Religiously Mixed Marriage

[Jean-Serge]

I do not know your story. But it seems you marrried your wife when you were no longer Orthodox (when you lapsed). If you come back to orthodoxy, it is not necessary to celebrate an orthodox wedding since you are in the category of those who married a non-orthodox wife before being orthodox... Saint Paul advises them to keep their wife...

[CorpusChristi]

Grand Duchess
St Elizabeth Feodorovna Romanova
was still very Catholic until ten years after her Orthodox Marriage, and then she finally converted, and this ecomonomia was granted and look what the outcome was, a marvelous Martyred Saint.........
Grand Duchess
St Elizabeth Feodorovna Romanova

'I am leaving a glittering world where I had a glittering position,
but with all of you I am descending into a greater world -
the world of the poor and the suffering.'

ELIZABETH of Hesse-Darmstadt was born on 1 November 1864. She was named after Elizabeth of Hungary (1207-31), a Catholic saint of her own family. Her mother died when she was a child, and she came to England to live under the protection of her grandmother, Queen Victoria. If her childhood was Lutheran, the religious culture of her adolescence was distinctively Anglican. In 1884 Elizabeth married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the fifth son of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. Elizabeth found Orthodoxy increasingly absorbing, and in 1894 she adopted the faith.

Although her life had assurance and all the comforts of eminence, it rested on fragile foundations. The Tsarist state maintained its grip over a changing society by repression. Talk of revolution persisted, and grew louder. Acts of terrorism mounted. On 18 February 1905, the Grand Duke Sergei was assassinated.

This marked a turning point in Elizabeth's life. Now she gave away her jewellery and sold her most luxurious possessions, and with the proceeds she opened the Martha and Mary home in Moscow, to foster the prayer and charity of devout women. Here there arose a new vision of a diaconate for women, one that combined intercession and action in the heart of a disordered world. In April 1909 Elizabeth and seventeen women were dedicated as Sisters of Love and Mercy. Their work flourished: soon they opened a hospital and a variety of other philanthropic ventures arose.

In March 1917 the Tsarist state, fatally damaged by the war with Germany, collapsed. In October, a revolutionary party, the Bolsheviks, seized power. Civil war followed. The Bolshevik party was avowedly atheistic, and it saw in the Orthodox Church a pillar of the old regime. In power, it persecuted the Church with terrible force. In time, hundreds of priests and nuns were imprisoned, taken away to distant labour camps, and killed. Churches were closed or destroyed. On 7 May 1918 Elizabeth was arrested with two sisters from her convent, and transported across country to Perm, then to Ekatarinburg, and finally to Alapaevsk. On 17 July the Tsar and his family were shot dead. During the following night Elizabeth, a sister from SS Mary and Martha named Varvara, and members of the royal family were murdered in a mineshaft.

In the Soviet Union Christianity survived in the face of periodic persecution and sustained oppression. But Elizabeth was remembered. In 1984 she was recognized as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, and then by the Moscow Patriarchate in 1992.

[Liudmilla]

Nektarios wrote:

No she does not plan on becoming Orthodox. Well if the canons says against mixed marriages then I dont really have a choice. I cant do it then. That reallys sucks. Hopefully God has different plans in mind then what she does.

This is one of those things that should not be decided upon by internet discussion. Each situation is different and certainly not hopeless. Nektarios, Please, Please, talk to your priest, or even any Orthodox priest about this, before you make any decisions. An Orthodox marriage is possible (under circumstnaces only your priest can tell you about), I know because my husband was not Orthodox when we married and I had a church wedding.

If we all lived in a purely Orthodox country there would be no need for "special circumstances", but we don't live in purely Orthodox countries so exceptions exist. Lay people here may know the "rules", but they cannot know the exceptions....only your bishop will know how to deal with your specific situation.

So please go speak (or even write) to your priest and /or bishop and tell him your story. Don't deny yourself Orthodoxy based on the comments of a few who really cannot answer for the CHURCH.