The most significant fact about Orthodox marriage is that it is a sacrament. No other human relationship - not that of father and son, of sister and brother, of lifelong friends - is so honored. Indeed, the only other intimate relationship that is also a sacrament is that relationship which marriage most nearly resembles - the relationship of the individual with Jesus Christ, manifested in the sacrament of communion.

In the early twentieth century, the Russian Orthodox priest Alexander Elchaninov recorded in his diary reflections on marriage that grew out of his many years of service to married couples and of his own experience of marriage. "Marriage," he wrote, "fleshly love, is a very great sacrament and mystery. Through it is accomplished the most real and at the same time the most mysterious of all possible forms of human relationship. And, qualitatively, marriage enables us to pass beyond all the normal rules of human relationship and to enter a region of the miraculous, the superhuman." He goes on to say, "Only in marriage can human beings fully know one another - the miracle of feeling, touching, seeing another's personality - and this is as wonderful and as unique as the mystic's knowledge of God. It is for this reason that before marriage man hovers above life, observing it from without; only in marriage does he plunge into it, entering it through the personality of another. This delight in real knowledge and real life gives us a feeling of achieved plenitude and satisfaction which makes us richer and wiser."

It is precisely this ability of marriage to transform the individuals that enter into it, to aid Christian husbands and wives in the sanctification of their lives, that makes marriage such a worthy and desirable undertaking. But as is fitting for such a worthy goal, great sacrifice is also necessary. The sacrament of marriage is meant not just to enable us to experience the joys of wedded life, but also to help us remain strong in the face of its inevitable difficulties.

Speaking of the sacramental crowning of Orthodox weddings, Bishop Kallistos Ware writes, "the outward and visible sign of the sacrament signifies the special grace which the couple receives from the Holy Spirit, before they set out to found a new family or domestic Church. The crowns are crowns of joy, but they are also crowns of martyrdom, since every true marriage involves an immeasurable self-sacrifice on both sides."

Perhaps the most unfashionable element of the traditional Christian conception of marriage is this insistence on the certainity of sacrifices. The idea of "for better or for worse" may be commonplace in modern thinking about marriage, but in practice many people assume that the "worse" won't really be present in their own marriages. But the Orthodox perspective not only assumes that difficulties will arise, it finds in them a kind of satisfaction. "A Christian can and should make and keep various vows and promises that are troublesome and burdensome for our heart; but they should be vows in conformity with the Word of God and His will, and not according to our own ideas and fancies," wrote St. Innocent of Alaska in his brief but invaluable book, The Indication of the Way into the Kingdom of Heaven. And indeed, when we resolutely take on the vow of marriage we take a step towards our own salvation.

Douglas Cramer is a staff writer for Orthodox Christian Network and managing editor of AGAIN, published by Conciliar Press (http://www.conciliarpress.com/). He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with his wife Anastasia and their three sons.

This article is excerpted from "Marriage Transfigured"; AGAIN Magazine Vol 25 No 3, Fall 2003.