Children and the Church

"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.'

The New Ideal in Education

AN ADDRESS GIVEN BEFORE THE LEAGUE OF THE EMPIRE

On July 16th, 1916 by Fr Nikolai Velimirovich, Ph.D.

(Now St Nikolai Velimirovich - Canonised 2003)

"Nature takes sufficient care
of our individualistic sense,
leaving to Education the care
of our panhumanistic sense."

"Ladies and Gentlemen,

If we do not want war we must look to the children. There is the only hope and the only wise starting point. It is not without a deep prophetic significance that Christ asked children to come unto Him. In all the world-calamities, in all wars, strifes, religious inquisitions and persecutions, in all the hours of human misery and helplessness, He has been asking, through centuries, the children to come unto Him. I am sure, if anybody has ears for His voice to-day, amidst the thunderings of guns and passions and revenges, one would hear the same call: Let the children come unto Me!—Not kings and politicians, not journalists and generals, not the grown-up people, but children. And so to-day also, when we ask for a way out of the present world-misery, when we in profundis of darkness to-day ask for light, and in sorrow for to-morrow ask for advice and comfort, we must look to the children and Christ. 

The Semantron

My favorite instrument used to call Christians to prayer is the semantron or talanton.  I never thought hitting a piece of wood could be so beautiful.  Listen to it here.  You can also buy a great children's book, which includes a CD, here.  With an audio file you can even program the semantron to sound for the hours on your laptop or cellular phone.

We are Mysteries to Ourselves

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life's star,

Hath had elsewhere in its setting,

And cometh from afar;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But in trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lines about us in our infancy!

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie

Thy soul's immensity;

Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep

Thy heritage; thou eye among the blind,

That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal deep,

Haunted for ever by the eternal mind

Mighty Prophet! Seer blest!

On whom those truths do rest..."