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Orthodox saints and prayers for finding a spouse: who to ask and how to pray while you wait

Which saints and Scripture passages Orthodox Christians turn to when hoping to marry, what intercession actually is, and a simple way to pray while you wait.

By Orthodate Editorial20 minute read

Orthodox Christians who hope to marry are in a particular position. The Church teaches that marriage is a sacrament and that most people are called to it, it surrounds the wedding with some of the most beautiful prayers in its books, and then gives very little by way of a script for the years before. There is no official saint of finding a husband or a wife, no standard prayer, no recognised formula. What there is, in abundance, is a tradition of asking holy people to pray with us, a Scripture full of couples and of people who prayed about marriage, and a settled understanding of what prayer is for. This guide gathers those together honestly: the saints whose lives are actually about marriage, the passages of Scripture that are worth praying with, what the Church does not teach, and a plain plan for praying through a long wait.

At a glance

Key takeaways

  • Asking a saint for prayer is the same kind of request as asking a friend or a godparent to pray for you, and it carries no guarantee of the outcome you are hoping for.
  • The saints most worth knowing for this are those whose lives were about marriage itself: Peter and Fevronia, Adrian and Natalia, Joachim and Anna, and the New Testament couple Aquila and Priscilla.
  • The prayer the tradition leaves you to build is simple: thanksgiving, surrender to God’s will, a request for the person you could become and for a companion with whom you can be saved, and prayer for other people.

1. What it means to ask a saint for help

The Orthodox understanding of the saints rests on a simple conviction: those who have died in Christ are alive in him, and they continue to pray. The Letter to the Hebrews presents the Church on earth as surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses, and the Letter of James says that the prayer of a righteous person has great power. When an Orthodox Christian asks the Theotokos or a saint to pray, he or she is doing what Christians do when they ask a friend to pray for them, with the difference that the friend is closer to God than we are.

That framing removes most of the common confusions. A saint is not a dispenser, and a request is not a transaction. Nobody in the tradition teaches that a prayer said on the right day, in the right words and a certain number of times, will produce a spouse. What the tradition does teach is that we are not alone in our asking, that the whole Church prays with us, and that the answer to prayer is not always the one we imagine.

It also explains why the tradition has not produced a list of marriage saints with a job description. The Church recognises saints because they lived the Gospel, and any saint can be asked for anything. The ones named below are worth knowing for another reason: they are people whose lives show what a Christian marriage looks like when it is lived under pressure, and that is useful to someone who is preparing for one.

2. What the Church does not teach, and what it warns against

Three habits recur in popular lists, and each deserves to be named so that it can be avoided. The first is the idea that a particular saint has been assigned to unmarried people. Different cultures have different devotions, and a family tradition that turns to one saint for this purpose is a perfectly good tradition, but it is a custom and not a doctrine. The second is the idea that a prayer works through exact repetition, of the kind found in a number of Western devotions. Orthodox practice offers akathists, supplicatory canons and the paraklesis, which are services and hymns and not counted incantations. The third, and the one that matters most, is the temptation to treat prayer as a way of bypassing the other person’s freedom. Praying that a particular man or woman will fall in love with you is not prayer in the Orthodox sense. It is a request that God override someone else’s will, and it is much better replaced by prayer for that person’s good and for your own discernment.

The tradition also draws a firm line against divination. Folk customs of trying to learn the identity or the name of a future spouse, through objects, dreams, charms or fortune-telling, exist in a number of cultures and some of them sit close to Orthodox holidays. The canons treat resort to soothsayers and fortune-tellers as a serious matter. The sixty-first canon of the Council in Trullo, which the Orthodox Church receives, assigns six years of penance to those who go to such people to have things revealed to them, and names those who tell fortunes and fates. The reason is not that the Church disbelieves in the longing. It is that the longing is being answered by something other than trust in God.

None of this should make the subject feel fraught. The point is that a prayer for a spouse is simply a prayer, to be said in the same spirit as any other: honestly, without bargaining and without a deadline.

3. Saints Peter and Fevronia of Murom

Prince Peter and Princess Fevronia of Murom are the saints most often associated with Orthodox marriage in the Slavic world, and they are commemorated on 25 June in parishes that follow the Revised Julian calendar, which is 8 July on the civil date for churches that keep the old calendar. In Russia, 8 July is marked as a Day of Family, Love and Fidelity.

According to the Orthodox Church in America’s account, Peter was the second son of the prince of Murom and came to the throne in 1203. In the traditional life, Fevronia was a peasant girl who was not of his rank, and their marriage met the objection of the nobles, who would not accept her as a princess. The couple left the city rather than part, and it was later the city that asked them to return. They ended their lives as monastics, taking the names David and Euphrosyne, and tradition holds that they died on the same day.

What is worth taking from the story, for someone who is not yet married, is not the details of the legend. It is the picture of a marriage that held together under social pressure, between two people of unequal standing who nonetheless agreed that the marriage was the thing that mattered. In a century when so much of the pressure on couples comes from outside, whether from family, money or expectation, that is a more practical devotion than it first appears.

4. Saints Adrian and Natalia of Nicomedia

Adrian and Natalia are commemorated on 26 August on the Revised Julian calendar. The Orthodox Church in America’s life of them notes that they were married in their youth for one year before their martyrdom in Nicomedia, in the reign of the Emperor Maximian, and that Adrian suffered along with a number of other Christians he had come to join. In the traditional account, Natalia encouraged her husband to remain firm.

They are a marriage saint of an unusual kind. Their marriage lasted a year and its entire meaning was found in what the two of them did together under pressure. For a person who is anxious about how long a marriage will last or what it will cost, they are a reminder that the holiness of a marriage is not measured in years. For those who are widowed or whose marriages were short, they have been an obvious intercessor for centuries.

5. Saints Joachim and Anna, and Zechariah and Elizabeth

Two couples in the Church’s memory are defined by the long wait for a child, and both have drawn a great many people whose waiting is of another kind. Joachim and Anna, the parents of the Theotokos, are commemorated on 9 September. The Orthodox Church in America describes Joachim as of the tribe of Judah and a descendant of David, and Anna as the daughter of the priest Matthan, of the tribe of Levi. The tradition the Church keeps, which comes from its hymns and from non-canonical sources, is that their marriage was long and childless, that they prayed, and that their prayer was answered.

The second couple appears in Scripture. The Gospel according to Luke introduces Zechariah and Elizabeth as righteous before God and blameless in the commandments, and in the same breath says that they had no child and that both were advanced in years. The pattern is the same: faithful people in a marriage that was not what they had hoped for, receiving something that they had stopped expecting.

It would be wrong to promise anyone that the pattern will repeat. These are not stories in which a fixed sequence of prayer and waiting always ends in the same way. They are stories of a particular kind of patience, one that continues to be faithful when nothing is changing. For someone who is single and wondering whether the wait will end, that patience is the thing they have in common with the saints, and for a married couple that is struggling to conceive it is much the same. The guide on infertility and childlessness takes that up directly.

6. Aquila and Priscilla, the couple in the New Testament

If you want to see what a working Christian marriage looks like in the earliest Church, look at Aquila and Priscilla. They appear six times in the New Testament, in the Acts of the Apostles, in the Letter to the Romans, in the First Letter to the Corinthians and in the Second Letter to Timothy. They are tentmakers who worked with Paul in Corinth, they hosted the church in their house, they took the eloquent Apollos aside and explained the way of God to him more accurately, and Paul says that they risked their necks for his life.

Two details stand out. In four of the six places Priscilla is named first, which suggests that in the early Church her place in their shared work was not a footnote. And everything they are recorded as doing, from the trade to the hospitality to the teaching, was done together. A man or woman who is hoping to marry could do worse than to pray for that: a partner in work and in faith, someone with whom the Gospel is lived and not only believed.

7. Saint Nicholas, and the three sisters

The traditional life of Saint Nicholas, commemorated on 6 December, includes the story of a father so poor that he could not provide dowries for his three daughters, and who was on the point of letting them be sold into prostitution. In the story, Nicholas threw bags of gold secretly through the window in three consecutive nights, so that each of the daughters could marry honourably.

It is a story about charity rather than about romance, and it has been told in the Church for as long as the saint has been honoured. Its place in a guide like this is that it describes something the Church has always cared about, which is that marriage should not depend on wealth or on someone’s desperation. Anyone who is anxious about the financial side of marrying can ask for his prayers with confidence, and the guide on money questions before marriage is a useful companion.

8. Scripture worth praying with

The saints are one source. The other is the Scriptures, which treat marriage and the longing for it with more frankness than most devotional literature. A few passages repay slow reading.

  • Genesis 2:18. “It is not good that the man should be alone.” God’s own judgement on the human condition is that solitude is a lack, and so the wish for a companion is not a failure of faith.
  • Genesis 24:12 to 14. Abraham’s servant, sent to find a wife for Isaac, stops at the well and asks the Lord to lead him. It is a short and humble prayer, and the point of it is that he asks for guidance and then acts, rather than waiting for a sign to arrive.
  • Tobit 8:5 to 8. The Orthodox canon includes the Book of Tobit, in which Tobias and Sarah pray together on their wedding night, blessing God and asking that they might find mercy and grow old together. It is perhaps the most beautiful marriage prayer in the Old Testament, and it is a model for praying together as a couple.
  • Psalm 127, in the Septuagint numbering the Orthodox use (Psalm 128 in most English Bibles). “Blessed are all who fear the Lord.” It is sung at the Orthodox wedding service, and it is worth praying slowly in the years before.
  • 1 Corinthians 7:7. Paul says that each person has his or her own gift from God, one of this kind and another of that. It guards the prayer against a false certainty: the gift may be marriage and it may not, and the Church holds both vocations in honour.
  • Matthew 26:39. “Not as I will, but as you will.” The prayer of Christ in the garden is the pattern for every prayer that asks for something specific. It does not make asking wrong. It makes surrender the last word.

9. How to pray while you wait: a pattern you can build

The Church does not hand you a prayer for this, and that is not an oversight. The tradition expects you to have a rule of prayer, which a priest can help you shape, and to bring whatever is on your heart to it in your own words. The Orthodox Church in America publishes a collection of common prayers, and your morning and evening prayers are the natural place for this intention to sit. What follows is a pattern, not a text.

Begin with thanksgiving. It is surprisingly easy to pray for a spouse in a spirit of complaint, and thanksgiving corrects that at once by reminding you of what you already have. Name two or three concrete things. Then say what you hope for, simply: that if it is God’s will you would be given a husband or a wife, and that, whatever happens, you would be given the grace to live well. Then say what you want to be like, not who you want to meet. A prayer that asks for the person you could become is more honest and more useful than one that describes the person you hope to find.

Next, ask for a companion with whom you can be saved. This is the Orthodox way of putting the aim of marriage: not happiness first, but the common journey into the Kingdom of God, which a husband and wife make together. Pray, finally, for other people. Pray for the people you have dated, including the ones who hurt you, and for friends whose marriages are in difficulty, and for those who have no one. Intercession is the part of the prayer that does the most to break self-absorption, which is the main danger of a long wait.

Then add the Jesus Prayer, which can be said while walking, commuting or lying awake, and which asks for nothing in particular except mercy. Many who pray for years about marriage find that the Jesus Prayer is what holds them steady. And ask a priest, if you are able to, whether he would be willing to serve a short supplication, a paraklesis to the Theotokos or a moleben for guidance, with your intention in mind. It is an ordinary thing to ask, and it joins your prayer to the Church’s.

If it helps to have words to start with, here is one in plain language, which is not a traditional text and does not need to be treated as one. “Lord Jesus Christ, I thank you for this day and for the people you have given me. If it is your will that I should marry, prepare me for it and prepare the person you have in mind for me. Make me honest, patient and kind. Give me a companion with whom I can be saved. If it is not your will, teach me to love the life you have given me. Through the prayers of the Theotokos and of all your saints, have mercy on me. Amen.”

10. Five ways this goes wrong

Prayer about marriage goes wrong in recognisable ways, and the failures are worth naming because most of them feel like piety from the inside.

  • Praying for one particular person. It is natural, when you are drawn to someone, and it is understandable that prayer gathers around them. The safer pattern is to pray for that person’s good, and for the clarity to see what is true, and to leave the outcome open.
  • Demanding a sign. The servant at the well asked for guidance and then acted. A person who will not move until a sign arrives is usually avoiding a decision. If a prayer for a sign is answered, it should confirm what ordinary prudence already suggests, not replace it.
  • Making a bargain. A prayer that offers a vow, a pilgrimage or a fast in exchange for a result is not the Orthodox pattern. Fasting and almsgiving are part of the Christian life in themselves, and they are not currency.
  • Treating a feast as a deadline. If you have prayed to Peter and Fevronia since last June, nothing is owed on the 25th. The calendar is a rhythm for prayer, not an appointment for an answer.
  • Using prayer to avoid action. The tradition asks for prayer and for ordinary effort: being at church, being in company, accepting an invitation, replying to a message. It is perfectly reasonable to pray for a husband and to join an event, a parish and a community where one might be met.

11. When the answer is to wait, or to hope for something else

Some people pray for a spouse for years without one appearing, and the advice they hear is often worse than the silence. The tradition has better things to say. It says that prayer is not a mechanism, and that the one who prays is changed by praying even when circumstances are not. It points to Christ in Gethsemane, who asked for the cup to pass and then accepted that it would not, and to Paul, who prayed three times about the thorn in his flesh and was told that grace was sufficient for him.

It also holds that marriage is not the only road. The Church honours single life lived faithfully and monastic vocation as callings in their own right, and to be asked to wait is not the same as being passed over. A person praying about marriage should also be praying about vocation more broadly, with a priest who can help them listen. The guides on single life while hoping to marry and on marriage and monasticism take up the question in detail.

What the tradition will not say is that an unanswered prayer means that you prayed badly. It has no account of marriage as a reward for good prayer. It does say, firmly, that no prayer is wasted. If you are asking for something good with a pure heart, the asking itself is already part of the life you are being given.

A thirty-day plan for praying and acting together

The point of this plan is to turn a vague ache into a steady habit. It takes a few minutes a day, and it asks for one small outward action each week so that prayer and effort travel together.

  1. Step 1

    Fix the time and the sentence

    Choose a regular moment, such as after morning prayers or before bed, and write your intention in one sentence of your own. Keep it honest and modest: “If it is your will, prepare me for marriage and prepare the person you have in mind for me.” Say the sentence at the same time each day for the thirty days.

  2. Step 2

    Name three companions in prayer

    Choose three saints from this guide, or from your own family’s devotion, and ask for their prayers by name. Peter and Fevronia, Adrian and Natalia, and Aquila and Priscilla are a good set, since all three are about marriage lived under pressure. Add the saint whose name you bear.

  3. Step 3

    Pray for one other person each week

    Week one, pray for someone you are attracted to or have dated, for their good only. Week two, for a friend whose marriage is in trouble. Week three, for someone who is alone. Week four, for a person who has hurt you. This part of the plan does more than any other to turn the prayer away from yourself.

  4. Step 4

    Take one outward step per week

    Pair each week with something small and concrete: go to a service you usually skip, reply to an invitation, introduce yourself at coffee hour, or ask a friend to introduce you to someone. Prayer and ordinary effort belong together, and neither replaces the other.

  5. Step 5

    Tell a priest, and ask for his prayers

    Speak to your priest in the first week. Tell him what you are praying for and ask whether he would remember it in the services or serve a short supplication. He may have advice about your rule of prayer that is better than anything in a guide, and it is easier to keep a rule that someone else knows about.

  6. Step 6

    Review at the end, and keep what helped

    At the end of thirty days, write down what changed. It may be a calmer heart, a clearer sense of what you are looking for, or a new friend. It will probably not be a spouse. Decide what to keep, and continue it. The habit is the result, and it will serve you whatever the answer turns out to be.

Common questions

Which saint is the patron of finding a husband or wife in the Orthodox Church?

There is no official patron saint for this. Different cultures have different devotions, and a family’s custom of asking a particular saint is a good one, but it is a custom and not a rule. The saints most worth knowing are those whose lives were about marriage: Peter and Fevronia, Adrian and Natalia, Joachim and Anna, and Aquila and Priscilla.

Is it all right to pray for a specific person to marry me?

It is natural to pray for someone you care about, and you should do so, but the Orthodox pattern is to pray for that person’s good and for your own discernment rather than that they be made to love you. A prayer that asks God to override another person’s will is not a good prayer. Ask instead for clarity and for the outcome that is best for both of you.

Do Orthodox Christians say a novena?

A novena is a Western devotion of nine days of repeated prayer, and it is not part of Orthodox practice. Orthodox Christians use akathists, which are hymns of praise to Christ, the Theotokos or a saint, the paraklesis to the Theotokos, and a daily rule of prayer. A priest can help you decide which suits your situation.

What prayer should I say to find a spouse?

There is no required text. Many Orthodox Christians pray in their own words within their morning and evening prayers, and the pattern in this guide is a starting point: thanksgiving, an honest request, surrender to God’s will, a prayer for a companion with whom you can be saved, and intercession for other people. The Jesus Prayer is a steady companion for the waiting.

Is it wrong to ask God for a husband or wife?

No. The Scriptures say that it is not good for a person to be alone, and the wish for a companion is a natural one that the Church takes seriously. The Orthodox way of asking always ends with surrender, “not as I will, but as you will,” and it holds both marriage and the single life in honour as vocations.

What if I have prayed for years and nothing has changed?

The tradition does not claim that prayer is a mechanism, and it does not treat an unanswered prayer as evidence of failure. Keep praying, keep to your parish and your friends, speak to a priest about your vocation, and be open to a path you have not imagined. The Church honours single life and monastic life as callings, and waiting is not the same as being overlooked.

Are horoscopes, fortune-telling or folk divination about a future spouse acceptable for an Orthodox Christian?

No. The Church has long held that turning to soothsayers and fortune-tellers is incompatible with trust in God, and the canons attach a heavy penance to it. It does not mean the longing is wrong. It means that the answer is to be sought in prayer, in counsel from a priest and in ordinary life, not through divination.

Sources and further reading

Pastoral practice can vary by diocese and jurisdiction. For questions about your circumstances, speak with the priest responsible for your pastoral care.