Every country that has accepted Orthodoxy as the One True Faith has added their own rich experiences and understanding of the Ancient Truth expounded by the saints and Holy Fathers, and Russia is no different. It is particularly easy to see the different perspective, priorities, and richness that Russian experience and culture brings to the Church when looking at the saints that are near and dear to the Russian heart, the ones that are revered across the country.

The peculiarities of Russian sainthood are expressed by special ranks of saints, introduced by the Russian Church and absent in the Greek Church. To the purely Russian type of saints one must first of all refer to the rank of the Passion-Bearers. It is interesting that this rank formed as if of its own accord due to the popular veneration of Princes Boris and Gleb, murdered by their half-brother Svyatopolk, who for this received the nickname "the accursed”.

Saints Boris and Gleb were the first saints canonized by the Russian Church… The Russian Church honored their canonization despite the objections of the Greeks. The Greeks could not understand the dignity of the murdered princes so beloved by the Russians. After all, Saints Boris and Gleb were not martyrs for the faith or fighters for Orthodoxy, but died because of political calculation and the guile of Svyatopolk. It was the firm belief of the Russians in their new saints that overcame all misunderstanding and resistance of Greeks and to achieve church-wide glorification of the killed princes, having assigned to them, strange for the Greek mind, the rank of passion-bearers…

What did our old ancestors see in the spiritual images of Boris and Gleb, and what does the Russian understanding of holiness mean? Our ancestors saw in the trusting, defenseless brothers a reflection of the image of Christ and his demise as an innocent. Indeed, Boris and Gleb literally took from Christ an example of his meekness at the point of death. And the Russian people, honoring them from age to age, reveals a special commitment to the truth of humility, as well as its ability to love all the weak, thin, defenseless, to mourn them, and to pity. And to believe not in useless, senseless martyrdom, but in the higher meaning and supreme value of this fragile suffering humanity.

This is the subtle Christian perception of life that gave birth to the holy Passion-Bearers, who suffered not for the triumph of the faith, not at the hands of foreign believers, but solely because of the insidiousness of the evil of the world, a focus that was unknown anywhere else in the Christian world and that was not provided for by the tradition of the Byzantine Church. In the Church of Russia, however, it became historically the first rank of holiness, symbolically emphasizing the nationwide veneration of defenselessness as a sign of the deepest trust in God.

The deeply national rather than accidental nature of the veneration of St. Boris and Gleb finds convincing confirmation in the particular reverence of popular religious feeling for the numerous images of the Passion-Bearer children. Children who died a violent death, in which sacrificial suffering was combined with infantile purity. This explains the canonization of Tsarevich Dimitri, who died at the hands of murderers, of the rebel Gabriel of Slutsk, and many infants, whose death had no other meaning than undeserved suffering, recalling the innocent sacrifice of Christ…

The purely national character of the veneration of the Passion-Bearers allowed G. P. Fedotov to say that everything "heroic" in the Russian national ideal of holiness can be reduced to humility and suffering. And suffering becomes a source of salvation and holiness when it is accepted voluntarily or innocently, and the victim clearly expresses that they are following Christ.

Another purely Russian type of holiness is expressed in the ranks of the holy Princes - the defenders of the Fatherland. In contrast to the Equal-to-the-Apostles Princes and the Passion-Bearer Princes, the image of the Warrior Prince is devoid of features of monastic traits, and is full of masculine beauty, dignity, and strength. Nationwide veneration of the exploit of service to the Russian Orthodox land and constant readiness for sacrificial martyrdom were imprinted upon him.

The special reverence of Saint Alexander Nevsky the Prince, in Russian Orthodoxy and in the Russian historical memory in general, is obviously defined by the fact that he gave to all the subsequent generations of our compatriots an example of the correct understanding of the sense of their fight against the western and eastern enemies of Russia.

It is important to note that not only selfless service to one's people was revered as holiness in Rus’, but also the fullness of monastic holiness implied public service. Therefore, the other ranks of Russian saints, such as the ranks of the monks transfigured by the Spirit, and the ranks of the bishops glorified in the field of education and the organization of the spiritual life of society are distinguished not by their detachment from the daily life of their country, but on the contrary, by their active and multifaceted service to their Fatherland.

In Russian monasticism we see incomparably less alienation from ordinary human nature, rigidity, and severity than in the Catholic and some Eastern Christian traditions of monasticism. Our monastic way is characterized by a sense of proportion and discernment, by the constant physical labor of ascetics, by the spiritual openness of life, by a very subtle, discreet character of the mystical principle, by love for all who live and suffer on earth. By virtue of the marked features of Russian monastic culture, the Russian saints quite organically combined a spiritually strict monastic life with ardent patriotic service to Russia, its people, and its state.

The indissoluble connection of monasteries and holy ascetics with historical life of people, a clear consciousness of that religious justification of monasticism receives in its loving service to the world, has allowed the penetrating researcher of Russian holiness G.P. Fedotov to make the following conclusion: "After all hesitations, overcoming all temptations of national pride, we resolve to say, that in Old Russian holiness the evangelical image of Christ shines brighter than anywhere else in history.”

Source: Derzava (Russian)