Worshipping Saints!

[SaintGeorge]

Ok, I know that we don't worship saints or pray to them. We only worship the Holy Trinity and pray directly to God through Christ. However, it has come to my attention that my fellow brothers and sisters of TAW have recently made statements making it look like Orthodox Christians do indeed venerate saints like God, which is completely incorrect. We may ask for their intercession, but offering them praise rather than respect is a big mistake, right?

How do you all feel about this? Have some of you been noticing this too?

[Grand_Duchess-Elizaveta]

Ok, I know that we don't worship saints or pray to them. We only worship the Holy Trinity and pray directly to God through Christ. However, it has come to my attention that my fellow brothers and sisters of TAW have recently made statements making it look like Orthodox Christians do indeed venerate saints like God, which is completely incorrect. We may ask for their intercession, but offering them praise rather than respect is a big mistake, right?

How do you all feel about this? Have some of you been noticing this too?
1. Orthodox Christians definitely DO pray to Saints. We do not worship them as though they are God, but we venerate their Icons and we ask for their intercession. Christ has destroyed death. The Saints are still very much among the living. Asking a Saint to pray for you is almost the same as asking another Christian (in the flesh) to pray for you. However, these Saints are now much closer to the throne of God than we are. Who better to ask for prayers?

2. We do give praise to Saints. They lived righteous lives and now make intercession for us who are still earth-bound. They pray for our salvation! Why wouldn't we thank them and honor them?

When you are baptised/chrismated, you will be given a patron Saint. This will be a Saint you will have a special relationship with, and he/she will be like a special guide or intercessor for you. I'll try to find some info. that will explain this better than I.

[Grand_Duchess-Elizaveta]

Well, I'm having trouble finding something appropriate for a 16 yr. old, but this article explains a few things about honoring Saints:

http://www.orthodoxinfo.com/death/honor_due.aspx

I'll try to keep looking. Hopefully some other people more qualified than I can jump in here and help you out. I know this was a hard concept for me when I first became interested in Orthodoxy.

[Moros]

[b]When you are baptised/chrismated, you will be given a patron Saint.

You pick or are you bestowed upon?

[Grand_Duchess-Elizaveta]

You pick or are you bestowed upon?
Either. If a person has a Saint in mind and the priest approves it, so be it. If a person doesn't know who to pick, or for whatever reason doesn't want to choose one, then the priest will choose one for you. I'm speaking generally here. I suppose there might be some priests out there who won't let the person choose, but I've never heard of any.

[The Prokeimenon!]

You pick or are you bestowed upon?


I tend to believe that your Patron Saint picks you, but I don't know if that's always the case or even a standard teaching. I certainly believe it in my case.

We do praise Saints. I praise my cat when he uses the litter box, so I see no problem praising a Holy man or woman who has completed this life in repentence and is a shining example of the Christian Life.

It's important to understand that because Orthodoxy has come to us from different cultures, things that seem extreme to us are quite commonplace. I've never once seen a person kiss any inanimate object in life, but in Orthodoxy we kiss everything. It's a way of showing respect in other countries, and it looks strange, but that's what we do. In other cultures they don't say "good job!" they say "you are the most wonderful at what you do!!! there has never been a time when it has been done better, nor will there ever be!!!!"

Sometimes the language we use to honor and praise Saints seems excessive, but in the context of Orthodox worship, there is no question who is being worshipped and who is just being praised. We praise, we bless, and we worship God alone- but we praise the Saints, we praise our Priests and Bishops, and we praise each other.

When you begin participating in Orthodox worship, I think you'll see clearly Who is worshipped. And if the language is hard to swallow at first, just pray about it. Don't try to hard to rationalize it because in this part of the world, our rationalization is based on very different world-view and we tend to confuse ourselves easily. If you trust that this is The Church, the Body of Christ, and that the Holy Spirit has led it into all Truth, than the troublesome language won't bother you for too long.

Eusebius (the one who posts on TAW, not the Church historian) said something once that stuck with me- that he had a really hard time accepting what The Church taught about the Theotokos. But he kept going with the knowlege that it was True, whether or not he felt it or understood it. Eventually, he came to be at peace with it- not through rationalization or research, but through participation in the life of The Church. (sorry to use you as an example, Eusebius, but that post a long while back stuck with me and has been a great help to me :))

Moses

[SaintGeorge]

Oh yes. I understand that we ask saints to pray for us, but do we actually pray to them?

This is an example of what I mean. We don't worship saints, right? We only worship God. But all the time I see statements like this.
That was the feast of St. Sergius of Radonezh, one of Russia's foremost saints, whom Elizabeth worshipped with her whole ardent heart.
and
Whenever I pray to her, I feel an overwhelming sense of her presence, and a great feeling of being loved.
So am I misinterpreting a doctrine or something? Because this was said earlier in this thread, and it seems to contradict the two statements above.
We do not worship them as though they are GodI do agree that we should honor the saints and give praise to their works, but worshipping them like gods is a completely different situation; one I think is wrong.

[Grand_Duchess-Elizaveta]

Praying to Saints is the same thing as asking them to pray for us. If ever we ask a Saint to pray for us, we know that it is ultimately God who answers our prayer, not the Saint. The Saint only does this or that for us through the power of God. When I pray to St. Elizabeth, I usually say "Holy Martyr Elizabeth, please pray for me....." about this or that issue. *Sometimes, you will see prayers either to a Saint or to the Theotokos asking them to save us. It is not actually them that save us, but their prayers of intercession to God for us. And the Theotokos does play a big role in our salvation because the Savior of our souls was born through her.*

As far as the way that article reads, "worshipped" is not usually a word used to describe veneration of Saints, or prayers to them. It might be that the article was originally written in Russian and didn't get translated just right. Or, in Russian culture perhaps it is common to use the word "worship" interchangeably with veneration. I'm not sure, but I do know that we only worship God.

*This comment is based on my own limited understanding. If it is not correct, someone please correct me. Thanks.:)

[Alfred M]

Esran,

I do not know if this will help, and it may seem simply like semantics to many, but I do not pray "to" a saint but I do communicate with them and praise them IN and through prayer. I ask for their intercessions and know that they can and do worship and continue in prayer to God through Christ, and their prayers are most powerful.

I venerate their icons knowing that their lives have made my salvific journey easier. Their strong faith has helped pave my way so to speak and for that I am ever thankful to them. Their lives truly represent our windows to Heaven.

We must be careful with those who do not understand the Holy Tradition of Orthodoxy. Many will continue to see the icons as idols...and it is up to us to be sure we do not make them idols unto ourselves. (as anything can be made into an "idol")

As others have said above, take things slowly and do not try to apply wisdom you have yet to understand. Give it some time and work on your heart first and the rest will begin to come to light. I converted and was chrismated in 1998 and still have a lifetime of understanding yet to go.

In the love of our Saviour,
Alfred, chief of all sinners.

[Grand_Duchess-Elizaveta]

Esran,

I do not know if this will help, and it may seem simply like semantics to many, but I do not pray "to" a saint but I do communicate with them and praise them IN and through prayer. I ask for their intercessions and know that they can and do worship and continue in prayer to God through Christ, and their prayers are most powerful.

I think it is just semantics, but thanks for explaining that in a better way than I was able.:)

[SaintGeorge]

Thank you for your explanations. I think we're actually saying the exact same thing, but phrasing it differently.

Thank you all for helping me to grow in my new faith.

[katherine2001]

Moses, it's good to know that our running mates, Guido and Mouse, are potty-trained! That is very important for those in public office.

[Eusebios]

Ah, it is so, so good to see Alfred back amongst us! His input is always wonderful.
As to what Moses the Black was saying, I wholeheartedly concur, that the saints seem to "choose" us. My own particular name saint, Eusebios of Samosata (http://www.oca.org/pages/orth_chri/Feasts-and-Saints/June/Jun-22.html#1) ,was martyred for his defense of the faith against the Arian heresy, a heresy which I was at one time all too willing to embrace, if not in whole, then at least in part. And I don't believe it is any coincidence that God has called my wife and I to be a part of Holy Assumption (http://www.holyassumption.net/) as I struggled mightily with the Ever-Virginity of Mary.It was my very wise priest who told me not to worry, it would"come to me" and it did, in a most powerful way as I lived the life of the Church and steeped myself in her worship.
I know that the language can seem odd at first, that is why it is important to dig deeper and understand the realities that lie behind it. We worship God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit exclusively. When we offer praise and veneration to those who have gone before us, that great cloud of witnesses, who have run the race and finished the course, it is God's own work in their life which we are praising, it is the image of Christ within them that we venerate. You will find that there is no greater way to love God than by recognizing His work in our brothers and sisters and in all of creation! Alas, I ramble.
Under His Mercy,
Eusebios.
http://www.christianforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=16090&stc=1

[The Prokeimenon!]

Hey there Esran,

Alfred's explanation was good, as was GDE's. (Edit: And so was Eusebios'. And everyone else's. I just now realized that it looked like I was excluding people! :o )

Keep in mind also, that the root of the word "pray" simply means "to ask". In Spanish, for example, there are several words for "to pray" or "to ask" that are used interchangably. If you ever read "olde English" literature, you might come across a passage where a servant says to his owner, "I pray of thee, master, do not turn me out" or some such thing. So to "pray" to someone does NOT automatically mean that you feel they are "godlike".

And I don't like the word "worship" used in conjunction with talking about honoring saints, either, but I have come to find out that GDE's answer was right - it's nearly always a language problem. Remember that Orthodoxy has been around for 2000 years, and English wasn't the main language back then! So stuff that's translated often uses words that maybe aren't as precise as we'd like them to be.

Rest assured - we worship GOD only - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and we love and honor those who lived out Christ. St. John tells us if we do not truly love our brother, then we do not truly love God. These wonderful saints who finished the race are indeed our brothers, in every sense. And we love them.

Moses' wife Katherine

[Akathist]

I understand where you are coming from with your question. One of the things protestants object to with RCC and also with EO is that there is anyone other than theTrinity being spoken to (prayed to.)

For me, when I used to have this misunderstanding, it was based on being taught anti-RCC material by family. Also, I the theology of death was different. On one hand when someone died it was thought that they were in heaven (if "saved") but on the other hand we acted as if they no longer existed, with rare memorials beyond a funeral and a time of grief. In some denominations I attended it was believed that our loved ones who died were "asleep" and would not awake until the second coming of Jesus.

Therefore the idea that one would ask someone who has died to pray for me seemed ludicrous since they were alseep or too far away to hear.

But that is not the teaching of EO. And I have come to see that the bible doesn't really support the other teaching at all. (IMHO)

Now about veneration. If one of the people in history who you really really admired were to appear to you in your livingroom, how would you react? I bet you would be really respectful and would tell them how great you think they are. If this person was a very religious and holy person and you knew they could carry a message of prayer to the Trinity, would you not ask them to?

Of course they don't "appear" in your livingroom. But it is believed that an icon of them represents their energy or essense (can't think of the term right now.) Just as a photograph of your girlfriend is special to you and if she were on vacation and you didn't see her for a couple weeks, you might be tempted to talk to her picture or even kiss it. Why? Because even in a photograph there is a pathway toward some kind of energy of the other person. (Example: my mother loves to have pictures of family all over her house. I asked her why one day and she said "to keep them close to me". Of course they don't actually live in the pictures, but she can feel a connection to them when looking at the pictures.)

Just some musings from a fellow inquirer. Be sure to write your questions down and get answers from a local priest.

[Michael the Iconographer]

Yes, everyone is very correct so far. Let us remember the differences between Adoration and Veneration. We may venerate the saints, but when we venerate them the honor we give them is given to their Creator. We only Adore the Trinity because God alone is worthy of Adoration. The same is true with our prayers. When I ask St. Andrei Rublev to pray for me I am asking him to take my concerns to God.

[Rick of Wessex]

Hi, Esran!

My two cents on this subject:

Our souls are immortal and Scripture says, "God is not a God of the dead, but of the living." Was Moses dead when he appeared with Christ at the Transfiguration? St. Paul in his Letter to the Hebrews says we are surrounded by a "cloud of witnesses."

The problem that most people have with the communion of saints is that they may think we go to the saints instead of Christ. Nothing could be further than the truth.

Christ and the Apostles, especially Saint Paul, urge us to pray for one another. Now, if (for instance) a Baptist can ask his pastor or a friend (who both still have a chance to ruin their lives through sin) to pray for him, why can I not ask those who have already made it through this life, who have overcome sin by Christ's grace, to pray for me? If someone tells me that I cannot ask a saint to pray for me simply because they are physically dead, they are denying the immortality of the soul and the afterlife.

There has never been a time when the Christian Church has not asked for the prayers of the saints. This practice dates all the way back to the time of the Apostles, because that is exactly what the Apostles taught us. This practice was not done away with until well after the Reformation.

Hope this helps.
In XC, Rick

[Matthias]

Saints are there to be prayed for, and have prayers requested, and when answered they are there to be thanked.