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(95) The saints fulfilled the word of the Lord; the Lord fulfils their word; they worked for Him - He does so for them. The Lord Himself said: "With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again" (St. Matthew VII. 2). This is why the Lord speedily fulfils the prayers of the Saints for us.

 (96) "My servant Job shall pray for you; Abraham shall pray for thee ... Moses ... Samuel ... Elijah" (Job XLII. 8; Genesis XX. 7, 17; Jeremiah XV. 1; 1 Kings XVIII. 36; Psalm XCIX. 6). The prayers of the Saints for us are pleasing unto the Lord, as coming from His faithful servants.

 (97) God's saints are great merchants, who have enriched them­selves with all spiritual treasures, with all virtues: meekness -s, humility, abstinence, patience, great faith, hope, and love. This is why we ask their holy prayers, as poor men of rich, that they may help us in our spiritual poverty; that they may teach us how to pray and to progress in all Christian virtues; that they, having boldness before God, may pray for the remission of our past sins and protect us from fresh ones. We go to earthly merchants in their shops to buy their merchandise: shall we not have recourse to the heavenly merchants with fervent prayer, as though with silver and gold? Shall we not purchase of them their intercession for us before God for the forgiveness of sins and the bestowal of various Christian virtues? It seems very natural to do so.

 (98) Call upon the saints with faith unshamed and love un­feigned if you wish them to hear you and fulfil your prayer. Remember that like seeks after like. The saints have themselves pleased God by their faith and love, and wish to see the same in n you. To faith and love add also the reverence due to them.

 (99) Lutherans say: "Why should we ask the prayers of the ,saints for ourselves? We pray to God Himself." But they contra­dict themselves, for why do they ask a pastor to pray for them? They might as well pray without a pastor if everyone has an equal access to God and we have no need of any sanctified suppliants. What blindness! They say that by praying to the saints we worship idols. This is untrue. We do not pray to any saint as we pray to God, we only ask his prayers for ourselves. Is there a shadow of idolatry in this? In the same manner as we ask God's living ministers and suppliants to pray to Him for us, so likewise we ask the heavenly suppliants, who, from their love to God, have great boldness before Him; besides this, very many of them, even when they lived here on earth, were already suppliants and intercessors before God for the world; there, in heaven, this activity of theirs is only continued, has attained greater dimensions, and is especially powerful, because it is no longer hindered by the heavy and inert flesh. All the saints, though they have finished their earthly course, yet live: "For He is not a God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto Him" (St. Luke XX. 38).

 (100) How do the saints hear us? They hear us as being one in the Holy Spirit with us - "that they may be one in us" (St. John XVII. 21), as members of the one Church of God, having for her head the one Christ, and animated by the one Spirit of God. The saints see and hear us in the Holy Spirit in the same manner as we see and hear with our bodily eyes and ears by means of light and air; but our bodily sight and hearing are very imperfect in comparison to spiritual sight and hearing. At a great distance we cannot see many objects and cannot hear many sounds, but spiritual sight and hearing are perfect; not a single movement of the heart, not a single thought, not a single word, intention, or desire escapes them, because the Spirit of God - in Whom the saints dwell, see, and hear us - is all­perfect, omniscient, all-seeing, and all-hearing, for He is omni­present.

 (101) God's saints are near to believing hearts and, like the truest and kindest of friends, are ready in a moment to help the faithful and pious who call upon them with faith and love. We have for the most part to send, and have sometimes to wait long for earthly helpers, whilst we have not to send for nor wait long for spiritual helpers: the faith of him who prays can place them close to his very heart in a moment, and he will as speedily receive through faith full spiritual help. In saying this, I speak by experience; by this I mean the frequent deliver­ance from affliction of heart through the intercession and patron­age of the saints, and especially through the intercession of Our Lady, the Holy Virgin Mary. Probably some would say that this is the action of simple and firm faith, and a determined assurance in our deliverance from affliction, and not the intercession of the saints for us before God. No, it is not so. How can this be proved? It can be proved by the fact that if I do not call upon the saints known to me in hearty prayer, without making any distinction, if I do not see them with my spiritual vision, then I shall obtain no help, however great assurance I may have felt of being saved without their help. I recognize, I feel clearly, that I receive help through the names of those saints upon whom I have called, because of my lively faith in them. This happens just as everything happens in the usual order of earthly things.  First, I see my helpers by means of earnest faith; then, seeing them, I pray to them also with my whole heart, invisibly to myself; after this, having received invisible help in quite an imperceptible manner, but sensibly to my soul, I simultaneously receive a strong conviction that this help has been obtained from them, as a sick man, cured by a doctor, is convinced that he has been cured precisely by that doctor, and not by any one else; that his illness has passed away not by itself, but through the help of this particular doctor. All this comes to pass so simply that it is only necessary to have eyes in order to see.

 (102) If you invoke any saint doubting that he is near you and hears you, and your heart is oppressed and contracted, conquer yourself, or, rather, overcome, with the help of the Lord Jesus Christ, the calumniator (the devil) nestling in your heart; call upon the saint with the hearty assurance that he is near you in the Holy Spirit and hears your prayer, and you will at once feel relieved. Oppression and weariness of heart during prayer proceed from want of sincerity, from the deceitfulness and craftiness of our heart, in the same manner as when, during ordinary conversation with other people, we feel inwardly ill at ease if we do not speak to them from the heart, but un­truthfully, insincerely. "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks" (Acts XXVI. 14). Be true in heart always and every­where, and you will always and everywhere have peace, but especially be true in your converse with God and the saints, "because the spirit is truth" (1 John V, 7).

 (103) I ought to rejoice in the fact that it very often happens to me to carry in my mind and heart, and to pronounce with my lips, the name of God, the name of Our Lady, the Mother of our God, those of the holy Angels and Saints, either of them, all by name during the year, or of the special ones daily mentioned in the church prayers, or in the office of the blessing of the water. For the name of God, as well as the name of the Mother of God, our all-powerful Mediatrix, remembered sincerely, from the whole heart, sanctifies, quickens, and comforts; and the Saints our intercessors before God, pray for us, when we call upon them in prayer, and enlighten us by their manifold '1 virtues. It is good to have union with God and the heavenly dwellers.

 (104) If we sinners pray and make supplications to the Lord for ourselves and for others; if, when living upon earth, the saints pray for others and ask God for what is needful for them, then much more will they do so when they are trans­planted to eternity and are face to face with God. By virtue of the great mediatory sacrifice of the Son of God, the prayers of the saints, especially those of His most pure Mother, possess by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the power of mediation. This is the Lord's recompense for the merits of the saints.

 (105) It is remarkable: today I felt a doubt - of course suggested by the evil one - on the subject of the turn of the phrase in a prayer, namely: "Thou, Who alone hast power to forgive sins by the prayers of T hy most holy Mother and of all the saints" (Prayer for a woman on the first day after childbirth), and I was covered with shame in my reasoning: the enemy struck me, hindered me, disturbed me during public prayer. But in ,.,,,hat respect was my thought false? I thought thus: how God has the power to forgive sins by the prayers of His most pure Mother and those of the saints, and not independently of Him­self? Of course He has the power without the prayers of others. He alone has the power, but in order to honour the exalted virtues of the saints, and especially those of His Mother, the saints, who are His friends, who pleased Him with all their might during their earthly life - He accepts their prayerful intercession for us, unworthy ones, for us who must often stop their mouths on account of our great and frequent transgressions. Re­member Moses, who interceded for the Hebrew people and ob­tained life for them from God Whom they had angered. Some may say that God might have spared His people even without Moses' prayers; but, then, God would have been, so to say, unjust in bestowing life upon those who were not worthy of life, after He himself had decreed that they should die; but when Moses - a righteous, meek, and humble man - began to intercede for them, then the most just God was appeased at the sight of the righteous man, at his love for God and his people, and for the sake of Moses' merits, the Lord forgave the unworthy, that is, the unrighteous, for the sake of the righteous. So likewise now, of ourselves, through our great and frequent sins and iniquities, are unworthy v of His mercy. "Though Moses and Samuel stood before Me, yet My mind could not be toward this people," said the Lord to Jeremiah (XV. 1) of the Jews. From this it is evident -hat the Lord accepts the intercession of the saints for the evil-doers when the sins of these last do not exceed the measure of God's forbearance.

  (106) From our own experience of lively, heart-felt prayer, we may know that the saints are received into the closest union with God. Also, by our own experience we know that during our communion with God, by means of the prayer of faith, our mind is enlightened in an extraordinary manner, and acquires the widest scale of action. At this time it sees that which it does not see in its ordinary state. From this, it follows that the saints, being in union with God, being also pure, detached from the body, have the most clear, far-seeing mind. They hear our fervent prayers; and if these prayers are pleasing to God and profit­able to us, they will unfailingly fulfill them.

 (107) "O most holy Bishop, Father Nicholas, pray to God for us!" What is the reason that we ask the prayers of the Saints for ourselves? Do they really pray for us? And is their prayer effective? God Himself plainly declared His will to some persons not having nearness to Him, chiefly to sinful men, that they should ask God's people to pray for them. For instance, Abime­lech, who took Abraham's wife, was commanded to ask Abraham to pray for him; Job prayed for his friends, in accordance with the evident revelation of God's will; Moses, Samuel, Elijah, and all the prophets prayed; the Lord Himself, in accordance with His human nature, prayed to the Heavenly Father for Peter and for all the disciples. The Saints are worthy of being inter­cessors for us before God, by their virtues, by their merits, and as those who pleased Him. If earthly justice requires that a certain man nearer to God (for instance, a priest) should pray to God for others, then why should it not be the same in heaven? All the Saints live in God and for us; in God they see our needs, they sympathise with us, they are ready, in accordance with our prayers, to help us. Why in accordance with our prayers, and not otherwise? In order to strengthen us in faith and prayer­fulness. Besides, why do even living men wish that others who need their help should ask them for it?

 (108) When we call upon the Saints in prayer, if we pronounce their names from the heart, it 'already means that we bring them near our heart itself. Therefore ask their prayers and intercession undoubtingly for yourself. They will hear you and will speedily lay your prayers before the Lord, in the twinkling of an eye, for He is omnipresent and omniscient.

 (109) The name of Saints, from articulate sounds, signifies as if the flesh of the Saint ... In minor form, beings of the higher and spiritual world, are as though reflected in our mouths: - and all this through faith, by the Holy Spirit, Who alone is Being - is everywhere present and filling all things.

 (110) When calling or glorifying God's Saints, we must call or glorify them with all our heart, with fervor of soul; so as to bring them closer to us in this manner, to come nearer to them and become like them as far as possible: for then are they with us and for us, when we call or glorify them with a pure heart, and they offer our prayers to God.

 (111) Lord, in our prayers to Thee, we ask the intercession of the Saints, these spiritual sweet scents, that fragrance of Thy perfumes! Accept their prayers for us, fragrant with love and purity, and save us from the evil odour of sins, for our hearts are unclean and our mouths impure, and we are unworthy of most sweet converse with Thee. Everything in us is - earthly, corrupt, impure, and evil, whilst they, Thy Saints, are the purest fragrance; and, above all, Thy Most Pure Mother, Thy living, light-bearing abode, She is purer than all the brightness of the sun, more fragra than all perfumes, for heaven and earth are full of the fragrance of Her holiness and of Her Divine virtues.

 (112) You do not understand how the saints in Heaven can hear us when we pray to them. But how do the rays of the sun bend down from heaven to us, lighting everything through­out the earth? The saints in the spiritual world are like the ray, of the sun in the material world. God is the eternal, life-giving Sun, and the saints are the rays of this wise Sun. As the eyes of the Lord are constantly looking upon the earth and upon terrestrial beings, so also the eyes of the saints cannot but turn towards the same direction as the provident gaze of the Lord of all creatures towards where their treasures (their bodies, their works, the holy places, and the persons devoted to them) are to be found. "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (St. Matthew VI. 21). You know how quickly, how far, and how clearly the heart can see (especially the objects of the spiritual world); you notice this in all the sciences, especially in the spiritual ones, where a great deal is adopted by faith only (the vision of the heart). The heart is the eye of the human being. The purer it is, the quicker, farther, and clearer it can see. But with God's saints this spiritual eye is refined, even during their lifetime, to the highest degree of purity possible for man, and after their death, when they have become united to God, through God's grace it becomes still clearer and wider in the limits of its vision. Therefore the saints see very clearly, widely, and far: they see our spiritual wants; they see and hear all those who call upon them with their whole hearts - that is, those whose mental eyes are fixed straight upon them, and are not darkened or dimmed when so fixed by unbelief and doubt; in other words, when the eyes of the heart of those who pray, so to say, meet the eyes of those they call upon. This is a mysterious vision. He who is experienced will understand what is meant. Therefore, how easy it is to communicate with the saints! It is only necessary to purify the eye of the heart, to fix it firmly upon a saint known to you, to pray to him for what you want, and you will obtain it. And what is God in reference to sight? He is all light, and all knowledge. He everlastingly fills both Heaven and earth, and sees everything in every place. "The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good" (Proverbs XI. 3).

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