That's interesting about remarriage after the death of a spouse. From my POV, I would say it's OK to get remarried in this case because the vow before God was honored and completed. Since the surviving spouse is not "broken", as you describe in the case of most marriage dissolutions, why is this an ideal? I could be wrong about this, but in the OT, if a married man died, wasn't it the duty of his brother to take the widow as his wife, either to provide for her or to carry on the family name, etc.?
Keep in mind that in the Orthodox Church, we take seriously St. Paul's admonition that a clergyman is to be "the husband of one wife."
This of course precludes women being ordained, and we also believe that it means that this applies not only to polygamy (which was no longer a part of Jewish life), but more specifically that a man should only have had one marriage.
There are many reasons for this, but I would point out that in the Orthodox Church, celibacy is considered to be the state in which one can most readily and perfectly draw close to God *all other things being equal.* St. Paul, again, really couldn't make this more clear, could he?
Of course, all things aren't equal in the real world. Very few have the strength of will to live the celibate life of a monastic. (And the Orthodox Church in general discourages anyone from attempting life-long celibacy outside of the structure of a monastic life.)
But again, it is clear from St. Paul that he discourages widows from remarrying. He says, however, that it is "better to marry than to burn." In an Orthodox remarriage ceremony, this is actually the epistle reading that is appointed to be read. (In practice, many Orthodox priests use the usual reading, and others use it only if it is a second marriage for both partners.)
In the New Testament, there is detailed a new way of caring for widows by the entire community, and the importance of leaving one's "seed" became of far less significance because of this, and after the coming of the Messiah.
As I said before, in the Orthodox Church, we don't take vows as part of our marriage service. We come humbly before God, asking to be married, and God, through the Church bestows the grace and blessing of marriage on us. We are certainly admonished on how we are expected to behave toward each other, but there are no vows. The communication in this sense is one-way -- from God to us. It is expected that we would want and intend to do nothing else other than follow the guidelines of the Church with regard to marriage -- not from fear, but out of love for God and each other.
I did not say that the reason that a divorced spouse shouldn't remarry is that the spouse is "broken." I said that the reason that the marriage broke up was because there was something spiritually wrong there, in most cases.
I guess that the best way of describing it is this. Over the course of an Orthodox marriage, the marriage has played several roles. The most important is that the marriage helps us to attain salvation. In the crudest sense, it does so by giving licit outlets to our sexual appetites and prevents us from commiting adultery and fornication.
More importantly, we look on marriage as a situation in which we can learn to be selfless, forgiving, and bearing each other's burdens. We help encourage each other to pray, to go to services, to teach our children, to help each other. More often than not, one is strong when and where the other is weak.
The ideal also is that during the course of marriage, one learns to control one's "passions" (and not just the sexual type.) There are times and situations when the Church discourages us from engaging in marital relations. The admonition of Scripture to come apart by agreement, for a season, for purposes of prayer, is built into Orthodox life, although with all of the temptations of today, fully following such guidelines is beyond most people -- staying chaste within the bonds of marriage certainly trumps "coming apart for a season."
What I am getting at is that by the time a spouse dies, one hopes that the other spouse has reached a point where it is possible to live without marriage. One can give undivided attention to one's children, grandchildren, and the Church. Even those who lose a spouse young can often do this. Look at the Scriptural example of the Prophetess Anna, who had lived with her husband only a few years before being widowed, and who then spent the rest of her life serving and praying in the Temple.
This is the ideal that the Church holds up before us, and it shows the example by requiring clergy to strictly meet these criteria. Our bishops are required to be completely celibate, and are generally drawn from the ranks of monastics, although widowers are sometimes chosen to be bishops.
I hope this helps explain a little more.