The Orthodox Church, in accordance with the love for man which characterizes her, permits prayer for those who have cut themselves off from her, i.e. for heretics and schismatics. But prayers in what regard? Prayers that they convert to the Orthodox Faith before the end of their lives.
Thus in the Prayers of Intercession we pray: "Illumine with the light of grace all apostates from the Orthodox Faith, and those blinded by pernicious heresies, and draw them to Thyself, and unite them to Thy Holy, Apostolic, Catholic Church."
From this it is clear that the Orthodox Church permits prayer for those who have departed from the holy faith—prayer for their conversion. But what can one say about those who have departed from this life? Does the Church pray for such persons in her divine services? In the services of the Orthodox Church there is no prayer for persons who have died in heresy. Quite the opposite, on the First Sunday of Great Lent, in the Service of Orthodoxy, our holy Church pronounces anathema, i.e., excommunication on all heretics and apostates from Orthodoxy. How is it then, we ask, that the Church at one and the same time anathematizes and prays for apostates? "The non-Orthodox by their very non-Orthodoxy have excommunicated themselves from the Mysteries of the Orthodox Church.
Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow stated that not commemorating them during the Liturgy and removing their names from the diptychs (the Synodikon, or lists of names to be commemorated; i.e., the lists of those with whom the Orthodox are in communion) is in full accord with and flows logically from their excommunication. We might note here that removal from the diptychs reminds us that the names of the non-Orthodox should not be commemorated at any Orthodox Service.
