The glory the Lord bestows upon the saints is so great that natural man cannot bear the glory of a heavenly manifestation. Do not be surprised at this. The Lord so loved His creation that He gave man abundantly the Holy Spirit, and in the Holy Spirit, man became like God. Why does the Lord love man so? Because He is Love Himself; and this Love is known by the Holy Spirit.
By the Holy Spirit man comes to know the Lord, his Creator, and the Holy Spirit fills the whole man with His grace: soul, mind, and body.
The Lord bestowed His grace upon the saints, and they loved Him and clung to Him to the end. And if this is so on earth, then all the more so in Heaven, the saints are united with the Lord in love. And this love is indescribably sweet, and it comes from the Holy Spirit, and all the Heavenly Powers are nourished by it.
God is Love; and in the saints the Holy Spirit is Love.
By the Holy Spirit the Lord is known. By the Holy Spirit the saints glorify God, and by the gifts of the Holy Spirit the Lord glorifies the saints, and this glory will have no end.
Many feel that the saints are distant from us. But they are far removed from those who have withdrawn themselves, and very close to those who keep Christ's commandments and have the grace of the Holy Spirit.
In Heaven, all things live and move by the Holy Spirit. But on earth, too, the same Holy Spirit lives. He lives in our Church; He lives in the sacraments; He is in Holy Scripture; He is in the souls of believers. The Holy Spirit unites all, and therefore the saints are close to us; and when we pray to them, in the Holy Spirit they hear our prayers, and our souls feel that they are praying for us.
So happy and blessed are we, Orthodox Christians, in spirit that the Lord has granted us life in the Holy Spirit; and He gladdens our souls. But we must guard Him wisely, for even one bad thought causes Him to abandon the soul, and then God's love is no longer with us; there is no boldness in prayer; nor is there any firm hope that we will receive what we ask for.
The saints live in another world, where, through the Holy Spirit, they behold the glory of God and the beauty of the Lord's face. But in that same Holy Spirit, they see our lives and our deeds. They know our sorrows and hear our fervent prayers. While living on earth, they learned the love of God from the Holy Spirit; and whoever has love on earth passes with it into eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven, where love grows and will be perfected. And if love here cannot forget a brother, how much more do the saints not forget us and pray for us.
The Lord gave the Holy Spirit to the saints, and in the Holy Spirit they love us. The souls of the saints know the Lord and His goodness to man, and therefore their spirits burn with love for the people. While still living on earth, they could not hear of sinful man without sorrow, and in prayer they shed tears for him. The Holy Spirit chose them to pray for the whole world and provided them with sources of tears. The Holy Spirit bestows so much love upon His chosen ones that their souls, as if on fire, are consumed by the desire for all people to be saved and to behold the glory of the Lord.
The holy saints have attained the Kingdom of Heaven and there behold the Glory of our Lord Jesus Christ; but through the Holy Spirit, they also see the suffering of people on earth. The Lord has given them such great grace that they embrace the entire world with their love. They see and know how we are exhausted by sorrows, how parched our souls are, how despondency has bound them, and they ceaselessly intercede for us before God.
The saints rejoice at our repentance and grieve when people abandon God and become like senseless beasts. They grieve that people live on earth, unaware that if they loved one another, the earth would be free from sin; and where there is no sin, there is joy and gladness from the Holy Spirit, so that wherever you look, everything is lovely, and the soul wonders why it feels so good, and glorifies God.
Call upon the Mother of God and the saints with faith and pray. They hear our prayers and even know our thoughts. And do not be surprised by this. The entire heaven of saints lives by the Holy Spirit, and nothing in all the world is hidden from the Holy Spirit. I didn't previously understand how the holy denizens of heaven could see our lives, but when the Mother of God convicted me of my sins, then I realized that in the Holy Spirit they see us, they know our lives.
The saints resemble the Lord, but so do all people who keep Christ's commandments, while those who live according to their passions and do not repent resemble the enemy. I believe that if this secret were revealed to people, they would stop serving the enemy, and everyone would strive with all their might to know the Lord and be like Him.
The saints were people just like all of us. Many of them came from great sins, but through repentance they attained the Kingdom of Heaven. And all who reach there do so through the repentance granted to us by the Merciful Lord through His suffering.
In the Kingdom of Heaven, where the Lord and His Most Pure Mother dwell, live all the saints. There are the holy forefathers and patriarchs, who courageously upheld their faith. There are the prophets, who received the Holy Spirit and with their words called the people to God. There are the apostles, who died for preaching the Gospel. There are the martyrs, who joyfully gave their lives for the love of Christ. There are the hierarchs, who imitated the Lord and bore the burdens of their spiritual flocks. There are the venerable fasters and fools for Christ, who through their ascetic struggles conquered the world. There are all the righteous, who kept God's commandments and conquered the passions. They walked the earth with their feet and toiled with their hands, but their spirit always dwelt in God, and their minds refused to be torn from the memory of God. For the love of Christ, they endured all sorrows on earth and feared no suffering, thereby glorifying the Lord. For this reason the Lord loved and glorified them, and granted them the Eternal Kingdom with Himself.
Source: https://www.blagobor.by/article/saint/pray