A Homily at St. John’s for Sunday June 2, 7533 (6/15/25 on the civil calendar), the Sunday of All Saints, by Priest Paul Siewers.

Today is the original All Hallows Day in the Orthodox Church. In the West, that developed into a feast day honoring all the Saints in late fall, and from that comes the term and the secular neopagan holiday Halloween today. But in the East, which kept the traditions of the original continuing Church of the Apostles, All Saints Day comes for us the Sunday after Pentecost.

This is not a spooky or creepy time, but the natural continuation of Pentecost. The Holy Spirit having been made manifest to the Church, indeed inspiring and literally firing up the Church with the uncreated light of God, the saints are the fruits.

The Holy Saints are our Church family, who are all around us as a cloud of witnesses. We see family portraits of them in our Church iconography, and we feel welcomed by their embrace and upheld by their prayers as we recognize how they are filled with the Pentecostal uncreated light.

So we look to those holy fathers and mothers both alive and dead for our spiritual support network in Orthodoxy today.

Years ago, as I was telling a few of our members recently, I was a graduate student on a budget, and would help mow the lawn at a large country monastery as a sinner and newcomer to Orthodoxy (I am still a sinner but no longer so completely a newcomer but still with much to learn!). I would also help in the workshop as a volunteer, and having worked there late, I was asked if I could stay over to complete the work project. I said yes, and although my means were limited as a graduate student. I stopped at a local motel and soon fell asleep. When I arose in the morning to check out, I was told that a man had already paid my bill. When I asked who that was, nobody seemed to know. I assumed that one of the monks had stopped by or sent someone, although because of the distinct monastic cycles of sleep and wakeful work, they usually would not have yet been awake. I got to the monastery and told one of the monks what had happened. Later, in conversation there, one of the fathers told me that it must have been an angel who provided for my stay. This was meant literally but my mind was very worldly and skeptical. Yet no one else had known of my stay there, the monks were all surprised by my room having been paid for, and this was years before things like the “pay it forward” campaign had emerged. Besides, my very low-profile entry and stay at the motel made it more of a mystery. In Orthodox Christianity, we are taught to try the spirits and to pray for discernment and not to assume any thing about visions or supposed miracles, which can also be from the devil. Yet in looking back at that incident now decades ago, I am grateful that the holy father’s assessment pierced my worldliness and my lack of attention to the spiritual realm. So we must, all of us, rely on saintly and holy people, such as that monk who was a mentor to me in entering Orthodoxy, for the spiritual vision they impart to our lives. This is part of why we celebrate All Saints together.

Our father among the Saints Gregory Palamas wrote of the holy saints we commemorate today in this way (translation from Prof. Christopher Veniamin’s wonderful collection):

Truly “God is Wonderful in his saints” (Ps. 68:35 LXX). Let us call to mind the martyrs’ superhuman struggles, how in the weakness of their flesh they put to shame the evil one’s strength, disregarding pain and wounds as they struggled bodily against fire, sword, all different kinds of deadly tortures, patiently resisting while their flesh was cut, their joints dislocated and their bones crushed, and keeping the confession of faith in Christ in its integrity, complete, unharmed and unshaken. As a result there were bestowed on them the incontrovertible wisdom of the Spirit and the power to work miracles. Let us consider the patience of holy men and women, how they willingly endured long periods of fasting, vigil and various other physical hardships as though they were not in the body, battling to the end against evil passions and all sorts of sin, in the invincible inner warfare against principalities, powers and spiritual wickedness (Eph. 6:12). They wore away their outer selves and made them useless, but their inner man was renewed and deified by Him from whom they also received gifts of healing and mighty works. When we think on these matters and understand that they surpass human nature, we are filled with wonder and glorify God who gave them such grace and power. For even if their intentions were good and noble, without God’s strength they could not have gone beyond the bounds of their nature and driven away the bodiless enemy while clothed in their bodies.

Now, after Pentecost, the Church gathers all the saints together and offers up a common hymn to all, partly because they are all united with one accord and are one, according to the prayer of our Lord, “Grant them”, says the Lord to His Father in the Gospels, “that they all may be one; as I, Father, am in thee, and thou in me, that they also may be truly one in us” (cf. John 17:21). But this is not the only reason why the Church offers up one hymn to them all. It is also because during Holy Lent and the fifty days following, it strives to declare and magnify all the works of the Lord. As you know, it celebrates everything: how the world was made in the beginning by God; how Adam was banished from paradise and from God; how in times gone by God’s people were called; how they too were cast out from friendship with God because they transgressed; how God’s only-begotten Son bowed the heavens and came down for our sake, did extraordinary wonders for our good and taught the way of salvation, suffered and died on our behalf, was buried as man, rose again as God on the third day, ascended into heaven, whence He had earlier descended, with His flesh, and, having sat down on the right hand of the Father, sent down the All-Holy Spirit. Now that the Church of God has sung hymns of praise in honour of all these events, it adds what is lacking, and shows how many great fruits have been harvested for eternal life by the coming of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit. It commemorates all the saints together and renders praise and honour today to them all.

Let us too, brethren, give honour to God’s saints. But how should we honour them? By imitating them and purifying ourselves “from all defilement of flesh and spirit” (2 Cor. 7:1), and hastening towards holiness through abstaining from all evils. If we keep our 205 tongue from swearing and making false oaths, as well as from speaking nonsense and abuse, and stop our lips from uttering lies and slanders, then we offer the saints sweet praise.

If we do not cleanse ourselves in this way, each of us shall rightly hear from them those words God directed to the sinner. How can you dare to commemorate the names of the saints, to take them on your tongue and tell of their way of life, filled as it was with every virtue and purity? You, by contrast, have hated virtuous living and have driven away purity from your soul and body. “When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him, and hast been partaker with adulterers. Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son” (Ps. 50:18–20). Neither God nor His saints, brethren, accept hymns from such mouths. If none of us will take something we need from our own hand if it has touched dung, unless we wash it first, how will God accept the offerings of a dirty body and soul, unless we cleanse ourselves first? Sin, deceit, lies, envy, hatred, greed, treachery, shameful thoughts and words, and the polluted acts which result from them, are all much more disgusting than dung. But how can someone who has fallen into these be purified? Through repentance, confession, good works and fervent prayer to God.

When on the feasts commemorating the saints we all take a holiday from our trades and businesses, we should occupy our minds with the question of how we can distance ourselves from the sins and defilements into which each of us has fallen, and become free of them. On the other hand, if we amuse ourselves to the detriment of our souls, pay no attention and get drunk, how can we claim to be celebrating the saints, since we have made the day impure? I beg you, brethren, let us not keep the feasts like that, but let us, like the saints, present our bodies and souls as a pleasing offering to God on these days of celebration, that by the prayers of the saints we may come to share in that endless festival and joy.

May we all attain to this, by the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom belongs glory, with His Father without beginning and the all-holy, good and life-giving Spirit, now and for ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

So wrote St. Gregory. Brothers and Sisters, let us with the help of God’s grace through Pentecost, raise our minds above worldliness, that we may appreciate the help and discernment of the holy saints of the Orthodox Church, living and dead, for thus we may entertain angels unawares.