Who can become a hieromonk?
A monk who decides to become a mentor or is nominated for ordination by other monks has the right to become a hieromonk. As a rule, this is a person who has lived as a monk for quite some time and has some advantage over those who have just taken monastic vows.
Interesting! The rank of hieromonk can be received both by priests who have decided to become monks, and by monks who have been ordained, allowing them to perform church sacraments themselves, and have received the status of a priest.
Hieromonk's place of service
As a rule, a hieromonk serves at male monasteries, as has been the case since ancient times. However, this means a certain closeness and isolation of the church life of the hieromonk, therefore in today’s world the hieromonk has the right to serve in his church, which is most often located in rural areas.
The hieromonk is supposed to be addressed with the words: “Your Reverence!”
Nowadays, a hieromonk can conduct such church sacraments as:
- communion;
- confession;
- funeral service;
- Unction.
He also conducts the Divine Liturgy and prayer service.
How to contact a hieromonk
The generally accepted address for parishioners to a hieromonk is “father,” adding a name, for example, Father Sergius, and you can also address them with a word such as “father.”
Both of these addresses will be appropriate, however, in a more formal situation it is better to choose the first option, and the second option can be used in a personal conversation.
Who is a hieromonk?
One of the church ranks familiar to many is the hieromonk. A hieromonk is a person who is both a monk and a priest, i.e. unlike a simple monk, he can lead worship and often even has his own church parish.
A hieromonk is a priest who is a monk
Turning to history, it is worth saying that initially monks were strictly forbidden to take holy orders for the reason that they chose the life of a hermit, which means they could not conduct pastoral and social activities, with which the life of a priest was always connected. For this reason, in the first few centuries of Christianity, the rank of hieromonk was thought of as something incomparable.
But gradually, when the monks began to unite into communities and then monasteries, the need began to arise for a spiritual mentor and, accordingly, a priest, who began to be chosen from among the monks for ordination.
Origin of the term
The word “hieromonk” comes from Greece and comes from the merger of two roots - “hieros” and “monos”. The first root, “hieros,” is literally translated as the adjective “sacred,” and the second root, “monos,” means “one.”
Accordingly, the whole word has a translation close to the meaning of “sacred loner.”
The meaning of the word "hieromonk"
The term “monos” means a person who has chosen for himself a hermitage and spiritual improvement, but at the same time a renunciation of marriage and many worldly goods. Probably for this reason, in Russian the word took root in the meaning of “monk”.
Returning to the word “hieros”, we can add that it is from this word that another Greek word “hiereus” comes from - priest. Thus, we can conclude that the word “hieromonk” on Russian Orthodox soil has been fixed in the meaning of “monk-priest.”
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Is it a sin to marry me? I am divorced.
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Reader question:
Hello, father. I have a question about fornication. I got married and it so happened that my husband could not give me the proper attention as a man. They treated me, went to doctors - all to no avail. Two years later they decided to get a divorce, but he needed citizenship. They took the application for divorce from the registry office so that he could obtain citizenship, and decided to live together as neighbors. It was convenient for him that the woman was in the house, and it was convenient for me that there was no need to move. After these events, I began to actively communicate on the Internet with the guy. In total, we knew each other for two years, communicated daily on the Internet, on Skype for three months, met, liked each other and decided to live together. He knew about my fictitious marriage. He himself came from another city and took him to his place. We decided to live, get to know each other and then get married if we both wanted. Several more months passed. The guy believed strongly, began to study the Bible and learned that our relationship is sinful, and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery. They decided to stop fornication, began to pray every day, repent, they wanted to get married later, in a year, the husband would have received citizenship. They wanted to live according to God. But now he has again decided that I am divorced and he cannot marry me and chooses God. Our relationship is sinful, we started wrong. I changed my shoes along the way, basically. But I want to understand who is right, who is wrong and what to do? I started looking because of my husband’s weakness. The Bible says that a man should not marry if he “cannot,” which leads the wife into sin, because the flesh demands it. But still I sinned, I committed adultery in marriage. And my boyfriend is probably right, if we stay together, then I’ll make him sin, because you can’t marry divorced people. Please advise me something. The situation is very difficult, in my opinion. Thank you.
Archpriest Andrei Efanov answers:
Good afternoon
Indeed, according to the documents “Fundamentals of the Social Concept of the Russian Orthodox Church,” inability to cohabitate in marriage is one of the grounds for divorce. In this case, it’s really not your fault that the family broke up.
As for your second companion, let him not lie. Sin is that you began to live outside of marriage. And if he had the intention of marrying you, then it would be normal and logical to legitimize your relationship with him before God and people. After all, you already lived together, you already had a marital relationship, they just needed to be brought back to normal. And now it turns out that he strives for a supposedly pure life, but at the same time there was still a sin, and even the woman he supposedly wanted to marry, that is, you, he puts in an even worse situation, leaving her alone, out of wedlock, those. throwing. So you would not introduce him into any new sin through marriage; on the contrary, legal family life would take the place of sin.
Another question is that if he does not want to be with you and simply found a reason for this, then you will not do anything about it, because it is impossible to force a person. You can, of course, talk to the priest to whom he confesses; if you wish, then come and talk together. I think this is the most reasonable thing to do now.
And in the future, if things don’t work out, there’s no need to live outside of marriage. If a person is serious, meet him without crossing the line, get married - and then let a full-fledged married life begin. And if there is no marriage, then nothing is needed. This is not divine, and you yourself can see that nothing good comes from this.
God bless you!
An archive of all questions can be found here. If you do not find the question you are interested in, you can always ask it on our website.
Who can become a priest's wife?
Irina Voiko
Priest Alexy Yalansky answers:
– According to the requirements of the canon, the bride of the future priest must be of the Orthodox faith (14th Ave. of the IV Ecumenical Council), and, like himself, must maintain chastity until marriage, and therefore she cannot be a widow, divorced or be in prodigal cohabitation (18th Apostolic Canon; 3rd Ave. of the VIth Ecumenical Council).
The desire to be a mother - the wife and life partner of a priest - is without a doubt a laudable desire. Without a stretch, it can be called a feat.
As a former seminarian, I remember many marriages that developed between seminarians I knew and girls who dreamed of becoming mothers.
But, unfortunately, such marriages were often built on the idealization of the life of future mothers and fathers, and life often revealed completely different realities: insecurity, lack of employment, moving from place to place, etc. For many young priests, this was the norm of life, and only after a few years, such families achieved a more or less stable lifestyle. I’ll be honest: there have been cases when such difficulties were something shocking and completely unexpected for young mothers, which sometimes led to the tragic breakup of families. But after a divorce, the priest no longer has the right to marry a second time, and such unfortunate young people became celibates against their will.
Therefore, the future mother must not only be prepared to bear all sorts of difficulties and hardships, but also be responsible for the family she is creating, because frivolity can doom the future priest to loneliness.
But even in a stable, firmly established family of a priest, mother will not be able to relax: mother is always in sight and she must remember that with her words, actions, and even clothes, she can give rise to gossip and condemnation not only of her family, but also Orthodoxy as a whole. Moreover, you will have to watch not only yourself, but also your children: what companies they work in, what ideas they live by. Unfortunately, even in the families of priests, children often fall under the skating rink of temptations of this world and lose authority in the face of Orthodoxy. And here the lion’s share of the struggle for preserving the purity of faith lies with mother.
And the most important thing: the future mother must be an example of an Orthodox Christian, not only after marrying a candidate for the priesthood, but also before this marriage. This is required by church canons.
And finally, personal advice from me: not all seminarians plan to become priests in the future, because the Seminary itself is a preparatory test for the priesthood, which not everyone passes. Take a closer look at your chosen one: does the sacrificial fire of shepherding really burn in him, or has such a person already chosen a different path for himself in the Church?
I hope everything works out for you with God's help.
Black and white priest - what is the difference?
In the Orthodox Church, all clergy are divided into 2 categories - black and white. The black clergy includes monks who have taken monastic vows, while the white clergy includes priests who have not taken monastic vows.
Important! The most important difference between the black and white clergy is that clergy members of the white clergy can marry.
There is a prejudice among people, undoubtedly connected with the semantics of color, that white clergy are better than black ones. This question requires additional clarification, because in various questions that parishioners often address to the priest, a white or black priest can be useful.
The rank of hieromonk corresponds to the rank of priest in the white clergy
For example, if a person turns to the priest with a question about family problems, then a white priest will answer this question more practically, due to the fact that he himself has a family. But if a pilgrim or monk turns to a priest with a question concerning deeply spiritual quests, then the help of a black hieromonk would be more appropriate here, because he himself walked this path.
