Saints grow to love God, in all of humanity, and in all creatures. The following tales are ultimately love stories — in turns humorous and poignant, sublime and even surreal. All of these stories point to larger spiritual realities — suggesting that the purpose of life is to make God present in the world through living in harmony with God and all created beings.

This type of peaceful, love-inspired life is a mark of saintliness and points to the Garden of Eden, before sickness, sin, and death shattered the oneness of creation. The saints' interactions with animals also points to the life that is to come, where perfect love unites all redeemed creatures.

As Fyodor Dostoyevsky wrote in his book The Brothers Karamazov, “Love every leaf, every ray of God's light. Love the animals, love the plants, love everything. If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things.”

Many of the following stories were kept alive through oral tradition, growing out of a symbolic world where not all stories were taken as literal truth. As the years progressed, many of these stories become spiritualized or mythologized, and one need not assume that every detail of the following accounts is straight historical fact. Instead, one just needs to be open to the possibility that these things could have occurred — that nothing is impossible in the lives of the saints — and that everything can become possible through love.