Seeking Guidance from Women Saints
Oct 3rd, 2007 by michelle
Browsing the Christian blogosphere, it seems like many woman are striving to be Titus 2 women. I wasn’t exactly sure what this meant; so I looked up the passage as well as some sites relating to this trend.
Titus 2:3-5 says, “Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.” The websites that I have perused focused on training woman in how to be good homemakers, mothers and wives. The offer good information on how to accomplish this by examining the Bible and also books written by women on this topic.
I do think that it is important to follow this teaching, but I do not think it is the only way to learn how to be godly women. The problem with being “Bible-only” is that you miss out on all the other ways that God is teaching us this same lesson. By reading the lives of the saints, I feel that women are given real role models. The saints are not only given to us so that they can pray for us, but their lives are given as examples.
First and foremost, the Theotokos is our guide. Mary said yes to becoming the mother of Jesus, and in doing so, said yes to the life and light of the world. We are to honor Mary and to try to imitate her example by opening our lives to the love of God and the loving of others.
For the next several posts, I will be focusing on the Theotokos and the women saints of the Orthodox Church. Enjoy
I always wondered why the women in the Titus 2 groups did not look more to Mary as an example. The groups that I was familiar with (an involved in for a while,) were very mentor based. Sort of mutual encouragement-but that did have it’s downfalls. I began to think that I had to run my home and do things exactly as other women in the group did.
That is why I like women saints! They came from such varied backgrounds! Strong women of faith and prayer AND Moms, wives, sisters, daughters!
I hope you write about Saint Juliana of Lazarevo…my patron saint. There was a Mom, wife and lover of God!
This is such a wonderful idea. I get such inspiration from reading about the saints lives (although sometimes its a bit discouraging when they’re always “pretty” and always “pious” children).
I hope to keep up with this series, even if I’m a few days behind.
There is such a wide palette to chose from, and there are holy ones alive today, especially in Russia. For instance, virtually all of the new monastic houses founded recently are headed by spiritual daughters of Abbess Varvara of Pyukhtitsa, the staritsa of Patriarch Aleksei.
Besides the usual monastic sources, there are many Orthodox women active in the arts and media, and often their work deals with Orthodox themes. Svetlana Yekimenko is a presenter with VOR, and she hosts “The Christian Mesaage from Moscow”. (gp tp http://www.ruvr.ru for mp3 podcasts of the programme) Tatiana Shvetsova is a talented radio/TV producer (her brother is the superior of an Orthodox monastery in Japan).
The artists Yulia Kuzenkova, Natalia Kurguzova-Miroshnik, Saida Afonina, and Maria Vishnyak (to name only a few of a large contingent) along with the bulk of their male colleagues, are moving Russian art back to a classical realism, abandoning the decadent abstract art indroduced in the early 20th century (in fact, one of the early artists to protest abstract art as meaningless was another female Russian artist, Natalia Goncharova (drat! there is no space to tell you of the “Donkey’s Tail”…).
These are just two fields, I could go on for much longer. In short, there is a great deal of good Orthodox work (and just plain good work period!) done by women, but, most of it is “invisible” because it is in Russian, not English. There is very little of quality available in English, that is why I advise converts to learn Russian, because it opens to them the doors of contemporary Orthodox creativity (which is virtually all in Russian, I am afraid).
Pray for thhis sinner.
Vara