One thing that surprises people about Orthodoxy is the place we give to the saints. The saints, though, are our friends, our fellow-congregants, one with us in love, one with us in prayer. Thus, when we ask the saints to pray for us, it is not that we think them more merciful or more ready to help than the Good and All-Loving God: we are asking them, in the love that unites us all and knits us together in a single Body, to join their voices to our own. For if they are merciful, if they are loving, if they are kind to us, it is because they refract to us the mercy and the kindness and the love of God, Who binds us altogether as one.
