Talking about spiritual motherhood seems, at first glance, to be talking in a vacuum if we think about the state of the Church today, where spiritual fatherhood is almost frozen, and where confession is almost absent. And yet, despite this, there is motherhood practiced and lived in the Church today. But talking about spiritual motherhood is not an incentive to adopt the female priesthood. However, exempting a woman from the priesthood does not deprive her of the possibility of being a spiritual mother.

The Orthodox tradition is so well known for its emphasis on spiritual fatherhood that the words “Yarunda” and “Startz” are not foreign to books of an Orthodox nature. The question that arises now: Is it strange to talk about the spiritual mother, just as we talk about the spiritual father? Is it not possible for a woman, created like a man, in the image and likeness of God, to be an instrument of the Holy Spirit and thus be called a spiritual mother? What prevents a woman from being as spiritually radiant as a man?

Every person born to God in the baptismal font is called to be a son of God and a temple of the Holy Spirit. Just as the spiritual father is a channel for the Holy Spirit, so, every spiritual person can be a channel for the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, as the book says: “He blows wherever he pleases,” and it is impossible for him to blow only on men. Otherwise, why would God say: “Let us make man in our image and likeness,” and then “male and female he created them”?

But the spiritual mother is no stranger to Christian thought. Of course, it becomes clear if we look at the “sayings of the elder fathers”(41) There is mention of more than one hundred and twenty-seven spiritual elders, corresponding to only three spiritual mothers who are literally: (Theodore, Sarah, and Syncletic). The women mentioned are truly giants in spirit, and of the same stature as the aforementioned fathers, yet their number is small.

However, in the year 1200 AD, Father Isaiah collected a book of spiritual sayings from spiritual mothers, to be parallel to “The Sayings of the Elder Fathers” or “An Elder Said” and “The Desert Fathers”... and he translated it into Russian by Saint Bishop Theophan the Recluse, and it has been printed three times to this day. straight.

We also cannot forget, and through the history of monasticism and monastic literature in particular, that women were pioneers in the life of the soul, and even surpassed men as well. How many bright stars in the Church had a virtuous mother behind them, such as the mother of Saint John Chrysostom, the family of Saint Basil the Great, and the mother of Saint Gregory Plamas and others...

We know from Christian history that Saint Anthony, the Father of the Desert, when he decided to become a monk, placed his sister, after the death of his parents, in the custody of a women’s monastery that existed in that region, and after that he found comfort in God, so he directed his struggles in the desert.

However, we also know that the spiritual father in the Orthodox Church is an elder priest, and what is known in Greek as (Eromonachus). But what we also know is that confession was never limited to seminarians. This is what we saw clearly in the first five centuries AD, where people were spiritually guided by the monasteries, and where candidates for the bishopric were brought from the monasteries. Saint Anthony the Great, for example, was a spiritual father to Saint Patriarch Athanasius the Great, even though the former was not a priest. Historically, confession was not limited to the evangelistic priesthood, but rather was generally within the framework of the royal priesthood in which everyone who was baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit could participate. This means that a secular person can, as history teaches us, be a spiritual father. Therefore, there is nothing preventing secularism from being a spiritual mother in turn. What is important in the matter is physical maturity and filling with the spirit, and this is an image that can be provided in women as well as in men, because both are created in the image of God.

The question now is the following: What is the reason for women’s veil in terms of spiritual guidance?

I believe that the answer to the question must take into account the social and educational status of women and nothing more. If the woman, especially the Eastern woman, is overpowered and oppressed, and moves from the authority of her parents to the authority of her husband, and does not inherit as is the case with her brother, and is not treated as her brother is treated, and indeed her brother’s freedom is maintained, while she is oppressed, then it is obvious that this will be reversed. This all depends on her spiritual status, and on the possibility of playing a spiritual role in her church. Where can we get an independent being if we do not raise our daughters to be independent?

Unfortunately, reality clearly proves to us that girls are superior to boys in studies, which means that male superiority becomes meaningless and unnecessary, and the male superiority complex becomes useless and useless, and is even unjustified. Women today are an equal to men. In the study(42) And production. Women have entered various fields of life, although they are still lacking at the level of political leadership, despite a few cases that we have known in India, Britain, and Argentina. In short, women are created in the image of God, and this means that they have what men have. As for the injustice of society, it is what changed the facts and data, upended the equation, and made us see women as inferior to men in everything.

(41) The author was Arabized and printed in coordination with Al-Noor Publications and the Theological Institute in Balamand.

(42) We know from experience as teachers that the majority of high achievers are female. Girls outperform boys in order and accuracy, which means that male superiority is a figment of the imagination. This may be due to a number of reasons. There is no room to enumerate and study them in this book.