The Devil’s Advertising Campaign

The devil is not hiding anymore. 

There is no need for him to hide when the world gives itself over to his control. Daily. We do his will with as much eagerness as the demons.

We love him.

We laugh at his jokes. 

Maybe you find these billboards funny, but blasphemy shouldn’t be humorous for an Orthodox Christian.

How many people driving past this billboard are chuckling at the “humor”—the blasphemous use of the language of the Commandments, and the statement that a nun is nothing more than a woman who failed to find a man? Even if you do not outwardly laugh at the billboard, you will have seen it, and the enemy will have succeeded in planting his seed. 

Satan’s handiwork is to constantly put malicious and damaging thoughts in people’s minds. 

– St. Paisios

In a country where monasticism is unknown, misrepresented, or regarded as archaic, there is already a very small chance of a woman becoming a nun. With this new dart from the enemy, the chance becomes even smaller. The average American woman has few encounters with the concept of monasticism, so that this one, with its bold letters against their bright yellow background, will stand out in her mind. If she encounters a real-life nun, she will have this association: The nun became a nun because she had no other options. She gave up on dating. She made a vow of celibacy to escape from something. She will never be free, beautiful, and happy like the women in the photographs.

The open secret is that the devil has a special hatred for women because of the New Eve: the Mother of God, the Most Holy Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary. One of the devil’s greatest fears is that a young woman would become a nun. Nuns are the shadow of the Mother of God and seek to imitate her in everything. We imitate her modesty, obedience, purity, silence, and strength. These virtues are the exact opposite of everything the devil, by way of feminism, is telling women to be: promiscuous, rebellious, shameless, aggressive, and captive to a victim mentality. 

In truth there is only one freedom – the holy freedom of Christ, whereby He freed us from sin, from evil, from the devil. It binds us to God. All other freedoms are illusory, false, that is to say, they are all, in fact, slavery.

– St. Justin Popovich

I was that type of woman for several years, and I was miserable—more accurately, I was literally living in hell. 

I was a prodigal. I was Orthodox from a young age, and so I knew, deep down, from whence I had strayed and to where I needed to return. Once I reached the point of despair, I knew in my heart what I needed to do: pray, go to church, confess, and receive Holy Communion. After living in this way for a few months, it became clear that monasticism was the only way forward for me; the only way I could be saved. 

For women in the world, called to be nuns, who are not Orthodox and may have never heard of monasticism, there are many more steps in between their current state and their calling. They don’t know the path, so there is much more opportunity for confusion, delays, U-turns, and complete denial. A woman may see a nun or hear about monasticism and feel a kindred, a longing in her heart, only to instantly shut it down with the memory of these obnoxious yellow billboards. “Me? Become a nun? No way. I haven’t given up. I can get a man whenever I want to.”  

It is a lie of the devil that women become nuns as a final resort or as an escape. Hidden within this lie is another lie: being physically desirable is the highest virtue to which a woman can attain. 

A woman who has accepted this lie will be infected with the cancer of vanity, self-love, and self-worship. She will waste countless hours in front of the mirror, attempting to make herself more beautiful—forgetting that her body will die and decompose, but her soul will live forever. She takes no thought for her soul and may forget that she even has a soul at all. 

For the living know that they will die, 

but the dead know nothing; 

they have no further reward,

and even their name is forgotten.

Ecclesiastes 9:5

At the time when I answered the call to monasticism, I wanted to get married and have children, and I could have…but God summoned me to something higher. Monasticism is the Angelic Life. A nun is not a single woman or a spinster—she is a bride of Christ. Jesus Christ, the Son of God and God, our Creator and the Savior of the World. 

The soul that has come to know God fully no longer desires anything else, nor does it attach itself to anything on the earth; and if you put before it a kingdom, it would not desire it, for the love of God gives such sweetness and joy to the soul that even the life of a king can no longer give it any sweetness.

– St. Silouan the Athonite

The devil is attacking the church and monasticism because there is meant to be a flowering of monasticism in our times. For many young people, monasticism may be the only way out of the abyss of sin into which they have fallen. 

More importantly, it may be the only way to fill the void which is really a longing for God. 

But the void goes by other names these days: atheism, anxiety, and depression. 

The existence of this void is ubiquitous in the soul of the modern secular person. There are infinite means of trying to fill it: entertainment, food, education, success, alcohol, drugs, and fornication… 

It is innate to every person to seek God. 

You will never be satisfied until you are united with Him. 

A monastic is a person who has given herself over completely to the search for God; who cares for her immortal soul rather than her mortal body; who knows that feminism and the world have nothing to offer us but death. 

Just as people do not enter a war in order to enjoy war, but in order to be saved from war, so we do not enter this world in order to enjoy this world, but in order to be saved from it. People go to war for the sake of something greater than war. So we also enter this temporal life for the sake of something greater: for eternal life. And as soldiers think with joy about returning home, so also Christians constantly remember the end of their lives and their return to their heavenly fatherland.

– St. Nikolai Velimirovich

The chief end of our life is to live in communion with God. To this end the Son of God became incarnate, in order to return us to this divine communion, which was lost by the fall into sin. Through Jesus Christ, the Son of God, we enter into communion with the Father and thus attain our purpose.

– St. Theophan the Recluse