—Geronta, tell us about Saints Joakeim and Anna, the ancestors of God. You once started to speak of them.
—Since I was little I’ve had a great veneration for the Holy Ancestors. Surely I’ve told one of you about wanting them to give me the name Joakeim when they made me a monk. We owe them so much! Saints Joakeim and Anna are the most dispassionate couple ever! They didn’t have a fleshly mind in the slightest.
That’s how God created man, and that’s how He wanted people to beget children: dispassionately. However, after the Fall passion jumped into the relationship between man and woman. As soon as a dispassionate couple appeared—that were as God had created man, and as He wanted humans to procreate—the Panagia, that pure creature, was born; and after that Christ became incarnate. It makes me think that Christ would have come down to earth even sooner, had a pure couple such as Saints Joakeim and Anna appeared sooner.
The Roman Catholics have fallen into delusion and wrongly believe, out of misguided devotion, that the Panagia was born without having ancestral sin. Whereas in truth, the Panagia was not exempt from the ancestral sin, but rather was begotten as God had originally intended mankind to be begotten after its creation. That is, She was all-pure [1] because Her conception was without pleasure. The Holy Ancestors, after fervent prayer to God that He would grant them a child, came together not out of carnal desire, but out of obedience to God. This is something I experienced on Sinai. [2]
Abstinence in married life
God “created all things, very good.” [3] A man feels physical attraction towards a woman, and the woman towards the man. If this attraction did not exist then no one would have ever set out to start a family. Instead, they’d have reflected upon the difficulties they’d have to face later in family life, in raising children, etc., and would have decided not even to begin.
In those years after the Fall of the first-created, the carnal mind in some people might have been five percent, in others ten percent, thirty percent, and so on. Today, however, where is anybody going to be found who has a carnal mind of only five percent, that is, one who has a pure mind! At any rate, to all people God has given the potential to attain dispassion if they struggle with philotimo.
Husbands and wives should never forget that man is not only flesh but also spirit, and in this way restrain themselves. They must struggle to subjugate the flesh to the spirit. If they struggle to live spiritually, with the guidance of their spiritual father, little by little they will begin to taste of the delights from on high—spiritual and heavenly delights—and they won’t seek after carnal things.
Endnotes
[1] The Theotokos was born according to nature and not virginally. She is “all-pure,” for, as St. John the Damascene writes in his work “On the Nativity of our All-holy Lady the Theotokos and Ever-virgin Mary,” she was conceived “chastely” (Cf. Patrologia Greca 96, 669A), and also increased in holiness because of her spiritual struggle, the good beginning of which she received from her parents, repulsing “every superfluous and soul-damaging thought before experiencing them.” (Ibid. 676B).
[2] Geronta Paisios lived ascetically on Mt. Sinai in the asketerion of Saints Epistimi and Galaktion from 1962 until 1964. He did not reveal this event to us.
[3] Cf. Genesis 1:31
Translation by Fr. Luke Hartung from the book Family Life [in Greek], by Elder Paisios the Athonite, published by the Sacred Hesychastirion of St. John the Evangelist, Souroti, Greece (2002).
Saints Joakeim and Anna are the Most Dispassionate Couple
—Geronta, tell us about Saints Joakeim and Anna, the ancestors of God. You once started to speak of them.
—Since I was little I’ve had a great veneration for the Holy Ancestors. Surely I’ve told one of you about wanting them to give me the name Joakeim when they made me a monk. We owe them so much! Saints Joakeim and Anna are the most dispassionate couple ever! They didn’t have a fleshly mind in the slightest.
That’s how God created man, and that’s how He wanted people to beget children: dispassionately. However, after the Fall passion jumped into the relationship between man and woman. As soon as a dispassionate couple appeared—that were as God had created man, and as He wanted humans to procreate—the Panagia, that pure creature, was born; and after that Christ became incarnate. It makes me think that Christ would have come down to earth even sooner, had a pure couple such as Saints Joakeim and Anna appeared sooner.
The Roman Catholics have fallen into delusion and wrongly believe, out of misguided devotion, that the Panagia was born without having ancestral sin. Whereas in truth, the Panagia was not exempt from the ancestral sin, but rather was begotten as God had originally intended mankind to be begotten after its creation. That is, She was all-pure [1] because Her conception was without pleasure. The Holy Ancestors, after fervent prayer to God that He would grant them a child, came together not out of carnal desire, but out of obedience to God. This is something I experienced on Sinai. [2]
Abstinence in married life
God “created all things, very good.” [3] A man feels physical attraction towards a woman, and the woman towards the man. If this attraction did not exist then no one would have ever set out to start a family. Instead, they’d have reflected upon the difficulties they’d have to face later in family life, in raising children, etc., and would have decided not even to begin.
In those years after the Fall of the first-created, the carnal mind in some people might have been five percent, in others ten percent, thirty percent, and so on. Today, however, where is anybody going to be found who has a carnal mind of only five percent, that is, one who has a pure mind! At any rate, to all people God has given the potential to attain dispassion if they struggle with philotimo.
Husbands and wives should never forget that man is not only flesh but also spirit, and in this way restrain themselves. They must struggle to subjugate the flesh to the spirit. If they struggle to live spiritually, with the guidance of their spiritual father, little by little they will begin to taste of the delights from on high—spiritual and heavenly delights—and they won’t seek after carnal things.
Endnotes
[1] The Theotokos was born according to nature and not virginally. She is “all-pure,” for, as St. John the Damascene writes in his work “On the Nativity of our All-holy Lady the Theotokos and Ever-virgin Mary,” she was conceived “chastely” (Cf. Patrologia Greca 96, 669A), and also increased in holiness because of her spiritual struggle, the good beginning of which she received from her parents, repulsing “every superfluous and soul-damaging thought before experiencing them.” (Ibid. 676B).
[2] Geronta Paisios lived ascetically on Mt. Sinai in the asketerion of Saints Epistimi and Galaktion from 1962 until 1964. He did not reveal this event to us.
[3] Cf. Genesis 1:31
Translation by Fr. Luke Hartung from the book Family Life [in Greek], by Elder Paisios the Athonite, published by the Sacred Hesychastirion of St. John the Evangelist, Souroti, Greece (2002).