Today we celebrate the lives and deaths of all the saints. Here are people so committed to Christ and His Church that we want to remember them and seek their prayers and fellowship. The first Christian saints were martyrs, among these, notably St Stephen the Protomartyr. They died for their faith, rather than renounce their faith in Christ. The word “martyr” is from the Greek word martys which means “witness,” because these people died as an act of witness for their faith. Therefore, it is very appropriate that the reading we have just heard from the book of Hebrews reminds us, and I quote, that “since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.”

A fifth century Antiochian bishop, St Theodoret of Cyr, writing about this Biblical passage, urges us to “be light on our feet and rid ourselves of unnecessary worries [and] … avoid sin.” As one of you pointed out to me, “You worry too much!” At times, I do worry too much. A lot of us worry too much, especially about other people who might be causing us problems. We can’t change other people. We can only change ourselves, with our prayers and God’s grace—God’s love for each of us. Now, we all “run [together] with perseverance” this race that is set before us—being alive, living on earth and seeking, with God’s love, to go to heaven. That’s our race. But I think there are three surprises—first, where the race begins; second, the purpose of the race; and third, that we are each in this race.

For us, as Orthodox Christians today, martyrdom may come but the race always begins with asceticism. The race often begins with denying ourselves something we would like to have—something to eat, something to do, something to see. As the Orthodox priest, Father Michael Steenberg, writes in Father John Anthony McGuckin’s The Concise Encyclopedia of Orthodox Christianity: “Asceticism is understood in Orthodoxy as that way of life which prepares one for the Kingdom of God through the training and conditioning of the whole human person—body and soul—towards a Godlike life, and its exercise in virtue.” The root Greek word is askesis which means “exercise” or “training.” As Father Michael comments, spiritual “exercise and training [require] battle against the will, habits and passions” that we each have as human persons.

This race begins now—in the present moment, here, today—with a personal search in prayer for asceticism—with my having one biscuit instead of two, even when I would like to have two or more. Surprisingly, the race also begins back in the Old Testament, with those people mentioned in the reading from the book of Hebrews—Samson, David, Samuel and the prophets—who “won strength out of weakness.”  We too, like these Old Testament models can turn our weaknesses into strengths, by facing our problems, by being honest with ourselves. If we want to change a particular weakness into a strength, we have to admit that we have a weakness—a particular subject we are studying at school or university that we find difficult, a particular person that we find hard to relate to, a particular job or task that we don’t know how to do. Once we admit to ourselves that we have a particular weakness, we can then pray, ask God to help us, and work out why we have this problem and how to deal with it.

The second surprise is that the race is not to become famous, or to become a celebrity, or to achieve great things in the world, or even to be sinless. The purpose of the race is holiness. As another contributor to Father John’s Concise Encyclopedia of Orthodox Christianity, Maria Gwyn McDowell, points out: “Saints are not those whose lives are perfect, but whose lives at some point and in some manner [show forth] the virtues and holiness of God…. [A person’s] holiness is the synergy [that is, the relationship and cooperation between two things] between personal freedom and the grace of God which results in both repentance and virtue.” In other words, as we recognise that we are not perfect, that we have faults, we also see that we have the personal freedom to change ourselves with our prayers and the grace of God.

The third and final surprise is that we are each in this race. In the Divine Liturgy, when the priest takes up the Lamb, the Eucharistic portion of the prosphora set aside for Holy Communion, he holds it in both hands and makes the sign of the cross over the diskos plate, saying, “The Holy Things are for the holy.”  It is clear that the priest is holding up “the Holy Things,” but we at times forget that all of us—priests and deacons and sub-deacons and lay people alike—are “the holy.”  We are the people who are becoming holy.

Now, you might be thinking—“Who me? Become holy? No way! That’s not possible for me.” You would be wrong. Holiness is a gift from God to each of us which we can choose to open, or not. As Archbishop Demetrios, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church in America, has pointed out, to achieve union with God—to achieve the holiness that the Lord wants each of us to have—three conditions are necessary. First, we have to pray and want to relate to God; second, we have to be self-aware of our daily actions—to realise the impact, for better or worse, that our lives have on others; and third, we need to participate in the liturgy of the Orthodox Church. Those three conditions for holiness are simple, not frightening. We can wish to draw closer to the Lord. We can become self-aware of our actions. We can come to the Divine Liturgy and receive Holy Communion.

All Saints Day reminds us that we run together now with perseverance toward holiness. St John Chrysostom, preaching on this passage from the book of Hebrews, said “[Christ] put the beginning into us; He will also put on the end.” The beginning is baptism; the end is the experience of becoming holy. We can be confident that God has blessed us not only in baptism, but also in the experience of becoming holy.