In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Away at the beginning of our existence as human beings, God said: Be holy, for I am holy (cf. Leviticus 19:2). What does that mean? It means that we should be holy, because God is holy. Holiness is all about our relationship of love, and our love is between ourselves, and God. Those whom we love, we always try to emulate. That’s a standard human principle. I remember that from my childhood. I remember that from when I was five, there were beautiful, older people whom I wanted to be like. They were so wonderful, so full of love, so caring about a silly, little kid like I was. Not only was I silly, but I was rather unrestrainable, and even much worse. I was very independent-minded, and a daredevil, which is why my mother got gray hair early.

Be that as it may, it is a human way always that if we love someone, we try to imitate that person. How much more is this really the case when it comes to our relationship with God, with our Creator. He wants us to live in this relationship of perfect love with Him. He wants us to be like Him, because to be like Him means to be alive, truly alive. When we’re not like Him, we’re caricatures; we’re twisted caricatures – we’re really sort of zombies, the “living dead”, walking around. We’re not like Him. To be like Him means to be alive, to be free.

Power, life – that’s what He wants for us. He created us to be full of power, and life. He doesn’t want anything less for us. If anything less happens to us, it’s because we choose it. It’s because we’re afraid of His love. It’s because we don’t dare to approach this love. We run away from love out of fear. It’s because of this that we become twisted caricatures, and paralysed zombies. The Saviour wants us to live in Him, to have life, and to have it abundantly (cf. John 10:10).

Don’t forget that the Saviour’s love for us is not limited to the time after the Incarnation. After all, He is the Word that spoke everything into being. There are saints who come from far before the Incarnation, all the way from our first parents, Adam and Eve. These Old Testament persons are saints of our Church, too. The Body of Christ is not limited just by the point-in-time of the Incarnation. The Body of Christ encompasses all of God’s creation. So, when the Apostle today is talking about all those people who suffered those horrible things, he was trying to impress on us that they suffered for the sake of their love for God, and their trust in His Promise, in the Saviour who was yet to come, whom they had never seen, and would not see in their lifetime. In the end, they only saw Him face-to-face, when, after He was crucified, He descended into Hades, and preached to them. They recognised Him, and He lifted them up with Adam and Eve.

Before the Incarnation, these people trusted God’s love, lived according to it, and did crazy things (like Abraham). For no apparent reason, except that God said: Do it, Abraham got up, and moved himself, and his whole household, and became a nomad, wandering all over the place on land that didn’t belong to him. He was not the most welcome person in this foreign territory. And what about all the other people from the Old Testament who did weird things (according to the standards of the people around them). There’s no point in my going into that whole list right now. You can read the Old Testament for yourself, or listen to it (there are all sorts of ways). There are very interesting people for you to learn about, and understand. These people did all these weird, and strange things because of their love for God, so that God, through them, would speak to His people, who were lost in their “zombiness”, in their selfishness, in their stubbornness, and self-preoccupation. The Lord wanted to wake up His children, and He used people like Abraham, and all sorts of other people. Very often the people were just so obstinate that they did not listen at all (at least not the principal ones). However, other people listened, and were touched.

Nowadays, here at the beginning of the twenty-first century, all sorts of people have the idea that to be a saint is like being some sort of “professional Christian”, some sort of Christian guru, super-specialist, super-example. You get to be called a saint because you get all these points, and people examine all these points, and say: This person is a good person to be a saint, and so we’ll make that person a saint. That’s not at all how it is. In fact, today, we are remembering all the saints. There are many saints that are not even known. We don’t know the names of many of the saints. In fact, there are many people who were martyrs in the early Church, known only to us as one of thousands of martyrs, such as those babies in Bethlehem. Fourteen thousand babies in the area of Bethlehem – we only know that there are fourteen thousand. There are forty thousand here, and a hundred thousand there. All those people who were burned to death on Christmas Day in Nicomedia – we only know there were about twenty thousand of them. We only know their number. However, they are all saints; they are all holy people – people who gave their lives for the love of Jesus Christ.

In North America, we have glorified saints. There are people who are well recognised by the whole Church. It’s very odd that we, of all people, who have freedom to understand things, are the most guilty about thinking that you have to have some sort of special point system in order to merit to be named a saint. So we don’t look around us. We leave it to some bishop somewhere to say that this person will become a saint. That is not how the Church works, not at all how the Church works. It has always been that the Lord tells us who is a holy person, and to whom we should be turning in order to have encouragement, and intercession, and support. It is the Lord who tells us, and shows us. Holy people will come to us, and say: Straighten out your life. Do this or do that. Correct your life. Repent. Turn about, and follow Christ. People will recognise: Aha, the Lord is speaking to me through this person. This person has been sent by God to be my helper. I should remember this.

Sometimes people are healed by the intercessions of those who have gone before, and it is through that that we can recognise who is a saint. How does all this come about? It comes about through our normal, Christian life. There is, for instance, the custom that we have to pray regularly for people who have died. Sometimes those people come to us, and correct us. God shows to us these persons who have been gathered into His bosom. They are messengers of His to us in order to correct us. Sometimes these persons are used so many times, and so many wonders come about, that the people recognise that this is a person who is holy, and it is the people who tell the bishop that this person should be a saint, and recognised officially. There are many people in the Orthodox world who are not even recognised officially by any bishop, who are recognised by the people to be holy. They are holy. People pray to them. People go to their tombs. God answers their prayers. It’s not who gets on the list of saints who is holy. Who is holy? It is the person who loves God, and tries to be like Him. That’s all. It’s not some sort of “professional person” on a list.

I have been going over a list of saints for the sake of our people who don’t know who the saints are, and also don’t know what a variety of names there are. People name their children after the saints: i.e. “George”, “Anne”, “Sophia”, and the like. However, there are so many other names, too. The oldest custom about how to name people is to open The Synaxarion to the day on which the child was born, and see which saints are remembered on that day. The child is then named after one of those saints that seems to be appropriate for that child. This requires prayerful discernment. There is a large selection per day. Of course, that’s how you get people named Barsanuphius (in some parts of the world, there are people called that, and not just monks).

If we are hearing about all the saints, this means for us that we, also, like them, must grow in love of Jesus Christ. We are meant to put nothing between ourselves, and God. That’s what the Saviour is saying today: “He who loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and he who loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me”. And why is He saying that? He is saying that because if I put any human being or any picture between myself, and Him, I’ve made that thing into God. Instead of God, I’ve put it between myself, and God. I’ve made it into an idol, in fact. It can be anything or anyone, money or a car. That’s what the Lord is talking about in the Ten Commandments. Anything or anyone that comes between me, and the Lord – that thing has become a substitute for God. That’s why the Lord would say that this person, who has done such a thing, is not worthy of Him. If I have done such a thing, if I have put anyone or anything between me, and the Lord, I have to repent, fix up my life, and put the Lord first again. No matter how much I love someone, that person has always to come after the Lord. No one can come before the Lord in my life if I am going to be a lover of God.

The Lord wants you, and me to be this sort of person who really loves, because, as I said in the beginning, such a person is free, such a person has a sense of him- or her-self, has peace, has joy, has a sense of direction, and does not have to have a particular job or profession. This person knows that the Lord has called him or her to this or that situation to show concern about that human being, to show that God cares about that human being. That is what life is really about. It’s not about profession; it’s not about success; it’s not about money; it’s about being – being someone who loves. All the rest is an aftermath. If I don’t love people, if I don’t care for them, then I am empty. Then I can’t really call myself a Christian because I am not bearing Christ in my life, and I am not showing His love to people around me. That’s what it means to live a Christian life – to show Christ’s love to people around me, and let them have a little bit of hope.

In Canada these days, where so many people are so lost, our responsibility is great: to live this love, to show our joy, and our hope to people around us, to give people hope. We don’t have to go preaching. We just have to live. We have to do it. Do this love. Don’t talk about it. Do it. That’s what He wants. Do My love, the Saviour says to you, and me: Show your love for Me by doing it. Love each other as I love you. That’s what He wants. Then we will be becoming hope, ourselves, when we do these things. So, let’s take confidence in the witness, the service, the example of all the saints (both known, and unknown, recognised, and unrecognised) that we are remembering today, who love Jesus Christ, who are alive in Jesus Christ, and let us, ourselves, follow Him. Let us be like Him as they are like Him, and live in Him. By our love, let us help other people around us to find Him who loves them, and to glorify our Saviour, Jesus Christ, together with His Father, who is from everlasting, and His all-holy, good, and Life-giving Spirit, now, and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

† Archdiocese of Canada - Orthodox Church in America