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

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

– Father, the family is called “Little Church”. In your opinion, is there a contradiction between public and family education these days?

In the first centuries of Christianity, the family was a small church in its entirety. This is clearly visible in the life of St. Basil the Great, his brother Gregory of Nyssa, sister Macrina - they are all saints. Both father Vasily and mother Emilia are saints... Gregory of Nyssa, brother of Basil the Great, mentions that their family held services and prayers to the 40 martyrs of Sebaste.

Ancient writings also mention the prayer “Quiet Light” - during the service, during its reading, light was brought. This was done in secret because the pagan world was persecuting Christians. But when the candle was brought in, “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 accomplish together.

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

– This is not all given at once, but is developed 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 and are not absorbed by the growing child. If he did something shameful or unpleasant, his parents find words that can reveal to him the true nature of the offense. The vice must be eliminated immediately so that it does not take root.

The most necessary thing is to raise children according to God's laws. Instill in them the fear of God. After all, before a person could not allow some dirty tricks, dirty words in front of people, in front of his parents! Now everything is different.

- Tell me, father, howRightcelebrate Orthodox holidays?

– First of all, a person goes to worship on a holiday and confesses his 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. once wrote. Gogol, a man who has attended the liturgy, recharges himself, restores lost strength, and 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 gains peace, joy, and 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 more than our appeal to humility, to patience, which a person initially lost through intemperance and disobedience. But the severity of fasting is not unconditional for everyone: fasting is for those who can withstand it. After all, it helps us in acquiring patience and should not harm a person. Most fasters say that fasting has only strengthened them, physically and spiritually.

– Airtime is coming to an end. Father, I would like to hear your wishes to TV viewers.

– We must value ourselves. For what? So that we can learn to appreciate others, so that we don’t suddenly inadvertently offend our neighbor, don’t offend him, don’t offend him, or spoil his mood. For example, when an ill-mannered, selfish person gets drunk, not only does he not take into account his needs, he ruins the peace in the family and brings grief to his 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 Russia has believed. We have been given our precious Christian faith, which shows us the true path of life. In Christ, man acquires a solid stone and unshakable foundations for his salvation. Our Orthodox faith contains everything that is necessary for the future eternal life. The immutable truth is that the transition to another world is inevitable and that the continuation of life awaits us. And this makes us Orthodox happy.

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

» 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 preserved and protected for centuries, family occupies a special place. This is the small Church in which a person learns to love, share the joy and sadness of his loved ones, learns to forgive and have compassion.

In the Old Testament, in the Book of Genesis, we read the words: « It is not good for a person to be alone; Let us make him a helper suitable for him. And the Lord God created a wife from a rib taken from a man 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 be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh » (Life 2, 18, 22-24).

Thus, marriage is a sacrament established 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 and raise children in a Christian way. Only in such a Christian marriage can one learn what love is.

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

Orthodox Church carefully preserves their history. The blessed Prince Peter was the second son of the Murom prince Yuri Vladimirovich. He ascended the Murom throne in 1203. A few years earlier, Saint Peter fell ill with leprosy, from which no one could cure him. In a dream vision, it was revealed to the prince that the pious maiden Fevronia, a peasant woman from the village of Laskovoy 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 fell in love with her so much for her piety, wisdom and kindness that he vowed to marry her after he was cured. Pious Fevronia healed the prince. And then he married her. The boyars respected their prince, but the arrogant boyars' wives disliked Fevronia. Not wanting a peasant woman to rule in Murom, they admonished their husbands: “Either let him let go of his wife, who insults 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 slander, insults, envy and anger from the boyars' wives. But one day the boyars invited Fevronia to leave the city, taking everything she wanted. In response to this, the princess said that she did not need anything other than a husband. The boyars rejoiced, because everyone secretly set their sights on the princely place, and they told their prince about everything. Saint Peter, having learned that they wanted to separate him from his beloved wife, chose to voluntarily renounce power and wealth and go into exile with her. The prince firmly remembered the words of the Lord: « What God has joined together, let no man separate». Therefore, true to the duty of a Christian spouse, he renounced the principality.

Loving spouses sailed on a boat along the Oka from 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: “Don’t be sad, prince, the merciful God, the Intercessor and Creator of everyone, will not leave everyone in trouble.” At this time, the cook began to prepare dinner and, in order to hang the cauldrons, 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 live again” (Job 14:7), then there is no doubt that a person who hopes in the Lord and trusts in Him will have blessings in this life , and in the future.

The Lord did not abandon pious 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, giving alms with prayer in their hearts. When old age came, they took monasticism 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 monks in one coffin and violated the will of the deceased. Twice their bodies were carried to different temples, but both times they miraculously turned out to be nearby. So they buried the holy spouses together near the cathedral church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and every believer received and still receives generous healing and help here.

Saints Peter and Fevronia are an example of Christian marriage. With their prayers they bring down heavenly blessings on the spouses. Piety is embodied in their lives, mutual love and fidelity, sincere and pure care for each other, mercy.

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. Violating 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 Assumption Church, mitred archpriest Peter Kowalski.

Orthodox family- this is a family, the purpose of which is life with God and the salvation of the soul. The opposite of it is the family... “civilian”, the goal of which is happy life on earth and procreation. But at the same time, both an Orthodox and a civil family can be both good and bad, just as there are good and bad Christians, highly moral and immoral people. Both an Orthodox and a civil family can be full-fledged, happy, and strong, but the guarantee of happiness still lies in the spiritual sphere.

When a person in a family lives for himself: strives for comfort, wants to be loved, understood, shares his views, strives to continue his family, then, despite the seeming naturalness of all these desires, such a family has a high probability that the family it will cease to be, since it is not always possible to create comfort, someone else, as it turns out, will be able to love you more, and will understand better and will want to become the father of your children...

If both husband and wife (or at least one of them) live for the other, then the situation becomes exactly the opposite: a person in this case strives to act, think and feel in such a way that those who are next to him feel calm, good and comfortable. If this is an Orthodox family, then this desire becomes even higher: the spouses try to help each other become better and get closer to the salvation of the soul.

Unfortunately, it happens that even in Orthodox families people live for themselves and strive only for their own salvation. And it happens that people who are far from God, by their very upbringing and character, are sacrificial people. The main thing is that behind this sacrifice there is no expectation of retribution, because there may not be retribution. The spouse for whom you sacrificed your career and health may, in the event of your own failures, begin to reproach you for every little thing, the children to whom you gave all of yourself may not value your opinion at all and consider it a hindrance...

A good, strong, full-fledged family is one where spouses respect each other, do not oppose themselves to each other, but strive for mutual understanding, where parents teach children by example of their own lives and NEVER make comments to each other or quarrel in front of their children. Even if this family is not Orthodox, it is easier for her to come to God, who said: “Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.”

If the family is strong, whether it is Orthodox or not, then it is not afraid of whirlwinds. Difficulties only bring spouses together. They are one whole, and do not think of themselves differently. A spouse is a gift that is given to you by God (or fate) to keep and increase. And in many ways it depends on you: whether this gift will die from inept handling or how a beautiful flower will bloom and bear fruit.

“Bound by the bonds of marriage, we replace each other’s hands, ears, and feet. The common concerns of spouses make their sorrows easier, and common joys are more delightful for both of them. For spouses who are unanimous, wealth is more pleasant, and in poverty, unanimity itself is more pleasant than wealth. They have only one drink from a domestic source, which does not flow out anywhere and does not flow anywhere” (St. Gregory the Theologian)

I will add to the above that there is one more and very important thing that distinguishes Orthodox family from any other - it is a blessing from God himself.

“Marriage is a sacrament in which, with the bride and groom freely promising mutual marital fidelity before the priest and the Church, their marital union is blessed, in the image of the spiritual union of Christ with the Church, and they ask for the grace of pure unanimity for the blessed birth and Christian upbringing of children.” (Orthodox Catechism)

And it is the grace of God that preserves the union of husband and wife. And often, just when it’s no longer enough own strength spouses, to fulfill the commandments of the Lord, especially in front of each other, when something happens to us, our feelings, when, having stumbled, we are drawn to sin, the Lord himself comes to the rescue and dispels the nets of the evil one and returns peace to the souls of those closest to us people to each other and they fall to each other with tears and the words “forgive me, for God’s sake, it’s all my fault (to blame).” And everything is forgiven, the difficult is forgotten and joy returns again, and the family that has passed the test is strengthened, and only more grateful prayers are offered to the Lord, His Most Pure Mother and His Saints.

I saw a “definition” of a Christian family in one book and I completely agree with this statement: “A good Christian family is a protection of pure morals, a soil for planting goodness in humanity, an instrument and means for the spread and establishment of the Holy Church of Christ on earth.”

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

IN Orthodox theology There is an area 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 salvation of the soul,” but it is not easy to find teachers on this path.

Family life is blessed in a number of ways 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 for a mother who has just given birth and her baby, a prayer for naming a newborn, a prayer before the start of the child's education, an order for the consecration of a house and a special prayer for housewarming, the sacrament of unction of the sick and prayers over the dying. There is, therefore, the Church's concern for 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 it is given great importance Christian family life. But it is difficult to find in them direct, specific advice and instructions applicable to family life and raising children in our time.

I was very struck by the story from the life of one ancient desert saint, who fervently prayed to God that the Lord would show him true holiness, a true 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. The hermit joyfully set off on his journey and, having reached the indicated place, found two washerwomen 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 lived simply, amicably, in love, did not quarrel, prayed to God, worked... And this was a lesson to the hermit.

“Eldership,” as the spiritual leadership of people in the world, in family life, has become a part of our church life. Despite any difficulties, thousands of people were and are drawn to such elders and elders, both with their usual everyday concerns and with their grief.

There were and are preachers who can speak especially clearly about the spiritual needs of modern families. One of these was the late Bishop Sergius of Prague in exile, and after the war - Bishop of Kazan. “What is the spiritual meaning of life in a family?” said Vladyka Sergius. In non-family life, a person lives on the outer side - not the inner side. In family life, every day you have to react to what is happening in the family, and this makes a person, as it were, expose himself. Family - this is an environment that forces us not to hide our feelings inside. Both good and bad come out. This gives us the daily development of a 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 that raising a Christian family these days is more difficult than ever. Destructive forces They affect the family from all sides, and their influence on the mental life of children is especially strong. The task of spiritually “nurturing” the family with advice, love, directions, attention, sympathy and understanding of modern needs is the most important task of church work in our time. Helping the Christian family truly become a “small church” is as great a task as the creation of monasticism was in its time.

About the family worldview

As believing Christians, we try to teach our children Christian doctrine 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, flow away like water. Perhaps other influences, other impressions will displace from 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 child’s soul, determines the development of children’s feelings and children’s thinking. This general atmosphere, difficult to define in words, can be called the “family outlook.” It seems to me that no matter how the destinies of people who grew up in the same family turn out, they always have something in common in their attitude towards life, towards people, towards themselves, towards joy and grief.

Parents cannot create the personality of their child, determine his talents, tastes, or put into his character the traits they desire. We do not “create” our children. But through our efforts, our own lives and what we ourselves have received from our parents, a certain worldview and attitude towards life is created, under the influence of which the personality of each of our children will grow and develop in their 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 calling.

Sincere, unintimidated truthfulness is one of the most precious qualities that comes from a family atmosphere. Children's untruthfulness is sometimes caused by their fear of punishment, fear of the consequences of some offense. But very often, children with virtuous, developed parents are insincere in expressing their feelings, because they are afraid of not meeting the high parental requirements. A big mistake parents make is to demand that their children feel the way their parents want them to feel. You can demand compliance with external rules of order and fulfillment of duties, but you cannot demand that a child considers touching what seems funny to him, admires what is not interesting to him, or loves those whom his parents love.

It seems to me that in a family’s worldview, openness to the world around us and interest in everything are very important. Some happy families so closed in on themselves that the world- the world of science, art, human relations - seems to be uninteresting to them, does not exist for them. And young family members, going out into the world, involuntarily feel that those 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. Adults often complain about children's disobedience, but their complaints include a misunderstanding of the very meaning of obedience. After all, obedience is different. There is obedience that we must instill in the baby for his safety: “Don’t touch, it’s hot!” "Don't climb, you'll fall." But for an eight or nine year old, a different kind of obedience is already important - not to do anything bad when no one can see you. And even greater maturity begins to manifest itself when the child himself feels what is good and what is bad, and consciously restrains himself.

I remember how amazed I was by a seven-year-old girl whom I took with other children to church for a long service of reading the 12 Gospels. When I invited her to sit, 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 higher, to act as he considers right, and not as he wants. This spirit of internal discipline should permeate all family life, parents even more 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 feature is of great importance in 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,” just as food without salt spoils. What is humility? This is the ability to not attach too much importance to yourself and what you say and do. This ability to see yourself as you are, imperfect, sometimes even funny, the ability to sometimes laugh at yourself, has much in common with what we call a sense of humor. And it seems to me that in a family’s worldview it is precisely this kind of easily perceived “humility” that plays a very important and beneficial role.

How to pass on our faith to children

We, parents, are faced with a difficult, often painful question: how to convey our faith to our children? How to 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, and 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, just like we can pass on a sum of money. Faith is the path to God, faith is the road along which a person walks. Orthodox Bishop Callistus (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 follow. This, in the fullest sense of the word, is the path 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 will see it ourselves." The task of Christian education is to show children this path, put them on this road and teach them not to stray from it.

A child appears in an Orthodox family. It seems to me that the first steps towards discovering faith in God in the life of a baby are connected with his perception of life through the senses - sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch. If a baby sees his parents praying, crossing himself, baptizing him, hears the words “God,” “Lord,” “Christ is with you,” accepts Holy Communion, feels drops of holy water, touches and kisses an icon, a cross, the concept that “God exists” gradually enters his consciousness. There is neither faith nor unbelief in a baby. But he grows up with believing parents, perceiving with his whole being the reality of their faith, just as it gradually becomes clear to him that fire burns, that water is wet, and the floor is hard. A baby understands little about God intellectually. But from what he sees and hears from others, he learns that God exists and accepts it.

In the next period of childhood, children can and should be told about God. It is easiest to talk to children about Jesus Christ: about Christmas, about the gospel stories, about Christ’s childhood; about the worship of the Magi, about the meeting of the Baby by Elder Simeon, about the flight to Egypt, about His miracles, about the healing of the sick, about the blessing of children. If parents do not have paintings and illustrations on Sacred History, it is good to encourage children to draw such illustrations themselves; and this will help them perceive stories more realistically. And at seven, eight, nine years old, a 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 equally simple and clear answers. I still remember that when I was about eight years old, I asked my father during a lesson on the Law of God how to understand that light was created on the first day, and the sun on the fourth? Where did the light come from? And the priest, 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, feel sorry, and sympathize; a 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 origin 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 creation of the world in the Bible and modern ideas very close about this. The beginning of everything - an explosion of energy (Big Bang) - the biblical words "Let there be light!" and then gradually the following periods: creation water element, the formation of dense masses ("firmaments"), the appearance of seas and land. And then, by the word of God, a task is given to nature: “...let the earth produce greenery, grass that yields seed...” “let water bring forth creeping things...” “let the earth produce living creatures according to their kinds, cattle, and creeping things, and beasts of the earth according to their kind...." And the completion of the process is the creation of man... And all this is done by God's word, according to the will of the Creator.

The child grows, he has questions and doubts. A child’s faith is also strengthened through questions and doubts. Faith in God is not just belief that God exists, it is not a consequence of theoretical axioms, but it is our attitude towards God. Our relationship with God and our faith in Him are imperfect and must constantly evolve. We will inevitably have questions, uncertainties and doubts. Doubts are inseparable from faith. Like the father of a sick boy who asked Jesus to heal his son, we will probably say for the rest of our lives, “Lord, I believe!” The Lord heard the father’s words and healed his son. Let us hope that He will hear all of us who pray to Him of little faith.

Conversations with children about God

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

Children's religious life needs direction and nurturing, for which parents are little prepared.

It seems to me that we need, first of all, to understand distinctive feature children's thinking, children's spiritual life: children do not live by abstract thinking. Perhaps in this realistic nature of their thinking lies one of those properties of childhood about which Christ said that “of 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 completeness, for example, the taste of food, the pleasure of intense movement, the physical sensation of raindrops on the face, warm sand under their bare feet... Some impressions are remembered for a lifetime early childhood, and what is real for children is the experience of sensation, and 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 make children feel the reality of God in a childlike way? How can we give them the experience of 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 and crosses around him: he touches them, kisses them. The first, very simple concept of God lies in this consciousness that God exists, just as there is heat and cold, the feeling of hunger or satiety. The first conscious thought of God comes when a child is able to understand what it means to do something - fold, mold, build, glue, draw... Behind every object there is someone who made this object, and the concept of God as the Creator becomes accessible to the child quite early. It is at this time, it seems to me, that the first conversations about God are possible. You can draw a child's attention to the world around him - bugs, flowers, animals, snowflakes, a little brother or sister - and arouse in him a sense of the wonder of God's creation. And the next topic about God that is made accessible to children is God’s participation in our lives. Four- and five-year-old children love to listen to stories that are accessible to their realistic imagination, and there are many such stories in the Holy Scriptures.

New Testament stories about miracles impress young children not with their miraculousness - children little distinguish a miracle from a non-miracle - but with joyful sympathy: “Here is a man who didn’t see, didn’t see anything, never saw anything. Close your eyes and imagine that you saw nothing.” ", you don't see anything. And Jesus Christ came up, touched his eyes, and he suddenly began to see... What do you think he saw? How did it seem to him?" “But people were sailing with Jesus Christ on a boat, and it started to rain, the wind rose, a storm... It was so scary! But Jesus Christ forbade the wind and the waves of the water, and it suddenly became quiet...” You can tell how the people who gathered 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 little children to see the Savior because they were noisy, and Jesus Christ was indignant and ordered the little children to be allowed to come to Him. And, hugging them, he blessed them..."

There are a lot of such stories. You can tell them at a certain time, for example before going to bed, or show illustrations, or simply “when the word comes.” Of course, this requires that there be a person in the family who is familiar with at least the most important 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 to young children.

By the age of eight or nine, children are already ready to perceive some kind of primitive theology, they even create it themselves, coming up with explanations that they observe that are convincing to them. 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, reward for good and 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 understanding of these words. It is important that they understand the difference between explaining how an event happened and what the meaning of the event is.

I remember how I had to explain to my nine- to ten-year-old grandchildren the meaning of repentance, and I invited them to imagine in their faces the dialogue between Eve and the serpent, Adam and Eve, when they violated God’s prohibition of eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And then they brought to their faces the parable of the prodigal son. How accurately the girl noted the difference between “blaming each other” and the repentance 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, an example, a story, and not our explanation, an abstract train of thought.

Growing up, around the age of eleven or twelve, almost all children experience difficulties in the transition from childhood faith in God to more mature, spiritualized thinking. Just simple and entertaining stories from the Holy Scriptures are no longer enough. What is required from parents and grandparents is the ability to hear that question, that thought, that doubt that was born in the head of a boy or girl. But at the same time, there is no need to impose on them questions or explanations that they do not yet need, for 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- to 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, what if

we did something bad, then we can regret it, repent, ask for forgiveness, correct the problem. And it is very important that the image of the Lord Jesus Christ is familiar and loved by children.

I will forever remember one lesson given to me by believing 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 “who art in heaven” mean. Those heavens where astronauts fly? Do they see God? What is the spiritual world - heaven? We talked about all this, judged, and I suggested that everyone 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 a world that we cannot touch or see, but it is very real ..." And the youngest wrote in clumsy letters: "Heaven is kindness...."

It is especially important for us to understand, feel and penetrate into inner world teenager, his interests, his worldview. Only by establishing such a sympathetic understanding, I would say respect for their thinking, can we try to show them that a 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 spiritual life, spiritual faith in God, church, religion - something else, does not concern “real life.” The best thing we can give to teenagers and young people - 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, arise with our children not according to plan, not out of a sense of duty, but by accident, unexpectedly. And we, parents, must be prepared for this.

On the development of moral consciousness in children

Along with concepts, with thoughts about God, about faith, their moral consciousness develops in children.

Many infantile sensations, although they are not moral experiences in the literal sense of the word, serve as “bricks” from which moral life is later built. The baby feels the praise and joy of his parents 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 adult approval is done important element his life. Essential for the development of a child’s moral consciousness is the feeling that he is being cared for. He experiences pleasure and a sense of security in parental care for him: the feeling of cold is replaced by warmth, hunger is satisfied, pain is calmed down - and all this is connected with a familiar, loving adult face. And the infant “discovery” of the surrounding world also plays a big role in moral development: one must touch everything, try everything... And then the baby begins to realize through experience that his will is limited, that he cannot reach everything.

About the beginning of the genuine moral life we can say when a child awakens to consciousness about himself, the consciousness that “here is me,” but “here is not me,” and that “I” want, do, can, feel this or that in relation to what “ not me." Young children under four or five years of age are self-centered and feel very strongly only their feelings, their desires, their anger. What others feel is uninteresting and incomprehensible to them. They tend to feel like they are the cause of everything that happens around them, the culprits of every misfortune, and adults need to protect young children from such trauma.

It seems to me that the moral education of children in early childhood consists of developing and encouraging in them the ability to sympathize, that is, the ability to imagine what and how others feel, “not me.” Many are useful for this good stories, evoking sympathy; and taking care of their beloved animals, preparing gifts for other family members, caring for the sick is very important for children... I remember how one young mother amazed me: when fights arose between her young children, she did not scold them, did not get angry with the offender, and began to console the offended person, caress him, until the offender himself became embarrassed.

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

Young children usually identify evil and good with material damage: breaking a big thing is worse than breaking something small. And moral education consists precisely in this: to give children a sense of the meaning of motivation. Breaking something because you tried to help is not evil; and if you broke it because you wanted to hurt, to upset, that’s bad, that’s evil. By their attitude towards children's misdeeds, adults gradually instill in children an understanding of good and evil and teach them truthfulness.

The next stage in children's moral development is their ability to form friendships and personal relationships with other children. The ability to understand how your friend feels, to sympathize with him, to forgive him for his guilt, to give in to him, to rejoice in his joy, to be able to make peace after a quarrel - all this is connected with the very essence of moral development. Parents need to make sure that their children have friends, comrades, and that their friendships with other children develop.

By the age of nine or ten, children already understand well that there are rules of behavior, 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 “possible,” but if it’s “impossible,” then it’s impossible. But for those, everything was “impossible,” but in reality everything was “possible.”

But the Christian understanding of what repentance, repentance, and 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 have caused pain, to have hurt the feelings of another person, and if there is no such sincere grief, then there is no point in asking for forgiveness - it will be false. And for a Christian, repentance means pain for the fact that you upset God, were unfaithful to God, unfaithful to the image that God put in you.

We do not want to raise our children to be legalistic, to follow the letter of the law or rule. We want to cultivate 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 and sin. Sin, evil violates our intimacy with God, our communication with Him, and repentance opens the way to God's forgiveness; and this forgiveness heals evil, 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, their thoughts and moods, and how fairly adults treat them. They consciously feel unhappy or happy. We can say that by this time the parents had invested everything they could invest in the upbringing of their children. Now teenagers will compare the moral and spiritual heritage with their environment, with the worldview of their peers. If teenagers have learned to think and we have managed to instill in them a sense of goodness and repentance, we can say that we have laid in them the right foundations for moral development, which continues throughout their lives.

Of course, we know from numerous modern examples that people who knew nothing about faith in childhood come to it as adults, sometimes after a long and painful search. But believing parents who love their children want to bring into their lives from infancy the grace-filled, all-enlivening 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 are possible and real.

How to teach children to attend worship services

We live in such a time and in such conditions that it is impossible to talk about children attending church 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, and 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 languid by long services, the language of the services is incomprehensible to them, standing motionless is tiring and boring. Very young children are entertained by the external aspects of the service: bright colors, crowd of people, singing, unusual clothes of priests, censing, solemn exit of the clergy. Small children usually receive communion at every Liturgy and love it. Adults are condescending towards their fuss and their spontaneity. And slightly older children are already accustomed to everything that they see in the temple; it does not entertain them. They cannot understand the meaning of the divine service, even the Slavic language is poorly understood by them, and they are required to stand calmly, decorously... One and a half to two hours of immobility are difficult and boring for them. True, children can sit in front of the TV for hours, but then they follow a program that captivates them and understands them. 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 church: prepare festive clothes and cleaned shoes in the evening, give them a particularly thorough wash, clean the room in a festive manner, prepare dinner in advance, which they will sit down to after returning from church. All this together creates a festive mood that children love so much. Let the children have their own small tasks for these preparations - different 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, went to a cafe on the way home from church with her little son and they drank coffee and delicious buns there...

What can we as parents do to “make sense” of our children’s time in church? Firstly, we need to look for more reasons for children to do something themselves: seven-eight-year-old children can themselves prepare notes “for health” or “for repose,” adding there the names of those close to them, dead or alive, for whom they want to pray. Children can submit this note themselves; You can explain to them 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 has received communion, he will put these particles into the Chalice, and thus all those people whom we wrote down how they would 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, and let them venerate the icon. It is good for children to receive communion as often as possible, to teach them how to do it, how to fold their hands, and say their name. And if they do not 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 service on those holidays when a special ritual is performed in the church: the blessing of water on the feast of Epiphany, having prepared in advance a clean vessel for holy water, for the All-Night Vigil on Palm Sunday, when in the church they stand with candles and willows, especially ceremonial services Holy Week- reading the 12 Gospels, taking out the Shroud on Holy Saturday, at least for that part of the service when all the vestments in the temple are changed. The Easter night service makes an unforgettable impression on children. And how they love the opportunity to “shout” in church “Truly He is Risen!” It is good if children are present in church at weddings, christenings, and even at funerals. I remember how my three-year-old daughter, after the funeral service in my mother’s church, saw her joyful in a dream, 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 different topics for observation, available to him: “Look around, how many icons of the Mother of God, Mother of Jesus Christ, will you find in our church?” “How many icons of Jesus Christ?” “And over there on the icons various holidays are depicted. Which of them do you know?” "How many doors do you see at the front of the temple?" “Try to notice how the temple is structured, and when we return, you will draw a plan of the temple,” “Pay attention to how the priest is dressed, and how the deacon is dressed, and how the altar boys are dressed; what differences do you see?” etc., etc. Then, at home, you can give explanations of what they noticed and remembered; and as children grow, fuller explanations can be given.

In modern life, there almost always comes a time when teenage children begin to rebel against the rules of behavior that their parents try to instill in them. This often applies to going to church, especially if it is ridiculed by friends. Forcing teenagers to go to church, in my opinion, makes no sense. The habit of going to church will not preserve faith in our children.

And yet, the experience of church prayer and participation in divine services, laid down in 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 was spent in an atmosphere of church piety and divine services, which brought beauty and joy into a dull life. As a young man, Father Sergius lost his faith, remained an unbeliever until he was thirty, became interested in Marxism, became a professor of political economy, and then... returned to faith and became a priest. In his memoirs, he writes: “In essence, I have always, even as a Marxist, been religiously yearning. 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 as a child and carried it in my heart. Powerfully and irresistibly drew me to my native church. Like a round dance of heavenly bodies, the stars of impressions from Lenten services once lit up in my childish soul, and they did not go out even in the darkness of my godlessness..." And may God grant us to lay in our children such unquenchable flames of love and faith in God.

Children's prayer

The birth of a child is always not only a physical, but also a spiritual event in the life of the parents... When you feel the tiny human being born from you, “flesh of your flesh,” so perfect and at the same time so helpless, before whom an infinitely long road to life opens up, with with all its joys, sufferings, dangers and accomplishments - the heart is compressed with love, burning with the desire to protect your child, strengthen him, give him everything he needs... I think that this is a natural feeling of selfless love. The desire to attract all good things to your baby is very close to a prayerful impulse. May God grant that every baby 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 life can be, how many dangers, both external and internal, a newborn creature will have to overcome. And the surest 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 immediately, by itself. Just as a child learns to walk, talk, understand, read, he learns to pray. In the process of teaching prayer, it is necessary to take into account the level of mental development of the child. After all, even in the process of speech development, it is impossible to learn poetry by heart, when the child can only pronounce “dad” and “mama.”

The very first prayer that the baby unconsciously perceives as the nourishment he receives from the mother is the prayer of the mother or father over him. The child is baptized when he is put to bed; pray over him. Even before he begins to speak, he imitates his mother, trying to cross himself or kiss the icon or cross above the crib. Let's not be embarrassed that this is a "holy toy" for him. Crossing oneself, kneeling down is, in a sense, 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 begins. “Lord, have mercy...” or “Save and preserve...” says the mother, crossing herself and calling the names of loved ones. Gradually, the child begins to list everyone he knows and loves; and in this listing of names he should be given greater freedom. With these simple words his experience of communication with God begins. I remember how my two-year-old grandson, having finished listing the names in the evening prayer, leaned out of the window, waved his hand and said to the sky: “Good night, God!”

The child grows, develops, thinks more, understands better, speaks better... How to reveal to him the wealth of prayer life that is preserved in church prayers? Prayers such as the Lord's Prayer "Our Father" remain with us throughout our lives, teaching us the correct attitude towards God, towards ourselves, towards life. We adults continue to “learn” from these prayers until the day we die. How to make this prayer understandable to a child, how to put the words of these prayers into the child’s consciousness and memory?

Here, it seems to me, you can teach the Lord’s Prayer to a four- to five-year-old child. You can tell your child how His disciples followed Christ, how He taught them. And then one day 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 request, one expression, doing it very simply. "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 the way we love Mom and Dad. Another time we can say that the words “who art in heaven” mean the spiritual invisible heaven and mean that we cannot see God, we cannot touch Him; how we cannot touch our joy, when we feel good, we only feel joy. And the words "hallowed be Your name" can be explained this way: when we are good, kind, we “glorify,” “sanctify God,” and we want Him to become king in our hearts and in the hearts of all people. We say to God: “Let it not be like me I want, but how You want!" And we will not be greedy, but ask God to give us what we really need today (this is easy to illustrate with examples). We ask God: "Forgive us all the bad things we do, and We ourselves will forgive everyone. And save us from everything bad."

Gradually, children will learn to repeat after an adult the words of the prayer, simple and understandable in meaning. Gradually, questions will begin to arise in their minds. One must be able to “hear” these questions and answer them, deepening – to the extent of the child’s understanding – the interpretation of the meaning of the words.

If the family situation allows, you can learn other prayers in the same way, such as “Virgin Mother of God, rejoice,” showing children an icon or picture of the Annunciation, “Heavenly King...” - a prayer to the Holy Spirit, whom God sent to us when Jesus Christ returned On sky. You can tell a small child that the Holy Spirit is the breath of God. Of course, new prayers should not be introduced immediately, not on one day, not in one month or year, but it seems to me that first we need to explain the general meaning, general theme of this prayer, and then gradually explain individual words. And the most important thing is that these prayers should be a real appeal to God for 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, independently, without the participation of their parents. If children have not yet firmly established the habit of praying when they go to bed or get up in the morning, then it is good to remind them of this at first and make sure that there is an opportunity for such prayer. Eventually, daily prayer will become the growing child's personal responsibility. It is not given to us, parents, to know how the spiritual life of our children will turn out, but if they enter life with the real experience of daily turning to God, this will remain an incomparable value for them, no matter what happens to them.

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

Family holidays

It seems to me that in our attempts to build a Christian family life there is always some element of the “struggle for joy.”

Life for parents is not easy. It is often associated with tedious work, with worry for children and other family members, with illness, financial difficulties, conflicts within the family... And they illuminate our life, give us the opportunity to see it in its true, bright image, moments of special joy, especially strong love. These moments of “good inspiration” are like the tops of hills on the road of our life, so difficult and sometimes incomprehensible. These are like peaks from which we suddenly see better and more clearly where we are going, how far we have already walked and what surrounds us. These moments are the holidays of our lives, and it would be very difficult to live without such holidays, although we know that after the holidays everyday life will come again. Such holidays are a joyful meeting, a joyful event in the family, some kind of family anniversary. But they also live with us from year to year and church holidays are always repeated.

The Church is not a building, not an institution, not a party, but life - our life with Christ. This life is connected with work, and with sacrifices, and with suffering, but it also has holidays that illuminate its meaning and inspire us. It's hard to imagine life Orthodox Christian without the bright, joyful Easter celebration, without the touching joy of the Nativity of Christ.

There was a time when folk life was associated with Christian holidays, when they determined the calendar of agricultural labor and blessed the fruits of this labor. Ancient, pre-Christian holiday customs were intertwined with Christian holidays, and the church blessed them, although it tried to cleanse these customs of pagan elements of superstition. But in our time it is difficult to celebrate church holidays. Our life in this sense has become empty, and church festivity has disappeared from it. Thank God, the holidays have been preserved in our church service, and the Church prepares those praying for them and observes the memory of the holidays for several days. Many pious people work related adults go to church on holidays.

But are we bringing the holiday spirit into our family life? Do we know how to convey the festive mood to our children? Can church holidays become a living experience for them?

I remember a wonderful lesson my twelve-year-old daughter taught me. France. We have just survived the years of German occupation, and we lived through them in great need and even danger. And so, returning from school, my Olga tells me: “You know, mom, it seems to me that we have more “spiritual life” in our family than my friends!” “What kind of unchildish expression is that?” - I thought. Yes, I don’t think I’ve ever spoken such words to children. "What do you want to say?" - I asked. “Well, I know how difficult it was for you to get food, how often there was not enough of everything, and yet every time on name days, on Easter, you always managed to bake us a pretzel or Easter cake, make Easter... How long have you been for such I saved and took care of food for days..." Well, I thought, it was not for nothing that I tried. This is how the Lord reaches children's souls!

May God grant that our children have the opportunity to attend services on holidays. But we, parents, understand perfectly well that children’s joy and festivity are given to children not by the words of prayers that are often incomprehensible to them, but by joyful customs, vivid impressions, gifts, fun. In a Christian family, it is necessary to create this festive mood on holidays.

I lived abroad all my motherhood, and I always had difficulties with celebrating the Nativity of Christ. The French celebrate Christmas according to the new calendar, and the Russian Orthodox Church according to the old one. And so Christmas is celebrated both in schools and in institutions where parents work, Christmas trees are arranged with Santa Claus, shops are decorated, or New Year even before our church Christmas. Well, on our Christmas they go to church. What will be the real holiday for children that they are waiting for and dreaming about? I didn’t want to leave my children as if destitute when all their French comrades received Christmas gifts, but I also wanted their main joy to be associated with the church celebration of the Nativity of Christ. And so, “for French Christmas,” we followed French customs: we made a cake called a “Christmas log,” we hung stockings on the children’s cribs, which we filled with small gifts at night, and lit electric lanterns in the garden. On New Year's Eve, they celebrated the New Year with comic fortune-telling and games: they poured wax, floated a nut on the water with a candle, which set fire to notes with "fate." It was all a lot of fun and felt like a game.

But our home Christmas tree was lit on Orthodox Christmas, after the festive all-night vigil, real, “big” gifts from parents were placed under the tree. On this day, the whole family, relatives and friends gathered for a festive dinner or tea party. On this day, the Christmas play was staged, for which we had been preparing for so long, learning the roles so carefully, making costumes and scenery. I know that my long-grown grandchildren have not forgotten the joy and excitement of these “grandmother’s performances.”

Every religious holiday You can somehow mark home life with customs that are pious in essence, but translate the meaning of the holiday into the language of childhood impressionability. At Epiphany, you can bring a bottle of “holy water” from the church, give the children a drink of holy water, and bless the room with water. You can prepare a special bottle in advance, cut it out and glue a cross on it. On Candlemas, February 14, when one remembers how the Baby Jesus Christ, brought to the temple, was recognized only by the ancient elder Simeon and the old woman Anna, you can honor your grandparents, or another elderly family friend - to honor old age. On the Annunciation, March 25th, when in the old days it was a custom to release a bird in memory of the good news brought to the Virgin Mary by the Archangel, you can at least tell the children about this and bake “larks” buns in the shape of a bird in memory of this custom. On Palm Sunday, you can bring a consecrated willow twig to the children from church, attach it above the crib, and tell how the children greeted Christ with shouts of joy, waving the branches. How much it meant for the children to bring home the “holy light” from the 12 Gospels, light the lamp, and make sure it doesn’t go out before Easter. I remember how upset my five-year-old grandson was because his lamp went out, and when his father wanted to light it again with a match, he protested indignantly: “Don’t you understand, dad, this is a holy light...” Thank God, grandma has a lamp. did not go out, and the grandson was consoled by receiving the “holy light” again. There are so many Easter customs, so many goodies associated with the holiday, that it’s not worth listing. The memory of "egg rolling" is still alive. Color eggs and hide them in the garden Easter eggs or gifts and let them look for them... And once upon a time, in the old days, boys were allowed to ring bells all day on Easter Sunday. Maybe it can be restored. And on Trinity Day, 50 days after Easter, when the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles, the Spirit of God, Who gives life to everything, you can, according to the old Russian custom, decorate the rooms with greenery or, at least, put out a bouquet of flowers. In the month of August, on Transfiguration, it is customary to bring fruits to the house, fruits blessed in the church.

All these, of course, are little things, our home life. But these little things and this everyday life make sense if the parents themselves understand and joyfully experience the meaning of the holiday. This way we can convey to children in a language they understand the meaning of the holiday, which we perceive as adults, and the children’s joy of the Holiday is as great and also real as our joy.

I cannot help but mention one more incident from our family life. It was in America, on the day of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was a weekday, my daughter and son-in-law were at work, my six- and eight-year-old grandchildren were at school. We, grandparents, went to church for mass. Coming back, I thought: “Lord, how can I make the children feel that today is a holiday, so that the joy of this day reaches them?” And so, on the way home, I bought a small cake - the kind they make in America for birthdays, inserting candles into it according to the number of years. I placed the cake in the kitchen on the table in front of the icons and hung the icon Mother of God. When the children arrived, and they always entered the house through the kitchen, she inserted a lit candle into the cake. "Whose birth?" - they shouted as they entered. "It's Her birthday!" - I answered, pointing to the icon. And just imagine, the next year my granddaughter reminded me that I needed to bake a pie for the Mother of God, and two years later she baked it herself, and went with me to the all-night vigil.

And how (!) one of the most cheerful people I knew, the late Vladyka Sergius (in exile of Prague, and then of Kazan), spoke about joy: “Every day is given to us to extract at least the minimum of that good, that joy that is in essence is eternity and which will go with us into the future life... If I direct my inner eye to the light, then I will see it. Fight, strengthen yourself, force yourself to find the light and you will see it..."

Raising love in children

No one will dispute that love is the most important thing in family life. The theme of maternal love, the love of a child for mother and father, the love of brothers and sisters for each other, as well as the theme of the violation of this love, has often inspired writers and artists. But each of us, parents, ourselves and in our own way experiences love in family life and thinks about what love is and how to cultivate the ability to love in our children. And we must exercise this love practically in our family life, in specific relationships with those people, adults and children, with whom we are connected in our family.

Love between people is the ability to sympathize, rejoice, and suffer with another. Love is affection, friendship, mutual trust. Love can inspire a person to self-sacrifice, to heroism. Parents are faced with the task of creating a family life in which children are surrounded by love and in which their capacity for love develops.

Children do not immediately, not “by themselves,” learn to love, just as they do not immediately learn to speak, communicate with people, and understand them. Of course, each of us has an inherent need to communicate with other people. But education is necessary so that this need turns into conscious and responsible love for others. Such love develops in a person gradually, over many years.

How early does a child's moral development begin? In the 30s of our century, the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget drew up a whole scheme intellectual development human, associated with a person’s adaptation to the environment, with his gradually developing understanding of the causality of events and their logical connection, with the development in a person of the ability to analyze specific situations. Piaget came to the conclusion that in most cases, teachers and parents impose moral concepts on children that children are still absolutely incapable of perceiving, which they simply do not understand. Of course, there is a certain truth in this: children often call something “bad” or “good” only because adults say so, and not because they themselves understand it. But it seems to me that there are simple moral concepts that the child perceives very early: “I am loved,” “I love,” “I am glad,” “I am scared,” “I feel good,” and the child perceives them not as some moral categories, but simply as a feeling. Just as he perceives the sensation “I’m cold,” “I’m warm.” But it is precisely from these sensations and concepts that moral life gradually develops. I recently read with interest an article in an American scientific journal about the first manifestation of emotions and feelings in infants. Research on this topic was conducted in the laboratories of the National Institute of Mental Health. Their authors led to the conclusion that an infant is capable of emotionally empathizing with the sensations and feelings of another from the very beginning. early years life. The baby reacts when someone cries in pain or distress, and reacts when others quarrel or fight.

I remember an incident from my interactions with children. A three-year-old boy, playing in the house, stuck his head between the balusters of a staircase railing and turned it so that he could not pull it out. Frightened, the boy began to scream loudly, but the adults did not immediately hear him. When the grandmother finally ran up and freed the boy’s head, she found his two-year-old sister there: the girl was sitting next to her brother, crying loudly and stroking his back. She sympathized: she could not do anything else. Wasn't this a sign of true love? And what a big role brotherly and sisterly love plays in life later.

Nurturing the ability to love lies in developing in children the ability to sympathize, suffer, and even rejoice with others. First of all, this is brought up by the example of surrounding adults. Children see when adults notice each other's fatigue, headaches, poor health, old age's infirmities, and how they try to help. Children unconsciously absorb these examples of empathy and imitate them. In this development of the ability to sympathize, caring for domestic animals is very useful: a dog, a cat, a bird, a fish. All this teaches children to be attentive to the needs of another being, to care for others, and to have a sense of responsibility. The family tradition of gifts is also useful in this development: not only receiving gifts for the holidays, but also preparing gifts that children give to other family members.

In the process of nurturing love, the family environment is very important, because in this world there live several people of different ages, at different stages of development, different characters, in different relationships with each other, with different responsibilities for each other. In a good family, good relationships are created between people, and in this atmosphere of benevolence, the yet undiscovered spiritual powers of a person come into action. Vladyka Sergius, whom I mentioned earlier, said that from loneliness a person almost always becomes poor, he is, as it were, cut off from the general life of the whole organism and dries up in this “selfhood”...

Unfortunately, in family life there is also a distortion of love. Parental love sometimes turns into a desire to possess children. They love children and want the children to belong completely to them, but any growth, any development is always a gradual liberation, a search for their own path. From the moment of leaving the mother's womb, the development of a child is always a process of emerging from a state of dependence and moving step by step into greater independence. Growing up, the child begins to make friends with other children, leaves the closed circle of the family, begins to think and reason in his own way... And the final stage of his development is leaving his parents and creating his own, independent family. Happy are those families in which the love that binds all its members becomes mature, responsible, and unselfish. And there are parents who experience their children’s growing independence as a violation of love. While children are small, they take exaggerated care of them, protect the child from all sorts of real and imaginary dangers, are afraid of all outside influences, and when children grow up and begin to look for the love that will lead them to creating their own family, such parents have a hard time experiencing this as some kind of betrayal to them.

Family life is a school of love for children, spouses, and parents. Love is work, and you have to fight for the ability to love. In our family life, we have to react every day in one way or another to everything that happens, and we open up to each other as we are, and not just as we show ourselves to be. In family life, our sins, all our shortcomings, are revealed, and this helps us fight them.

To teach our children to love, we ourselves must learn to truly love. The Apostle Paul gives an amazingly deep description of true love in his Epistle to the Corinthians: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am like sounding brass... If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries, and have all knowledge and all faith, so that I could move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing..." (1 Cor 13:1-2).

The Apostle Paul speaks about the properties of love, about what love is: “Love is patient, is kind, love does not envy, love does not boast, is not proud, does not act rudely, does not seek its own, is not easily provoked, thinks no evil, does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things..." (1 Cor 13:4-5).

It seems to me that our main task is to work to apply these definitions, these properties of love to every little detail of our everyday family life, to how we teach, how we raise, punish, forgive our children and how we treat each other. to a friend.

On obedience and freedom in raising children

How often do we hear the word “obedience” in conversations about raising children? People of the old generation often say that our children are disobedient, that they are poorly brought up because they do not obey, that punishments are needed for disobedience, that obedience is the basis of all education.

At the same time, we know from experience that abilities and talents are not developed through obedience, that all growth, both mental and physical, is associated with a certain freedom, with the opportunity to try one’s strengths, explore the unknown, and look for one’s own paths. And the most wonderful and good people They are not at all the most obedient children.

No matter how difficult this question is, parents have to solve it, they have to determine the measure of obedience and freedom in raising their children. It is not without reason that it is said that it is not given to a person not to decide. Whatever we do, no matter how we act, there is always a decision in one direction or another.

It seems to me that in order to understand the issue of obedience and freedom in raising children, you need to think for yourself what the meaning of obedience is, what its purpose is, what it serves, in what area it is applicable. And we also need to understand what freedom means in the development of a human being.

Obedience in early childhood is, firstly, a measure of safety. It is necessary for a small child to learn to obey when they say “Don’t touch me!” or "Stop!" and every mother, without hesitation, will force a small child to such obedience in order to avoid trouble. A person learns to limit his will from early childhood. For example, a baby sits in his high chair and drops the spoon on the floor. So funny! What a noise! Mother or grandmother raises the spoon. The baby soon abandons her again. This is his creative act: he made this wonderful noise! And every reasonable adult will understand this joy of creativity and let him drop the spoon again and again. But the moment will come when an adult will get tired of raising it, and he will remove it, take away this object of infantile creativity. Scream! Roar! But in this and in hundreds of similar cases, the baby understands that his will is limited by the will of others, that he is not omnipotent. And this is very important.

Obedience is necessary. Without obedience to known rules, neither a peaceful family life nor any social structure, neither state nor church life. But in obedience there must be a certain hierarchy, gradualness: who should be obeyed, whose authority is higher. Moral education consists precisely in developing in a child the ability to consciously subordinate himself - not to violence, but to freely recognized authority, in the end, to his faith, his convictions. The ability to recognize a higher authority is given only by education aimed at freedom, that is, education of freedom of choice, education of the ability to decide for yourself: “This is good!” is that bad!" and “I will do this because it will be good!”

I remember how struck I was by the incident with a boy of four or five years old. His parents were expecting guests, and a table with refreshments was set in the dining room. Through the slightly open door, I saw how the boy, standing alone in the room, several times extended his hand to take something tasty from the table and each time pulled it back. There were no adults there. Knowing his parents, I was sure that he would not face any punishment if he took anything, but it seemed to him that there was no need to take it, and he never took it.

We parents need to work hard to teach our children to obey. known rules. But we need to work even more to develop in children the ability to understand which rules are the most important, who and what they need to obey. And children learn this best from the example of their parents. You must obey not because “I want it so!” but because “It’s necessary!” and the binding nature of such rules is recognized by parents and for themselves. They themselves act one way or another: “Because it’s necessary,” “Because God commanded it!” "Because it's my duty!"

The scope defined by obedience and punishments for disobedience is very limited. This is the sphere of external actions: not putting something back in its place, taking a forbidden thing, starting to watch TV when homework is not prepared, etc. And punishment should be a consequence of breaking the rules - immediate, quick and, of course, fair. But obedience does not apply to the tastes and feelings of children. You cannot demand that children like the book or program that their parents like, so that they are happy or sad at the parents’ request; you cannot be angry with children when what parents find touching seems funny to them.

How to educate children with this moral taste? It seems to me that this is given only by example, only by the experience of living in a family, by the image and behavior of loved ones surrounding the child. I remember how my son, then a healthy thirteen-year-old boy, once helped an old American woman, our neighbor, drag a heavy suitcase to the top floor. In gratitude for this, she wanted to give him a dollar and then laughingly told me how seriously he refused to accept the money, saying: “This is not accepted among us Russians!” - Oh, how children absorb both the good and the bad, which is “not accepted” in the family.

Every time I am amazed by the story of the Evangelist Luke about the twelve-year-old boy Jesus (Luke 2:42-52). His parents went with Him to Jerusalem for the feast. At the end of the holiday, they returned home, not noticing that Jesus Christ remained in Jerusalem - they thought that He was going with others. They searched for Him for three days and finally found Him talking with the disciples in the temple. His Mother said to Him: “Son! What have You done to us? Behold, Your Father and I have been looking for You with great sorrow.” And Jesus Christ answered: “Or did you not know that I must be concerned with the things that belong to My Father?”

Obedience to the Heavenly Father was higher than obedience to earthly parents. And in addition to this are the words immediately following this in the Gospel: “He went with them and came to Nazareth, and was in subjection to them... and increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men.”

These few words contain the deepest meaning of human upbringing.

About parental authority and friendship with children

As they often say these days about the crisis that a family is going through in modern society. We all complain about the collapse of the family, about the decline in the authority of our parents. Parents complain about their children’s disobedience and their disrespect for their elders. In truth, the same complaints and conversations have existed in all centuries, in all countries... And St. John Chrysostom, the great preacher of the 4th century, repeats the same thoughts in his sermons.

It seems to me that in our time another circumstance has been added to this eternal problem, especially affecting religious parents. This is a conflict between the authority of believing parents and the authority of the school, state, and society. In the Western world we see a conflict between the moral beliefs of religious parents and the non-religious, I would say utilitarian, attitude towards moral life, which dominates in school and in modern society. The conflict between the authority of parents and the influence of their peers, the so-called, is also very strong. youth culture.

In the conditions of life in the former Soviet Union, the conflict between the authority of religious parents and the authority of the school and state was even more acute. From the very first years of life, a child - in a nursery, in kindergarten, at school - words, concepts, feelings, images were instilled that denied the very foundations of a religious understanding of life. These anti-religious concepts and images were closely intertwined with the process schooling, with trust and respect for teachers, with the desire of parents for their children to study well, with the desire of children to achieve success in school. I remember how one story struck me. A little girl told the kindergarten that she was with her grandmother in church. Hearing this, the teacher gathered all the children and began to explain to them how stupid and shameful it was for a Soviet girl to go to church. The teacher invited the children to express their condemnation to their friend. The girl listened and listened and finally said: “Silly, but I wasn’t in the church, but in the circus!” In fact, the girl was with her grandmother in church;

and to what sophisticated cunning the conflict between the authority of the family and the authority of the school reduced a five-year-old child.

And parents often face a terrible question: isn’t it better to give up their authority, isn’t it better not to burden the minds of their children with such a conflict? It seems to me that we, parents, need to deeply think through the question: “What is the very essence of parental authority?”

What is authority? The dictionary defines it as "generally accepted opinion," but it seems to me that the meaning of this concept is much deeper. Authority is a source of moral strength that you turn to in cases of uncertainty, hesitation, when you don’t know what decision to make.

Authority is a person, an author, a book, a tradition, it is like evidence or proof of truth. We believe something because we trust the person who tells it to us. Not knowing how to get somewhere, we ask for directions from a person who knows the way and whom we trust in this regard. The presence in a child’s life of such a trusted person is necessary for normal child development. Parental authority guides the child through all the seeming chaos, all the incomprehensibility of the new world around him. The daily routine, when to get up, when to go to bed, how to wash, dress, sit at the table, how to greet, say goodbye, how to ask for something, how to thank - all this is determined and supported by the authority of parents, all this creates that stable world in which a small person can grow and develop calmly. When a child’s moral consciousness develops, the authority of the parents sets the boundaries between what is “bad” and what is “good,” between random impulses, random “And I want!” and sober “Now you can’t!” or "That's how it should be!"

For the happy and healthy development of a child in a family environment, there must be room for freedom, for creativity, but the child needs, and experience of reasonable limitation of this freedom.

The child grows, develops morally, and the concept of authority also takes on a fuller and deeper meaning. The authority of parents will remain effective for teenagers only if they feel that in the lives of their parents there is an unshakable authority - their beliefs, convictions, their moral rules. If a child feels and sees that parents are honest, responsible, truly true to truth, duty, love in their daily life, he will maintain trust and respect for parental authority, even if this authority is in conflict with authority environment. An example of their sincere obedience to the Higher Authority they recognize, that is, their faith, is the most important thing that parents can give to their children.

But the conflict of authorities has always been and always will be. During the days of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, when the Jewish people experienced their submission to Roman power with such bitterness, Jesus Christ was once asked, “Is it permissible to give tribute to Caesar?” that is, to the Roman emperor, “He said, Why are you tempting Me? Bring Me a denarius, so that I may see it. They brought it. Then He said to them, Whose image and inscription is this? They said to Him, Caesar’s. Jesus answered and said to them, Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. A God's God"(Mark 12:15-17).

This answer of Jesus Christ remains an eternal and valid indication of how we should define the boundaries between our duties to the society in which we live and our duty to God.

It is necessary for us, parents, to always remember the other side of parental authority - friendship with children. We can influence our children only if we have live communication with them, live connection, that is, friendship. Friendship is the ability to understand a friend, the ability to see a child as he is, the ability to sympathize, have compassion, and share both joy and sorrow. How often do parents sin by seeing their child not as he is, but as they want him to be. Friendship with children begins from their earliest childhood, and without such friendship, parental authority remains superficial, without roots, remains only “power.” We know examples of deeply religious, very outstanding people whose children never “entered the faith of their parents” precisely because neither the father nor the mother were able to establish sincere friendship with the children.

We cannot impose “feelings” on our children using our parental authority.

We, parents, have been given the responsibility by God to be educators of our children. We do not have the right to refuse this responsibility, to refuse to bear the burden of parental authority. This responsibility includes the ability to see and love our children as they are, to understand the conditions in which they live, to be able to distinguish what is “Caesarean” from what is “God,” to let them experience good order in family life and the meaning of rules. The main thing is to be faithful to the Highest Authority in our lives, in Whom we profess faith.

Children's independence

Usually, when it comes to raising our children, we are most concerned about how to teach them to be obedient. An obedient child is good, a disobedient child is bad. Of course, this concern is quite justified. Obedience protects our children from many dangers. A child does not know life, does not understand much of what is happening around us, cannot think for himself and intelligently decide what can be done and what cannot be done. A certain amount of training is necessary for his own safety.

As children grow, the simple requirement of obedience is replaced by a more conscious, more independent obedience to the authority of parents, educators, and older comrades.

The moral education of children consists precisely in such gradual development or, rather, rebirth.

Schematically, this process can be imagined as follows: first, a small child learns from experience what it means to obey, what it means “you can” and what it means “you can’t.” Then the child begins to have questions: who should you obey and who should you not obey? And finally, the child himself begins to understand what is bad and what is good and what he will obey.

All of us, parents, should strive to protect our children from the real dangers that exist in our society. The child should know that one cannot always obey adults unknown to him, accept treats from them, or leave with them. We teach him this and thus we ourselves place on him the responsibility for making an independent decision - who he should obey and who he should not. Over the years, the conflict between authorities becomes stronger and stronger. Who should you obey - your comrades who teach you to smoke and drink, or your parents who forbid it, but who themselves smoke and drink? Who should you listen to - believing parents or a teacher respected by children who says that there is no God, that only gray, backward people go to church? But don’t we sometimes hear about the opposite conflict of authorities, when children of convinced communists, brought up in atheism, growing up, encounter manifestations of religious faith and begin to be irresistibly drawn to a spiritual world still unknown to them?

How can one practically make the transition from “blind” obedience to obedience to self-recognized authority?

It seems to me that from early childhood it is necessary to distinguish between two areas in a child’s life. One is the sphere of mandatory rules of behavior that do not depend on the desires or moods of the child: you need to brush your teeth, take medicine, say “thank you” or “please.” Another area is everything in which a child can show his tastes, his desires, his creativity. And parents should ensure that this area is given enough freedom and attention. If a child draws or paints, let him give full rein to his imagination and there is no need to tell him “that there are no blue hares,” as Leo Tolstoy recalls in “Childhood and Adolescence.” It is necessary to encourage in every possible way the development of children's imagination in their games, to provide them with the opportunity to carry out their own ideas and projects, which are not always successful from an adult point of view. We need to encourage their ability to choose between several decisions, listen to their opinions, discuss them, and not just ignore them. And we must try to understand their tastes. Oh, how difficult it can be for a mother to put up with unexpected fantasies when it comes to her teenage daughter’s hairstyle, clothes, or even makeup. But we must remember that these are the girl’s first attempts to find herself, to “find her image,” her style, and one cannot help but sympathize with this desire to “spread her wings.”

We want our children to grow up kind and responsive, but neither kindness nor responsiveness develops by order. You can try to evoke the ability to sympathize by involving children in caring for animals, preparing gifts, or helping a sick or old family member. And this will be sincere only if we provide children with greater independence, if we let them think for themselves, decide for themselves what they want to do. We need them to see around them an example of caring for others, empathy for other people, and at the same time we need to involve children in thinking and discussing what they want to do. That is why we need to devote both time and attention to conversations with children, always remembering that conversation is a dialogue, not a monologue. We must be able to listen to our children, and not just lecture them. We must call them to think, to “judgment:” “What do you think?” “Yes, but you can also say...” “Or maybe that’s not entirely true?”

Such conversations are especially important in the area of ​​our faith. Recently I read in a book a saying that I really liked: “Faith is given only by the experience of faith.” But experience is your personal, direct, independent experience. The development of such real independence of spiritual life is the goal of Christian education. Maybe the goal is unattainable? None of us parents can be

confident that we will be able to provide such an education. I have always been supported by the encouraging words of Nikolai Gumilyov’s wonderful poem:

There is God, there is peace, they live forever,

But people's lives are instantaneous and miserable.

But a person contains everything within himself,

Who loves the world and believes in God.

Today, a serious problem is the question of what a Christian family and marriage is. Now this concept is quite difficult to comprehend in parish life. I see so many young people who are disoriented in what they want to see in their family. In their heads there are a lot of cliches of relationships between a boy and a girl, which they focus on.

It is very difficult for modern young people to find each other and start a family. Everyone looks at each other from a distorted angle: some have gained their knowledge from Domostroy, others from the television program Dom-2. And everyone in their own way tries to correspond to what they read or see, while refusing own experience. The young people who make up the parish very often look around them to find a mate who might suit their ideas of family; How not to make a mistake - after all, an Orthodox family should be exactly like that. This is a very big psychological problem.

The second thing that adds a degree to this psychological problem: separation of concepts - what is the nature of the family, and what is its meaning and purpose. I recently read in a sermon that the purpose of a Christian family is procreation. But this is wrong and, unfortunately, has become an undiscussed cliche. After all, the Muslim, Buddhist, and any other family have the same goal. Procreation is the nature of the family, but not the goal. It is laid by God in the relationship between husband and wife. When the Lord created Eve, He said that it was not good for man to be alone. And I didn’t mean just childbearing.

First declaration of love

In the Bible we see a Christian image of love and marriage.

Here we meet the first declaration of love: Adam says to Eve: bone of my bones and flesh of flesh. Think about how wonderful this sounds.

In the wedding rite itself, it first speaks of helping each other, and then only the perception of the human race: “Holy God, who created man from the dust, and from his rib formed a wife, and combined with him an assistant suitable for him, for it was so pleasing to Your Majesty, so that man may not be alone on earth.” And therefore having many children is not the goal either. If a family is given the following task: it is imperative to reproduce and reproduce, then a distortion of marriage may occur. Families are not rubber, people are not endless, everyone has their own resource. It is impossible to set such a colossal task for the Church to solve the demographic issues of the state. The Church has other tasks.

Any ideology that is introduced into the family, into the Church, is terribly destructive. She always narrows it down to some sectarian ideas.

Family – small Church

Helping a family become a small Church is our main task.

And in modern world the word about the family as a small Church should sound loudly. The purpose of marriage is the embodiment of Christian love. This is a place where a person is truly and completely present. And he realizes himself as a Christian in his sacrificial attitude to each other. The fifth chapter of the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians, which is read at the Wedding, contains the image of the Christian family that we focus on.

U o. Vladimir Vorobyov has a wonderful idea: the family has its beginning on earth and has its eternal continuation in the Kingdom of Heaven. This is what a family is created for. So that two, having become a single being, transfer this unity to eternity. Both the small Church and the Heavenly Church became one.

Family is an expression of the anthropologically inherent churchliness in a person. In it the fulfillment of the Church, implanted by God in man, is realized. Overcoming, building oneself in the image and likeness of God is a very serious spiritual ascetic path. We need to talk a lot and seriously about this with our parish, with young men and women, with each other.

And reducing the family to stereotypes must be destroyed. And I believe that the large family- This is good. But everyone can do it. And it should not be carried out either by spiritual leadership or by any council decisions. Procreation is exclusively the fulfillment of Love. Children, marital relationships are what fill the family with love and replenish it as a kind of impoverishment.

Marriage is a relationship of love and freedom.

When we talk about intimate relationships in a family, many difficult issues arise. The monastic charter by which our Church lives does not imply discussion on this topic. Nevertheless, this question exists, and we cannot escape it.

The implementation of marital relations is a matter of personal and internal freedom of each spouse.

It would be strange, because the spouses take communion during the Wedding Rite, to deprive them of their wedding night. And some priests even say that spouses should not receive communion on this day, because they have a wedding night ahead of them. But what about those spouses who pray to conceive a child: so that he is conceived with God’s blessing, should they also not receive communion? Why is the question raised about the acceptance of the Holy Mysteries of Christ - God Incarnate - into our human nature with a certain impurity in the relationship consecrated by the Wedding? After all, it is written: the bed is not bad? When the Lord visited the wedding in Canna of Galilee, He, on the contrary, added wine.

Here the question of consciousness arises, which reduces all relationships to some kind of animal relationship.

The marriage is celebrated and is considered undefiled! The same John Chrysostom, who said that monasticism is higher than marriage, also says that spouses remain chaste even after they rise from the marital bed. But this is only if their marriage is honest, if they take care of it.

Therefore, marital relations are relations of human love and freedom. But it also happens, and other priests can confirm this, that any excessive asceticism can be the cause of marital quarrels and even the breakdown of a marriage.

Love in marriage

People marry not because they are animals, but because they love each other. But not much has been said about love in marriage throughout the history of Christianity. Even in fiction The problem of love in marriage was first raised only in the 19th century. And it was never discussed in any theological treatises. Even in seminary textbooks it is not said anywhere that people who create a family must love each other.

Love is the basis for creating a family. Every parish priest should be concerned about this. So that people who are going to get married set themselves the goal of truly loving, preserving and multiplying, making it that Royal Love that leads a person to Salvation. There can be nothing else in marriage. This is not just a household structure, where the woman is the reproductive element, and the man earns his bread and has a little free time to have fun. Although now this is exactly what happens most often.

The Church must protect marriage

And only the Church is now still able to say how to create and maintain a family. There are a lot of enterprises that make it possible to enter into and dissolve marriages, and they talk about it.

Previously, the Church was indeed the body that took upon itself the responsibility of a legal marriage and at the same time carried out the church blessing. And now the concept of legal marriage is becoming more and more blurred. Ultimately, legal marriage will be diluted to the last limit. Many people do not understand how a legal marriage differs from a civil marriage. Some priests also confuse these concepts. People do not understand the meaning of getting married in state institutions and say that they would rather get married in order to stand before God, but in the registry office - what? In general, they can be understood. If they love each other, then they do not need a certificate, some kind of formal certificate of love.

On the other hand, the Church has the right to enter into only those marriages that are concluded in the registry office, and here a strange thing happens. As a result, some priests say strange words: “You sign, live a little, a year. If you don’t get divorced, then come get married.” Lord have mercy! What if they get divorced because there was no marriage? That is, such marriages do not seem to be considered, as if they did not exist, and those that the Church has married are for life...

It is impossible to live with such a consciousness. If we accept such a consciousness, then any church marriage will also fall apart, because there are reasons for the dissolution of a church marriage. If you treat state marriage in this way, that it is such a “bad marriage,” then the number of divorces will only increase. A married and an unmarried marriage have the same nature, the consequences of divorce are the same everywhere. When the strange idea is allowed that one can live before the wedding, then what will our marriage itself be like? What then do we mean by indissolubility, by “two - one flesh”? What God has joined together, man does not separate. After all, God unites people not only through the Church. People who meet each other on earth - truly, deeply - they are still fulfilling the God-given nature of marriage.

Only outside the Church they do not receive that grace-filled power that transforms their love. Marriage receives the power of grace not only because it is married in the Church by a priest, but also because people take communion together and live together the same church life.

Many people do not see the essence of marriage behind the wedding ceremony. Marriage is a union that was created by God in heaven. This is the mystery of paradise, heavenly life, the mystery of human nature itself.

Here there is a huge confusion and psychological obstacles for people who are looking for a groom or a bride in Orthodox youth clubs, because as long as there is an Orthodox with an Orthodox, and there is no other way.

Preparing for marriage

The Church needs to prepare for marriage those people who do not come from within the church community. Those who could now come to the Church through marriage. Now a huge number of unchurched people want real family, real marriage. And they know that the registry office will not give anything, that the truth is given in the Church.

And here they are told: get a certificate, pay, come on Sunday at 12. The choir is for a separate fee, the chandelier is for a separate fee.

Before a wedding, people must go through a serious preparatory period - and prepare for at least several months. This should be absolutely clear. It would be good to make a decision at the Synodal level: since the Church is responsible for the indissolubility of marriage, it allows it only between those who regularly came to the Temple for six months, confessed and received communion, and listened to the priest’s conversations.

At the same time, civil registration in this sense recedes into the background, because when modern conditions it makes it possible to secure some property rights. But the Church is not responsible for this. She must comply with very clear conditions on the basis of which such a Sacrament is performed.

Otherwise, of course, these problems with debunked marriages will only grow.

Answers on questions

When a person understands that he is personally responsible for every thought, every word, for every action, then the person begins to real life

– What are you doing in your parish to restore the value of marriage?

Marriage is a value of the Church itself. The task of a priest is to help a person acquire these values. Young people today are often disoriented about what marriage is all about.

When a person begins to live church life and partake of the Sacraments, everything immediately falls into place. Christ and we are next to Him. Then everything will be correct, there are no special tricks, there shouldn’t be any. When people try to invent some special techniques, it becomes very dangerous.

– What solutions exist to solve this problem? What advice do you have for young people?

– First of all, take your time and calm down. Trust God. After all, most often people do not know how to do this.

Free yourself from cliches and ideas that everything can be done in some special way, the so-called recipes for happiness. They exist in the minds of many Orthodox parishioners. Allegedly, in order to become such and such, you need to do this and that - go to the elder, for example, read forty akathists or take communion forty times in a row.

You need to understand that there are no recipes for happiness. There is personal responsibility for one's own own life, and this is the most important thing. When a person understands that he is personally responsible for his every word, for his every step, for his action, then, it seems to me, a person’s real life will begin.

And give up what is unnecessary: ​​external, far-fetched, what replaces a person’s inner world. The modern Christian church world now strongly gravitates towards frozen forms of piety, without comprehending their usefulness and fruitfulness. It focuses only on the form itself, and not on how correct and effective it is for a person’s spiritual life. And it is perceived only as a certain model of relationships.

And the Church is a living organism. Any model is good only insofar as it is. There are only some direction vectors, and a person has to go himself. And trust in external form, which supposedly will lead you to salvation, is not worth it.

Half

– Does every person have their own half?

– The Lord created man in this way, removing a part from him to create the second half. It was the Divine act that made man incomplete without union with another. Accordingly, a person therefore looks for another. And it is fulfilled in the Mystery of Marriage. And this replenishment occurs either in family life or in monasticism.

– Are they born with halves? Or do they become halves after the wedding?

– I don’t think that people are created this way: as if there are two such people who need to find each other. And if they don’t find each other, they will be inferior. It would be strange to think that there is only one and only one who was sent to you by God, and all the others must pass by. I don't think so. Human nature itself is such that it can be transformed, and relationships themselves can also be transformed.

People look for another precisely as a man and a woman, and not at all as two specific individuals who exist in the world. In this sense, a person has quite a lot of choices. Everyone is suitable and unsuitable for each other at the same time. On the one hand, human nature is distorted by sin, and on the other, human nature has such enormous power that by the grace of God, the Lord creates children for himself even from stones.

Sometimes people who grow hard on each other suddenly become so indivisible, unity in God and with each other’s efforts, if desired, with enormous work. And it happens that everything seems to be fine with people, but they don’t want to deal with each other, to save each other. Then the most ideal unity can fall apart.

– Some people are looking for and waiting for some internal signal that this is your person, and only after such a feeling are they ready to accept and stay with the person whom God has placed in front of them.

– It is difficult to fully trust such a feeling, on the one hand. On the other hand, you can’t help but trust him absolutely. This is a Mystery, it will always remain a Mystery for a person: The Mystery of his mental anguish, heartache, his anxiety and his happiness, joy. No one has an answer to this question.

Prepared by Nadezhda Antonova