The Husband Demanded his Wife be a Fleshly Object
A certain lady from Thessaloniki told me that once Saint Paisios brought a decisive end to a burdensome and extremely sinful marital trial she was facing. She and her husband had different spiritual fathers (confessors).
Her own spiritual father was traditional, conscientious, and pointed out the God-ordained boundaries and conditions of an honorable marriage.
Her husband’s spiritual father, however, was a modernist and “post-patristic,” and he would tell her husband the well-known, blasphemous, and immoral claim that: “God leaves the bedrooms free and does not concern Himself with what spouses do in their relations, but with the heart…”
The husband demanded that his wife turn into a base, degrading, fleshly object, constantly pressuring her—under the blessing of his spiritual father—to submit to unnatural, God-hated, and abominable sin.
She followed the guidance of God’s voice through her good spiritual father and never even considered committing such a pathological and impious act.
At some point, in despair, she went to the Holy Monastery of Saint John the Theologian in Souroti and met Saint Paisios there. She confided her problem to him and asked for his help.
According to her testimony, the Saint became, as we say, like a “volcano” of righteous indignation. He instructed her not to give in—even under threat of death—to the most loathsome and deadly sins fallen man can commit. He explained that through such sins the devil enters the marriage and the Holy Spirit departs.
People become sub-beastly creatures—so degraded that even animals should feel ashamed before them and humans should learn from the animals instead. He further explained that such acts overturn the purpose of marriage, which preserves what is natural and elevates it to the supernatural. These abominable acts—like those punished by fire from heaven in Sodom—are especially beloved by the devil, because they lead the human being, created in the image and likeness of God, downward into the distorted state of demons rather than toward the exalted, triumphant position revealed by the deified human nature assumed by Christ—namely, at the right hand of the Father.
He called these acts a scourge of the age and a cause of divorces, psychological fragmentation between spouses, and especially the corruption and moral downfall of modern children, who absorb demonic influence through the conditions surrounding their conception and from the open spiritual wounds that remain unhealed in their parents’ souls.
What particularly impressed the woman was Saint Paisios’ insistence that she report her husband’s “spiritual father” to his bishop so that he would be defrocked. He told her verbatim:
“Go and tell the bishop so he can strip him (of his priesthood)!”
We thus observe Saint Paisios’ clear position—consistent with all the Holy Fathers—against any form of sexual perversion, whether outside or within marriage. Such acts turn marriage into a “legitimized” form of sodomy with destructive consequences both for the spouses—who, if they do not repent, are condemned—and for their children.
We also see his patristic stance toward those so-called “spiritual fathers” who lack the Holy Spirit and give ruinous advice to their spiritual children by indulging their passions. As taught by the patristic tradition, a spiritual father has the authority to forgive only those things that are forgivable according to God’s law—not everything.
Willful blindness and unlawful, misguided forgiveness of unrepentant sinners lead both the one confessing and the spiritual father to condemnation.
May the Lord grant us discernment and bless us all through the prayers of His saint, Saint Paisios the Athonite.
*Hieromonk Savvas Agioritis*
