In the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Spirit!

I congratulate you all, dear brothers and sisters, with your saint’s day, because today is All Saints Sunday and it is our name-day today. Today the Church glorifies all saints, holy God-pleasers, – both Christians who lived before us and those people who were led by the Holy Spirit even before coming Christ to the earth. Each nation irrespective of its faith has such notion as a saint. A person is usually called a saint when he differs from other people surrounding him, by his best features. Though, as a rule, it is difficult for people to explain what holiness is. But in the teaching of the Orthodox Church this question is solved simply: saint is the one who is connected with the Holy Spirit.

Not a single person being born from sinful parents and leading a sinful life can’t be saint itself, because human nature fell down because of the sin. A person can’t be a generator of God’s grace. The source of grace is only God. And if a person is striving for God, if his striving is sincere, deep, real, then the Lord seeing it, comes to meet this man, and there takes place connection of human soul and God’s soul. This connection is called holiness or eternal life, because everything that is not connected with God and has no God’s spark is perishable, and what is connected with God is not perishable. God is eternal and when human soul connects with God’s soul, the soul of a person becomes eternal.

The Lord has founded the Church not to pray for repose of the dead, to read the burial service or perform services of need. The only God’s aim is to bring all of us to Him, and this can take place by God’s grace, through connection with grace of our spirit. And today’s Holy Gospel tells us how to achieve this connection, how to achieve holiness. But the Gospel was written long ago when there were no saints yet, so it is much easier for us now. We can study the life of any saint, we can see what he did, what he said and we can begin to imitate him in our life in order to achieve the same communication with God. In the Holy Gospel and the saints’ lives we are shown the way how to achieve holiness. And if during our life we want to achieve what saint God-pleasers achieved, if we want our going to church, our communion, studying Holy Scripture, in general, our life to have some fruit, then we must go exactly this way. And if we are striving for something more besides holiness, then our life will be fruitless.

The Lord tells us what holiness begins with, “Everyone who will confess me before human beings, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. But the one who will deny me before human beings, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven” (Mt. 10, 32-33).

The thing is that holiness is not fixed, settled state. This is not simply the result of ascending from the valley of sin to the top of justice: once you have achieved something and have rested content. Holiness is not an order which is awarded for intensive spiritual work or for successful battle with the angel of darkness. Holiness is, in general, not a result but a process. Holiness is continuous movement to Christ. The movement where stop, rest, even short-time rest are impossible. It goes without saying that any result of such movement can’t be finale, the end of efforts but can be only intermediate, uncompleted phenomenon.

The Church celebrates the memory of the saints to show us living examples of people whose souls were saved, so that we can imitate them in our lives. They teach us how to please God. So the word of God commands us, “Remember those who led you, who spoke the word of God to you; and considering the result of their conduct, imitate their faith” (Heb. 13, 7). Glorifying the saints, we, at the same time, call them to pray for us, as they love us, and daring to pray before God throne, they can help us by their prayers in our salvation. Glorifying the saints, we glorify their virtues, and glorifying virtues, we glorify God – the source of all virtues.

There are a lot of saints glorified by their pious and righteous life. According to some church historian, as stars in the sky light all parts of the world and show the way to travellers on the earth and in the sea, so the deeds of saints shine, spiritually enlighten and show the way to those who want to be saved. And let nobody be despaired in their salvation as the saints’ lives show that people of any rank, class, under different circumstances and life conditions have achieved a state of grace. Neither the place nor the conditions save a person. We must do only one thing: not to break conscience and the law of God by our work and life. Amen.