About marital intimacy during Lent: is it possible or not?

The topic of marital relations during Lent is inexhaustible. Lent is a time of spiritual work and growth, so questions immediately arise. How to deal with marital responsibilities in family life? How to behave if your spouse begins to demand intimacy, and the woman fasts? With the beginning of Lent, especially Great Lent (before Easter), many Christians first ask similar questions to themselves. And then they discuss it on the Internet, and also ask priests. At the same time, a pure, bright and unearthly life is often contrasted with base intimate relationships. Because of this attitude, problems begin: how to combine fasting and intimacy?

Is physical intimacy during Lent and church holidays a sin or not?

Photo: Pixabay.com
The topic of permissibility of marital intimacy during Lent is not without reason of concern to many family people. The whole point is that the Church does not give clear instructions, as is the case with other sins, where penance (punishment) is unambiguous.

Today's Typikon, according to which Orthodox Christians live and serve, came into use in the 15th century. According to him and general parish practice, one must abstain from intimate relationships during Lent. However, the ban is advisory in nature.

Joy and sadness

Marriage is almost always associated with joy, while fasting is mostly associated with sadness and brokenness. “And Jesus said to them, Can the sons of the bridal chamber mourn while the bridegroom is with them? But the days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast” (Matthew 9:15).

It is difficult to imagine a person who has a special need, who calls on God, cries out to Him, and then goes to enjoy and revel in the caresses of his spouse. After all, fasting is a STATE of humility of the soul. I would like to make a reservation that the Bible does not recommend having sex during Lent, not because it is something sinful and base - God forbid! But because this is part of family life, which brings us pleasure and satisfaction not only to the soul, but also to the body.

What's the use?

Saint Basil the Great said: “Fasting also knows the measure in marital affairs, restraining from immoderation in what is permitted by law.” That is, a person trains his own will, which means he will be able to refrain from cheating, and will not give reasons for jealousy, since he has learned to abstain. St. John Chrysostom wrote: “Marriage is given for procreation, and even more so for extinguishing the natural flame ...”, marriage is “a medicine that destroys fornication.” If a family man does not know how to abstain at all, then in the end, fed up with his other half, he will begin to look to the left.

What about others?

There are so many religions, so many opinions. Each has its own dogmas, prohibitions and restrictions. Islam is considered one of the strictest. So, it must be said that Muslims are not very categorical on this issue. Islam does not prohibit sexual activity during Ramadan (almost the same as fasting for the Orthodox). But! The permit applies only to the sick, nomads and people temporarily settled in a foreign land. They can have sex during fasting, but everyone else will have to wait.

How to properly observe marital fasting?

Photo: Pixabay.com
According to the rule of Timothy of Alexandria, physical relations are prohibited on the eve of Sunday, holiday, Wednesday and Friday. And throughout 4 fasts (Assumption, Christmas, Great and Petrovsky), Bright Week and Christmastide. But, while abstaining from physical intimacy, according to the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 7:1-7), one must adhere to three conditions:

1. mutual agreement;
2. for fasting and prayer;
3. for a certain time.

Situations in family life are different, so you need to treat everything with common sense and, if possible, consult with your spiritual father. For example, during the lives of Saints Ambrose of Optina and Seraphim of Sarov, who considered abstinence during fasting obligatory, almost all of Russia was Orthodox. People have been fasting since childhood; for them it was easy and natural. Nowadays, many families are just beginning to become church members, and it often happens that one of the spouses is a believer and the other is not. What should I do? For example, if a wife wants to fast, but her husband does not, then the woman must give in and vice versa. “A spiritually strong person in marriage should give the weak one the opportunity to set the time and measure of fasting,” says priest Vladimir Golovin.

How should a wife behave?

A woman must remember that “the head of the family is the husband.” In addition, it is more difficult for a man to abstain due to physiological characteristics. Therefore, he must decide the issue of abstinence.

What should a husband do?

A man must understand that most women need not so much physical intimacy as confidence in the love of their spouse. If the husband suddenly begins to abstain from intimacy without explaining anything to his significant other, then the wife will have doubts about her husband’s fidelity and his love for her. Therefore, a wise husband compensates for physical joy in other ways (gifts, compliments, and so on).

What should young spouses do?

Experienced confessors advise newlyweds to begin not with abstinence, but with love. The first thing that married people learn is to give in to their soulmate, to love her more than themselves, this is the main goal of married life.

Saint John Chrysostom said that if one of the spouses is against abstinence, then he cannot be forced to fast. “Because great evil comes from this; adultery, fornication and domestic disorder.” So many wives give their spouses a “reason for debauchery.” But there is no benefit from observing fasting in intimate life if the family is destroyed and/or one of the spouses falls into sin.

Advice on abstinence in marriage. (According to the teachings of St. Maximus the Confessor)

When a person entering into marriage has only sensual pleasures in mind, and strives only to please the lusts of his flesh, then he is deeply mistaken and by such a union with a woman he introduces disorder into life relationships, the bad consequences of which quite naturally respond to himself and his offspring.

The Holy Scriptures, without preventing us from using the benefits that the Lord gave to people to satisfy their vital needs, however, keeps us from any excesses and rash actions. People need food, but it does not follow that we overeat to the point of gluttony. The desire to have children is no less natural in man, and Scripture does not prevent him from doing so, but strictly forbids us to fall into carnality and debauchery.

Every human act must have its own good purpose, making it reasonable and normal, as opposed to such actions that are inspired in a person only by the impulse of his passion and are therefore vicious, testifying to his moral depravity. So it is in marriage: especially if you act lawlessly even in a legal marriage, committing adultery and abusing the impunity of carnal intercourse with the wife given to you by law.

The Lord established marriage to increase the human race, and not for the sake of satisfying the passions of a dissolute person and, of course, not for the sake of sensual pleasure. Abstinence in marriage is therefore a great moral adornment for people. What we mean here, of course, is not the senile calmness and dispassion that comes naturally after maturity, when bodily strength weakens and carnal passions extinguish. This is only a normal state of age, and in this case abstinence is not the result of a person’s own desire and way of thinking. After all, one cannot be victorious in a battle without experiencing the battle itself, and a fighter cannot say that he entered the fight and won when he is found already old and incapable of fighting. But if a person in a flourishing age, when he is completely full of bodily strength, easily ignited by the most insignificant reason, will resist temptations and, conquering his impulses, will have power over himself, then such a fighter should be given due honor to virtue, since he Through a difficult trial I achieved spiritual purity.

In the Old Testament, in the book of Tobit, it is said about Sarah, the daughter of Raguel, that she was given up to seven husbands, but that the evil spirit, Asmodeus, killed them all before they could approach the marital bed, for all these seven husbands were unworthy prudent Sarah: they all wanted to marry her for the sake of their immoral lust, seduced only by her beauty and maturity. Therefore, God retreated from them, and Asmodeus, the evil spirit, punished them with death, for the devil has the greatest power over such people. Tobias, knowing this, prayed like this: “Now, Lord, I take this sister of mine not to satisfy lust, but truly as a wife: deign to have mercy on me and let me grow old with her. (Comd. VIII, 7).” And the angel of God, Raphael, who was sent by God to instruct Tobias, bound the demon Asmodeus and ordered him to remain in the Egyptian desert so that he would not kill Tobias, just as he killed the rest of the men of Sarah.

Thus were seven young men destroyed by the terrible demon of debauchery! Listen, spouses! Pay attention, you who are getting married! Listen and learn that marriage without the fear of God and without abstinence is the joy of devils. They rejoice at such marital cohabitation no less than when debauchery plunges people into fornication. But it is not appropriate to even talk about this much, since it is shameful to talk about such vices. How people who have entered into marriage should behave, how they should govern themselves in order to maintain chastity, anyone can learn by reading the book of Tobit.

Holy Hierarch Demetrius of Rostov writes about the reason for the longevity of the first people, that they observed prudence, chastity and purity, abstained from themselves and did not marry early, keeping the marital union undefiled. They treated marriage with due respect and, always finding joy with their wives, did not approach them when they were pregnant, since they knew well that the marriage union was not established by God for the sake of lust and pleasure, but for procreation.

This is the law and command of God, and those who do not abstain in married life, but live immorally, not only remove the Lord from themselves, but also damage their physical health, destroy their strength, and thereby shorten the days of their life. On the contrary, abstaining from sensual intercourse preserves a person’s health and lengthens the days of his life.

So in St. In Scripture we see that the pious Noah remained celibate until the age of fifty, prudently observing his virginity, and only in the fiftieth year of his life did he take a wife for himself at the command of God and, having given birth to three sons from her, stopped relations with her. From such a marriage, blessed by God, came the offspring from which the human race was to spread after the flood.

The Lord said to Noah, when human wickedness on earth reached its highest limits: “People will not neglect Me forever: they have gone astray and become carnal... The earth is filled with evil deeds from people. I will destroy them from the earth (Gen. VI, 3).” Thus the Lord blesses chastity and abstinence and punishes wickedness and debauchery.

Regarding what the mutual relations of spouses should be, St. Isidore Pelusiot writes to the presbyter Athanasius that it is proper for a husband to approach his wife at a time when she is free from purification. Many, due to their immorality and intemperance, seek relations with their wives not only during the period of purification, but even during their pregnancy. And despite the fact that this is very disgusting, the women themselves allow them to do this, so that even unreasonable animals behave more prudently, because after conception they no longer communicate. Thanks to such human immorality, even that strange opinion has been established that a woman, in comparison with other living female creatures, is stronger. But alas!

It would be much more correct to say that it is weaker, since animals communicate only to continue the race, fulfilling the commandment of God: “be fruitful and multiply”; a woman does this not only to multiply the human race, but often even more because of her inclination to sin, thanks to her immorality and depravity. Such unnatural behavior, which goes against nature and degrades it, brings the most disastrous fruits. First of all, such spouses who do not maintain purity in their mutual relations are punished by the fact that the children born from them are weak, frail organisms, easily susceptible to various kinds of diseases, prone to all sorts of weaknesses and vices, which are passed on to them as if by inheritance. The Lord, wanting to correct and prevent this evil, visibly separates children born from such unions, clearly indicating by this how displeasing such behavior of parents is to Him. And really, can there be a more severe punishment for parents than when they see that the children they have born, whom they were looking for and wanted to see, at least the same as they themselves were, are ugly or vicious? Such children are the subject of eternal torment for parents. And this punishment is even more aggravated by the fact that they see how their children suffer innocently, and, moreover, are well aware that they themselves were the cause of the latter’s misfortune.

St. Nile of Sinaiti says about himself that when he had two sons, he stopped cohabiting with his wife, believing that two sons were enough to preserve his parents in old age and to continue the family line. In addition, he says, I strove to ensure that my children were born reasonable, sane people, and not given over to sensuality and vices.

These are the advice and admonitions that the holy fathers give us, so that our life would be in agreement with the commands of God; This is what we must do in order to gain peace and longevity on earth, and in the future life to be worthy of the Kingdom of Heaven. To all this, let us add a few more words about the harm that excesses in marital relationships bring to people, since the latter cause not only mental death, but a whole series of physical suffering.

They say that the greatest misfortunes that ever strike the human race occur in most cases from two reasons: from wine and from excessive love passion. With a certain degree of abstinence, neither wine nor attraction to one’s wife constitutes a great evil. But when this attraction crosses the boundaries of moderation, it turns into a disastrous passion, often driving a person to the point of fury in his depravity. How rarely, unfortunately, do we see people resisting the power of their passions, and how often, on the contrary, people are completely enslaved by them!

Such excesses place a heavy burden on human health. But in addition to the suffering of the flesh, our soul itself still here on earth accepts punishment for its errors. No one can deny that love passions enslave the spirit, humiliate its nobility and hinder the height of the mind. King Solomon, who in ancient times was glorified as the wisest man, destroyed the spirit of his wisdom by falling into the pleasures of love.

How often do we see in history that the strongest and most intelligent peoples, glorified for their power, perished due to the fact that as their morals deteriorated and the rigor of life disappeared, their physical and spiritual strength weakened.

A person who indulges in excesses in marital pleasures even loses his bodily beauty, and his appearance changes for the worse: his head loses hair, his eyes become dull and unclear, his gaze does not shine as before, and his vision itself becomes dull to the point that there is a need for glasses . But how often, and being in such a state, a person still does not want to understand that he is destroying himself, and prefers to lose his strength and reason than to abstain from the vices that give him pleasure. What a terrible blindness these people are in, having subordinated their soul to the power of the body, forgetting that the image of God is in them!

And the longer this lifestyle is maintained, the more and more disastrous consequences befall the dissolute person. The brain, this most noble organ, dries out, its activity weakens, and as a result, mental abilities become dull. Among such people, devoted to their lusts, it is almost impossible to meet a great, wise, strong person in mind and will. The chest suffers no less harm, as it weakens, becomes stunted and sunken, and is easily susceptible to serious illnesses. Excessive excitement of the body results in a constant feverish state that gives no rest either day or night; then a cough appears, dry and heavy, often with blood. Most of all, the organs used for procreation suffer, as well as the parts of the body adjacent to them, and this is quite understandable, since these members serve to satisfy lust. This is followed by: general insanity, suffering of the kidneys and stomach, relaxation of the bladder, paralysis of the sciatic part and, finally, that vile and shameful disease that arouses the highest degree of disgust for the suffering person, i.e. venereal disease. In addition, excessive voluptuousness weakens the body's warmth, and this makes the stomach unable to perform digestion correctly. Constant catarrhs, rheumatism, night pain in the limbs are felt throughout their lives by those who sought in it only sensual pleasures for their flesh. Oh, how deceptive these pleasures are: even the most innocent of them do not go unpunished if they are disorderly. But even if someone avoided physical suffering, then in any case he would not be able to free himself from that inner, spiritual repentance that always and inevitably appears after excesses in sensory relationships. No matter how much a person neglects the attacks of this bitter feeling, he will never escape it! And the more excesses there are, the stronger this feeling will be!

There was a time when fruits served as food for man, and only water as drink: then he did not know about the existence of diseases, his body was full of bodily strength, and his soul was full of moral strength; and abstinence alone cured the few sufferings that he occasionally had to experience. But it was not for long that he limited himself to the natural food that nature itself provided him, like a kind mother. He began to choose refined foods for himself, often even harmful to the body, seasoned with stimulants. Such nutrition, having a detrimental effect on the body, corrupted the body and soul of a person who had retreated from correct physical life. And nature rewarded him for this as he deserved, endowing him with many terrible diseases, such as we find in everyone who indulges in sensual pleasures.

But perhaps those bodily sufferings about which we have talked so much have not yet sufficiently convinced anyone of the need for abstinence. Let him not think that our soul suffers less from excesses than our body. On the contrary, mental illnesses that are a consequence of debauchery are even more terrible than illnesses of the flesh. Not to mention the torment of conscience, which even the most immersed in vices does not avoid, because his soul, enslaved by the body, nevertheless cries out to God, and only thinks that this is a disorder of brain activity, entailing a dulling of mental abilities, which we have already mentioned as a consequence of debauchery, always damages our spiritual strength and often drives a person to insanity. When the soul is sick, the correctness of a person’s life activities is immediately disrupted: memory is lost, the imagination weakens, or it rushes to abstract objects, surrounding itself with strange and painful ideas. And it is not surprising if, being in such a state and continuing to lead the same way of life, a person loses even that reason that still remains in him!

The Holy Apostle Paul preferred abstinence to marriage, because he knew well how much harm carnal love brings. Therefore, everyone, as far as possible, should be moderate, yielding to his attraction to his wife only when it is caused by the impulse of nature, and not by depraved imagination, and when he notices in his wife an inclination to fulfill marital duties. But extremely unhappy and worthy of pity is that person who, no longer finding pleasure in the impulses of nature alone, tries to arouse himself by various means and often even by drugs, in order to constantly be in debauchery. In addition to eternal punishment in the future life, he dooms himself in advance to all the earthly suffering of soul and body that we talked about.

Alas! Often, a reasonable person with a free soul can use dumb animals as an example, who understand better than he the harm from love pleasures and therefore come together occasionally, only to continue the race. How often does this very reason, of which people are so proud and which is such an important advantage for the human race, not only turn out to be a powerless remedy against the onslaught of passions, but even more subjugate our soul to them, arousing in our imagination ideas of unprecedented pleasures.

Curb your mind and heart, your desires and passions, for it is terrible, having a reasonable and free soul, to suppress its good aspirations to the point of despising yourself for your actions.

What has been said, one must think, is enough to understand where intemperance and a vicious life lead us. If already in this earthly life the Lord punishes a dissolute person with such severe suffering of soul and body, then what should be the punishment awaiting him in the next century! A terrible sin is debauchery, a sin that kills soul and body, entailing a whole series of other, no less serious sins.

Think about this, Orthodox Christians, and strive for abstinence!

Is it necessary to repent in confession if there was marital intimacy during Lent?

Even if physical intimacy occurred as a concession to the other half, it is necessary to confess. After all, the fast is broken - the sin is committed. Moreover, Orthodox spouses should not engage in perversions in their sexual lives, many of which have become the norm. These “excesses” from movies labeled 18+ are a sin, these are abnormal marital relationships. Spouses must respect each other's human dignity, desires, and seek an approach to their other half. And remember the main commandment: “Love one another” John. 13.34–35.

( 7 ratings, average: 4.71 out of 5)

What do people think?

If you conduct a survey among modern people on the topic “Is it possible to have sex during fasting? " , opinions will be very different. Some will say that it is absolutely impossible. Others believe that it is possible, but only for married couples. Some people think that registering the relationship at the registry office is enough. And some will impose a ban only on free love, which is generally considered a terrible sin in Orthodoxy. Nevertheless, many are wary of having sex during fasting. Where do the roots of these beliefs come from, and what are their reasons?

Personal confessor will answer

So is it possible or not to have sex while fasting? This article will allow you to draw certain conclusions. But there is not and cannot be anything unambiguous or categorical in the world. A person must be flexible, listen to his soul...

And each family is a purely individual case. And the circumstances are different. That is why the wise Apostle Paul said that abstinence should be by mutual consent of the spouses.

If the two of you cannot come to a decision, the priest will help. Just don’t contact a stranger about such an intimate matter. You can trust a confessor who has been leading the family for a long time, knows about the problems and circumstances of the spouses’ lives, and will be able to suggest a reasonable, correct answer for this particular case. Or rather, not even an answer, but advice. Who will preserve marital love and deliver from sin.

The important point is reciprocity

It happens that in a family one of the spouses is a church member, but the other is not. Or simply someone is stronger in spirit, and someone is weaker. And then, while the first one is fasting furiously (including sexually), the second one makes up for the deficit on the side. From the point of view of the Orthodox Church, this situation is even more sinful than carnal relations between spouses during Lent. And if you are not sure about your partner, you doubt his strength, it is better not to practice abstinence at all, but to go towards “hunger” gradually: through conversations, prayers and confessions.

Orthodox exceptions

But Orthodoxy – especially modern Orthodoxy – is not such a beast. There are cases when spouses met after a long separation, and their meeting coincided with Lent. For example, a serviceman came home for a week, or a sailor returned from a long voyage, and a month later he was back on the road. It would be cruel to require abstinence from them and, according to the teachings of St. Paul, even sinful. Especially if there is a new separation ahead. In such cases, the Orthodox Church turns a blind eye to dogma and gives the green light to physical love.