We honor the saints because they’re alive in Christ and still part of the Church. Death doesn’t end membership in the Body of Christ. It just changes where you are.
If you grew up Baptist or non-denominational here in Southeast Texas, this probably sounds strange. You were taught to go straight to Jesus. Why bring anyone else into it? And honestly, that’s a good instinct. We don’t pray to saints the way we pray to God. We ask them to pray for us, the same way you’d ask your mom or your friend at work to pray for you. The difference is that the saints are closer to God than we are, freed from sin and distraction, fully alive in His presence.
The Church has always been one family that includes both the living and the dead. St. Paul prayed for Onesiphorus after he died. Early Christians scratched prayers on catacomb walls asking the martyrs to intercede. This isn’t some medieval invention. It’s how Christians understood the faith from the beginning.
What Honoring Means
There’s a word for this: veneration. Not worship. Worship belongs to God alone. When we venerate a saint, we’re recognizing what God did in that person’s life. We’re saying, “Look at how grace transformed this human being.” And we’re asking that saint to bring our needs before God.
Think of it this way. If your cousin worked at the refinery and you needed advice about applying there, you’d ask him to put in a good word. That doesn’t mean you think your cousin runs the company. He just knows the boss better than you do. Saints know God better than we do. They’ve finished the race. They’re with Him now.
We call this the communion of saints. The Church isn’t just the people in the pews on Sunday morning. It’s everyone who belongs to Christ, living or dead. When we celebrate the Divine Liturgy, we’re joining a worship that includes the angels and the saints and the whole company of heaven. Death is real, but it’s not a wall. Christ destroyed that wall when He rose from the dead.
Why This Isn’t Worship
Some folks worry that honoring saints takes glory away from Christ. But it’s the opposite. When you look at St. Mary of Egypt, who went from a life of sin to years of repentance in the desert, you’re seeing what Christ can do. When you read about St. John Chrysostom standing up to an empress and getting exiled for it, you’re seeing courage that only comes from the Holy Spirit. The saints point to Jesus. They don’t replace Him.
We kiss their icons. We light candles. We sing hymns on their feast days. But we’re not confused about who they are. They’re creatures, not the Creator. They’re our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers in the faith. Some of them were worse sinners than we are before Christ changed them. That’s the whole point.
The Practical Side
So what does this look like day to day? You might ask St. Michael the Archangel to protect you. You might ask St. Nicholas to pray for your kids. If you’re struggling with anger, you might turn to St. Moses the Black, who was a murderer before he became a monk. You’re not bypassing Jesus. You’re asking someone who’s already with Jesus to pray alongside you.
We also pray for the dead. If your grandmother dies, we don’t just shrug and say, “Well, she’s in God’s hands now.” She’s still part of the family. We offer prayers for her at the Divine Liturgy. We bring her name to memorial services. We trust that our prayers matter, that love continues across the boundary of death.
This is different from the Catholic idea of purgatory, which has a lot of legal and temporal language we don’t use. We don’t claim to know exactly how God purifies and heals people after death. We just know He does, and we know our prayers participate in that somehow. It’s a mystery, but it’s a mystery rooted in love.
What This Changes
When you start to see the saints as living members of your family, church gets bigger. You’re not alone in this. You’ve got the Theotokos, the Mother of God herself, praying for you. You’ve got the Apostles and the martyrs and the desert fathers and mothers. You’ve got St. Thekla and St. Seraphim and St. Xenia and St. Paisios. Some of them died 1,700 years ago. Some died in the last fifty years. All of them are alive in Christ right now.
And one day, if we’re faithful, we’ll join them. Not as some distant reward, but as the fullness of what we’re already becoming. The Christian life is about union with God, what we call theosis. The saints are the ones who’ve gotten there. They’re proof it’s possible. They’re cheering us on.
Next time you’re at St. Michael’s and you see all those icons around the nave, remember they’re not just pictures. They’re windows. The people in them are looking back at you. They’re praying for you. They want you to make it. And they know better than anyone that with God’s grace, you will.
