“Praise God in His Saints”. If anyone had said that to me 30 years ago, I could not have understood. I did not know, or even allow that the mystery of God’s Spirit, image and likeness could be in human beings. Now I understand that the more believers in God seek the love and grace of Christ, through the Cross, (repentance, service, death and resurrection) the closer His saints are to the Heart of God. Thus in honouring the saints we honour God who gave them all the love and Spirit they need for the sake of the Kingdom of God. And God blesses His saints to bless us in our needs.
My most recent experience of the ‘love of God’ working through the saints was during the Covid 19 lockdown. I had asked a man to help me put up a shed. He agreed. As part payment we agreed I would paint an icon, for his wife, of St Judas (Jude) – an apostle and the ‘brother of James’ and step brother of Christ. I knew nothing but the bare facts about him but looked him up, and discovered he is known as the Apostle for the despairing, hopeless and helpless. In America, he has hospitals named after him, both Roman Catholic and Orthodox, because of prayers answered.
But while painting and praying the icon, I sensed very strongly that I should make myself a copy. I forgot. When the icon was being blessed some weeks later, I felt rebuked that I hadn’t yet made a copy. I returned to the house and printed out 3 copies from the photo I had taken. I made one into an icon for a friend who was desperately unhappy with her situation, and sent it to her. Two nights later, another friend who was about to come for the weekend to the spare room in my flat, asked for an icon of St Judas. My immediate reaction was that I hadn’t got one! Then I remembered the prints and found I had got another board of the right size! God provided – and I was obedient to the provision.
But God was not simply providing images of the saints. He was enabling the opening of hearts in faith to receive the fruit of St Jude’s prayer. I was in despair because I simply could not get rid of a sense of oppression from some particular event and was finding forgiveness difficult. On his feast day I asked St Jude for his prayers – and moments later my mind had switched from feeling oppressed and ‘stuck’, to being able to praise and thank God for the trial with all the burden lifted. On the same day, my friend, who had asked for the icon, was in a difficult situation at work and was feeling despair. She had found a longer prayer to St Judas (an Akathist) and prayed this before going to the meeting at work. The outcome of the meeting far exceeded her wildest dreams, and all the anxiety in her heart was gone. Glory to God in His saints.
This small group of us, had previously prayed asking St John Maximovich for his prayers for help with specific unresolved situations in our lives, or of those we prayed for. We then discovered it could well have been St John who sent St Judas to us. St John is a 20thC saint who spent his final years in America. He is known as a ‘wonderworker’ and many people are still finding prayers answered who ask him to help with difficult situations. However he received a prophetic word before he died, and he knew he would die on the date of St Judas’ feast day…. which he did. The mystery and unity of the saints across time and place, through the Holy Spirit of God, underlines the hope we have in a living and loving God. He still seeks to help us grow in His Spirit and ways, when we are humble enough to ask and let go of assuming that we know the answers. Love is mystery and humility ‘and passes all understanding.’
“Glory to God in His Saints”.