As we grow in the way of prayer, we begin to know that true prayer is an aware openness to the working of Love, that we may play our part in transmitting the divine love to all whom we meet in the daily round. Prayer is universal in scope, for God has no favorites. The way of communicative silence is the most effective way of knowing God and serving our brothers and sisters... I have little doubt that we will appreciate the silence when the body is dead and the soul passes forth into new surroundings for fresh adventures.
A saint is a person who practices the keystone human virtue of humility. Humility in the face of wealth and plenty, humility in the face of hatred and violence, humility in the face of strength, humility in the face of your own genius or lack of it, humility in the face of another's humility, humility in the face of love and beauty, humility in the face of pain and death. Saints are driven to humbling themselves before all the splendor and horror of the world because they perceive there to be something divine in it pulsing and alive beneath the hard dead surface of material things -- greater and purer than they are.