You’ll choose your patron saint in conversation with your priest during your preparation for baptism or chrismation. This isn’t something you decide alone or announce at the last minute. It’s part of your catechesis.
Your patron saint becomes your spiritual companion for life. When you’re baptized or chrismated, you take the saint’s name as your Christian name, the one that goes on your certificate and the one by which you’re commemorated in the Church. This saint prays for you. You pray to them. You read their life, keep their icon, celebrate their feast day. It’s a real relationship, not just picking a name you like the sound of.
So how do you actually choose?
Start by praying about it. Ask God to guide you toward the saint who’ll be your advocate and example. Some people feel drawn to a particular saint during their catechism, maybe you keep running into St. Mary of Egypt in your reading, or St. Nicholas keeps coming up in conversations. Pay attention to that. The saint might be choosing you as much as you’re choosing them.
Look at the calendar. Many Orthodox Christians choose a saint whose feast day falls on or near their birthday. Others pick the saint commemorated on the day they were baptized or chrismated. There’s something fitting about sharing a feast day with your patron, it ties your earthly life to your new life in Christ.
Consider your struggles and your work. If you’re a teacher, maybe St. John Chrysostom or St. Basil the Great. If you’ve battled addiction, St. Moses the Black or St. Mary of Egypt walked that road before you. If you work offshore on the rigs, St. Nicholas is the patron of sailors and travelers. If you’re a parent trying to raise kids in the faith, look at St. Macrina or St. Monica. The saints aren’t distant figures. They lived real lives with real problems.
Don’t overthink it, though. You’re not locked into one saint forever in some rigid way. Your baptismal patron is your primary saint, yes, and that name matters, it’s canonical, it’s on the record. But you can develop devotion to other saints throughout your life. You might pray to St. Nectarios when you’re sick, ask St. Xenia’s intercession when you’re looking for housing, turn to St. Silouan when you’re struggling with prayer. The communion of saints is big enough for all of that.
When you’ve narrowed it down to a few possibilities, talk to your priest. He knows you. He’s walked with you through catechism, heard your questions, seen what you’re wrestling with. He might suggest someone you hadn’t considered. I’ve heard of priests recommending St. Raphael of Brooklyn to converts because he was a missionary bishop who brought Orthodoxy to America, or St. Thekla because she was a convert herself in the apostolic age. Sometimes the priest sees connections you don’t.
Your sponsor or godparent will typically bring an icon of your patron saint to your baptism or chrismation to be blessed. That icon goes home with you. It becomes part of your prayer corner, a window into heaven where you meet your patron face to face. You’ll learn their troparion, read their life in a book like the Synaxarion, maybe even pray their akathist on their feast day.
Here’s what matters: pick someone whose life inspires you to become more like Christ. That’s what the saints are for. They’re not perfect people who never struggled, read the lives and you’ll see plenty of struggle. They’re people who let God transform them, who kept getting up when they fell, who became transparent to grace. Your patron saint is the one who’ll show you how to do the same.
Don’t wait until the week before your chrismation to think about this. Start now. Read some lives of the saints. The Prologue from Ochrid by St. Nikolai Velimirovich gives you a saint or two for every day of the year, it’s a good place to browse. Talk to other Orthodox Christians about their patron saints and why they chose them. And pray. If you’re serious about this, the right saint will become clear.
When the day comes and you’re chrismated with your new name, you’ll be joining a family that stretches back two thousand years. Your patron saint is your elder sibling in that family, the one who knows the way home.
