ping
"Therefore, the Faith of the Church does not belong exclusively to those of us who happen to be alive at this time and we need to take into account what has come before us, which we have received from the saints who have preceded us in death and yet are alive in the Lord, and treat it with the respect it deserves."
I suppose it shows how detached I have been of late from the problems in the AC, but this never occured to me. And you would think that it would occur to me. Everytime Orthodox people are in church, or go to their icon corner or shelf to pray, we are very conscious of the presence of the saints, who praise God unceasingly, praying with us. Our icons which surround us in our homes and offices and churches are the representations of that "cloud of heavenly witnesses" to our prayers, devotions and Divine Liturgies." I appreciate the ping, because I think that we Orthodox tend to in a way take the saints a bit for granted, probably because we otherwise feel so completely with them when we pray, rather like we sometimes tend not to notice that our families are all around us.
This is a sad post, because, maybe better than I've ever seen it expressed, it shows just how lost ECUSA really is in its mundane self-centeredness.