While in English we use separate words – holy and saint – in Greek these worlds both translate to the one word “agios”. We should remember that saint and holy are the same word. Saint John = Holy John. Holy Spirit = Saint Spirit. Holy Ones = Saints. The saint receives holiness from the Holy Spirit. Without the Holy Spirit, there are no holy ones (saints).

“‘The patriarch Enoch was a shoemaker; with every stitch by which he joined the lower leather of a shoe to the upper leather, he united the Glory that is below with the Glory that is above.’ This ancient rabbinical Jewish saying represents a vision in which holiness is a matter of connecting the ordinary matter of earth with its depths in the life of God. This saint is not primarily the high achiever of the moral life, the honors graduate in discipleship, but the person in whom the depths of the ordinary become visible. The face of the saint is just as the tradition of Orthodox icon painting conceives it – a face that is unmistakably distinctive and human, yet ‘thinned out’ so as to let the light through, the light that is found in the deep background of the picture.” (Rowan Williams in Hidden Holiness by Michael Plekon, pg. vii)