We don’t worship saints. We ask their prayers, and there’s a difference.
When you walk into an Orthodox church and see someone light a candle before an icon of St. George or kiss an icon of the Theotokos, they’re not worshipping. They’re doing something closer to what you’d do if you asked your friend at First Baptist to pray for your daughter’s surgery. The saint is alive in Christ, part of the Church, and we’re asking for help.
The confusion comes from the word “pray.” In older English, “pray” just meant “ask.” When Shakespeare wrote “I pray thee, tell me,” he wasn’t worshipping anybody. He was asking a question. So when we say we “pray to” St. Mary of Egypt or St. Nicholas, we mean we’re asking them to intercede for us before God. That’s it.
What Worship Actually Means
Worship is something else entirely. The Greek word is latria, and it means total self-giving. It’s the complete surrender of yourself to God, the kind of devotion that unites you with the Trinity. You can’t give that to a creature, no matter how holy. If you did, it’d be idolatry.
What we give the saints is called douleia in Greek. That’s veneration, honor, respect. We show delight in what God has done in their lives. We bow before their icons, we kiss them, we light candles, we ask their prayers. But we’re not giving ourselves over to them. We’re honoring the image of God perfected in them.
Think of it this way. If you met someone who’d been healed of cancer and you said, “Praise God for what He did in your life,” you wouldn’t be worshipping that person. You’d be glorifying God through them. That’s what we’re doing with the saints, except they’re closer to God than we are. They’ve finished the race. They’re standing before the throne. Why wouldn’t we ask them to put in a good word?
The Theotokos gets a special level of veneration called hyperdouleia. That’s higher than what we give other saints because of her unique role as the Mother of God. But it’s still not latria. We don’t worship Mary. We honor her more than all the angels and saints because she said yes to God and bore the Incarnate Word in her womb.
Why This Isn’t Weird
If you grew up Baptist or Church of Christ here in Southeast Texas, this probably sounds strange. You’ve been taught that Jesus is the only mediator, and that’s true. First Timothy 2:5 says exactly that. But that same passage tells us to pray for one another. Paul asks for prayers constantly in his letters. James says the prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
The saints are righteous people. They’re more righteous than your prayer group at church because they’ve been perfected in Christ. They’re not dead. Jesus said God is the God of the living, not the dead. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive. So is St. Paul. So is St. Seraphim of Sarov. Death doesn’t cut us off from the Body of Christ.
When we ask St. Anthony to help us find our lost keys or St. Nicholas to intercede for our kids, we’re acting like the Church is real. Not just the people in the pews on Sunday, but the whole communion of saints across time and eternity. The Church includes your grandmother who died in the faith and the martyrs who died in the Colosseum and the monks who prayed in the Egyptian desert. They’re all part of this.
What It Looks Like
So yes, we light candles. We burn incense. We bow and kiss icons. To someone walking in off Calder Avenue for the first time, it might look like worship. But these are just expressions of respect and love. You’d stand when a judge enters the courtroom. You’d salute a flag. You’d put flowers on your mother’s grave. None of that is worship.
The candles and incense aren’t offerings to the saints like some kind of pagan sacrifice. They’re part of how we pray, how we create a space that reminds us of heaven. The book of Revelation shows the saints offering incense before God’s throne. We’re joining that worship, not replacing it.
And here’s the thing: everything we do before the icons is directed through them to God. When I kiss the icon of St. Michael, I’m not kissing paint and wood. I’m venerating the person depicted, honoring what God did in him, and asking him to pray for me. The honor goes through the saint to God, who made him holy.
The Real Question
The question isn’t really whether we should ask the saints’ prayers. The question is whether they’re alive and whether the Church is one body across heaven and earth. We believe both those things are true. If you believe them too, then asking St. Thekla to pray for you makes as much sense as asking your friend Susan.
Come to a service sometime and watch. You’ll see people venerate icons, light candles, ask the Theotokos to intercede. You won’t see anyone collapsing in total devotion before a saint the way we do before Christ in the Eucharist. That difference is everything.
