If Our Church stopped giving birth to its saints, it would become useless in this world, and the doomsday would have arrived. But the Church will give birth to the saints until the last days. Though, they might be not that many in number as they used to be in the previous centuries. Our Church provides us with all the means to live in a spiritual feat and a spiritual joy, and have a spiritual zeal.   

We venerate the saints and talk among ourselves, “My patron saint is this one, and I was tonsured and received the name of Saint Antony the Great, and I was called after the Venerable Seraphim of Sarov, and so on…” When we share this joy, we start involuntarily to relate ourselves to these saints and involuntary be proud of this. A little vanity appears deep inside of us, as we bear the name of this or that great saint.  In fact, we should have oppositely different thoughts and concerns. 

If only we, having the names of great saints and having read their lives many times and seeing the purity of them, would start to compare our inner state to the life of the saints, then we would have had drastically different attitude to our acts and feats, and the whole life…

Archpriest Sergiy Baranov