Children and Ecclesiastical Life (Fr. Alexander Schmemann)

 

By Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann 

As a general rule, children like attending Church, and this instinctive attraction to and interest in Church services is the foundation on which we must build our religious education. When parents worry that children will get tired because services are long and are sorry for them, they usually subconsciously express their concern not for their children but for themselves. Children penetrate more easily than do adults into the world of ritual, of liturgical symbolism. They feel and appreciate the atmosphere of our Church services. The experience of Holiness, the sense of encounter with Someone Who is beyond daily life, that mysterium tremendum that is at the root of all religion and is the core of our services is more accessible to our children than it is to us. "Except ye become as little children," these words apply to the receptivity, the open-mindedness, the naturalness, which we lose when we grow out of childhood. How many men have devoted their lives to the service of God and consecrated themselves to the Church because from childhood they have kept their love for the house of worship and the joy of liturgical experience! Therefore, the first duty of parents and educators is to "suffer little children and forbid them not" (Matt. 19:14) to attend Church. It is in Church before every place else that children must hear the word of God. In a classroom the word is difficult to understand, it remains abstract, but in Church it is in its own element. In childhood we have the capacity to understand, not intellectually, but with our whole being, that there is no greater joy on earth than to be in Church, to participate in Church services, to breathe the fragrance of the Kingdom of Heaven, which is "the joy and peace of the Holy Spirit."

A Prayer to the Panagia by Saint Ephraim of Katounakia for a Group of Children That Visited Him in 1993

Our sweet Mother, to these little children now that they have come to your fold, 

open your protective covering and bless them so that they may become chosen vessels, 

so that the Holy Spirit may rest in their souls, within their souls.

Our Panagia, our sweet Mother, our consolation, our strength, our illumination, 

help them to become heirs of those indescribable good things, 

for you are blessed unto the boundless ages of ages.

Source: From the book The Holy Mountain by Metropolitan Nektarios Antonopoulos of Argolis. Translated by John Sanidopoulos. 

Speech Given to Students of the Newly Opened Free of Charge Sunday School (St. John of Kronstadt)

Speech Given to Students of the Newly Opened Free of Charge Sunday School

By St. John of Kronstadt

My friends! A Sunday School has been opened for you today, with God's blessing, for free: and the books in it are ready for you and everything you need for studying. It is called a Sunday School because you will come to it on Sundays, and on other feasts of the Lord, and of the Mother of God.

Do not think that it is a sin to go to school on feast days. No, it is not sinful, but soul-saving. Rather than sitting at home, or doing something idle, or wandering the streets, it is better, without a doubt, to occupy yourself with study for an hour or two. Learning is light, which means that it is a good deed, and when is the time for a good deed, if not on a feast day? On a feast day you do not work, according to the fourth commandment of the Lord; according to that commandment, one must work six days a week, if there is no feast day, and on the seventh, that is, on Sunday, one must go to church – to pray to the Lord, our Creator, to venerate His most pure Body and Blood at the Liturgy, to listen to the word of God, to remember God's mercy to us, and to think about eternal life. For all of us, brethren, will be resurrected in due time for another, never-ending life in heaven. This is a very important matter, and that is why, among other things, the no work day of Sunday is given to us, that is why we must certainly go to church on Sundays, so that, having venerated Christ's resurrection, we may remember our own resurrection from the dead, in order to prepare our souls for a joyful, and not a sorrowful resurrection.

When Saint Panteleimon Talks To One of Your Students

By Vasilis Frangos

Lately I have often been talking with D. who is in his first year of High School. He tells me that he likes History very much and is looking for the lives of various heroes in Byzantium. We were talking a lot about them yesterday. Yesterday, however, he told me that he was reading the lives of Saints, such as Saint Nicholas Planas, who was celebrating, and a Neomartyr, unknown to me. We used to say that the Saints are always by our side, when we talk about them and read their lives.

At that moment he spontaneously tells me that he especially loves Saint Panteleimon. To my question why him in particular, he replied that the Saint was a doctor and he would like to become a doctor himself. But the most shocking thing I heard at the end: he told me that he once saw Saint Panteleimon himself in his dream saying to him:

Saint Sophrony and the Children That Visited Him

Father Paisios the Mathematician was a direct disciple of Saint Paisios the Athonite and the spiritual father of the female Monastery of Saint Hilarion near the village of Promachoi in the Municipality of Aridaia. One of his neighbors was a little girl named Chryse, and according to him she once went to visit Saint Sophrony with her mother. The Saint had never met them before, but as soon as he saw Chryse he welcomed her by name, saying: "Welcome Chrysoula! I knew a little girl would come from Greece!" And when the girl's mother asked the Saint to bless the child, he said: "Why should I bless her! I wish where this child will go, I will go too!" Shortly after this meeting and the photo taken above, Chryse passed away.