Artist: Henri‑Jean‑Guillaume Martin
Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled (Heb. 13:4)
The other day, one of my old friends called me. It wasn’t exactly a confession, but rather a conversation between two acquaintances who had met for a quiet kitchen chat, only this time via mobile phone. Her voice was thoughtful, even slightly bewildered. And the topic that came up was the most everyday one—about marriage, about family, about how young people (and not only young people) build their relationships nowadays. “You know,” she said, stirring her tea with a spoon—you could hear the spoon clinking against the cup—“my acquaintance announced that her daughter and her boyfriend have decided to ‘just live together.’ Without a marriage certificate, without a wedding, just under the same roof, to test their feelings. Everyone around is saying that this is sensible, this is modern. But something inside me is clenching. They say it’s not a sin these days, not for a long time now. But I still feel uneasy… Do we really believe that, as Christians?”
If we want to remain Christians not just in name, but in practice, we need to preserve the traditional attitude towards marriage.
And we got talking. And the longer this heartfelt, almost evening‑long dialogue went on, the more clearly one simple yet bitter thought emerged—a thought we shared, much like two streams converging into one river: If we want to remain Christians not just in name, but in essence, we need to preserve the traditional attitude toward marriage. Not as a museum exhibit, but as a living, awe-inspiring sacrament. And here’s why.
I remember listening to a friend and remembering a smiling couple who once came to talk to me. “Father,” the young man says with genuine enthusiasm, “we have decided to get married. But first, you know, we want to live together for a year or two. Take a closer look. So to speak, “test drive”. And then we'll see.” Back then, I, in all honesty, couldn’t help but slightly smile, and I replied: “You know, when I was a deacon, I had an old Volkswagen. When I bought it, I also spent a long time looking it over: how the heater worked, whether the engine made any knocking sounds, how much oil it consumed. But please forgive me magnanimously, but your immortal soul and the soul of your chosen one are not a carburetor. And the heart is not a gearbox either.” How are you going to “test” that which according to God’s design, is meant to be a once-and-for-all, unrepeatable, and self-sacrificial thing?
My young interlocutor then hesitated, and his companion blushed. But in essence, he expressed what is heard everywhere today: The traditional form of relationship between future husband and wife—first, getting to know each other with the blessing of the parents, chaste communication, then an engagement, then a wedding and living under the same roof—is increasingly being declared something outdated, almost indecent, “cliché”. Cohabitation before marriage, that very trial “civil partnership”, is almost called the norm of common sense.
When we call sin a “test of relationships,” we’re simply trying to dress up our inner weakness in the clothes of philosophical wisdom.
And here, my dear ones, I don’t want to deliver a theological lecture, but rather delve into the very essence of this substitution. Let’s be honest: when we call sin “psychological compatibility” and “testing the relationship,” we’re simply trying to dress up our inner weakness in the guise of philosophical wisdom. We’re lulling our conscience, which quietly but persistently whispers that a house built on the sand of trivial pleasures will not stand up to the winds of real sorrow.
And here, in a conversation with an acquaintance, we took the very step that I’m asking you to take now: Let’s see where this winding path leads. If we once and for all agree that marriage is nothing more than an agreement about living together, about mutual convenience, about “psychological compatibility,” then tell me, with your hand on your heart: Where is the limit here? If the essence of marriage boils down to nothing more than the earthly comfort of two people who like each other, then what difference does it make what gender they are? If the sacramental nature of marriage has disappeared, if God’s blessing is just a beautiful, old‑fashioned ritual for the faint‑hearted, then marriage turns into a construction set—today I’m assembling a family model with a man and a woman, and tomorrow, under the influence of European trends, society says that the same “social unit” can be assembled with two men. Gender ceases to matter, and tradition even less so. Only the cold logic of comfort remains.
I didn’t say this to my acquaintance right away; it was as if I was tasting the words. She fell silent on the phone, and then she sighed: “So that’s what it is… So these are the very ‘European values’ that are being so heavily pushed on us. First they said, ‘Live for yourself,’ and then they ended up saying that marriage isn’t important—as long as there’s love, any kind of love.” Yes, that’s exactly right. When society loses the sanctity of marriage, it inevitably slides down a slippery slope. And what is presented today under the guise of “civil marriage” (although in reality it’s just cohabitation, because a civil marriage is, after all, an official registration with the registry office—but more on that later) and what tomorrow will become a “same‑sex union” are not two different phenomena, but links in one chain. It’s just that at first a person says: “I want to live with whomever I want without any obligations,” and then: “I want to live with whomever I want and for it to be called marriage, and don’t tell me about nature.” The logic is ironclad: If God is not in our relationship, then anything goes.
I must admit that at this point in our conversation, we both felt that particular bitterness that comes when you read ancient chronicles and suddenly, with horror, recognize yourself in them—but not in the best light. And I remembered how, in the early centuries of Christianity, when the Church was still a small handful of people in the midst of a raging pagan sea, it was precisely the attitude toward marriage and family that became that very light which struck the pagans to the very depths of their souls.
Let us transport ourselves mentally to ancient Rome or the licentious Corinthian Hellenes. The pagan world, for all its outward splendor, was imbued with a cult of the flesh and hedonism. Marital fidelity was considered eccentric, and virginity before marriage was simply foolishness. Men had legitimate affairs on the side, courtesans were respected ladies, and the cults of Bacchus and Aphrodite sanctified the most blatant debauchery. And into this world entered the Christians. Simple, often illiterate people, not senators and not philosophers. But they had something that made pagans, accustomed to moral relativism, literally faint: Their wives did not cheat on their husbands, husbands did not abandon their wives, and young men and women preserved chastity until marriage as the greatest treasure. It was a real scandal, a quiet but stunning revolution of the spirit. “Look,” the pagans whispered, “how these strange people love each other! Even their marriages are pure, and children are born not from casual lust, but from blessed love.” It was precisely this, rather than political pamphlets, that won over hearts. Their traditionalism, set against the backdrop of pagan licentiousness, was not hypocrisy, but the radiance of a different, heavenly order.
Today, we who call ourselves Christians wear a cross around our necks, but we sometimes behave worse than the ancient pagans.
And now, sitting in our kitchen philosophy, we looked the bitter truth in the eye. Today, we who call ourselves Christians wear a cross on our chests, but we sometimes behave worse than those ancient pagans. Why worse? Because the pagans sinned out of ignorance. They did not know the Gospel, they had not heard the Savior’s words: “What God has joined together, let no man separate.” They gave in to their passions because the truth was hidden from them by the fog of idolatry. But we know better. We have read both “Marriage is honorable, and the bed undefiled” and the stern warnings of the Apostle Paul. We have heard that fornicators will not inherit the Kingdom of God. And yet, when we justify our cohabitation as a “psychological test,” we are not just falling—we are trying to pass off our fall as a rise. We proudly raise our heads and say: “This is not fornication, it is a conscious choice made by mature people.” That is the tragedy. An ancient pagan, going to the Baths of Caracalla to indulge in debauchery, at least did not say that he was going to pray. But we clothe our weakness in the robes of worldly wisdom and even try to get a blessing for it.
We are worse than the pagans. They simply didn’t know, but we do, and yet we still look for excuses for ourselves. We all, as pastors and as flock, face this choice. And here is where that very subtle humor emerges, which, they say, is characteristic of genuine spiritual life—humor that makes you cry. We have surpassed the ancient pagans, and so boldly that they must be looking at us in amazement from their shadows, shaking their heads: “You Christians have received such grace, and what do you do with it? You are justifying something that even we, without knowing God, have at least occasionally felt ashamed of.”
At this point, I remembered another story. One of my acquaintances, a man who was far from being religious but who liked to show off his erudition, in an argument once said to me: “Father, why do you keep clinging to these medieval norms? In ancient Athens, Socrates and his students—they, you know, also professed freedom in relationships, and no one condemned them.” I smiled and replied: “My friend, Socrates drank hemlock for his philosophy, but no one has yet poisoned us for our ‘free relationships.’ But if we’re going to refer to the pagans, then let’s go all the way—at least they didn’t swear allegiance to Christ. And we, you know, are baptized. We’re held to a different standard.” He laughed then, but it seemed he was thinking.
In a “trial” relationship, a person initially enters into the relationship with a backup option in hand.
Indeed, let’s be completely frank. The Church calls any carnal relationship outside of the marriage blessed by God fornication. Does that sound harsh? But try replacing that word with “trouble.” After all, in Russian, the word for fornication comes from the word “to be lost.” A person wanders in the dark, seeking genuine intimacy, but finds only its imitation. They want warmth, but they get only a spark that fades away at the first gust of everyday life. After all, it’s no coincidence that psychologists (the very ones that supporters of “trial marriage” so like to hide behind) note: couples who lived together before getting married get divorced more often than those who entered into marriage while maintaining a chaste acquaintance with each other. Why? Because in a “trial” union, a person initially enters into a relationship with a backup plan in hand. He doesn’t trust completely, he doesn’t sacrifice himself, and, like an experienced buyer, he’s constantly weighing things. “Did I get the right model?” Maybe an updated version will be released in the next quarter?” True love is a leap into the water, not a stroll in shallow water with a walking stick in hand.
And when my acquaintance and I reached this point in our reflections, I realized that our conversation had long since ceased to be just a “discussion about marriage.” It had turned into a quiet, heartfelt confession of faith. Both of us, looking towards our Christian past and our shared present, had come to an agreement. Not a gloomy, grumbling stance of “oh, the youth is doomed,” but a bright and courageous one: We must preserve and pass on the traditional attitude towards marriage. Not as a chain and a burden, but as the greatest treasure. After all, it is in the sacrament of Marriage that two become one flesh, not out of instinctive inertia, but by the gift of the Holy Spirit. In marriage, as in monasticism, there are no trial runs or initial drafts. You cannot enter the water halfway—you must either stay on the shore or swim, trusting in Him who walked on the water.
The first Christians were also considered backward and hypocritical. The Roman world shook its head in disbelief: what kind of people are these Christians, who don’t attend gladiatorial games, don’t abandon infants in the streets, remain faithful to their boring wives, and don’t partake of idolatrous offerings? And in the end, the empire collapsed, while the Church endures to this day. So perhaps our “non‑modernity” is in fact the very essence of the true modernity of eternity?
Marriage is not a “test drive” or a philosophical experiment. It is a tiny but daily Golgotha for two people.
And here, my dear friends, I want to say what I probably sat down to write down this conversation for, while the memories are still fresh. Marriage is not a “test drive,” not a philosophical experiment, and not a pretext to have a beautiful photo shoot in a church. Marriage is a school of love, and Love, as we know from Scripture, is patient and kind; it does not seek its own. In other words, it is a tiny but daily Golgotha for two people who agree to die for each other, so that one day they may rise together for incorruptible joy. No “test” can prepare one for this miracle, because a miracle cannot be tested—one can only enter it with closed eyes, holding on to God’s hand.
And when we lose this understanding, when we, like unwise children, tear the heart of marriage—God—out of it, we are left with only an empty shell. And then it no longer matters what this shell is called: common-law marriage, guest marriage, or same‑sex union. All of these are different masks for the same orphanhood, in which people try to warm themselves with their own breath; but the wind of this world blows out all the candles.
We finished the conversation, and I sat by the window for a long time, watching as dusk gathered outside the glass. And I thought about how many such people—anxious but true to their inner compass—live among us. And how many more are still wavering, waiting not for angry outbursts from us, but for a simple, clear word of truth. Words that chastity is not a sign of hypocrisy, but a beautiful garden in which true love can grow. That tradition is not a dusty chest full of grandmothers’ dresses, but a canal tested over centuries, along which the family’s ship safely enters the harbor of salvation. And that any attempt to “make life easier” by renouncing responsibility and blessing inevitably leads us to that gloomy harbor where there is no longer either God or man—only cold pragmatism, which today allows us to “live for ourselves,” and tomorrow will declare anything to be the norm, just to deprive us of our every last sacred thing.
When a pagan asked a Christian why he did not share his free‑spirited ways, the answer was simple: “Because I belong to Christ.” And this answer turned the world upside down.
Let us remember, that when a pagan in ancient Athens asked a Christian why he did not share his free‑spirited ways, the answer was simple: “Because I belong to Christ.” And this answer turned the world upside down. Today, when we are told: “Why do you cling to these old‑fashioned marriages?” let us respond not with words of hatred, but with the quiet light of our family life. A life where a husband loves his wife as Christ loves the Church, where a wife fears (in the biblical sense—reverently respects) her husband, where children grow up in the faith, and the home is a small Church. And then no “European” wind will extinguish the lamp that was lit by God Himself. And we will not outdo the ancient pagans in the dubious competition of moral decline; instead, we will quietly but firmly follow Christ, in whom “there is neither Greek nor Jew,” but only Love, crucified and risen—the very Love for which it is worth living, believing, and building a family.
