Mother Siluana Vlad: On saints and holiness
Question:
Mother Siluana, what is holiness? Can we talk about certain rules, which, if we observe them, we become holy?
Mother Siluana:
Yes, of course! We can talk about certain rules, but not in the sense that we understand rules. The only rule we need to observe in order to be holy is to receive God, the only One Who is Holy. God is Holy. And God created us to make us holy, to make us saints - that is, to live in us and fill us with His holiness, which becomes our holiness.
Saints are people who fulfilled their destiny, who became what they were meant by God to become: beings who are rational, reasoning, free, loving, capable of living and manifesting God’s attributes - to be loving, patient, creative. This is what holiness means.
And the rule is this one: to cast away my egotistical way of being, my fearful way of living, my sinful way of being, which I acquired because I detached myself from God, because I didn’t understand what the purpose of my life on earth is.
Question:
When we talk about saints, we think of people who lived a century ago or a millennium ago. Can we still talk today about saints, can we talk about people who have this capacity of living in communion with God and becoming holy?
Mother Siluana:
Today we can even talk with saints. Of course, saints are not out in the open. The life of a Christian, our life is hidden with Christ in God. Our true virtues (when we have them), the holiness of a person which is acquired onto death and resurrection, all these are hidden in Christ even from that person - because we tend to become proud, to use what we have received from God apart from God, and hence this hiding away of the holiness.
But the one who has spiritual eyes to see, sees. We can meet saints. The saints are present in our lives wherever they are now, either in this earthly life or in eternal life.
Question:
Can we sense if we are in the presence of a saint? Can we say: this person is a saint?
Mother Siluana:
Yes, of course, we can sense this. We have a spiritual sense, a spiritual feeling by which we feel God’s presence, the presence of holiness, by its fruits. The fruits of the Holy Spirit, the fruits of holiness are joy, peace, patience, forbearance, faith, hope, love - these powers, these attributes of a person filled with God, are the signs of a saint, and people who go near a saint can feel this. And they can stay there, or they can run away.
It’s not easy to stay near saints, because they challenge you, they help you see yourself in a way you don’t like, they challenge you to cast away your sinful way of being - and that is why people are not crowding to see saints, or to live in the presence of our saints, of our holy elders. But they go to these elders when they have a need, and they wait for miracles from them - but the miracle accomplished by a saint is to show people: “Look, this is what we are called to be, this is what God wants with us!” And the healing performed by the saint is for the beneficiary to become ill with the yearning to be a saint - to be like God meant me to be, and not to fulfill some needs which keep me here on earth and which disappear together with my earthly life.
This is why saints are hard to recognize. People run after miracles, and the saints of today don’t accomplish - or God doesn’t accomplish through the saints of today - the same miracles as before. The power of the Holy Spirit, the power of holiness works differently in our day and age; it works according to our mentality and our openness today.
Question:
When we talk about saints, do we have to refer only to monastic life?
Mother Siluana:
Well, I’d say let’s look at the Church calendar, let’s look at the Lives of the Saints, and see who they were. The Holy Martyrs were not monastic, or the Holy Unmercenaries, or Saints who had been robbers, or the women Saints who had been prostitutes, or Saints who had been married and had many children. No, there is no favored category, because holiness doesn’t work by categories, by groupings - it works in communion, but each person chooses freely either to fulfill the commandments, which means to become holy, or to ignore the commandments, which means to give up the calling to become holy.
The path to holiness is the fulfillment of the commandments, and the commandments are powers that God gives us to be like Him. I will give you an example, since we don’t realize this, and we consider commandments to be external rules - and because of this, we don’t take advantage of the power that God places in them.
One day a priest who was going through a lot of trouble went to see his Metropolitan and ask for help. The Metropolitan, like a good shepherd, taught the priest what to do - taught him about patience, about love, about asking God for help; and at the end gave him a book and said: “Read this book written by a holy elder and you’ll learn many things from the elder, you’ll learn how to overcome your trouble.”
After a while, one or two years, the Metropolitan went to visit the priest and see if he overcame his distress. He found the priest somewhat restored and asked him: “Was the book I gave you useful?” The priest answered: “Yes, of course, it was useful, but my trouble was of a different nature, I didn’t need something to read.” The Metropolitan said: “I see that you didn’t read the book…bring it here.” The priest brought the book and when he opened it, the Metropolitan showed him a sum of money that he had put in there, exactly the amount necessary for solving the priest’s problem.
This is how the commandments are for us. We say: “No, this is not my problem, I don’t need to not lie, I need to get married, what does one have to do with the other?” If only we saw that in that commandment there is a “sum of money” hidden away, that in it there is exactly what we need to fulfill the yearning of our heart, to fulfill the profound expectations of our life.
Note:
Translated from Romanian: