Bishop Alexander (Mileant)

Family is a small church

IN The expression “family is a small church” has come down to us from the early centuries of Christianity. The Apostle Paul in his epistles mentions Christians especially close to him, the spouses Akila and Priscilla, and greets them and "Their home church" (Rom. 16:4).

IN Orthodox theology there is an area about which little is said, and the significance of this area and the difficulties associated with it are very great. This is the area family life. Family life, like monasticism, is also Christian work, also “the path to the salvation of the soul,” but it is not easy to find teachers along this path.

Family life is blessed by a whole series of church sacraments and prayers. In the Trebnik, a liturgical book that everyone uses Orthodox priest, in addition to the order of the sacraments of marriage and baptism, there are special prayers for a mother who has just given birth and her baby, a prayer for naming a newborn, a prayer before the start of a child’s education, an order for consecrating a house and a special prayer for housewarming, the sacrament of unction of the sick and prayers for the dying. There is, therefore, the care of the Church about almost all the main moments of family life, but most of these prayers are now read very rarely. In the writings of the saints and fathers of the Church, great importance Christian family life. But it is difficult to find in them direct, concrete advice and instructions applicable to family life and the upbringing of children in our time.

I was very struck by a story from the life of an ancient hermit saint who fervently prayed to God that the Lord would show him real holiness, a real righteous man. He had a vision, and he heard a voice telling him to go to such and such a city, to such and such a street, to such and such a house, and there he would see real holiness. Joyfully, the hermit went on his way and, having reached the indicated place, he found two female laundresses living there, the wives of two brothers. The hermit began to ask the women how they were saved. The wives were very surprised and said that they live simply, amicably, in love, do not quarrel, pray to God, work ... And this was a lesson to the hermit.

"Starship", as the spiritual guidance of people in the world, in family life, has become a part of our church life. In spite of any difficulties, thousands of people were and are drawn to such elders and old women, both with their usual everyday worries and with their grief.

There were and are preachers who are especially able to speak intelligibly about spiritual needs. modern families. One of these was the late Vladyka Sergius of Prague in exile, and after the war, Bishop of Kazan. “What is the spiritual meaning of life in the family? Vladyka Sergius said. In a non-family life, a person lives with his front side - not the inside. In family life, every day you have to react to what is happening in the family, and this makes a person seem to be naked. Family is an environment that makes you not hide feelings inside. Both good and bad come out. This gives us a daily development of the moral sense. The very environment of the family is, as it were, saving us. Every victory over sin within oneself gives joy, strengthens strength, weakens evil ..». These are wise words. It seems to me that in our days to create Christian family harder than ever. Destructive forces act on the family from all sides, and their influence on the mental life of children is especially strong. The task of spiritually “nourishing” the family with advice, love, guidance, attention, sympathy and understanding of contemporary needs is the most important task of church work in our time. Helping a Christian family truly become a "small church" is as great a task as the creation of monasticism was in its time.

The expression "family is a small church" has come down to us from the early centuries of Christianity. The Apostle Paul in his epistles mentions Christians especially close to him, the spouses Akila and Priscilla, and greets them and their home church... (Rom. 16:4).

There is an area in Orthodox theology about which little is said, but the significance of this area and the difficulties associated with it are very great. This is the area of ​​family life. Family life, like monasticism, is also Christian work, also “the path to the salvation of the soul,” but it is not easy to find teachers along this path.

Family life is blessed by a whole series of church sacraments and prayers. In the "Trebnik", a liturgical book that every Orthodox priest uses, in addition to the order of the sacraments of marriage and baptism, there are special prayers - over a mother who has just given birth and her baby, a prayer for naming a newborn, a prayer before the start of teaching a child, the procedure for consecrating a house and a special prayer for housewarming, the sacrament of unction of the sick and prayers over the dying.

There is, therefore, the care of the Church about almost all the main moments of family life, but most of these prayers are now read very rarely. In the writings of the saints and the Fathers of the Church, great importance is attached to Christian family life. But it is difficult to find in them direct, concrete advice and instructions applicable to family life and the upbringing of children in our time.

I was very struck by a story from the life of one ancient holy hermit who fervently prayed to God that the Lord would show him real holiness, a real righteous man. He had a vision, and he heard a voice telling him to go to such and such a city, to such and such a street, to such and such a house, and there he would see real holiness. Joyfully, the hermit went on his way and, having reached the indicated place, he found two female laundresses living there, the wives of two brothers. The hermit began to ask the women how they were saved. The wives were very surprised and said that they live simply, amicably, in love, do not quarrel, pray to God, work ... And this was a lesson to the hermit.

Spiritual guidance of people's lives in the world, in family life, "eldership" has become a part of our church life. In spite of any difficulties, thousands of people were and are drawn to such elders and old women, both with their usual everyday worries and with their grief.

There have been and still are preachers who are able to speak especially intelligibly about the spiritual needs of modern families. One of these was the late Vladyka Sergius of Prague in exile, and after the war, Bishop of Kazan. “What is the spiritual meaning of life in the family? - Vladyka Sergius said. - In a non-family life, a person lives with his front side - not the inside. In family life, every day you have to react to what is happening in the family, and this makes a person seem to be naked. Family is an environment that makes you not hide feelings inside. Both good and bad come out. This gives us a daily development of the moral sense. The very environment of the family is, as it were, saving us. Every victory over sin within oneself gives joy, affirms strength, weakens evil...” These are wise words. I think it's harder than ever to start a Christian family these days. Destructive forces act on the family from all sides, and their influence on the spiritual life of children is especially strong. The task of spiritually “nourishing” the family with advice, love, guidance, attention, sympathy and understanding of contemporary needs is the most important task of church work in our time. Helping a Christian family truly become a "small church" is as great a task as the creation of monasticism was in its time.

About the family mindset

As believing Christians, we try to teach our children the Christian creed and the laws of the church. We teach them to pray and go to church. Much of what we say and teach will be forgotten later, flowing away like water. Perhaps other influences, other impressions will force out of their consciousness what they were taught in childhood.

But there is a foundation, difficult to define in words, on which the life of every family is built, a certain atmosphere that family life breathes. And this atmosphere greatly influences the formation of the “spiritual image” of the child, determines the development of children's feelings and children's thinking. This general atmosphere, difficult to define in words, can be called the "worldview of the family." It seems to me that no matter how the fate of people who grew up in the same family, they always have something in common in their attitude to life, to people, to themselves, to joy and sorrow.

Parents cannot create the personality of their child, determine his talents, tastes, put into his character the traits they want. We do not "create" our children. But through our efforts, our own lives and what we ourselves have taken from our parents, a certain worldview and attitude to life is created, under the influence of which the personality of each of our children will grow and develop in its own way. Having grown up in a certain family atmosphere, he will become an adult, a family man and, finally, an old man, bearing its imprint all his life.

What are the main features of this family worldview?

It seems to me that the most essential thing is what can be called a "hierarchy of values", that is, a clear and sincere consciousness of what is more important and what is less important, for example, earnings or vocation.

Sincere, unintimidated truthfulness is one of the most precious qualities that come with a family atmosphere. The untruthfulness of children is sometimes caused in them by fear of punishment, fear of the consequences of some misconduct, but very often children of virtuous, developed parents are insincere in expressing their feelings, because they are afraid of not meeting the high parental requirements. A big mistake of parents is to demand from children that they feel the way their parents want. You can demand compliance with external rules of order, the performance of duties, but you cannot demand that the child consider touching what seems funny to him, admire the fact that he is not interested in loving those whom his parents love.

It seems to me that in the family worldview, his openness to the outside world, interest in everything is very important. Some happy families are so self-contained that the world around them - the world of science, art, human relations - is, as it were, uninteresting to them, does not exist for them. And young family members, going out into the world, involuntarily feel that the values ​​that were part of their family worldview have nothing to do with the outside world.

A very significant element of the family worldview is, it seems to me, an understanding of the meaning of obedience. Often adults complain about the disobedience of children, but in their complaints there is a misunderstanding of the very meaning of obedience. After all, obedience is different. There is an obedience that we must instill in the baby for his safety: “Don’t touch, it’s hot!”, “Don’t climb, you will fall!” But for an eight-nine-year-old, another obedience is already important - not to do something bad when no one sees you. And even greater maturity begins to manifest itself when the child himself feels what is good and what is bad, and consciously holds back.

I remember how amazed I was by a seven-year-old girl whom I took with other children to church for a long reading service of the 12 Gospels. When I asked her to sit down, she looked at me seriously and said, "You don't always have to do what you want."

The purpose of discipline is to teach a person to control himself, to be obedient to what he considers the highest, to act as he considers right, and not as he wants. This spirit of inner discipline should pervade all family life, there are even more parents than children, and happy are those children who grow up in the consciousness that their parents are obedient to the rules that they profess, obedient to their convictions.

Another trait is of great importance in the overall family life. According to the teachings of the saints of the Orthodox Church, the most important virtue is humility. Without humility, any other virtue can "spoil", as food without salt does. What is humility? It is the ability not to attach too much importance to yourself, to what you say and do. This ability to see yourself as you are, imperfect, sometimes even funny, the ability to laugh at yourself sometimes, has a lot to do with what we call a sense of humor. And it seems to me that just such an easily perceived “humility” plays a very large and beneficial role in the family worldview.

How to pass on our faith to children

We, parents, face a difficult, often painful question: how to pass on our faith to our children? How can we instill faith in God in them? How to talk to our children about God?

There are so many influences in the life around us that lead children away from faith, deny it, ridicule it. And the main difficulty is that our faith in. God is not just a treasure or wealth, or some kind of capital that we can pass on to our children, like a sum of money can be transferred. Faith is the way to God, faith is the road along which a person goes. The Orthodox Bishop Kallistos (Ware), an Englishman, writes wonderfully about this in his book The Orthodox Way:

“Christianity is not just a theory about the life of the universe, not just a teaching, but the path we are following. It is, in the fullest sense of the word, the way of life. We can learn the true meaning of the Christian faith only by embarking on this path, only by completely surrendering to it, and then we ourselves will see it.

The task of Christian education is to show children this path, put them on this path and teach them not to stray from it.

A child appears in an Orthodox family. It seems to me that the first steps towards the discovery of faith in God in the life of an infant are connected with his perception of life with the senses - sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch. If a baby sees how parents pray, cross themselves, baptize him, hears the words “God”, “Lord”, “Christ is with you”, takes Holy Communion, feels drops of holy water, touches and kisses an icon, a cross, little by little enters his consciousness the notion that there is a God. In an infant there is neither faith nor unbelief. But with believing parents, he grows, perceiving with his whole being the reality of their faith, just as it gradually becomes clear to him that the fire burns, that the water is wet, and the floor is hard. The baby understands little about God with the mind. But from what he sees and hears from those around him, he learns that there is a God and accepts it.

In the next period of childhood, children can and should be told about God. It is easiest to tell children about Jesus Christ: about the Nativity, about the gospel stories about the childhood of Christ, about the worship of the Magi, about the meeting of the Child by the elder Simeon, about the flight into Egypt, about His miracles, about healing the sick, about blessing children. If the parents do not have pictures and illustrations of the Sacred History, it is good to encourage the children to draw such illustrations themselves and this will help them to perceive the stories more realistically. And at the age of seven, eight, nine, the process begins that will continue for many years: the desire to understand what they see and hear, attempts to separate the “fabulous” from the “real”, to understand: “Why is this so?”, “Why is this ? Children's questions and answers are different from those of adults, and often puzzle us. Children's questions are simple, and they expect the same simple and clear answers. I still remember that when I was eight years old, I asked the priest at the lesson of the Law of God, how to understand that the light was created on the first day, and the sun on the fourth? Where did the light come from? And the father, instead of explaining to me that the energy of light is not limited to one luminary, answered: “Don’t you see that when the sun sets, it’s still light all around?” And I remember that this answer seemed unsatisfactory to me.

Children's faith is based on children's trust in any person. A child believes in God because his mother or father, or grandmother, or grandfather believes. On this trust, the child's own faith develops, and on the basis of this faith, his own spiritual life begins, without which there can be no faith. The child becomes able to love, regret, sympathize; the child can consciously do something that he considers bad, and experience a feeling of repentance, he can turn to God with a request, with gratitude. And finally, the child becomes able to think about the world around him, about nature and its laws. In this process, he needs the help of adults.

When a child begins to be interested in school lessons about nature, which talk about the emergence of the world and its evolution, etc., it is good to supplement this knowledge with the story of the creation of the world, which is set out in the first lines of the Bible. The sequence of the creation of the world in the Bible and modern ideas about it are very close. The beginning of everything - an explosion of energy (the big bang) - biblical words Let there be light! and then gradually the following periods: the creation of the water element, the formation of dense masses (“firmaments”), the appearance of seas and land. And then, by the word of God, nature is given a task: ... let the earth bring forth greenery ... let the water bring forth reptiles ... let the earth bring forth ... beasts and cattle ... And the completion of the process is the creation of man ... And all this is done God's word by the will of the Creator.

The child grows, he has questions and doubts. The child's faith is also strengthened through questions and doubts. Belief in God is not just a belief “what God is”, it is not a consequence of theoretical axioms, but this is our attitude towards God. Our attitude towards God and our faith in Him are imperfect and must be continually developed. We will inevitably have questions, uncertainties and doubts. Doubt is inseparable from faith. As the father of a sick boy who asked Jesus to heal his son, we will probably say for the rest of our lives: I believe, Lord! help my unbelief... The Lord heard the words of the father and healed his son. Let's hope he will hear all of us who pray to Him of little faith.

Talking to Children about God

The responsibility for instilling faith in God in children has always rested with the family, with parents, with grandparents more than with school teachers of the Law of God. And the liturgical language and sermons in the church are usually incomprehensible to children.
The responsibility for educating children to believe in God has always rested with the family.

Children's religious life needs to be nurtured and nurtured, and we, parents, are little prepared for this and simply do not know how to tackle it.

It seems to me that we need, first, to understand the distinctive feature of children's thinking, children's spiritual life: children do not live in abstract thinking. Perhaps this realistic character of their thinking is one of those characteristics of childhood about which Christ said that such is the Kingdom of Heaven. It is easy for children to imagine, to imagine very realistically what we are talking about in the abstract - the power of good and the power of evil. They perceive all kinds of sensations with particular brightness and fullness, for example, the taste of food, the pleasure of intense movement, the physical sensation of raindrops on their face, warm sand under their bare feet ... Some impressions of early childhood are remembered for a lifetime, and it is the experience that is real for children. sensations, not reasoning about it... For us, believing parents, the main question is how to convey in such a language of sensations, in the language of concreteness, thoughts about God, about faith in Him. How can we give children a childlike experience of the reality of God? How can we give them the experience of experiencing God in our lives?

I have already said how we introduce the concept of God with ordinary life expressions - “Glory to God!”, “God forbid!”, “God bless you!”, “Lord, have mercy!” But it is very important how we say them, whether we express a real feeling with them, whether we really experience their meaning. The child sees icons around him, crosses: he touches them, kisses them. The first, very simple concept of God is this consciousness that God exists, as there is heat and cold, the feeling of hunger or satiety.

The first conscious thought about God comes when a child is able to understand what it means to do something - to fold, mold, build, glue, draw ... Behind every object there is someone who made this object, and the concept is made available to the child quite early. about God as the Creator. At this time, it seems to me, the first conversations about God are possible. You can draw a child's attention to the world around him - insects, flowers, animals, snowflakes, a little brother or sister - and arouse in him a sense of the miraculousness of God's creation. And the next topic about God, which is made available to children, is the participation of God in our lives. Four and five year olds love to listen to stories that are accessible to their realistic imagination, and there are many such stories in Scripture.

New Testament stories about miracles impress young children not with their miraculousness - children hardly distinguish a miracle from a miracle - but with joyful sympathy: “Here, a man did not see, did not see anything,
never saw. Close your eyes and imagine that you see nothing, nothing. And Jesus Christ came up, touched his eyes, and he suddenly began to see... What do you think he saw? How did it feel to him?"

“But people were sailing with Jesus Christ on a boat, and it began to rain, the wind rose, a storm ... It was so scary! And Jesus Christ forbade the wind and the waves of the water, and suddenly it became so quiet ... "

You can tell how the people who gathered to listen to Jesus Christ were hungry, and nothing could be bought, and only one little boy helped Him. And here is a story about how the disciples of Jesus Christ did not allow small children to see the Savior, because they were noisy, and Jesus Christ was indignant and ordered to let small children come to Him. And, embracing... blessed them...

There are many such stories. You can tell them at a certain time, for example, before going to bed, or show an illustration, or simply “when it comes to the word.” Of course, for this it is necessary that there be a person in the family who is familiar with at least the main gospel stories. It may be good for young parents to re-read the Gospel themselves, looking for stories in it that will be understandable and interesting for young children.

By the age of eight or nine, children are already ready to perceive some kind of primitive theology, even create it themselves, coming up with explanations that are convincing for themselves for what they observe. They already know something about the world around them, they see in it not only good and joyful, but also bad and sad. They want to find some kind of causality in life that is understandable to them, justice, a reward for good and a punishment for evil. Gradually, they develop the ability to understand the symbolic meaning of parables, such as the parable of the Prodigal Son or the Good Samaritan. They begin to be interested in the question of the origin of the whole world, albeit in a very primitive form.

It is very important to prevent the conflict that often arises in children a little later - the conflict between "science" and "religion" in the children's sense of these words. It is very important that they understand the difference between explaining how an event happened and explaining what the meaning of the event is.

I remember how I had to explain to my nine-ten-year-old grandchildren the meaning of repentance, and I invited them to visualize the dialogue between Eve and the serpent, Adam and Eve, when they violated God's prohibition to eat fruits from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And then they presented in their faces the parable of the prodigal son. How accurately the girl noted the difference between "blaming each other" and the remorse of the prodigal son!

At the same age, children begin to be interested in such questions as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, life after death, or why Jesus Christ had to suffer so terribly. When trying to answer questions, it is very important to remember that children tend to “grasp” in their own way the meaning of an illustration, example, story, and not our explanation, an abstract train of thought.

Growing up, by the age of eleven or twelve, almost all children experience difficulties in the transition from childish faith in God to more mature, spiritual thinking. Only simple and entertaining stories from the Holy Scriptures are no longer enough. From parents, from grandparents, the ability to hear that question, that thought, that doubt that was born in the head of a boy or girl is required. But at the same time, it is not necessary to impose on them questions or explanations that they do not yet need, to which they have not matured. Every child, every teenager develops at their own pace and in their own way.

It seems to me that the “theological consciousness” of a ten or eleven year old child should include the concept of the visible and invisible world, of God as the Creator of the world and life, of what is good and evil, that God loves us and wants us to be kind, that if we did something bad, then we can regret it, repent, ask for forgiveness, correct the trouble. And it is very important that the image of the Lord Jesus Christ be known and loved by children.

I have always remembered one lesson given to me by the theologian children. There were three of them: eight, ten and eleven years old, and I had to explain to them the Lord's Prayer - "Our Father". We talked about what the words of Who art in heaven mean. Those skies where astronauts fly? Do they see God? What is the spiritual world - heaven? We talked about all this, argued, and I invited everyone to write one phrase that would explain what "heaven" is. One boy whose grandmother recently died wrote: “Heaven is where we go when we die...”, a girl wrote: “Heaven is such a world that we cannot touch or see, but it is very real ... ", and the youngest in clumsy letters deduced:" Heaven is kindness ... "

It is especially important for us to understand, feel and penetrate into the inner world of a teenager, into his interests, his worldview. Only by establishing such a sympathetic understanding, I would say, respect for their thinking, one can try to show them that the Christian perception of life, relationships with people, love, creativity gives all this a new dimension. The danger for the younger generation lies in their feeling that the spiritual life, spiritual faith in God, the church, religion is something else, does not concern "real life". The best thing we can give to teenagers, youth, and only if we have sincere friendship with them, is to help them think, encourage them to look for the meaning and reason for everything that happens in their lives. And the best, most useful conversations about God, about the meaning of life, we have with our children not according to plan, not out of a sense of duty, but by chance, unexpectedly. And as parents, we need to be prepared for this.

On the development of moral consciousness in children

Along with concepts, with thoughts about God, about faith, children also develop their moral consciousness.

Many infantile sensations, although they are not moral experiences in the literal sense of the word, serve as a kind of "brick" from which the moral life is later built. The baby feels the parents' praise and joy when he tries to take the first step, when he pronounces something similar to the first word, when he himself holds a spoon and this approval of adults becomes an important element of his life. It is essential for the development of the moral consciousness of the child and the feeling, the feeling that he is being taken care of. He experiences pleasure and a sense of security in parental care for him: the feeling of cold is replaced by warmth, hunger is quenched, pain calms down - and all this is connected with a familiar, loving adult face. And the infantile “discovery” of the surrounding world also plays a big role in moral development: everything must be touched, everything must be tried ... And then the baby begins to realize from experience that his will is limited, that it is impossible to reach everything.

Many infantile sensations, although they are not moral experiences in the literal sense of the word, serve as a kind of "brick" from which the moral life is later built.

One can speak about the beginning of a genuine moral life when a child awakens consciousness about himself, the consciousness that “here I am,” and “here I am not,” and that “I” want, do, can, feel this or that in relation to to "not me". Small children up to four or five years old are egocentric and very strongly feel only their feelings, their desires, their anger. What others feel is uninteresting and incomprehensible to them. They tend to feel that they are the cause of everything that happens around, the culprits of any trouble, and adults need to protect young children from such trauma.

It seems to me that the moral education of children in early childhood lies in the development and encouragement in them of the ability to sympathize, that is, the ability to imagine what and how others feel, "not me." Many good fairy tales are useful for this, causing sympathy and very important for children, caring for their beloved animals, preparing gifts for other family members, caring for the sick ... she did not scold them, did not get angry with the offender, but began to console the offended, caress him until the offender himself became embarrassed.

The concept of "good" and "evil" we lay in children very early. How carefully one must say: “you are bad” - “you are good” ... Young children do not yet think logically, they can easily become infected with the concept - “I am bad”, and how far this is from Christian morality.

Evil and good are usually identified by young children with material damage: breaking a big thing is worse than breaking something small. And moral education consists precisely in making children feel the meaning of motivation. Breaking something because you tried to help is not evil, but if you broke something because you wanted to hurt, upset, it's bad, it's evil. By their attitude to children's misdeeds, adults gradually bring up in children an understanding of good and evil, teach them truthfulness.

The next stage of children's moral development is their ability for friendship, for personal relationships with other children. The ability to understand what your friend feels, to sympathize with him, to forgive him his fault, to yield to him, to rejoice in his joy, to be able to put up after a quarrel - all this is connected with the very essence of moral development. Parents should take care that their children have friends, comrades, that their friendly relations with other children develop.

By the age of nine or ten, children are already well aware that there are rules of conduct, family and school laws that they must comply with and which they sometimes deliberately violate. They also understand the meaning of fair punishments for violating the rules and endure them quite easily, but there must be a clear consciousness of justice. I remember one old nanny told me about the families in which she worked: “They had almost everything“ you can ”, but if you really“ can not ”, then you can’t. And for those, everything was “impossible”, but in fact everything was “possible”.

But the Christian understanding of what repentance, repentance, the ability to sincerely repent, is not given immediately. We know that in personal relationships with people to repent means to be sincerely upset that you
hurt, hurt the feeling of another person, and if there is no such sincere grief, then it’s not worth asking for forgiveness - it will be false. And for a Christian, repentance means pain because you grieved God, were unfaithful to God, unfaithful to the image that God put in you.

We do not want to bring up our children in the spirit of legalism, that is, compliance with the letter of the law or rule. We want to instill in them the desire to be good, to be faithful to that image of kindness, truthfulness, sincerity, which is part of our faith in God. Both our children and we, adults, commit offenses, sin. Sin and evil break our intimacy with God, our communion with Him, but repentance opens the way for God's forgiveness, and this forgiveness heals evil and destroys all sin.

By the age of twelve or thirteen, children achieve what can be called self-awareness. They are able to reflect on themselves, on their thoughts and moods, how fair adults treat them. They consciously feel unhappy or happy. It can be said that by this time the parents had invested in the upbringing of their children everything that they could invest in it. Now teenagers will compare the moral and spiritual heritage they have received with their environment, with the worldview of their peers. If teenagers have learned to think and we have succeeded in instilling in them a sense of kindness and repentance, we can say that we have laid in them the right foundations for moral development that continues throughout life.

Of course, we know from numerous modern examples that people who knew nothing about faith in childhood come to it as adults, sometimes after long and painful searches. But believing parents who love their children want to bring into their lives from infancy the graceful, all-revitalizing power of love for God, the power of faith in Him, the feeling of closeness to Him. We know and believe that children's love and closeness to God is possible and real.

How to teach children to attend worship

We live in such a time and in such conditions that it is impossible to talk about church attendance by children as a generally accepted tradition. Some Orthodox families, both at home and abroad, live in places where there is no Orthodox church and children go to church very, very rarely. In the temple, everything is strange, alien, sometimes even scary to them. And where there is a church and nothing prevents the whole family from attending services, there is another difficulty: the children are languishing with long services, the language of services is incomprehensible to them, and it is tiresome and boring to stand motionless. Very young children are entertained by the external side of the service: bright colors, a crowd of people, singing, unusual clothes of priests, censing, a solemn exit of the clergy. Small children usually take communion at every Liturgy and love it. Adults are condescending to their fuss and their spontaneity. And the little older children are already used to everything they see in the temple, it does not entertain them. They cannot understand the meaning of worship, even the Slavic language is little understood by them, and they are required to stand calmly, decorously ... One and a half to two hours of immobility is difficult and boring for them. True, children can sit for hours in front of the TV, but then they follow the program that captivates them and is understandable to them. And what should they do, what should they think about in church?

It is very important to try to create a festive, joyful atmosphere around visiting the church: prepare festive clothes in the evening, clean shoes, wash your face especially carefully, clean the room in a festive way, prepare dinner in advance, which they will sit down after returning from church. All this together creates a festive mood that children love so much. Let the children have their own little tasks for these preparations - other than on weekdays. Of course, here parents have to refine their imagination and adapt to the situation. I remember how one mother, whose husband did not go to church, came on the way home from church with her little son in a cafe and they drank coffee with delicious buns there ...

What can we as parents do to "make sense" of our children's time in church? First, we need to look for more reasons for children to do something on their own: children of seven or eight years old can prepare notes “about health” or “for repose” by themselves, inscribing the names of the dead or living close to them for whom they want to pray: Children they can submit this note themselves, they can be explained what the priest will do with “their” prosphora: he will take out a particle in memory of those whose names they wrote down, and after everyone takes communion, he will put these particles in the Chalice, and, thus, all those people whom we have recorded will, as it were, receive communion.

It’s good to let the children buy and light a candle (or candles) themselves, decide for themselves which icon they want to put it in front of, let them venerate the icon. It is good for children to take Communion as often as possible, to teach them how to do it, how to fold their hands, and say their name. And even if they don’t receive communion, they must be taught how to approach the cross and receive a piece of prosphora.

It is especially useful to bring children to at least part of the divine service on those holidays when a special rite is performed in the church: for the blessing of water, on the feast of Baptism, having prepared in advance a clean vessel for holy water, for the vigil at Palm Sunday when they stand with candles and willows in the church, for especially solemn services Holy Week- reading of the 12 Gospels, the removal of the Shroud on Holy Saturday, at least for that part of the service, when all the vestments in the church are changed. The Easter night service makes an unforgettable impression on children. And how they love the opportunity to “shout” in the church “Truly Risen!” It’s good if children can go to church for weddings, christenings, and even funerals. I remember how my three-year-old daughter, after the funeral in my mother's church, saw her in a dream - joyful, telling her how pleased she was that her granddaughter stood so well in the church.

How to overcome the boredom of children who are used to going to church? You can try to interest the child by offering him various topics for observation that are available to him: “Look around, how many icons of the Mother of God, Mother of Jesus Christ, can you find in our church?”, “And how many icons of Jesus Christ?”, “And over there, the icons depict different holidays. Which of them do you know?”, “How many doors do you see in front of the temple?”, “Try to notice how the temple is arranged, and when we return, you will draw a plan of the temple”, “Pay attention to how the priest is dressed, and as a deacon, but as boy servants, what differences do you see?” etc. etc. Then, at home, you can give explanations of what they noticed and remember, and as the children grow up, they can be given more complete explanations.

IN modern life there almost always comes a point when teenage children begin to rebel against the rules of behavior that their parents are trying to instill in them. Often this also applies to going to church, especially if it is ridiculed by comrades. Forcing teenagers to go to church, in my opinion, does not make any sense. The habit of going to church will not keep the faith in our children.

And yet, the experience of church prayer and participation in worship, laid down from childhood, does not disappear. Father Sergius Bulgakov, a wonderful Orthodox priest, theologian and preacher, was born into the family of a poor provincial priest. His childhood passed in an atmosphere of church piety and divine services, bringing beauty and joy into a dull life. As a young man, Father Sergius lost his faith, remained an unbeliever until he was thirty, was fond of Marxism, became a professor of political economy, and then ... returned to the faith and became a priest. In his memoirs, he writes: “Essentially, even as a Marxist, I always yearned religiously. At first I believed in an earthly paradise, and then, returning to faith in a personal God, instead of impersonal progress, I believed in Christ, whom I loved and carried in my heart as a child. Imperiously and irresistibly drew me to my native church. Like a round dance of heavenly bodies, the stars of impressions from
Lenten services, and they did not go out even in the darkness of my godlessness...”

And God grant us to lay in our children such unquenchable lights of love and faith in God.

About Children's Prayer

The birth of a child is always not only a physical event, but their spiritual event in the life of parents... When you feel a tiny human being born from you, “flesh of your flesh”, so perfect and at the same time so helpless, before which an infinitely long road to life opens, with all its joys, sufferings, dangers and accomplishments - the heart shrinks with love, burns with the desire to protect your child, strengthen, give him everything he needs ... It seems to me that this is a natural feeling of non-selfish love. The desire to attract all that is good to your baby is very close to a prayer impulse. May God grant that every infant be surrounded by such a prayerful attitude at the beginning of life.

For believing parents, it is very important not only to pray for the baby, not only to call on God's help in order to protect him from all evil. We know how difficult it is in life, how many dangers, both external and internal, a newborn being will have to overcome. And the most correct thing is to teach him to pray, to cultivate in him the ability to find help and strength, greater than can be found in himself, in turning to God.

Prayer, the ability to pray, the habit of praying, like any other human ability, is not born all at once, by itself. Just as a child learns to walk, talk, understand, read, he also learns to pray. In the process of teaching prayer, it is necessary to take into account the level of spiritual development of the child. After all, in the process of speech development, one cannot memorize verses when a child can only pronounce “dad” and “mother”.

The very first prayer that an infant unconsciously perceives as nourishment that he receives from his mother is the prayer of his mother or father over him. The child is baptized, put to bed and pray over him. Even before he begins to speak, he imitates his mother, trying to cross himself or kiss the icon or cross over the bed. Let's not be embarrassed that this is a "holy toy" for him. To be baptized, to kneel - in a sense, it is also a game for him, but this is life, because for a baby there is no difference between play and life.

With the first words, the first verbal prayer also begins. “Lord, have mercy...” or “Save and save...,” the mother says, crossing herself and naming her loved ones. Gradually, the child begins to enumerate everyone he knows and loves, and in this enumeration of names he must be given greater freedom. From these simple words begins his experience of communion with God. I remember how my two-year-old grandson, having finished listing the names in the evening prayer, leaned out the window, waved his hand and said to the sky: “Good night, God!”

The child grows, develops, thinks more, understands better, speaks better... How can one reveal to him the richness of the prayer life that is preserved in church prayers? Prayers such as the Lord's Prayer "Our Father ..." remain with us for life, teach us the right attitude to God, to ourselves, to life. We adults continue to “learn” from these prayers until our death. And how to make this prayer understandable for the child, how to put the words of these prayers into the consciousness and memory of the child?

Here, it seems to me, you can teach the Lord's Prayer to a child of four or five years.

You can tell your child how His disciples followed Christ, how He taught them. And once the disciples asked Him to teach them to pray to God. Jesus Christ gave them "Our Father"... and the Lord's Prayer became our first prayer. First, the words of the prayer should be spoken by an adult - mother, father, grandmother or grandfather. And each time you need to explain only one petition, one expression, making it very simple. "Our Father" means "Our Father". Jesus Christ taught us to call God Father because God loves us like the best father in the world. He listens to us and wants us to love Him as we love Mom and Dad. At another time, it can be said that the words Izhe ecu in heaven imply a spiritual invisible sky and mean that we cannot see God, we cannot touch Him, just as we cannot touch our joy, when we feel good, we only feel joy. And the words “Hallowed be Thy Name” can be explained as follows: when we are good, kind, we “praise”, “holy God” and we want Him to become king in our hearts and in the hearts of all people. We say to God: “Let it will not be the way I want, but the way You want!” And we will not be greedy, but we will ask God to give us what we really need today (it is easy to illustrate with examples). We ask God: "Forgive us all the bad things that we do, and we ourselves will forgive everyone. And save us from all the bad things."

Gradually, children will learn to repeat the words of a prayer after an adult, simple and understandable in meaning. Gradually, questions will begin to arise. One must be able to "hear" these questions and answer them, deepening - to the extent of a child's understanding - the interpretation of the meaning of words.

If the family situation allows, you can learn other prayers in the same way: Virgin Mary, rejoice .., showing the children an icon or picture of the Annunciation, the King of Heaven ... - a prayer to the Holy
The Spirit that God sent us when Jesus Christ returned to heaven. You can tell a small child that the Holy Spirit is the breath of God. Of course, it is not necessary to introduce new prayers all at once, not on the same day, not in one month or year, but it seems to me that first you need to explain the general meaning, the general theme of this prayer, and then gradually explain individual words. And most importantly, these prayers should be a real appeal to God of the one who reads them with children.

It is difficult to say when that moment in a child's life comes when children begin to pray on their own, on their own, without the participation of their parents. If the habit of praying when going to bed or getting up in the morning is not yet firmly rooted in children, then it is good at first to remind them of this and take care that there is an opportunity for such prayer. In the end, daily prayer will become the personal responsibility of the growing child. It is not given to us, parents, to know how the spiritual life of our children will develop, but if they enter into life having behind them the real experience of daily turning to God, this will remain in them with an incomparable value, no matter what happens to them.

It is very important that children, growing up, feel the reality of prayer in the life of their parents, the reality of turning to God at various moments of family life: to cross the departing person, to say “Glory to God!” with good news or “Christ is with you!” - all this can be a short and very fervent prayer.

Professor Sofia Kulomzina

Photos from open sources

» Family - small church

Family - small church

Blessed Prince Peter and Princess Fevronia

Beloved in the Lord, dear brothers and sisters! Among the values ​​that our Orthodox people have kept and protected for centuries, a special place is occupied by the family. This is the small Church in which a person learns to love, share the joy and sorrow of his loved ones, learns to forgive and sympathize.

In the Old Testament, in the Book of Genesis, we read the words: « It is not good for a man to be alone; Let us make him a helper suitable for him. And the Lord God created from the rib taken from the man a wife and brought her to the man. And the man said, Behold, this is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; she will be called woman, for she was taken from her husband. Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother, and cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh » (Gen. 2, 18, 22-24).

Thus, marriage is a sacrament ordained by God, when two become one. When this union is blessed by the hand of a priest, Divine grace descends on the family, helping to live like a Christian and raise children. Only in such a Christian marriage is it known what love is.

The clearest example of true Christian love, fidelity and chastity are the holy nobles Prince Peter and Princess Fevronia. Their life reflects the spiritual, moral values ​​of Orthodox Rus', its ideals. Pure in heart and humble in God, they received great gifts of the Holy Spirit - wisdom and love.

The Orthodox Church carefully preserves their history. Blessed Prince Peter was the second son of Prince Yuri Vladimirovich of Murom. He ascended the throne of Murom in 1203. A few years earlier, Saint Peter fell ill with leprosy, from which no one could cure him. In a sleepy vision, it was revealed to the prince that the pious maiden Fevronia, a peasant woman of the village of Laskovaya in the Ryazan land, the daughter of a beekeeper, could help him. Saint Peter sent his people to that village. When he saw the girl, he loved her so much for her piety, wisdom and kindness that he vowed to marry her after the cure. The pious Fevronia healed the prince. And then he married her. The boyars respected their prince, but the arrogant boyar wives disliked Fevronia. Not wanting a peasant woman to rule in Murom, they taught their husbands: “Either let him let go of his wife, who offends noble wives with her origin, or leave Murom.” Fevronia had to endure many trials, but love for her husband and respect for him helped her endure the slander, insults, envy and anger of the boyar wives. But one day the boyars offered Fevronia to leave the city, taking everything she wanted. In response to this, the princess said that she did not need anything other than her husband. The boyars rejoiced, because each secretly aimed at the prince's place, and they told their prince about everything. Saint Peter, having learned that they wanted to separate him from his beloved wife, preferred to voluntarily give up power and wealth and go into exile with her. The prince firmly remembered the words of the Lord: « What God put together, let no man separate». Therefore, faithful to the duty of a Christian spouse, he renounced the principality.

Loving spouses on a boat sailed along the Oka from their hometown. In the evening they landed on the shore and began to settle down for the night. "What will happen to us now?" - Peter thought sadly, and Fevronia, a wise and kind wife, affectionately consoled him: “Do not be sad, prince, the merciful God, the Protector and Creator of all, will not leave you in trouble.” At this time, the cook began to prepare dinner and, in order to hang the boilers, cut down two trees, which the princess blessed with the words: “May they be big trees in the morning!” And a miracle happened, with which the princess wanted to strengthen her husband: in the morning the prince saw two large trees. And if “there is hope for a tree that, even if it is cut down, it will come to life again” (Job 14: 7), then there is no doubt that a person who trusts in the Lord and trusts in Him will have a blessing in this life , and in the future.

The Lord did not leave godly spouses with His mercy. Ambassadors arrived from Murom, begging Peter to return to reign, because civil strife had begun in the city and blood had been shed. Peter and Fevronia humbly returned to their city and ruled happily ever after, doing alms with prayer in their hearts. When old age came, they became monks with the names David and Euphrosyne and begged God to die at the same time. They bequeathed to bury them together and for this they prepared a coffin with a thin partition in the middle.

The merciful Lord heard their prayers: having taken monastic vows, the loving pious spouses died on the same day and hour, each in his own cell. People considered it impious to bury the monks in one coffin and violated the will of the deceased. Twice their bodies were carried to different temples, but both times they miraculously ended up nearby. So they buried the holy spouses together near the Cathedral Church of the Nativity Holy Mother of God, and every believer found and still finds generous healing and help here.

Saints Peter and Fevronia are a model of Christian marriage. With their prayers, they bring down a heavenly blessing on the spouses. Piety, mutual love and fidelity, sincere and pure concern for each other, mercy are embodied in their lives.

Dear brothers and sisters! As we celebrate the memory of Saints Peter and Fevronia, let us remember that the sacrament of marriage was established by the Lord Himself. In an Orthodox family, the head is the husband. His feat is courage, strength, reliability; he is responsible for his wife and children. The feat of a wife is humility, patience, meekness, worldly wisdom. If this God-established hierarchy is violated, then the family begins to collapse, and children stop listening to their parents. Violation of God's laws is always the path of destruction, not creation. To save a family, one must learn the laws of God, church institutions, and the experience of Christian life.

Rector of the Dormition Church, Mitred Archpriest Peter Kovalsky.

1. What does it mean to have a family as a small church?

The words of the apostle Paul about the family as "home church"(Rom. 16, 4), it is important to understand not metaphorically and not only in moral refraction. This is, first of all, ontological evidence: a real church family in its essence must be and can be a small Church of Christ. As Saint John Chrysostom said: "Marriage is the mysterious image of the Church". What does it mean?

First, in the life of the family, the words of Christ the Savior are fulfilled: "...Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them"(Matthew 18:20). And although two or three believers can be gathered without regard to a family union, the unity of two lovers in the name of the Lord is certainly the foundation, the foundation of an Orthodox family. If the center of the family is not Christ, but someone else or something else: our love, our children, our professional preferences, our social and political interests, then we cannot speak of such a family as a Christian family. In this sense, it is flawed. A truly Christian family is this kind of union of husband, wife, children, parents, when relationships within it are built in the image of the union of Christ and the Church.

Secondly, a law is inevitably realized in the family, which, by the very structure, by the very structure of family life, is a law for the Church, and which is based on the words of Christ the Savior: “By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”(John 13, 35) and on the words of the Apostle Paul supplementing them: "Bear one another's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ"(Gal. 6:2). That is, at the heart of family relationships is the sacrifice of one for the sake of the other. Such love, when I am not in the center of the world, but the one I love. And this voluntary removal of oneself from the center of the Universe is the greatest blessing for one's own salvation and an indispensable condition for the full life of a Christian family.

A family in which love is a mutual desire to save each other and help in this, and in which one for the sake of the other restricts himself in everything, limits, refuses something that he desires for himself - this is the small Church. And then that mysterious thing that unites husband and wife and that can in no way be reduced to one physical, bodily side of their union, that unity that is available to church-going, loving spouses who have gone through a considerable path of life together, becomes a real image of that unity of all with each other in God, which is the triumphant Church in heaven.

2. It is believed that with the advent of Christianity, the Old Testament views on the family have changed greatly. This is true?

Yes, of course, because New Testament brought those cardinal changes to all spheres of human existence, designated as a new stage in human history, which began with the incarnation of the Son of God. As for the family union, nowhere before the New Testament was it so highly placed and so definitely not mentioned either about the equality of the wife, or about her fundamental unity and unity with her husband before God, and in this sense, the changes brought by the Gospel and the apostles were colossal. , and by them the Church of Christ lives for centuries. In certain historical periods - the Middle Ages or modern times - the role of a woman could retreat almost into the realm of natural - no longer pagan, but simply natural - existence, that is, relegated to the background, as if somewhat shadowy in relation to her husband. But this was due solely to human weakness in relation to the once and for all proclaimed New Testament norm. And in this sense, the most important and new thing was said exactly two thousand years ago.

3. Has the Church's view of the marriage union changed over these two thousand years of Christianity?

It is one, since it relies on Divine Revelation, on Holy Scripture, therefore the Church looks at the marriage of a husband and wife as the only one, their fidelity as a necessary condition for full-fledged family relationships, children as a blessing, and not as a burden, and to marriage, consecrated in the Wedding, as a union that can and must be continued in eternity. And in this sense, there have been no major changes in the past two thousand years. The changes could relate to tactical areas: whether a woman should wear a headscarf at home or not, bare her neck on the beach or should not do this, whether adult boys are brought up with their mother or it is more reasonable to start a predominantly male upbringing from a certain age - all these are conclusion and secondary things that , of course, varied greatly over time, but the dynamics of such changes must be discussed specially.

4. What does the owner, mistress of the house, mean?

This is well described in the book of Archpriest Sylvester “Domostroy”, which describes exemplary housekeeping as it was seen in relation to the middle of the 16th century, therefore, those who wish to refer to it for a more detailed consideration. At the same time, it is not necessary to study the recipes for salting and kvass cooking, which are almost exotic for us, or reasonable ways of managing servants, but to look at the very structure of family life. By the way, this book clearly shows how high and significant the place of a woman in an Orthodox family was then seen, and that a significant part of the key household duties and cares fell on her and was entrusted to her. So, if we look at the essence of what is depicted on the pages of Domostroy, we will see that the owner and mistress are the realization at the level of everyday, way of life, stylistic part of our life of what, according to the words of John Chrysostom, we call the small Church. As in the Church, on the one hand, there is its mystical, invisible foundation, and on the other hand, it is a kind of social institution that exists in real human history, so in the life of the family there is something that unites husband and wife before God, - spiritual and spiritual unity, but there is its practical being. And here, of course, such concepts as a house, its arrangement, its splendor, order in it are very important. The family as a small Church implies both a dwelling, and everything that is equipped in it, and everything that happens in it, correlated with the Church with a capital letter as a temple and as the house of God. It is no coincidence that during the rite of consecration of any dwelling, the Gospel is read about the visit by the Savior to the house of the publican Zacchaeus after he, having seen the Son of God, promised to cover all the iniquities committed by him in his official position, to cover many times. Holy Scripture tells us here, among other things, that our house should be such that if the Lord visibly stands on its threshold, as He always stands invisibly, nothing would stop Him from entering here. Not in our relationships with each other, not in what can be seen in this house: on the walls, on bookshelves, in dark corners, not in what is shamefully hidden from people and what we would not want others to see.

All this in the aggregate gives the concept of a house, from which both the pious internal dispensation in it and the external order are inseparable, which is what every Orthodox family should strive for.

5. They say: my house is my fortress, but, from a Christian point of view, isn’t love only for one’s own behind this, as if what is outside the house is already alien and hostile?

Here we can recall the words of the Apostle Paul: “... As long as there is time, we will do good to everyone, and especially to our own by faith”(Gal. 6:10). In the life of every person there are, as it were, concentric circles of communication and degrees of closeness to certain people: these are all living on earth, these are members of the Church, these are members of a particular parish, these are acquaintances, these are friends, these are relatives, this is family, the closest people. And in itself, the presence of these circles is natural. Human life is arranged by God in such a way that we exist on different levels of being, including on different circles of contact with certain people. And if we understand the above English saying "My home is my castle" in the Christian sense, this means that I am responsible for the structure of my house, for the system in it, for relationships within the family. And I not only take care of my house and will not let anyone invade it and destroy it, but I realize that, first of all, my duty to God is to save this house.

If these words are understood in a worldly sense, as the construction of an ivory tower (or from any other material from which fortresses are built), the construction of some kind of isolated little world where we and only we feel good, where we seem to be (however, of course, illusory) protected from the outside world and where else we think - whether to allow anyone to enter, then such a desire for self-isolation, for leaving, fencing off from the surrounding reality, from the world in the broad, and not in the sinful sense of the word, a Christian, of course, should avoid.

6. Is it possible to share your doubts related to some theological issues or directly to the life of the Church with a person close to you who is more church-going than you, but who, after all, can also be tempted by them?

With those who are truly churched, it is possible. There is no need to convey these doubts and perplexities to those who are still on the first steps of the ladder, that is, who are less close to the Church than you yourself. And those who are stronger than you in faith must also bear greater responsibility. And there is nothing improper in this.

7. But is it necessary to burden your loved ones with your own doubts and troubles if you go to confession and take nourishment from a confessor?

Of course, a Christian who has minimal spiritual experience understands that reckless pronunciation to the end, without understanding what it can bring to his interlocutor, even if this is the most dear person, none of them benefit. Frankness and openness must take place in our relations. But the collapse of everything that has accumulated in us, which we ourselves cannot cope with, is a manifestation of dislike. Moreover, we have a Church where you can come, there is confession, the Cross and the Gospel, there are priests who have been given grace-filled help from God for this, and their problems need to be solved here.

As for our listening to the other, yes. Although, as a rule, when close or less close people talk about frankness, they mean rather that someone close was ready to hear them than that they themselves are ready to listen to someone. And then - yes. It will be a deed, a duty of love, and sometimes a feat of love, to listen, hear and accept sorrows, disorder, disorder, throwing our neighbors (in the gospel sense of the word). What we take on ourselves is the fulfillment of the commandment, what we impose on others is the refusal to bear our cross.

8. And should you share with your closest those spiritual joy, those revelations that you were given to experience by the grace of God, or should the experience of communion with God be only your personal and indivisible, otherwise its fullness and integrity are lost?

9. Should a husband and wife have the same spiritual father?

This is good, but not necessary. For example, if he and she are from the same parish and one of them went to church later, but began to go to the same spiritual father, from whom the other had already taken care of for some time, then this kind of knowledge of the family problems of the two spouses can help the priest give a sober advice and warn them against any wrong steps. However, there is no reason to consider this an indispensable requirement and, say, a young husband to encourage his wife to leave her confessor so that she now goes to that parish and to the priest with whom he confesses, there is no reason. This is in the truest sense of the word spiritual violence, which should not take place in family relationships. Here one can only wish in certain cases of disagreement, disagreement, intra-family discord, to resort, but only by mutual agreement, to the advice of the same priest - once the confessor of the wife, once the confessor of the husband. How to rely on the will of one priest, so as not to receive different advice on a specific life problem, perhaps due to the fact that both the husband and wife each presented it to their confessor in an extremely subjective vision. And so they return home with the advice they received, and what do they do next after that? Who is now to find out which recommendation is more correct? Therefore, I think that it is reasonable for a husband and wife in some serious cases to apply with a request to consider this or that family situation to one priest.

10. What should parents do if there are disagreements with the spiritual father of their child, who, say, does not allow him to study ballet?

If we are talking about the relationship between the spiritual child and the confessor, that is, if the child himself or even at the prompting of loved ones brought the decision of this or that issue to the blessing of the spiritual father, then, regardless of what the parents, grandparents and grandparents initially had, this blessing, Certainly, and should be guided. Another thing is if the conversation about making a decision turned into a conversation of a general nature: for example, the priest expressed his negative attitude either to ballet as an art form in general or, in particular, to the fact that this particular child would study ballet, in which case there is still some an area for reasoning, first of all, by the parents themselves and for clarifying with the priest those motives that they have. After all, parents do not have to imagine their child making a brilliant career somewhere in " Covent Garden,- they may also have good reasons to give the child to ballet, for example, to combat scoliosis starting from sitting for many years. And I think that if we are talking about this kind of motives, then parents, grandparents will find understanding with the priest.

But doing or not doing this kind of thing is most often a neutral thing, and if there is no desire, you can not consult with the priest, and even if the desire to act according to the blessing came from the parents themselves, whom no one pulled by the tongue and who simply assumed that the formed their decision will be covered by some kind of sanction from above, and thus it will be given an unprecedented acceleration, then in this case it cannot be neglected that the spiritual father of the child for some reason did not bless him for this particular occupation.

11. Is it worth discussing big family problems with small children?

No. It is not necessary to lay on children the burden of what is not easy for us to cope with ourselves, to burden them with our own problems. It’s another matter to put them in front of certain realities of their common life, for example, that “this year we won’t go to the south, because dad can’t take a vacation in the summer or because the money is needed for my grandmother to stay in the hospital.” This kind of knowledge of what is really happening in the family is necessary for children. Or: “We can’t buy you a new briefcase yet, since the old one is still good, and the family doesn’t have much money.” This kind of thing needs to be said to the child, but in a way that does not connect him to the complexity of all these problems and how we will solve them.

12. Today, when pilgrimage trips have become a daily reality of church life, a special type of spiritually exalted Orthodox has appeared, and especially females, who travel around monasteries from elder to elder, everyone knows about myrrh-streaming icons and about the healing of the possessed. Being with them on a trip is embarrassing even for adult believers. Especially for children, whom this can only scare away. In this regard, should we take them with us on pilgrimages and are they generally able to withstand such spiritual stress?

Trip trips are different, and you need to correlate them both with the age of the children, and with the duration and complexity of the upcoming pilgrimage. It is reasonable to start with short, one-, two-day trips around the city where you live, to nearby shrines, with a visit to one or another monastery, a short prayer before the relics, with a bath in the source, which children love very much by nature. And then, as they grow older, take them on longer trips. But only when they are already prepared for it. If we go to one or another monastery and find ourselves in a sufficiently filled temple for an all-night vigil that will last five hours, then the child should be ready for this. Just like the fact that in a monastery, for example, he can be treated stricter than in a parish church, and walking from place to place will not be encouraged, and, most often, he will have nowhere else to go, except for the temple itself where worship takes place. Therefore, you need to really calculate the forces. In addition, it is better, of course, if the pilgrimage with children is made together with your acquaintances, and not with people completely unknown to you on a voucher purchased in one or another travel and pilgrimage company. For very different people can come together, among which there may be not only spiritually exalted, reaching fanaticism, but also simply people with different views, with varying degrees of tolerance in assimilating other people's views and unobtrusiveness in presenting their own, which sometimes can turn out to be for children , still insufficiently churched and strengthened in the faith, by a strong temptation. Therefore, I would advise with great caution to take them on trips with strangers. As for pilgrimages (for whom it is possible) abroad, here, too, a lot of things can overlap. Including such a banal thing that in itself the secular worldly life of the same Greece or Italy or even the Holy Land can turn out to be so curious and attractive that the main goal of the pilgrimage will leave the child. In this case, there will be one harm from visiting holy places, for example, if Italian ice cream or swimming in the Adriatic Sea is more memorable than prayer in Bari at the relics of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker. Therefore, when planning such pilgrimage trips, one must wisely build them, taking into account all these factors, as well as many others, up to the time of the year. But, of course, children can and should be taken with them on pilgrimages, simply without in any way removing responsibility for what will happen there. And most importantly - without assuming that the very fact of the trip will already give us such grace that there will be no problems. In fact, the larger the shrine, the greater the possibility of certain temptations when we reach it.

13. In the Revelation of John it is said that not only “unbelievers, and abominations, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their fate is in a lake burning with fire and brimstone,” but also “fearful” (Rev. 21, 8). And how to deal with your fears for children, husband (wife), for example, if they are absent for a long time and for inexplicable reasons or travel somewhere and there is no news from them for an unreasonably long time? And what to do if these fears grow?

These fears have a common basis, a common source, and, accordingly, the fight against them must have some common root. The basis of insurance is lack of faith. A fearful one is one who trusts God little and who, by and large, does not really rely on prayer - either his own or others whom he asks to pray, since without it he would be completely scared. Therefore, one cannot suddenly stop being fearful, here one must seriously and responsibly undertake to eradicate and overcome the spirit of lack of faith from oneself step by step by kindling, trusting in God and a conscious attitude to prayer, such that if we say: "Bless and save", We must trust that the Lord will do what we ask. If we say to the Most Holy Theotokos: “Not other imams of help, not other imams of hope, except for You,” then we really have this help and hope, and not just beautiful words we speak. Here everything is determined precisely by our attitude to prayer. We can say that this is a particular manifestation of the general law of spiritual life: as you live, so you pray, as you pray, so you live. Now, if you pray, combining with the words of prayer a real appeal to God and hope in Him, then you will have the experience that prayerful intercession for another person is not an empty thing. And then, when fear attacks you, you stand up for prayer - and the fear will recede. And if you simply try to hide behind your prayer as a kind of external shield from your hysterical insurance, then it will return to you time after time. So here it is necessary not so much to fight head-on with fears, but to take care to deepen the prayer life.

14. The sacrifice of the family to the Church. What should be?

It seems that if a person, especially in difficult life circumstances, having hope in God, not in the sense of analogy with commodity-money relations: if I give, it will be given to me, but in reverent hope, with the belief that this is accepted, will tear something from the family budget and give Church of God, will give to other people for Christ's sake, then he will receive a hundredfold for it. And the best thing we can do when we don’t know how else to help our loved ones is to sacrifice something, even if it’s material, if we don’t have the opportunity to bring something else to God.

15. In the book of Deuteronomy, the Jews were prescribed what kind of food they could and could not eat. Is it necessary for an Orthodox person to adhere to these rules? Isn't there a contradiction here, because the Savior said: "... It is not what enters the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth defiles a person" (Matt. 15:11)?

The question of food was decided by the Church at the very beginning of its historical path - at the Apostolic Council, which can be read about in "Acts of the Holy Apostles". The apostles, guided by the Holy Spirit, decided that it was enough for Gentile converts, which we all are, in fact, to abstain from food that is brought to us with the torment of an animal, and in personal behavior to abstain from fornication. And that's enough. The book "Deuteronomy" had its undoubted divinely revealed significance in a specific historical period, when the plurality of prescriptions and regulations regarding both food and other aspects of the everyday behavior of the Old Testament Jews was supposed to protect them from assimilation, merging, mixing with the surrounding ocean of almost universal paganism. .

Only such a fence, a fence of specific behavior, could then help not only a strong spirit, but also a weak person to refrain from striving for what is more powerful in terms of statehood, more fun in life, simpler in terms of human relations. Let us thank God that we now live not under the law, but under grace.

Based on other experiences of family life, a wise wife will conclude that a drop wears away a stone. And the husband, at first irritated at reading a prayer, even expressing his indignation, scoffing, mocking, if the wife shows peaceful perseverance, after some time he will stop letting go of the hairpins, and after some time he will get used to the fact that there is no getting away from it, there are worse situations. And years will pass - you look, and you will begin to listen to what kind of words of prayer are said before eating. Peaceful perseverance is the best that can be shown in such a situation.

17. Isn't it hypocrisy that Orthodox woman to church, as expected, goes only in a skirt, but at home and at work in trousers?

Not wearing trousers in our Russian Orthodox Church there is a manifestation by parishioners of respect for church traditions and customs. In particular, to such an understanding of the words of Holy Scripture, which forbid a man or woman to wear clothes of the opposite sex. And since by men's clothing we mainly mean trousers, women naturally refrain from wearing them in church. Of course, such an exegesis is not literally applicable to the corresponding verses of Deuteronomy, but let us also remember the words of the Apostle Paul: “... If food offends my brother, I will never eat meat, so as not to offend my brother”

A new conversation with Schema-Archimandrite Ily (Nozdrin), aired on the Soyuz TV channel, is dedicated to the family.

Nun Agrippina: Good afternoon, dear viewers, we continue our conversations with Schema-Archimandrite Eli about life, eternity, and the soul. Today's topic is family.

- Father, the family is called "Small Church". In your opinion, is there a contradiction between public and family education today?

In the early centuries of Christianity, the family was a small church to the fullest. This is clearly seen in the life of St. Basil the Great, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, sister Macrina - they are all saints. Both Father Basil and Mother Emilia are saints... Gregory of Nyssa, brother of Basil the Great, mentions that they had a service, a prayer to the 40 martyrs of Sebaste in their family circle.

The ancient writings also mention the prayer "Quiet Light" - in the service, during its reading, light was brought. This was done in secret, because the pagan world came down on Christians with persecution. But when a candle was brought in, the “Quiet Light” symbolized the joy and light that Christ gave to the whole world. This service was performed in the secret circle of the family. Therefore, we can say that the family in those centuries was literally a small church: when they live peacefully, amicably, prayerfully, evening and morning prayers are performed together.

- Father, the main task of the family is the upbringing of the child, the upbringing of children. How to teach a child to distinguish between good and evil?

- All this is not given at once, but is brought up gradually. Firstly, moral and religious feelings are initially embedded in the human soul. But here, of course, parental education also plays a role, when a person is protected from bad deeds, so that bad things do not take root, are not assimilated by a growing child. If he did something shameful, unpleasant, the parents find words that can reveal to him the true nature of the offense. The defect must be eliminated immediately so that it does not take root.

The most important thing is to bring up children according to the laws of God. Instill in them the fear of God. After all, before a person could not allow some dirty antics, dirty words in front of people, in front of their parents! Now everything is different.

- Tell me, father, howRightconduct Orthodox holidays?

—First of all, a person goes to worship on a holiday, confesses sins in confession. We are all called to attend the Liturgy, to receive the holy gifts of the sacrament of the Eucharist. As N.V. Gogol, a person who has been to the liturgy, recharges, restores lost strength, becomes a little different spiritually. Therefore, a holiday is not only when the body feels good. A holiday is when the heart is happy. The main thing in the holiday is that a person acquires peace, joy, grace from God.

— Father, the holy fathers say that fasting and prayer are like two wings. How should a Christian fast?

— The Lord himself fasted for 40 days while he was in the Judean desert. Fasting is nothing but our appeal to humility, to patience, which a person lost in the beginning through intemperance and disobedience. But the severity of fasting is not unconditional for everyone: fasting is for those who can endure it. After all, it helps us in the acquisition of patience and should not go to the detriment of a person. Most fasting people say that fasting has only strengthened them, physically and spiritually.

- Airtime is coming to an end. Father, I would like to hear your wish to the viewers.

We must value ourselves. For what? So that we learn to appreciate others, so that we suddenly inadvertently do not offend our neighbor, do not offend him, do not warp, do not spoil the mood. For example, when an ill-mannered, selfish person gets drunk, not only does he not take into account his needs, he also ruins peace in the family, brings grief to relatives. And if he thought about his own good, it would be good for those around him.

We, as an Orthodox people, are endowed with great happiness - faith is open to us. For ten centuries now, Russia has believed. We have been given the treasure of our Christian faith, which shows us the true path of life. In Christ, a person acquires a solid stone and an unshakable foundation for his salvation. In our Orthodox faith there is everything that is necessary for the future eternal life. The undeniable truth is that we inevitably pass into another world and that further life awaits us. And this is what makes us Orthodox happy.

Living by faith is the key to a normal lifestyle for our family and for all the people around us. By believing, we acquire the main guarantee for moral deeds, the main incentive for labor. This is our happiness - the acquisition of eternal life, which the Lord himself indicated to those who followed Him.