The Saints

The holy men and women who show us what it means to live the Gospel fully.

The saints are not distant heroes from another age. They are the men and women in whom the life of Christ has become fully visible. They are the friends of God, the living proof that the Gospel is not an impossible ideal but a path that can be walked.

In the Orthodox Church we do not think of the saints primarily as examples of moral effort. We think of them as people who have been healed. The passions that disorder human life have been purified in them. The love of God has taken full possession of their hearts. They have become, by grace, what all of us are called to become.

This is why we honor them. We do not worship the saints — worship belongs to God alone. But we venerate them as the workmanship of the Holy Spirit and as our older brothers and sisters in the faith. We ask for their prayers because they stand in the presence of God and because love does not end at death.

The calendar of the Church is filled with their names. Every day we remember someone who finished the race and kept the faith. Some were martyrs. Some were monks and nuns. Some were bishops and teachers. Some were simple laypeople whose holiness was hidden until God chose to reveal it. All of them show us that there is no circumstance of life in which holiness is impossible. Those who wish to learn more about their lives will find a rich treasure in the Synaxarion, the Church’s collection of the saints appointed for each day of the year.

To love the saints is to love the fruit of the Gospel. To read their lives is to be encouraged that the same grace that worked in them is offered to us. And to ask for their intercession is to remember that the Church is not limited to those we can see. We are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who cheer us on and pray that we, too, may finish well.