* Holiness is the goal:

The Christian, then, is the one who walks the path of holiness in the company of brothers. No one understands except to the extent that he is sanctified. Understanding is not by the brain, it is by the Holy Spirit if He descends upon you. Your brain does not advance or delay this, it explains and clarifies some things for you, and clarification and interpretation are only to organize and arrange things and do not create divine effectiveness. Just as if I explain a painting before you, the mere explanation will not create in you a feeling of beauty unless you have a sense of beauty. The issue is not in explanation, and the Christian life is not in lectures, but rather in God descending upon you or not. The issue is a matter of divine grace that comes upon man and according to his holiness he understands. And since man cannot be sanctified alone, he must love in order to be sanctified - for he who does not love has nothing - and he must live with the community in practical service. And to the extent that this community supports each other, they become one man, that is, they become Christ. If this community here truly and deeply loves one another, and if each one of them is purified of his lusts, then it becomes Christ, and therefore, capable of understanding because Christ understands.

The Orthodox process is like this: “Let us love one another so that with one accord we may confess and acknowledge the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit…” Love is the condition of knowledge and the key to knowledge. Therefore, for me to indulge in my various passions, hatred, malice, envy, temptation, etc., and then go to a religious gathering, this is not possible, because people who have some insight realize that my words are repetitive, chewed over, and that they are merely copied from the books and do not come from within me and pass through all my bones, because I still maintain my passions and therefore I cannot speak or serve. Therefore, the question: Why are Christians lazy and indolent? The answer is: Because they do not love God and because their sins prevent them from being active. There is no other explanation. And in Orthodoxy there is no other existential explanation than this.

So this company and this companionship are strengthened by daily practical love.

*With the saints:

The communion among believers, by the one Holy Spirit in them, is not interrupted by death. “Love is stronger than death” (Song of Songs). What is called the communion of saints, and we translate here as the company of saints - and company is a very beautiful Arabic word that has no equivalent in any language, and it means here the saints on earth and the saints in heaven, so that the Apostle Paul calls Christians, here on earth, saints, and since the saint is the one who is dedicated to Christ and consecrated to Him, and the saint is not the hero, Christianity has no such thing as heroism - this company means that there are unbreakable ties between those on earth and those who have passed on to God. Protestantism, when it abolished the mention of the glorified saints, deprived itself of a priceless treasure. It deprived itself of remaining one with the processions, with these righteous generations that preceded us. For if Christ is one, if Christ conquered death, then His conquest is now taking place, otherwise it is nothing. If we say that we are all dead and perish in the graves and that Christ will only bring us back to Him on the last day, then this statement means that there is a gap between the resurrection of the Savior and the last day and that this gap cannot be filled by anyone.

The fundamental error of Protestantism is that it does not know fellowship. It knows that man is only with his Lord. But the truth of man is that he is with another man and God is the uniter between them. It is not true that I am with God alone. I am with you and we are all, one with the other, with God. This is humanity, this is the body of Christ. Christ is in those who love him, these members are inseparable from each other. And God the Father is the father of this family and Christ forms it and the Holy Spirit is poured into it. This is the truth of the Gospel. If Christ has truly risen, then he is, from now on, dominant over this community; that is, his resurrection, his saving of man from sin and corruption, this resurrection is effective. Otherwise, this means that the last day is separated from the resurrection, as if Christ were a memory that we dwell on. That is, there is a huge gap between the first coming and the second coming if there are no saints, if there are no people connected to each other. The Church, therefore, in one aspect, is this continuity between the first and second comings, and this continuity is represented by the Holy Chalice when, after the Communion of the faithful, we place in it the parts of the living and the dead, so that the living members are mixed, that is, the living ones who live here, and the members who have passed on to God, who are mentioned, and the saints represented by the nine orders on the left of the Lamb, and the Mother of God who is on the right of the jewel in the paten. These are united by the divine blood. This means that the blood of Christ that was poured out has been poured out in the world and gathers together the living and the dead, gathers together those who have been glorified in declared holiness and those who have passed on and have not been glorified in declared holiness but who share in the life of God and those who, on earth, are striving. All of these are bound together by the blood of the divine Lamb and are a company.

So man is not just the son of today. Man is supported. I have been connected, for two thousand years, to people who preceded me, to these successive processions of witness, blood, episcopate, and continuous sacrifice.

* Intercession of the Saints:

For this reason, the invocation of the saints - which they call intercession, and here, it means prayer - is a logical consequence of their being: [He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him] [Luke 20:38]. And the author of the Song of Songs says: [I sleep, but my heart is awake] [Song of Songs 5:2]. So these people sleeping in the graves are not dead, their hearts are awake. And if you want to make a philosophical distinction between soul and body, the souls of these people are already rising from death. Their souls are rising by the act of Christ, their bodies are dissolved, and this tomb we sealed with holy water, and thus we indicated in this symbolic way that it is the beginning of the resurrection, it is a beginning, an expectation. This expectation is a look forward to what will be.

But here we have two things: We have - and this is an Orthodox opinion, not a doctrine - that some bodies do not perish but remain fresh, for example: Bishop Sadaqa, who was placed in the Monastery of Mar Elias - Shuba, and he died about one hundred and fifty years ago and the flesh and hair were still on his body. About such a state, Symeon the New Theologian says that it is an intermediate state and that there is an awaiting of the Kingdom of Heaven, such that the body does not decay and remains in an intermediate state to indicate that these bodies will be resurrected. Apart from this opinion, which is not practiced in the whole Church, but in some of them - such as the Russian Church, which takes it completely - apart from this opinion, there is another important matter, which is the remains of the relics of the saints and the remains of the martyrs, which are preserved in the Church and placed in the antimension and on the Holy Table, also, when it is built, to indicate that these bodies will rise and that the Holy Spirit embraces them.

The important thing here is that we confirm this togetherness with all these symbols and actions, confirming this one togetherness between us and those who have gone, confirming that the one Holy Spirit unites them and us.

Therefore, the Orthodox position in the intercession of the Virgin and the saints, that is, asking for their prayers for us, the Orthodox position in this is not that they are a bridge that leads us to God - for God is closer to us than they are to us, and this image that God is far away and that they are bringing us closer to Him is a false image - but rather that they are with us in one prayer. The issue is only the issue of people arranged around the throne of God. We can say that those who preceded us to divine glory have finished their struggle, they have completed the good struggle. From this point of view, they have remained steadfast in the stillness of God. We consider them so in that we consider ourselves sinners and that we are still in the struggle while they have completed the struggle. This position of intercession is no different from any request for intercession. For example, when one of us presents an offering to the church on the feast of a saint, he asks the priest to mention his name. So asking for intercession in the name of this saint or that is because the request of the righteous is very powerful in its action. The righteous pray, of course, in church, and I am not talking about the ritual prayer that the priest presides over in terms of function, but I am talking about the special prayer in which we ask for the intercession of the righteous. From this point of view, we ask for the intercession of the first ones, those who belong to the first row of these rows that, in the end, all gather around the Lord Christ.

* Jesus Christ the only intercessor:

Hence, this question becomes superficial: Why do we pray for the intercession of the Virgin Mary with God when the only intercessor with God is Jesus Christ? Christ is the only intercessor between God and people, not in the sense that He excludes us, but in the sense that He excludes the intercession of the Old Testament. That is, Moses cannot be an intercessor between people and God, for people in Judaism remained separated from God until Christ came and united them with Him. Therefore, the only mediator who unites God and people is Jesus Christ, as the Apostle Paul says. That is, He is the one who was hung on the tree. This is what we mean by the man Jesus Christ. Because He was raised on the tree, died, and then rose again, He made God stick to people. This means that there is no sticking between God and people through Judaism, but through the New Testament. Thus, the phrase “the only intercessor” does not exclude Mary or the rest of the saints. The word “the only” is to exclude those who came before, that is, to exclude the legitimacy of the Jews. Therefore, Christ remains the only intercessor between God and people, and we are in Him.

So, this one intercessor between God and men is the growing Christ, the giant, who grows from now until the end of time. And he who receives the body and blood of Christ adheres to Him and becomes a part of Christ and becomes in Christ. So, he who has become in Christ risen from the dead, who is nourished by the resurrection and becomes a resurrected man, this man prays in Christ, from the belly of Christ he prays and remains in this intercessory unity, remains in this one being who intercedes for men.

Dr. Kosti Bandali
Introduction to the Christian faith
Chapter Eight: The Church