Each Christian is created in the image (eikon) and likeness of God and the life in Christ. The presence of the Holy Spirit is understood through the Eastern Fathers to be a process of theosis, a divinizing or deification, becoming more and more like the image in whom one is made and baptized. The description for many monastic saints in particular, prepodobny means "very much like, quite similar to . . . God," this being but one of many working definitions or descriptions of holiness, of sainthood.
— Michael Plekon, Living Icons