The word saints can mean two different things. First, the saints are all those who are in the Body of Christ, the Church (Acts 9, etc.). The word saint means one who has been set apart for God’s purposes.

In the second, more common sense, the saints are those whose lives have clearly shown that they are indeed set apart for the service of God. Their holiness, which is not their own but is from Jesus Christ (Gal. 2:20), is so obvious that Orthodox Christians give them great respect, which is called veneration. We venerate them because of Christ’s work in them, and because they have shown forth the life of Christ in all of its diversity.

When the Church officially recognizes the work of Christ in one of the saints, it does the formal work of canonization (which we call “glorification”). The whole Church affirms that their lives can be celebrated and imitated, just as the Apostle Paul urged us to imitate him as he imitated Christ (I Cor. 11:1). As part of canonization, liturgical services are composed for the celebration of the feast days of the saints, and their place as participants in the common worship of the whole Church is confirmed with iconography, visual images that connect us with a spiritual reality. The saints always surround us as a great cloud of witnesses (Heb. 12:1).

The Orthodox Church has many thousands of saints, whom we remember and venerate, that have emerged throughout our history, up to the present day. New saints are added to our calendar frequently. Not all saints are known, however, and we have days on which we remember unknown saints as well.