Before the coming of the Lord Christ into our earthly world, we humans knew that we were, in essence, only for death and death for us. All that was human was permeated, captured, and conquered by death. Death was closer to us than we were, more real than we were, and more powerful, incomparably more powerful than each individual and all people combined. The earth was a terrible prison of death, and we humans were death's helpless slaves (cf. Heb. 2:14-15 ). Only with the God-Man Christ did life appear, did eternal life appear to us, hopeless mortals, to us, death's wretched slaves. And we humans have seen this eternal life with our own eyes and touched it with our own hands, and we Christians proclaim eternal life to all. Because by living in communion with the Lord Christ, we live eternal life even here on earth (cf. 1 John 1:1-3 ). We know from personal experience: Jesus Christ “is the true God and eternal life” ( 1 John 5:20 ). He came into the world for this very purpose: to show us the true God and eternal life in Him (cf. 1 John 5:11 ). This, and this alone, is true and genuine love for mankind: “that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live in Him” ( 1 John 4:9 ), and through Him – eternal life. Therefore, “he who has the Son of God has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” ( 1 John 5:12 ); he is entirely in death. Life in the one true God and Lord Jesus Christ is our only true life, for it is eternal and stronger than death. Can a life infected with death and ending in death be called life? Just as honey is not honey if it is mixed with poison, which gradually turns all honey into poison, so a life that ends in death is not life.
The Lord Christ's love for mankind knows no bounds. For us humans to receive the eternal life that abides in Him and to live by Him, we require neither learning, nor fame, nor wealth, nor anything else that some of us lack, but only what each of us can have. What is this? Faith in the Lord Christ. Therefore, He, the only Lover of mankind, proclaimed this wondrous good news to mankind: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. He who believes in the Son has eternal life" ( John 3:16, 36 ). By giving people, as the only true God , what none of the angels and people can give them, the Lord Christ alone in the human race had both the courage and the right to declare: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me has eternal life” ( John 6:47 ), and he already here on earth passed into eternal life ( John 5:24 ).
Faith in the Lord Christ unites a person with the eternal Lord, Who, according to the measure of a person's faith, pours eternal life into their soul, and they sense and recognize themselves as eternal. Moreover, the more a person lives by that faith, which gradually sanctifies their soul, heart, conscience, and entire being with the gracious divine powers. The sanctification of a person's nature grows in proportion to their faith. And the holier a person is, the stronger and more vivid becomes their sense of personal immortality and their awareness of their own eternity, and the eternity of each person. Truly, a person's true life begins with their faith in the Lord Christ, which entrusts their entire soul, their entire heart, their entire mind, their entire strength to the Lord Christ, and He gradually sanctifies, transforms, and deifies them. And through this sanctification, He pours forth the gracious divine powers, which grant them an omnipotent sense and awareness of personal immortality and personal eternity. Indeed, our life is life to the extent that it is in Christ. And to the extent that it is in Christ, it demonstrates itself by its holiness: the holier a life, the more immortal and eternal it is. The opposite of this is death. What is death? Death is mature sin; and mature sin is separation from God, in Whom alone lies life and the source of life. The Gospel, the divine truth: holiness is life, sinfulness is death; worship of God is life, atheism is death; faith is life, unbelief is death; God is life, the devil is death. Death is separation from God, and life is a return to God and living by God. Faith is the revival of the soul from stagnation, the resurrection of the soul from the dead: "I was dead and am alive again" ( Luke 15:24 ). Man first experienced this resurrection of the soul from the dead with the God-Man Christ, and he continually experiences it in His Holy Church, for He is wholly within it and gives Himself to the faithful through the holy sacraments and holy virtues. Where He is, there is no more death; here all has passed from death to life; here we already live eternal life. With the Resurrection of Christ, we celebrate the mortification of death and the beginning of a new, eternal life.
True life on earth begins with the Resurrection of the Savior, for it does not end in death . Without the Resurrection of Christ, human life is nothing other than a gradual dying, which ultimately and inevitably ends in death. True, authentic life is that which does not end in death. And such a life became possible on earth only through the Resurrection of the God-Man, the Lord Christ. Life is truly life only through God. For it is a holy life and therefore an immortal life. As in sin there is death, so in holiness there is immortality. Only with faith in the risen Lord Christ does man experience the most fateful miracle of his existence: the transition from death to immortality, from corruption to eternity, from hell to paradise. Only then does man find himself, his true self, his eternal self: "I was lost and am found" ( Luke 15:24 ), for "I was dead and am alive again . "
What are Christians? Christians are Christ-bearers, and thus the bearers and possessors of eternal life. And this is according to the measure of their faith and the measure of holiness that comes from faith. Saints are the most perfect Christians, for they have sanctified themselves to the greatest extent through the exploits of holy faith in the risen and eternally living Lord Jesus. Truly, they are the only true immortals among mankind, for with their whole being they live in and for the risen Lord Christ, and no death has power over them. Their entire life is from the Lord Christ, and therefore everything is Christ-life; their thoughts are Christ-thoughts, and their feelings are Christ-feelings. Everything that belongs to them is first of all Christ's, and only then theirs; if conscience, then it is first Christ's, and then theirs; if life, then it is first Christ's, and then theirs. They do not have themselves, but Christ is all and in all.
Therefore, the "Lives of the Saints" are nothing other than the life of the Lord Christ, renewed in each saint to a greater or lesser degree, in one form or another. Or more precisely: it is the life of the Lord Christ, continued through the saints, the life of the incarnate God Logos, the God-man Jesus Christ, who became man in order to give and transmit His divine life to us as man, in order to sanctify and make immortal and eternal our human life on earth as God with His life. "For both he who sanctifies and they who are sanctified are all of one" ( Hebrews 2:11 ). The Lord Christ made this possible and feasible in the human world, from the moment He became man, assumed our human nature, took on flesh and blood, and thus became a brother to men, a brother according to flesh and blood (cf. Hebrews 2:14, 17 ). Having become man and remaining God, the God-man lived a holy, sinless, God-human life on earth, and by His life, death, and resurrection He destroyed the devil and his power of death. He thereby gave, and continually gives, the grace-filled powers to all who believe in Him, so that they too may destroy the devil, and all death, and every temptation (cf. Heb. 2:14–15, 18 ). This God-human life is fully present in the God-human Body of Christ—the Church—and is continually experienced in the Church as an earthly-heavenly whole, and by each individual according to the measure of their faith. The lives of the saints are in reality the life of the God-man Christ, which flows into His followers and is experienced by them in His Church. For even the smallest particle of this life is always directly from Him, because He is life (cf. John 14:6, 1:4 ), life infinite, boundless, and eternal, which by its divine power conquers all deaths and rises from all deaths. According to the all-true good news of the All-True: "I am the resurrection and the life" ( John 11:25 ). The wonderful Lord, Who is all resurrection and life, with His whole being is in His Church as a Divine-human reality, therefore there is no end to the existence of this reality. His life continues through all the ages; every Christian is "co-corporate" with Christ (cf. Eph. 3:6 ), and a Christian in that he lives the Divine-human life of this body as its organic cell.
Who is a Christian? A Christian is a person who lives by Christ and in Christ. The commandment of God's Holy Gospel is divine: "Walk worthy of God" ( Colossians 1:10 ), God, Who became incarnate and, as the God-Man, remained entirely within His Church, which lives and abides eternally in Him. And we live worthy of God when we live according to the Gospel of Christ. Therefore, this divine commandment of the Holy Gospel is also natural: "Live a life worthy of the gospel of Christ" ( Philippians 1:27 ). Life according to the Gospel, a holy life, a divine life—this is the natural and normal life for Christians. For Christians are saints by calling. This good news and commandment rings like a bell throughout the entire Gospel of the New Testament (cf. 1 Thessalonians 4:3, 7 ; Rom. 1:7 ; 1 Cor. 1:2 ; Eph. 1:1, 18, 2:19, 5:3, 6:18 ; Phil. 1:1, 4:21–22 ; Col. 1:2, 4, 12, 22, 26 ; 1 Thessalonians 3:13, 5:27 ; 2 Tim. 1:9 ; Heb. 3:1, 6:10, 13:24 ; Jude 1:3 ). To become completely holy, both soul and body, this is our calling (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:22–23 ). This is not a miracle, but a norm, a rule of faith, the logic and nature of the evangelical faith. The commandment of the Holy Gospel is clear and perfectly clear: "As He who called you is Holy, be ye also holy in all your conduct" ( 1 Peter 1:15 ). This means: according to the Holy Christ, Who, having become incarnate and man, revealed in Himself a perfectly holy life, and as such commands people: "Be holy, for I am holy" ( 1 Peter 1:16 ). He has the right to command this, for, having become man, He, through His Holy Self, gives people all the divine powers necessary for a holy and pious life in this world (cf. 2 Peter 1:3 ). Having united spiritually and by grace through faith with the Holy One—the Lord Christ—Christians receive from Him the holy powers to lead a holy life.
Living by Christ, the saints also perform the works of Christ, for through Him they become not only powerful, but also omnipotent: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" ( Phil. 4:13 ). And in them the truth of the All-True is clearly realized, that those who believe in Him will do His works, and will do even greater ones: "Most assuredly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do" ( John 14:12 ). And truly: the shadow of the holy Apostle Peter heals, Saint Mark of Thrace moves and relocates a mountain with a word... If God became man, then Divine life became human life, and Divine power became human power, and Divine truth became human truth, and Divine justice became human justice: all that is Divine became human.
What are the "Acts of the Holy Apostles"? They are the deeds of Christ, which the holy apostles performed by the power of Christ, or, more precisely, performed by Christ, who is in them and acts through them. And what are the lives of the holy apostles? The experience of the life of Christ, which in the Church is transferred to all faithful followers of Christ and continues through them with the help of the holy sacraments and holy virtues.
And what are the "Lives of the Saints"? Nothing other than a kind of continuation of the "Acts of the Apostles." They contain the same Gospel, the same life, the same truth, the same love, the same faith, the same eternity, the same power from above, the same God and Lord. For "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, and today, and forever" ( Heb. 13:8 ): the same for all people of all times, distributing the same gifts and the same divine powers to all who believe in Him. This continuation of all the life-giving divine powers in the Church of Christ through centuries and centuries and from generation to generation constitutes the living Sacred Tradition. This Sacred Tradition continues uninterruptedly as the life of grace in all Christians, in whom, through the holy sacraments and holy virtues, the Lord Christ lives by His grace, Who is entirely in His Church, and she is His fullness: "the fullness of Him who fills all in all" ( Eph. 1:23 ). The God-Man, the Lord Christ, is the perfect fullness of the Godhead: "For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily" ( Col. 2:9 ). And Christians, through the holy sacraments and holy virtues, must "be filled with all the fullness of God" ( Eph. 3:19 ). The Lives of the Saints reveal these individuals filled with Christ God, these Christ-bearing individuals, these holy individuals in whom the holy tradition of this holy, grace-filled life is preserved and transmitted, preserved and transmitted by the holy Gospel life. For the Lives of the Saints are holy Gospel truths, transferred by grace and struggles to our human lives. There is no Gospel truth that cannot be transformed into human life. All of them were brought by Christ God for one purpose: that they might become our life, our reality, our possession, our joy. And the saints, every single one of them, experience these divine truths as the core of their life and the essence of their being.
Therefore, the “Lives of the Saints” are both proof and testimony that our origin is from heaven; that we are not of this world, but of another; that man is truly man only through God; that on earth we live by heaven; that “our citizenship is in heaven” ( Phil. 3:20 ); that our task is to make ourselves heavenly by feeding on the heavenly bread, which came down to earth (cf. John 6:33, 35, 51 ), and came down in order to feed us with eternal Divine truth, eternal Divine goodness, eternal Divine justice, eternal Divine love, eternal Divine life through Holy Communion, through living in the one true God and Lord Jesus Christ (cf. John 6:50-51, 53-57 ). In other words, our calling is to fill ourselves with the Lord Christ, with His divine, life-giving powers, to become Christified and to be Christified ourselves. If you work at this, you are already in heaven, though you walk the earth; you are already entirely in God, though your being remains within the boundaries of human nature. By becoming Christified, man grows into God, the God-Man, in whom is given the perfect example of the true, real, complete, God-like man; and divine, all-conquering powers are also given, with the help of which man rises above all sin, above all death, above all hell: and this is done by the Church and in the Church, which all the powers of hell cannot overcome, because within her is the entire wondrous God-Man, the Lord Christ, with all His divine powers, truths, realities, perfections, lives, and eternities.
The Lives of the Saints are holy testimonies to the miraculous power of our Lord Jesus Christ. In reality, they are the testimonies of the holy Acts of the Apostles, only continued through the centuries. The saints are nothing other than holy witnesses, of what? Of the God-Man, the Lord Christ: of Him crucified, resurrected, ascended, and eternally alive; of His saving Gospel, which is continually written through the holy acts of the Gospel from generation to generation, because the Lord Christ, Who is the same forever, continually works miracles with the same divine power through His holy witnesses. The Holy Apostles are the first holy witnesses of the Lord Jesus and His Divine-human economy of salvation of the world (Cf. Acts 1:8, 22, 2:32, 3:15, 4:33, 5:32, 10:39, 41-42, 13:31, 22:15, 26:16 ; John 21:24-25 ; Luke 24:48 ); and their lives are living and immortal testimonies of the Gospel of the Savior as a new life, a life of grace, holy, Divine-human, and therefore always miraculous, miraculous and true, just as the life of the Savior itself is miraculous and true. And what about Christians? Christians are people through whom the holy, God-human life of Christ continues from generation to generation until the end of the world and the age, and they all constitute one body, the Body of Christ , the Church ; they are co-bodies of Christ and members of one another ( 1 Cor. 12:27, 12-14, 10:17 ; Rom. 12:5 ; Eph. 3:6 ). The stream of immortal divine life has flowed and flows unceasingly from the Lord Christ, and Christians by it float away into eternal life. Christians are the Gospel of Christ, continued through all the ages of the human race. In the Lives of the Saints, everything is ordinary, as in the Holy Gospel, but everything is also extraordinary, as in the Holy Gospel; but both are unparalleled true and real. And, moreover, true and real with the same God-human truthfulness and the same God-human reality; and is witnessed by the same holy power, divine and human: divine in an all-perfect way and human – again in an all-perfect way.
"Lives of the Saints"? – Here we are in heaven, for earth becomes heaven through the saints of God. Here we are among angels in the flesh, among Christ-bearers. And where they are, there is the whole Lord in them, and with them, and among them; there is all the Eternal Divine Truth , and all the Eternal Divine Righteousness, and all the Eternal Divine Love, and all the Eternal Divine Life.
"Lives of the Saints"? – Here we are in paradise, where everything divine, holy, immortal, eternal, righteous, true, and evangelical flourishes and grows. For in every saint, the tree of eternal, divine, and immortal life blossomed through the cross, and bore much fruit. And the cross leads us into paradise, leads us too, following the thief, who, to our encouragement, was the first to enter paradise after the All-Holy, Divine Cross-Bearer, the Lord Christ, and he entered with the cross of repentance.
"Lives of the Saints"? – Here we are in eternity: there is no longer time, because in the saints of God, Eternal Divine Truth, Eternal Divine Righteousness, Eternal Divine Love, Eternal Divine Life reign and rule. And death no longer exists in them, because their entire being is filled with the resurrectional divine powers of the risen Lord Jesus, the only Conqueror of death, of all deaths in all worlds. There is no death in them – in the holy people: their entire being is filled with the One Immortal – All-Immortal – Lord and God Jesus Christ. Among them – we are among the only true immortals on earth: they have conquered all deaths, all sins, all passions, all demons, all hells. If we are with them, no death can harm us, for they are death's lightning rods. There is no thunderbolt with which death can strike us if we are with them, among them, in them.
Saints are people who live on earth by holy, eternal, divine truths. Therefore, the "Lives of the Saints" are truly applied Dogmatics: for in them, all holy, eternal dogmatic truths are experienced in all their life-giving and creative powers. The "Lives of the Saints" most clearly demonstrate that dogmas are not merely ontological truths in and for themselves, but each one is a wellspring of eternal life and a source of holy spirituality. According to the all-true gospel of the one and irreplaceable Savior and Lord: "The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life" ( John 6:63 ): for each of them pours forth a saving, sanctifying, gracious, life-giving, and transforming power. Without the holy truth of the Holy Trinity, we lack the power from the Holy Trinity that we draw through faith, the power that enlivens, sanctifies, deifies, and saves us. Without the holy truth of the God-Man, there is no salvation for man, because from it, experienced by man, flows the saving power that saves from sin, death, and the devil. And is not this dogmatic truth about the God-Man, the Lord Christ, most obviously and most experimentally attested in the lives of countless saints? For the saints are truly saints because they continually experience the whole Lord Jesus as the soul of their soul, the conscience of their conscience, the mind of their mind, the essence of their being, and the life of their life. And each of them, together with the holy apostle, proclaims the truth: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" ( Gal. 2:20 ).
Delve deeply into the lives of the saints: from all of them flows the gracious, life-giving, and saving power of the Most Holy Theotokos, leading them from struggle to struggle, from virtue to virtue, from victory over sin to victory over death, from victory over death to victory over the devil, and guiding them into spiritual joy beyond which there is no sorrow, no sighing, no grief, but only "peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" ( Rom. 14:17 ), joy and peace from victory over all sins, over all deaths, over all unclean spirits. And all of this, without a doubt, is an empirical and living testimony to the truth of the holy dogma of the Most Holy Theotokos, truly "more honorable than the Cherubim and beyond compare more glorious than the Seraphim"—a holy dogma which the saints bear in their hearts by faith and live by with zealous love. Do you desire one, two, or even a thousand irrefutable testimonies to the life-giving and life-creating power of the all-honorable Cross of the Lord, and thus experimental confirmation of the all-truth of the holy dogma of the salvation-bearing nature of the Savior's death on the Cross? Then proceed with faith through the Lives of the Saints. And you will be able to sense and see that in each saint individually and in all the saints taken together, the power of the Cross is an all-conquering weapon with which they conquer all visible and invisible enemies of their salvation. And you will also see the Cross in all that belongs to them: in their soul, in their heart, in their conscience, in their mind, in their will, in their body. And in each of them, an inexhaustible source of salvation-bearing, all-illuminating power, which confidently leads them from perfection to perfection, from joy to joy, until it leads them into the eternal Kingdom of Heaven, where there is unceasing rejoicing in those who celebrate and the endless sweetness of those who behold the ineffable beauty of the Lord's face. "But the holy lives and holy personalities of God's saints bear true and convincing witness not only to the aforementioned dogmas , but also to all other holy dogmas: about the Church, about grace, about the holy sacraments, about the holy virtues, about man, about sin, about holy relics, about holy icons, about the afterlife, and about everything else that constitutes the divine-human economy of salvation. Yes, the "Lives of the Saints" are an experimental Dogmatics. Yes, the "Lives of the Saints" are a lived Dogmatics, lived through the holy lives of God's holy people."
Moreover, the "Lives of the Saints" also contain the entirety of Orthodox Ethics, Orthodox morality in the full radiance of its divine-human heights and immortal life-giving power. They most convincingly demonstrate and prove that the holy sacraments are the source of holy virtues; that holy virtues are the fruit and offspring of the holy sacraments: they are born of them, develop with their help, are nourished by them, live by them, are perfected by them, and by them remain immortal and eternal. All divine moral laws flow from the holy sacraments and are realized by the holy virtues. Therefore, the "Lives of the Saints" are lived Ethics, applied Ethics. Indeed, the "Lives of the Saints" irrefutably demonstrate that Ethics is nothing other than applied Dogmatics. The entire life of a saint consists of holy sacraments and holy virtues; and the holy sacraments and holy virtues are gifts of the Holy Spirit, who works all in all ( 1 Cor. 12:4, 6, 11 ).
What else are the "Lives of the Saints"? They are the only Orthodox pedagogy. Because they demonstrate, using countless evangelical methods, perfectly developed over centuries of experience, how the perfect human personality, the utterly ideal person, is developed and constructed, and how, with the help of the holy sacraments and holy virtues in the Church of Christ, one grows "unto a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ" ( Eph. 4:13 ). And this is the evangelical educational ideal, the only educational ideal worthy of such a God-like being as man, an ideal established by the Gospel of the Lord Christ. Established and realized first by the God-man Christ, and then realized in the holy apostles and the rest of God's saints. Meanwhile, without the God-man Christ, and outside the God-man Christ, with any other educational ideal, man forever remains an incomplete being, a mortal being, a pitiful being, a poor being, worthy of all the tears of all eyes, no matter how many there are in God's worlds.
If you like, the Lives of the Saints are a kind of Orthodox encyclopedia. In them you can find everything a soul needs, hungering and thirsting for eternal truth and eternal justice in this world, hungering and thirsting for divine immortality and eternal life. If you need faith, you will find it in abundance in them, and you will nourish your soul with food that will never make you hungry. If you need love, truth, hope, meekness, humility, repentance, prayer , or any virtues and ascetic labors, in them you will find countless holy teachers for every ascetic labor and receive gracious help for every virtue. If you suffer because of your faith in Christ, the Lives of the Saints will comfort and encourage you, give you courage, inspire you, and transform your suffering into joy. If you are in any temptation, the Lives of the Saints will help you, and you will overcome it, now and forever. If you are in danger from invisible enemies of salvation, the Lives of the Saints will arm you with the "whole armor of God" (cf. Eph. 6:11, 13 ), and you will defeat them, now and always, and throughout your life. If you find yourself among the visible haters and persecutors of the Church of Christ, the Lives of the Saints will give you confessorial courage and strength, and you will fearlessly confess the one true God and Lord in all worlds - Jesus Christ, and for the holy truth of His Gospel you will boldly stand to the death, to every death, and you will feel yourself stronger than all deaths, not to mention all the visible enemies of Christ, and, tormented for Christ, you will exclaim with joy, feeling with your whole being that your life is in heaven, hidden with Christ in God, all above all deaths (cf. Col. 3:3 ).
The Lives of the Saints show numerous, but always reliable paths to salvation, enlightenment, sanctification, transformation, Christification, and deification; they show all the ways by which human nature overcomes sin , any sin; overcomes passion, any passion; overcomes death, any death; overcomes the devil, any devil. There is a cure for every sin; a healing for every passion; a resurrection for every death; a deliverance from every devil; and salvation from all evils. There is no passion, no sin, for which the Lives of the Saints do not show the way by which this passion, this sin, is overcome, mortified, and eradicated. They clearly and obviously show: there is no spiritual death from which one could not be resurrected by the divine power of the risen and ascended Lord Christ; There is no torment, no misfortune, no torture, no suffering that the Lord, for the sake of faith in Him, would not gradually or instantly transform into quiet, tender joy. How even a sinner becomes righteous—there are many stunning examples of this in the "Lives of the Saints." How a robber, fornicator, drunkard, debauchee, murderer, adulterer becomes a holy man—there are countless examples of this in the "Lives of the Saints." How a self-loving, egotistical, unbelieving, atheist, proud, money-loving, lustful, evil, vile, corrupt, angry, nasty, quarrelsome, spiteful, envious, ill-natured, boastful, vain, unmerciful, voluptuous person becomes a man of God—there are also countless examples of this in the "Lives of the Saints."
But in the same way, in the Lives of the Saints there are many wonderful examples of how a young man becomes a holy young man, how a girl becomes a holy girl, how an old man becomes a holy old man, how an old woman becomes a holy old woman, how a child becomes a holy child, how parents become holy parents, how a son becomes a holy son, how a daughter becomes a holy daughter, how a family becomes a holy family, how a community becomes a holy community, how a priest becomes a holy priest, how a lord becomes a holy lord, how a shepherd becomes a holy shepherd, how a farmer becomes a holy farmer, how a king becomes a holy king, how a shepherd becomes a holy shepherd, how a worker becomes a holy worker, how a judge becomes a holy judge, how a teacher becomes a holy teacher, how a mentor becomes a holy mentor, how a warrior becomes a holy warrior, how an officer becomes a holy officer, how a ruler becomes a holy a ruler, as a civil servant becomes a holy civil servant, as a merchant becomes a holy merchant, as a monk becomes a holy monk, as a builder becomes a holy builder, as a physician becomes a holy physician, as a customs officer becomes a holy customs officer, as a student becomes a holy student, as a craftsman becomes a holy craftsman, as a philosopher becomes a holy philosopher, as a scientist becomes a holy scientist, as a statesman becomes a holy statesman, as a minister becomes a holy minister, as a beggar becomes a holy beggar, as a rich man becomes a holy rich man, as a slave becomes a holy slave, as a master becomes a holy master, as a married couple becomes a holy married couple, as a writer becomes a holy writer, as an artist becomes a holy artist...
Source: https://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Iustin_Popovich/chto-takoe-svjatost-i-zachem-pravoslavnomu-khristianinu-chitat-zhitija-svjatykh/