From time to time it happens that a priest is defrocked — that is, removed from the priestly rank — and that this decision is met with turmoil. Sometimes the one defrocked accepts it and submits; at other times he rejects it, considers himself wronged, and goes on his way, serving and shepherding outside the order of the Church, surrounded by faithful who honor him.
For a Christian looking on from outside, the question arises naturally: what is he to believe? How is he to distinguish justice from injustice? And above all — when the one defrocked defends himself by saying that the Saints too were unjustly condemned, how do things truly stand?
This article concerns no particular case. It concerns the principle, as the Church has established it through the canons and through the example of the Saints. For the answer is not to be sought in our own days, but in the centuries that have left us the measure.
What Defrocking Is
Defrocking (in Greek kathaíresis, “deposition”) is the gravest penalty the Church can impose upon a cleric. It is not a temporary suspension from serving, but the complete removal from the rank. The one defrocked returns to the state of a layman.
Here a clarification is needed that many overlook — and one that must be stated with precision, lest we err. Defrocking does not mean that ordination would be repeated, if ever, through repentance and ecclesiastical decision, the cleric were received back; the Church does not re-ordain. But it does mean the complete loss of the right and the power to serve and to work the things of the priesthood. For the priesthood is not a personal power, carried about and used at a man’s will, but an ecclesial ministry, operative only in the obedience and communion of the Church — a gift bound by its very nature to the Church and to the Holy Eucharist. Therefore the serving of one defrocked, outside the Church, is not a parallel priesthood, but a work void of foundation: the man has kept the form of the ministry, but not the power to work it, which comes only from communion.
The canons speak plainly of this. The one defrocked may no longer approach the Altar as a server, but only as a layman; still less is he permitted to celebrate any Mystery. And those who knowingly receive what is “served” by one defrocked take part in his condemnation; those who receive it in ignorance or under constraint are corrected with gentleness and discernment. The distinction, therefore, depends on knowledge — a heavy word for those who hear the truth today and yet remain.
The True Question
Many of those who reject a defrocking defend themselves with an argument that, at first hearing, seems crushing: “Saint John Chrysostom too was unjustly defrocked. Saint Athanasius too was driven out. Therefore my defrocking is also an injustice, and I am among the persecuted.”
The argument has a hidden weakness, and it is everything. For the question that separates a confessor from a schismatic is not whether he was wronged — many Saints were, plainly and cruelly. The question is how he responded to the injustice.
And here the testimony of the Saints is so clear that it dismantles, of itself, any false comparison.
The Path of the Saints: Patience, Silence, Obedience
Saint John Chrysostom
There is no more fitting example, for it is the very one most often invoked. Saint John was unjustly defrocked in the most flagrant form possible: by a robber synod, driven by the vengeance of the Empress Eudoxia, whom he had rebuked for her injustices. The service of the Church itself openly calls that assembly an “unjust council,” gathered by his enemies, whose slanders the emperor had believed.
And yet — here is the response that says everything. The Saint did not break communion. He did not make himself a “church” of his own. He did not serve against the decision. He went into exile. He was taken secretly out of the city, and he accepted this. When the people rose on his behalf and an earthquake brought down part of the imperial palaces, the Saint did not use the occasion for revolt: his adversaries, who had fled the city, in his goodness he forgave.
He then went into exile to the very end, unto death, after an exhausting journey of many months, reposing far from all, at Comana in Pontus. He did not turn his unjust deposition into a parallel jurisdiction, he did not celebrate a Liturgy of defiance, he did not gather a church of his own against the Church. He went on laboring through letters, through prayer, through patience — not through schism.
And from his very exile, what counsel did he send to those unjustly persecuted? Not “separate from the Church and serve on your own,” but the call to prayer and to patience, citing the example of the three youths in the Babylonian furnace, whose patience turned the fire to dew.
And one more detail, which strikes at the very heart of any schism: Saint John fell into trouble precisely because he had acted within the canonical order, showing mercy to certain banished clerics, but without transgressing the decisions — not against the order. He kept the framework of the Church even when he comforted those who had been wronged.
And the vindication? It came through the Church, not through a church he would have made for himself alongside it. Many years later, his relics were brought with honor to Constantinople, and the successors of those who had condemned him thus set right, before the whole Church, the injustice done. He who had endured like a lamb was glorified as a Saint — precisely because he had not broken from the Church.
Saint Flavian of Constantinople
Another clear example is Saint Flavian, patriarch of Constantinople. At Ephesus, in the year 449, in an assembly remembered in history under the name of “robber synod” — dominated by Dioscorus of Alexandria and supported by the emperor — Saint Flavian was deposed because he defended the right faith against the error of Eutyches. He was beaten, mocked, and died of his sufferings, within a few days, in the place of his exile.
But neither did he make of his suffering a jurisdiction of his own. He did not gather a faction, he did not turn the injustice into a right of revolt, he did not separate from the Church to make one of his own. His vindication came later, through the Church: at the Council of Chalcedon, the acts of the robber synod were annulled, and he was honored as a martyr of the faith. Here too, as everywhere, the setting-right came through the Church, not against it.
Saint Athanasius the Great
The pillar of Orthodoxy against Arianism was five times driven from his see, by decisions of synods under the dominion of heretics and supported by imperial power. His years of pastorate were more years of exile than of peace.
And yet, Saint Athanasius did not establish a Church of his own, parallel to the Church, but remained the Orthodox bishop who defended the Nicene faith against the hierarchs fallen into Arianism. He fled to the desert, he hid among the monks of Egypt, he wrote, he confessed the right faith with pen and with word — but he did not break communion with the one Church, nor did he make of his persecution a division. He waited. And the Church recognized him, in the end, for what he was: a great defender of the truth.
Here, however, a distinction of the greatest importance is in order, for it is the key to the whole matter. Saint Athanasius opposed hierarchs fallen into Arianism — a heresy condemned beforehand, at the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, which had confessed the divinity of the Son, consubstantial with the Father. Saint Athanasius did not defend himself as an injured person, but precisely this dogma of the Council. His opposition was not for a wrong done to his person, but for the defense of the faith already confessed by the Council. This is the only ground on which the Church ever permits opposition to a hierarch — and we shall see presently why.
Here also a word of caution is in order, for one might say: “I too confess, I write, I speak — the pen of old is today the word uttered before the world.” And he would be half right — but it is the other half that condemns him. Saint Athanasius kept his word free, but he stayed his hand: he did not serve against the decision, he did not ordain, he did not make a church of his own. He confessed the truth, but he did not celebrate the holy things against the decision of the Church. One thing is to speak — which no one forbids — and quite another to serve while cut off from communion. He who confesses through word does as Athanasius did; he who, besides the word, serves in defiance, no longer does as Athanasius did, but as those who separated from the Church to make one of their own. Confession has never been forbidden; serving in division, always.
And another distinction, equally important: when the Saints spoke, their word struck the heresy, not hierarchs as persons. Saint Athanasius did not defame men, but overthrew Arianism; he did not count the sins of his adversaries, but defended the dogma. True confession rises against a condemned error, not against persons one judges guilty. He who, under the name of “confession,” fills his word with accusations against persons — of sins, of corruption, of unworthiness — does not walk in the footsteps of the Saints, but in those of the men who, to cover their rupture, turned zeal for the truth into the slander of brethren. One thing is to rebuke a heresy; another, to slander a man. The first may be confession; the second has always been forbidden by the commandment.
Saint Maximus the Confessor
Because he opposed the Monothelite heresy — supported at the time even by patriarchal sees and by the emperor — Saint Maximus was judged, condemned, had his tongue and right hand cut off, and was sent into exile, where he reposed. He was, by the reckoning of the world and of the ecclesiastical power of that time, a condemned man.
And yet, Saint Maximus did not make of his suffering a rupture, he did not establish a community that would believe itself the only Church, but he confessed the truth and accepted the condemnation. Although Saint Maximus is not the example of a defrocked priest who would or would not have continued to serve — he was a monk and a confessor-theologian — the manner in which he bore the injustice remains decisive for our theme, for he suffered for the dogma without breaking the Church. And the Church honored him, after his death, as a Confessor — a Confessor, and not a rebel, for he had confessed the right faith at the price of blood, not a cause of his own at the price of division.
Saint Martin the Confessor, Pope of Rome
Alongside Saint Maximus stands Saint Martin the Confessor, Pope of Rome from before the Great Schism. For the same opposition to Monothelitism — which he had condemned at the Lateran synod — he was torn from his see, brought to Constantinople, tried both politically and ecclesiastically with false witnesses, humiliated, and sent into exile, where he died in want. Both — Maximus and Martin — suffered arrest, trial on false charges, and exile, for the same confession.
Neither did Saint Martin turn the injustice into a parallel work, nor did he establish a broken community that would believe itself the true Church. He confessed, he suffered, and he left the judgment in the hands of God and of the Church. And the Church numbered him too among the Confessors.
Saint Nektarios of Aegina
This Saint of recent times many know, and so a clarification is in order: Saint Nektarios was not, properly speaking, canonically defrocked, but slandered and driven out through the intrigue of clerics seized by envy. Driven from Egypt following calumnies, he returned to Athens alone, despised, in great need. Until the end of his life, the slanders did not cease to rise against him and against his monastery.
How did he respond? His service shows him to us: an “ocean of patience.” All the slanders, his life says, “he bore in the name of Christ, who dwelt in his heart.” He did not defend himself with a loud voice, he did not return accusation for accusation, he did not gather a camp against those who persecuted him. He kept silent, he endured, he labored in the monastery garden clothed in a simple garment — and through his very silence and humility he turned men back to Christ. And God glorified him, after his repose, with countless miracles, so that today he is one of the most beloved Saints of Orthodoxy.
Saint Gregory Palamas
Nor was Saint Gregory Palamas spared unjust ecclesiastical condemnations. In the time of Patriarch John Kalekas, an opponent of hesychasm, he was excommunicated and imprisoned for years for defending the hesychast teaching concerning the uncreated divine light and energies. He was, by the decision of the patriarchal see at that time, a condemned and excommunicated man.
But he did not turn the persecution into a schism of his own. He did not establish a parallel jurisdiction, nor a community that would believe itself the only Church. He wrote, he confessed the dogma, he endured imprisonment. And the vindication came, as everywhere, through the Church: the synods of Constantinople declared his teaching right, the opposing patriarch himself was deposed, and Saint Gregory was set as Archbishop of Thessalonica and honored as a great teacher of Orthodoxy. His example teaches us something definite: confession of the truth does not require complete silence — the Saint wrote and spoke without ceasing — but it requires that you not break the Church in the name of the truth you defend.
The Only Permitted Opposition
The attentive reader will have observed that all the Saints who truly opposed an ecclesiastical authority — Athanasius, Maximus, Martin, Gregory Palamas — did so for one thing alone: the defense of the right faith against a condemned heresy. And this is no accident; it is the very order of the canons.
The Holy Canons set things out with a clarity that leaves no room for deceitful interpretation. The 28th Apostolic Canon ordains that a bishop, priest, or deacon canonically defrocked, who nevertheless dares to lay hold of the ministry once entrusted to him, be cut off entirely from the Church — for this is no longer merely a transgression, but a defiance of the decision of the Church. And the 31st Apostolic Canon speaks outright of the priest who, despising his bishop, gathers a separate assembly and raises another altar: such a one is to be defrocked, together with those who follow him, as a lover of power and a rebel.
Likewise, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Canons of the Council called the First-Second, of Constantinople, forbid any cleric to break communion with his hierarch on account of a suspected fault, before synodal investigation and judgment and before a decision has been pronounced. He who does this falls himself under condemnation.
A single circumstance permits the cessation of communion before any judgment — and the 15th Canon states it in firm words: when the hierarch openly, in the church, “with bared head,” preaches a heresy already condemned by the Synods or by the Holy Fathers. Heresy alone, publicly preached and already condemned — nothing else. And not even then does the canon grant the right to establish a parallel jurisdiction: it shields from penalty those who guard themselves against a heresy openly preached, until the judgment of the Church — it does not permit separation from the Church to make a new one.
This is the key to the whole matter. Injustice, abuse of power, procedural defects, even the moral transgressions of certain hierarchs — however true they may be — do not open this door. They are judged within the Church, under obedience, by the appointed ways, not by departure from communion. He who breaks away for such causes, however justified he may feel and however real some of his grievances may be, does not confess — he divides.
It is fitting, therefore, to distinguish with particular clarity: not every ecclesiastical injustice is persecution for the faith. Persecution for the faith concerns dogmatic truth; administrative injustice concerns the person, the procedure, or discipline. The first may call for public confession; the second calls for canonical defense, patience, and appeal within the Church. To confuse them — to clothe a personal grievance in the garb of dogmatic confession — is precisely the device by which a rupture seeks a justification it does not have.
The history of the Church shows, with a troubling consistency, what follows such a rupture. Once the principle of conciliar obedience is abandoned, the division does not stop: those who have broken away break further among themselves, condemn one another, and the legitimacy they claimed fragments endlessly. Schism begets schism.
The Two Paths, Face to Face
Set side by side, the two responses to injustice differ completely.
The path of the Saints, defrocked or truly persecuted: silence, patience, exile, forgiveness. Confession through suffering, not through division. Awaiting vindication from the Church and from God, and not from an assembly raised against the Church. And, above all, the keeping of communion — even then, especially then, when it hurts.
The path of him who divides: rejection of the decision, refusal to submit, continued serving in defiance, the gathering of a band loyal to himself, the unceasing accusation of those who judged him, the presentation of himself as a wronged martyr.
The resemblance the latter seeks with the Saints lies only in the injustice he claims — often unproven. The difference lies in the response. And it is in the response that the spirit is seen.
Saint John Chrysostom was unjustly defrocked in truth — and he did nothing of what those who claim descent from him do today. He did the very opposite. That is why he was vindicated. That is why he is a Saint.
The Other Path, as a Mirror
The history of the Church knows also the opposite road, and it is fitting to look at it, for it shows something the mind easily overlooks: zeal, theological learning, even certain correct formulations do not preserve one from schism, if one breaks the Church.
Novatian, in the third century, was not a man without learning; on the contrary, he left Orthodox writings on the Holy Trinity. But he broke away from Cornelius, the lawful bishop of Rome, out of a rigorist zeal concerning the reception of those who had fallen in time of persecution — and he became a rival bishop, with a group of his own. The beginning seemed “purity” and “zeal”; the end was a church raised against the Church.
The Donatists, in the fourth century, broke the Church of Africa on a foundation still closer to our theme. They bound the working of the Mysteries to the moral purity of the minister: they denied communion with Bishop Caecilian because he received the repentance of those fallen in persecution, and because one of those who had ordained him was suspected of having handed over the holy books to the pagan power. They demanded a Church of the “pure” alone, holding the Mysteries of the clerics they deemed defiled to be void — and they established, in the name of this purity, a broken church that believed itself the only true one.
In both cases, the beginning seemed “zealous” and “pure,” but the end was the same: church against Church, community against community, private judgment raised against the conciliarity of the Church. And the Church named them both with the same word: schism. The difference from the Saints mentioned above lies not in the strength of conviction — the schismatics too were convinced — but in this, that the Saints kept their conviction within the Church, while the schismatics made of it a cause for departure.
A Distinction That Must Be Clarified
The reader who knows the history of the last century will rightly raise a question. There have been situations in which a part of a Church ceased, for a time, administrative communion with its ecclesiastical center — and yet the Church did not regard this as a schism. The best known is that of the Russian hierarchs abroad, who, after the coming of the atheist power and after the act of submission by the ecclesiastical administration that remained under communist rule, organized themselves on their own, ceasing to submit to that authority.
How does this accord with all that has been said above? The answer helps us understand the distinction yet more clearly — for it is precisely the conditions of that situation that show why it cannot be taken as an example in the ordinary cases of defrocking.
First, the break was not made on one’s own initiative, but on the basis of an act of the legitimate ecclesiastical authority itself: an ordinance given by the patriarch of that time, while still free, by which it was provided that, in time of persecution and of the loss of contact with the center, the hierarchs abroad should govern themselves until the ceasing of that state. He who breaks away today on his own has no such ordinance behind him; on the contrary, he invokes it against the authority that judged him.
Second, the cause was not a wrong done to anyone, nor an administrative abuse, but a matter of the confession of the faith: an ecclesiastical authority held in captivity and submission to a power that openly persecuted the Church of Christ. This touches precisely the only circumstance in which the canons permit the cessation of communion — the faith, and not discontent. The ordinary grievances — corruption, abuse, procedural defects, personal injustice — however true they may be, are not of this kind.
Third, and perhaps most telling: those hierarchs never declared themselves a new, autocephalous Church. They confessed clearly that they remained an inseparable part of the Mother Church, in spiritual unity with her, and that their state of self-governance was temporary — until the ceasing of the persecution. The schismatic does exactly the opposite: he establishes a parallel church, as a permanent settlement with no return.
And here the most powerful proof appears, for history has fulfilled it: once the conditions changed and the restoration of canonical communion became possible, full communion was restored. The state of exception came to an end because it was, from the very beginning, a state of exception, bounded by the very cause that had given rise to it. This is the seal that distinguishes a temporary interruption — arising from a cause of faith and under the shelter of an ecclesiastical ordinance — from a true division: the former carries within itself the hope and the resolve of return; the latter does not.
Let no one, then, take such a situation as a license. Almost none of its conditions is found in the ordinary case of a defrocked cleric who goes on serving: he has no ordinance of the legitimate authority behind him, but defies it; he does not break away for a condemned heresy, but for a personal or administrative cause; he does not regard himself as a temporarily free part of the same Church, but gathers a flock of his own; and he has no return in view, but a settling into separation. The surface resemblance — “they too parted from their authority, they too governed themselves” — dissolves at the first examination of the grounds. And it is the grounds, not the appearances, by which the Church has always distinguished confession from schism.
From here too must be clarified a word that those broken from the Church often borrow: that of “catacomb.” The first Christians hid in the catacombs from a pagan power that persecuted them — but they did not break from the Church; they served in full communion with her; their hiding was the hiding of the whole Church, persecuted from without. Likewise, the Catacomb Church of the last century did not establish a faith of its own, but kept that of the persecuted Church, refusing only submission to a hierarchy held captive by an atheist power. The true catacomb, therefore, is not the hiding place of one who has separated from the Church, but of one who remains within her when the world persecutes him for the faith. To call “catacomb” the assembly you have broken from the Church, for a cause that is not of the faith, is to borrow the honor of the martyrs without their cross — to take the appearance of persecution without its ground. Truly persecuted is not he who departs from the Church and makes a church of his own, but he who, remaining within her, endures the injustice without breaking it.
And If Another Church Receives Him?
There remains one path by which the one defrocked seeks his justification: passing under another Orthodox Church — Russian, Serbian, Greek, or another — and commemorating a foreign hierarch. “If another Church receives me,” it is said, “then I am a priest again, and the defrocking falls away.” This too must be clarified, for it seems strong, but does not withstand examination.
The local Orthodox Churches are not separate churches, but the same Church, one, in communion. It is precisely for this reason that a canonical decision of one is recognized by all the others — otherwise communion itself would be an empty word. And the canons ordain plainly how one passes from one diocese to another: only with the canonical letter, the letter of commendation of the diocese of origin. The 12th Apostolic Canon forbids the reception of anyone — cleric or layman — who comes without such a letter; and if the one who passes is among those under condemnation, the 13th Apostolic Canon ordains that his condemnation be prolonged, “as one who has lied to and deceived the Church of God.” Thus, far from raising him up, passing over without due order deepens his fall.
Moreover, the right to lift a penalty belongs to him who imposed it, not to another. The 32nd Apostolic Canon says that one bound by his bishop cannot be loosed by another, but only by the one who bound him — except in the case that the latter has reposed. A hierarch from another Church does not, therefore, have the power to undo what the rightful bishop of the one defrocked has bound. To do so is to transgress the order and to invade the jurisdiction of a sister Church — something the canons forbid precisely in order to guard the communion among the Churches.
From this, two conclusions. First: a canonical Orthodox Church does not receive into communion the one whom a sister Church has defrocked, without investigation and without the latter’s release; were it to do so, it would attack the very communion that makes them one. There is, it is true, a right path — appeal to a higher ecclesiastical instance, which, examining the case in communion with the diocese of origin, may lift the penalty; but this presupposes a canonical letter, real investigation, and communion, not a reception in secret, in defiance. Second: if the one who “receives” is not a Church in communion, but a group itself broken away, then the reception has no power whatsoever, for it comes from outside the Church — a schism cannot heal another schism, but only clothe it.
Thus, the true question is not “has someone received me?” but “has the Church received me, by the canonical path, in communion with those who judged me?” The commemoration of a foreign hierarch’s name does not replace this order; it merely shifts the appearance from one place to another. The one defrocked who, instead of seeking his vindication on the path of the Church, seeks another covering in defiance of her, does not depart from his state, but seals it — and the canon binds the one who receives him thus with the same bond.
How a Priest Ought to Conduct Himself in Trial
From the example of the Saints there emerges, without further need of command, the path on which a cleric who comes under such a trial ought to walk. It is not an easy path — the Saints paid for it with exile, with prison, sometimes with blood — but it is the only one that leads to salvation, and not to division.
First, to accept the investigation, not to flee from it. The Saints presented themselves before judgment, even when they knew it to be unjust. Saint Maximus and Saint Martin stood before their judges and confessed; they did not hide, they did not absent themselves from appearing, they did not deny the authority that judged them. He who refuses to present himself at the investigation, considering it false beforehand, sets himself outside the order, and loses the very place from which he might have spoken the truth.
Second, to discern the cause. If the accusation concerns a deed of his own, or even a wrong done to him, the way is defense within the Church, by the appointed means, and patience to the end. A cause of faith — that is, a heresy openly preached and already condemned by the Synods — is something altogether other than a personal injustice or an administrative disorder; and this distinction is judged in the conciliarity of the Church, not by each man’s own reckoning. Administrative grievances, however bitter, are not causes of faith; to treat them as such is the first error.
Third, not to make himself the center. The Saints did not gather a camp, they did not wage war before the eyes of the world, they did not turn the faithful into a party of their own. Saint John Chrysostom, when the people rose on his behalf, did not use the occasion for revolt, but forgave his adversaries. A cleric in trial ought to guard his flock from division, not draw it into his struggle — for those souls are not weapons, but sheep for whom he will give account.
Fourth, to leave the vindication to the Church and to God. This is the hardest part, for it requires you to believe that justice is not done by your own hand. All the Saints mentioned here were vindicated afterward — some only after death. Flavian was honored at Chalcedon, Chrysostom through the translation of his relics, Palamas through synods. None of them seized his vindication on his own; they endured, and the Church and God worked at their time. He who cannot await that time shows, by his very impatience, that he seeks his own justice, not God’s.
And above all, to remain in communion — even at the price of silence and of loss. A priest may lose his see, his parish, even the church built with his own hand, and yet keep his soul, if he remains in the Church. But if he gains all these by breaking communion, he has gained them outside the Body of Christ, where there is no salvation. One’s own salvation depends more on humility than on justice proven; and a ministry gained through division is a greater loss than any injustice endured.
This does not mean that injustice is to be loved, nor that abuse is to be kept silent out of cowardice. It means only that nothing — not even justice — is bought at the price of breaking from the Church. On this boundary, confessors and schismatics have always parted: some lost everything and remained in the Church; the others sought to keep their justice and lost the Church.
A Word for Those Who Follow Such a Case
There remains the Christian who follows, from outside, such a case — and asks himself what is fitting to do.
The canons, as we have seen, bind responsibility to knowledge: he who knowingly receives the things of one defrocked takes part in his state; he who receives them in ignorance is corrected with gentleness. This word is not meant to terrify, but to awaken watchfulness. Once the truth has been heard, ignorance is no longer a shield.
Saint Ignatius the God-bearer bound from the beginning the unity of the Church to communion with the bishop: breaking from him is breaking from the Church, even when it is clothed in the garb of zeal for the truth. And Saint John Chrysostom uttered the hard word that not even the blood of martyrdom washes away the sin of division — precisely because schism wounds the very unity of the Body of Christ.
This does not mean that every ecclesiastical decision is, in itself, just. The Saints show us that injustice is possible, sometimes crying out to heaven. But it means that the setting-right of an injustice is never sought through breaking from the Church, but within her, on the path of patience and obedience — the path on which all those whom the Church has, in the end, called Saints have walked.
And if someone, surrounded by faithful and convinced of his own rightness, nevertheless serves against the decision of the Church, it is fitting to remember that this very conviction, unaccompanied by obedience, has always been the surest sign not of the confessor, but of the one who divides. The true confessors endured in silence. They were vindicated not by the injustice they suffered, but by the manner in which they bore it.
The Church does not honor the Saints as triumphant rebels, but as intercessors who conquered through humility and through remaining in communion. For, in the face of injustice, the Church does not teach us to seek the victory of the one who defends himself, but the prayer of the one who lets himself be vindicated by God. So too we pray to them:
“Come into our midst and bless us all, and through your prayers obtain for us the forgiveness of sins, that we may all be saved.”