiritual father, who can temper zeal to a person's actual life — remembering always that the Lord's "Be ye therefore perfect" (Matthew 5:48) is spoken to all the baptized, in the monastery and in the world alike, and that both are honored roads to the one Kingdom.