Читать толкование: К Титу послание ап. Павла, Глава 2, стих 3. Толкователь — Иероним Стридонский блаженный

Старицы также - то есть, подобно старцам, во всем достойные, трезвые, скромные, степенные, здравые в вере, и любви, и терпении, соответствующее их полу имели бы подражание святым, или, лучше, как написано по-гречески: en katasthmati ieroprepeij¹, чтобы также сами их походка и движение, и лицо, и слово, и молчание, и что угодно - являли достоинство святого облачения.

Even if the apostle Peter commands that husbands should honor their wives as the weaker vessel, one should not think, however, that the wife, who may have the weaker bodily vessel is at once also weaker in soul. This is why it is now commanded to them that in them too the apostle’s words are fulfilled: “Power is perfected in weakness.” And it is said that they should have everything that the older men have been commanded to know commonly, namely, in that passage where he says, “Likewise bid the older women,” that is, just as the older men, “in everything to be sober, honest, chaste, sound in faith, love, and patience.” And they should have this unique thing in view of their sex, to be “of holy disposition,” or as it reads better in Greek, ἐν κατα­στήματι ἱεροπρεπεῖς, so that their very gait and movements, countenance, speech, silence, should present a certain dignity of holy elegance.
And because this kind of young women is accustomed to be garrulous, in accordance with this he says, “Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house, but not only idlers but also lo-quacious meddlers, speaking what is not fitting.” Therefore, he does not want them to be slanderers, that is, accusers. They should not be the type to detract from some in order to please others. Or, at least, because they themselves have already passed beyond adolescence, they would discuss with the ages of the younger women and would say, “She is adorned thus, she wears her hair thus, she proceeds thus, she loves him, she is loved by him.” Even if these things are true, she should not so much accuse others as correct herself secretly by the love of Christ, and let her not prefer to teach in order to avoid doing, to accuse her in public of what she herself has done.
These periods of life are accustomed to devote themselves to wine for the sake of lust, because they have grown cold from bodily excess (although there are very many who are not ashamed of their own flesh and, being timid young virgins, they are composed as they come before the flock of playboys). And when in the midst of their cups they seem wise and eloquent in their own eyes, they assume as it were an austerity of manners, speaking what seems good to themselves, and not remembering what they were. And therefore let the older woman be forbidden to drink wine excessively, since that which leads to lust in young men leads to drunkenness in the old. Or how can an older woman teach younger women chastity seeing that, if the young woman imitates the drunkenness of the older woman, she cannot be chaste?
It is significant, however, that he has expressed, “Not enslaved to much wine.” For enslavement is a kind of extreme condition. The senses of a man occupied with wine are not his own but the wine’s. Since therefore he has first taught what sort the older women ought to be, and after these things what things they have in common with the older men, he has likewise explained their own unique characteristics, that they should be filled with an honest and holy disposition and with all decorum; they should not be accusers or detractors of others, they should not have their senses occupied with wine. Now, consequently, he permits them to have the bridles of doctrine, so that when they become such, they may have the freedom to teach, namely, to teach what are good things. For although in another passage he said, “But I do not permit women to teach,” it should be understood thus, that lofty teaching should be for their husbands.
However that may be, let them teach the younger women, as if they were their own daughters, first of all, “chastity,” since the adversary fights against this all the more in the one blooming with youth;