About female and male faith
Is it true that female and male faith are somehow different, manifest in different ways?
- Of course, and this is described in the Gospel. There is the image of the apostles, and there is the image of the myrrh-bearing women. These are images of male and female attitudes not towards faith itself, but towards manifestations of faith. Therefore, when a woman meets Christ, she should not expect the same manifestations of faith as hers, the same feelings from a man. He will see it differently! And with her eyes, her heart, her feelings, he cannot go this way.
- If you transfer this to the modern world and to our reality - how do these differences manifest themselves?
- The world of the Gospel is always modern, so there is no need to shift anything. It's just that everyone can recognize themselves in this. The apostles did not go early to the Sepulcher, because they, like men, understood: this is madness! Why go to the Sepulcher at night if it is heaped up with a heavy stone, which a person cannot move, and there is also a Roman guard standing there ?! Pointless, useless! And the myrrh-bearing wives - let's go. They wanted to do everything to the end, let it be impractical, irrational. They acted contrary to logic - and became the first witnesses of the Resurrection.
We see how women find themselves at the Cross, and men scatter - everyone except the apostle John. But at the same time, men ascend Mount Tabor, while the sacrament of the Eucharist is performed in front of the apostles. And all the main secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven are first revealed to them ...
Beautiful inner irrationality, in a sense, makes it easier for a woman's path to faith, since faith is confidence in things invisible. And in men, their excessive rationality, on the one hand, sometimes acts as an obstacle to faith, and on the other hand, contributes to a deeper understanding of it. So men and women complement each other in the Church. Therefore, the family is the image of the Church.
Archpriest Alexey Uminsky
