An Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 88

1 BOOK IV — CHAPTER 15: Concerning the honour due to the Saints and their remains.

2 To the saints honour must be paid as friends of Christ, as sons and heirs of God. So that they are no longer servants, but sons: and if sons, also heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Now I mean gods and kings and lords not in nature, but as rulers and masters of their passions, and as preserving a truthful likeness to the divine image according to which they were made, and as being united to God of their own free-will and receiving Him as an indweller and becoming by grace through participation with Him what He is Himself by nature.

3 The Master Christ made the remains of the saints to be fountains of salvation to us, pouring forth manifold blessings and abounding in oil of sweet fragrance. In the law every one who touches a dead body was considered impure, but these are not dead. For from the time when He that is Himself life and the Author of life was reckoned among the dead, we do not call those dead who have fallen asleep in the hope of the resurrection and in faith on Him. For how could a dead body work miracles? How, therefore, are demons driven off by them, diseases dispelled, sick persons made well, the blind restored to sight, lepers purified?

4 Let us raise monuments to them and visible images, and let us ourselves become, through imitation of their virtues, living monuments and images of them. Let us give honour to her who bore God as being strictly and truly the Mother of God. Let us honour the apostles as the Lord's brothers, and the martyrs of the Lord as soldiers of Christ. Let us honour our holy fathers, the God-possessed ascetics, whose struggle was the longer and more toilsome one of the conscience: who wandered in deserts and in mountains and in dens and caves of the earth, of whom the world was not worthy.