I recently found in an older book from my library interestingly placed the homily of St John Chrysostom at the second book of Timothy as an example and guide on “How to overcome the obstacles in the family life”

After reading the chapter for the first time I got a little confused because I couldn’t easily see the correlation between the family life problems and the message in the text.

That made me go first to the original text of the Holy Scripture and read The Second Book of Timothy. Again here I couldn’t find an explanation why would this text would be connected to the family life and how it would be used as guidance. 

Next step was to go ahead and read St. John’s homily. The homily number 9 for The Second Book of Timothy. Here again I failed to see the direct resemblance with the family problems. After all, this Second Book of Timothy is a book that guides in overcoming the hardships in the ministry not in the family. 

I had to step back and take a break because things didn’t make sense. 

Why did the author who put this chapter together picked this homily as a guidance in overcoming the obstacles in the family. 

Lets look together at the points that I encountered in this chapter. 

1. The relationship of a servant with his master and how putting the needs of the master above anything of your own and your own needs is so important, and also very rewarding.
2. Disliking your own and of all of the worldly things and choosing those that are of the master will gain you bigger treasure of the spiritual kind and of course the Godly treasures.
3. If the servant is able to do achieve so much imagine how much more can the Master do and achieve. 
4. That who leaves serving the master for the riches, to gather for himself, stealing and hurting those of the master’s he will soon be lost and he will also lose his possessions. Here the author also mentions leaving the sorbing of the master even for raising his children and taking care of his wife, will lead towards the same consequences. 
5. The advice to despise those that are ours. Here the things become a little more clear and I can manage to understand better what is called “ours”.  Ours is referring to this world, all of it from the sky and everything on earth. If we despise them we will receive them back from God, but not only those., because these are also for the ones who don’t believe and are unworthy. What’ s more it’s the Kingdom and the glory, those are to be gained. 
6. Making the wrong choices. We are so stubborn in our ways that we keep choosing the wrong things over and over again. The Heaven is being presented in front of us and we keep choosing to spin around in circles on this earth. The Kingdom of Heaven is in front of us, yet we choose the poverty of this world. 
7. Be rich! Be greedy and kidnap! Very strange statement from a christian point of view, for sure. Even more: You will be found guilty if you are not greedy, you will find condemnation if you don’t kidnap.
   I do feel like I need to elaborate more at this point. Because the Kingdom of Heaven doesn’t shrink when you steal from it. When you kidnap the virtue, those of the body – the needs – shrink . On the other side if you try to kidnap/steal for your body (this world) the more the possessions will shrink. This basically means that the more you strive to have here on earth the more your needs will grow and your satisfaction will be further and further from being accomplished.
   I really want to stay here for a moment and clarify why the author choose these words: kidnaping & stealing. This is because a thief and a kidnaper in order to be successful they have to be alert, watchful, they have to be armed and to have protection. That is the reason he is using these specific words. We need to stop sleeping and snoring all the day and night and we have to stop being naked, unprotected and unarmed. Living as a sinful person it is the same as being unarmed. We need to get dressed with light, gather weapons, spiritual weapons , be alert and watchful. Without these things we will be unable to kidnap the Kingdom of Heaven.
   It is also useful to know that a thief or a kidnapper after they steal, they will start run-in fast in order not to be caught, in order to escape. Just like them we need to run, because the devil will run ahead of us and try to stop us and will make other to stop us, but if you are strong you will be faster than him and you will be able to kick away anything that is trying to catch you. Seeing that he will not be able to catch, eventually he will let you go, and you will be free like a bird, and you will be enjoying the unspoken goodness.
   Interesting, for sure. This is not your usual simple comparison. This is definitely something that can scandalize a person if the reading is done without much care and attention.

With all this points in front of myself, I still had quite a hard time to understand how all this advice was related to the family life. For sure on this instance I had to resort to an abstract kind of thinking in order to connect theses two the problem and the solution in this homily of St John. 

The way I finally managed to see this the proper way was to eliminate all the thinking about how to solve our daily problems as a family and just focus on “Kidnaping” the Kingdom of Heaven. That is for sure a long and elaborated work that if done together in a family the daily mundane things will slowly shrink and the beauty of Heaven would grow for both the husband and the wife and they would and they would not have to worry or fear anymore, because they will steal and kidnap together and run and be free together.