Youth and the Church: Who Is To Blame?

By Archimandrite Porphyrios, 

Abbot of the Holy Forerunner in Veria

Just a short while ago, I read another article on a topic that interests many. A respected monk from Mount Athos, who has now passed away, analyzes the subject: Youth and the Church.

Specifically, who or what is to blame for young people not attending Church?

I do not believe that young people do not go to Church. They do, and quite frequently. However, young people have certain expectations, and they express them more intensely than those who have since become set in their ways and indifferent. But that is a discussion for another time.

The text that will follow has been contemplated countless times, and, to tell the truth, each time I was about to write it, I was seized by an indistinct fear. Fear, because what you are about to read is not easily spoken.

A long and severe labor. And behold, now, the outcome. And since we are in Lent, in its second half, on the downward slope, which is also the more difficult part, I ask in advance for the sympathy of our readers.

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.