Synaxarion

One of my sisters gave me the "Synaxarion" for Christmas. She told me that she was going to test me. Four days into the year and I have been deligient in my reading. Two days ago I was reading it at 3:23 a.m.. I have been emailing her flipiant comments on the daily saints just so as she knows that I have been engaged in the daily readings. In reading hagiography with a logical, rather than a mythic mind, it is easy to see the deficiencies. But the stories of saints are not history, but stories to edify the faithful. So while I snickered when I read that Saint Basil the Great, January 1, returned from being away to study to find that his mother and sister had turned their, and his, home into a convent. I mean I could imagine returning from university to my home in Montreal to find that my mother and sister (which one, I wonder) had turned our house into a convent - well what about my dad and what about my bedroom?! That is looking at it through logical modern eyes, but with the eyes of faith to illustarted the sancity of the entire family - many of whom became recognized saints.
There is something that really does bother me. It seems that sainthood involves "fasting, prayer and the labours of the ascetic life." It seems to make a two tiered system, the holy people who are totally devoted to the labours of prayer, meditation etc. and the rest of us who work out our salvation or enlightenment, or not, in the turmoil of the world. This isn't just in Orthodoxy, but in the eastern religions as well. What about the rest of us who keep things running. Surely if "God' is just, then sanctity has to be available to us all. Otherwise I will just stamp my foot and protest the unfairness of it all.
Yet I do know that the door to holiness is open to us all, whatever our lot, because our sanctification must be worked out within our circumstances.