During Lent, we more often turn to the spiritual side of our earthly existence. Several years ago, a small church brochure, “The Prayer Book of an Orthodox Mother,” came into my hands. I wrote out several prayers from it. I offer them to you, my good friends. When, if not during Lent, should we pray for the souls of our dear children, and for our own sinful souls. Address your most secret requests to our Lord. Let's pray, Orthodox Christians!

A mother's prayer to Jesus Christ for the well-being of her children

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, prayers for the sake of Your Most Pure Mother, hear me, unworthy of a servant (name).

Lord, in Your merciful power are my children, Your servants (names). Have mercy and save them, for Thy name's sake.

Lord, forgive them all the sins, voluntary and involuntary, that they committed before You.

Lord, guide them on the true path of Your commandments and enlighten their minds with the light of Christ for the salvation of the soul and the healing of the body.
Lord, bless them at home and at school, on the road and in every place of Your dominion.

Lord, protect them under Your holy shelter from a flying bullet, poison, fire, from a deadly ulcer and vain death.

Lord, protect them from all visible and invisible enemies, from all illness, cleanse them from all filth and ease their mental suffering.

Lord, grant them the grace of Your Holy Spirit for many years of life, health, chastity.

Lord, increase and strengthen their mental abilities and physical strength, which You have given them, Your blessing for a pious and, if You wish, family life and shameless childbearing.

Lord, grant to me, Thy unworthy and sinful servant (name), a parental blessing on my children and Thy servant at this time of morning, day, night for the sake of Thy name, for Thy Kingdom is eternal, omnipotent and omnipotent. Amen.

Prayer to protect children from evil spirits

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, protect my child (name) with your holy angels and prayers, our all-pure Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary; by the power of the honorable cross; Saint Michael the Archangel of God and other disembodied heavenly powers; Holy Prophet and Forerunner of the Baptist of the Lord John the Theologian; Hieromartyr Cyprian and Martyr Justina; St. Nicholas, Archbishop of Myra in Lycia, wonderworker; Saint Leo, Bishop of Catania; Saint Joseph of Belgorod; Saint Mitrophan of Voronezh; St. Sergius, Hegumen of Radonezh; St. Seraphim of Sarov, wonderworker; holy martyrs Faith, Nadezhda, Lyubov and their mother Sophia; Saints and righteous Godfather Joachim and Anna and all your saints, help me, deliver my child (name) from all the slander of the enemy, from all evil, witchcraft, sorcery, sorcery and from crafty people, so that they may not be able to cause him any harm.

Lord, with the light of your radiance, save my child (name) in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, in the coming sleep, and by the power of your grace, turn away and remove all evil wickedness, acting at the instigation of the devil. Whoever thought and did - return their evil back to the underworld, for yours is the kingdom and power and glory of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Prayer for children's birthdays

Lord God, Master of everything visible and invisible! All the days and years of the life of my child (name) depend on Your holy will. I thank You, Most Merciful Father, for allowing him to live another year. Extend Your mercies to my child (name), prolong his life in good deeds and in peace with all his relatives and in harmony with all his neighbors. Give him plenty of the fruits of the earth and everything that is necessary to satisfy his needs. Especially cleanse his conscience, strengthen him on the path of salvation, so that by walking along it, after a long life in this world, passing into eternal life, he may be worthy to be the heir of Your Heavenly Kingdom. Lord Himself, bless the year that begins and all the days of its life. Amen.

About the welfare of children in society, about a good position
Prayer to Saint Mitrofan of Voronezh

Oh, all-praiseworthy saint of Christ and miracle worker Mitrofan. Accept this small prayer from us sinners to you, and with your warm intercession, beg our Lord and God, Jesus Christ, that having looked upon us mercifully, He will grant us forgiveness of our sins, voluntary and involuntary, and, by His great Mercy, will deliver us from troubles and sorrows , sorrows and illnesses, mental and physical, that support us: may the earth give fruitfulness, and all that is needed for the benefit of our life; May He grant us to end this temporary life in repentance, and may He grant us, sinners and unworthy, His Heavenly Kingdom, to glorify His endless mercy with all the saints, with His beginningless Father and the Holy Spirit, forever and ever. Amen.

Prayers of a believing mother to a merciful God
about the lost souls in the womb
(I - IV)
I

Prayer to the Lord God

Remember, O Lord who loves mankind, the souls of Your departed servants, the infants who in the womb of Orthodox mothers died accidentally from accidental actions or from a difficult birth, or from some carelessness, or who were deliberately ruined and therefore did not receive Holy Baptism.
Baptize them, O Lord, in the sea of ​​Thy bounties and save with Thy ineffable grace, and forgive me, a sinner (name), who committed the murder of a baby in my womb and do not deprive Thy mercy.
God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Lord, have mercy on my children who died in my womb, for my faith and my tears, for the sake of Your mercy, Lord, do not deprive them of Your Divine Light. Amen.

Prayer 1 to the Lord Jesus Christ

O Master, Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God! Much of Your goodness, for our sake and for our salvation, man was clothed in flesh and crucified and buried, and with Your blood renewing our corrupted nature, accept my repentance for sins and hear my words: I have sinned, Lord, in heaven and before You, in word, in deed , soul and body, and the thoughts of my mind, I transgressed Your commandments, did not listen to Your command, I angered Your goodness, my God, but as Your creation exists, I do not despair of salvation, but I boldly come to Your immeasurable Compassion and pray to You:

God! In peace, give me a contrite heart and accept me as I pray and give me the thought of confessing my sins, give me tears of compunction, Lord, let me, by Thy grace, make a good beginning. Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me, the fallen one, and remember me, Thy sinful servant, in Thy Kingdom, ever and ever. Amen.

Prayer 2 to the Lord Jesus Christ

O God, Most Merciful Christ Jesus, Redeemer of sinners, for the sake of the salvation of the human race, You left us, O All-Merciful, glorious Heaven, and You moved into this deplorable and sinful vale. You took Your Divine shoulder to bear our infirmities, and You bore our illnesses; You, O Holy Sufferer, were wounded for our sins and tormented for our iniquities, and therefore we, O Lover of Mankind, offer our humble prayers to You: accept them, O Most Gracious Lord, and condescend to our weaknesses and do not remember our sins , and turn away the angry intention to avenge our sins from us.

By Thy All-Honorable Blood, having renewed our fallen nature, renew, O Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior, us, in the ashes of our sins, and comfort our hearts with the joy of Thy forgiveness. With a cry and immeasurable tears of repentance, we fall at the feet of Your Divine mercy: cleanse us all. Our God, by Your Divine grace from all the untruths and iniquities of our life. May we, in the holiness of Your love for mankind, praise Your all-holy name, with the Father, and the Most Good, and the Life-giving Spirit, now and ever, and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

Prayer to the Blessed Virgin Mary

Open the doors of mercy for us, Blessed Mother of God, who hope in You, so that we may not perish, but may we be delivered from troubles by You. You are the salvation of the Christian race.

Rejoice, One Most Pure Mother of the One Creator, Lord, God and Savior of ours, Jesus Christ!

Be my Intercessor on the day of the terrible trial, when I appear before the Throne of the Unfeigned Judge, so that I may be delivered from fiery baptism through Your prayers, O Blessed One. Most Holy Theotokos, save us! Amen.

Parents' prayer for children

God and Father, Creator and Preserver of all creatures! Grace my poor children) with Your Holy Spirit, may He kindle in them the true fear of God, which is the beginning (names) of wisdom and direct prudence, according to which whoever acts, his praise abides forever. Bless them with true knowledge of You, keep them from all idolatry and false teaching, make them grow in true and saving faith and all piety, and may they abide in them constantly to the end.

Grant them a believing, obedient, humble heart and mind, so that they may grow in years and grace before God and before people. Plant in their hearts love for Your Divine Word, so that they may be reverent in prayer and in worship, respectful to the ministers of the Word and sincere in their actions, modest in their movements, chaste in their morals, true in their words, faithful in their deeds, diligent in their studies. , happy in the performance of their duties, reasonable and righteous towards all people.

Keep them from all the temptations of the evil world, and let not evil society corrupt them. Do not allow them to fall into uncleanness and unchastity, so that they do not shorten their own lives and do not offend others.

Be their protector in any danger, so that they do not suffer sudden destruction.

Make it so that we do not see in them dishonor and shame for ourselves, but honor and joy, so that Your Kingdom may be multiplied by them and the number of believers will increase, and may they be in heaven around Your Table, like heavenly olive branches, and may they reward You with all the elect honor, praise and glorification through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayer to the Mother of God

O Most Holy Lady Virgin Theotokos, save and preserve under Your shelter my children (names), all youths and young women and infants, baptized and nameless and carried in their mother’s womb. Cover them with the robe of Your motherhood, keep them in the fear of God and in obedience to their parents, pray to my Lord and Your Son to grant them what is useful for their salvation. I entrust them to Your maternal supervision, for You are the Divine Protection of Your servants.

Mother of God, lead me into the image of Your heavenly motherhood. Heal the mental and physical wounds of my children (names) caused by my sins. I entrust my child entirely to my Lord Jesus Christ and Your, Most Pure, heavenly protection. Amen.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit!

A child's very first happiness is an intelligent mother. Each of us, dear brothers and sisters, has been and is convinced of this through our own unique experience. Today we heard a Gospel reading about a very smart mother, whose wisdom and selflessness we will never cease to admire - the Gospel about the healing of the demon-possessed daughter of a Canaanite wife (a resident of Canaan), or, as the Evangelist Mark calls her, the Syrophoenician.

“Children are the anchors that hold their mother in life,” said the ancient tragedian Sophocles. But how sad it is when this holding relationship is joyless, painful and heavy in its hopelessness, how painful it is even from the outside to see parents who have problems with their children or problematic children. Nowadays it is not uncommon to see a child left by his parents in public care, and in fact an abandoned child. This happens for various, but not justified reasons, most often - if the unfortunate child has a serious physical or mental illness and cowardly parents are afraid of the feat of caring for him. During the earthly life of the Lord Jesus Christ, there were no orphanages or homes for the disabled, medicine was very primitive, and the rumors of the crowd most often blamed unrighteous, sinful parents for the physical or mental ill health of children.

Some peoples had views closer to our modern society regarding the future of unhealthy children, but instead of nursing homes, these children most often faced a quick death, either by being thrown off a cliff, as was done in Sparta, or by drowning in a river, as was the case in Rome. or they could simply be left on the street. Even the wise philosopher Plato said that “the offspring of the worst and the offspring of the best, if they are born with deviations from the norm, should be hidden in a mysterious place unknown to anyone,” that is, the child was left alone with nature.

The few who survived or became disabled were subjected to cruel ridicule and bullying and were most often sold into slavery. In the Acts of the Apostles we find a similar example, when the Apostle Paul in the Macedonian city of Philippi met a maid “possessed by a spirit of divination, who through divination brought great income to her masters” (Acts 16:16). Possessed children, possessed by evil spirits, also faced general ridicule, bullying and the real possibility of becoming slaves, after they were deprived of proper care and concern from their parents and loved ones. For this reason, most often, rootless demoniacs ran away from cities and wandered in deserted places.

Our Lord Jesus Christ, during his earthly life, sometimes went beyond the borders of those lands where the Jews lived; Thus, He also entered the boundaries of two cities - Tire and Sidon, located at a distance of 80-100 km from Galilee. These are ancient cities on the Mediterranean coast, founded by the Phoenicians - the Canaanite people, a people of brave sailors and enterprising merchants who, back in the 10th century BC, sailed the distant seas, founded prosperous trading colonies, including Tarshish, a city in the south of the Iberian Sea. peninsula, where the prophet Jonah wanted to escape from God. But this people was a pagan people, worshiping the idols of Baal, Moloch, Astarte, whose service was accompanied by ritual debauchery and frequent human sacrifices. The Lord commanded Moses about this people upon entering the Promised Land: “And in the cities of these nations, which the Lord your God is giving you to possess, you shall not leave a single soul alive, but shall consign them to destruction: the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Canaanites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites, as the Lord your God commanded you, lest they teach you to do the same abominations that they did for their gods, and so that you sin against the Lord your God" (Deut. 20: 16-18 ).

Although during the earthly life of Christ the Phoenicians no longer performed human sacrifices, the attitude of the Jews towards the inhabitants of the borders of Tire and Sidon was similar to the attitude towards the Samaritans. But the gospel of Christ touched the hearts and minds of the descendants of the ancient cruel Canaanites. Thus, we read in the 3rd chapter of the Gospel of Mark that in great numbers “those living in the environs of Tire and Sidon” followed the Lord, in addition to the inhabitants of Jerusalem, Idumea and beyond the Jordan (Mark 3:8). In today's Gospel reading, we heard that the Lord Himself withdrew from Galilee, where the Pharisees and scribes reproached Him, to the region where the Canaanites lived. Euthymius Zigaben, an interpreter of the Holy Scriptures, says that the Lord came to the borders of Tire and Sidon “not to preach, but to rest a little.” But even here one of the residents, “coming out of those places, shouted to Him: have mercy on me, O Lord, son of David, my daughter is cruelly raging” (Matthew 15:22).

“But He didn’t answer her a word. And His disciples came up and asked Him: Let her go, because she is screaming after us” (Matthew 15:23). The apostles were also tired of the ill will and insidious questions of the Pharisees, from constant requests and delving into other people's problems, they wanted to spend a little time alone with their teacher. The Lord Jesus Christ is a perfect God and a perfect Man, who during his earthly life was tired from the journey and the heat (see: John 4:6), in need of sleep, food and drink (see: Matt. 21:18; Mark. 4: 38; John 4: 7), experiencing emotions characteristic of us, such as joy and love (see: Mark 10: 21; John 11: 15), anger and sorrow (see: Mark 3: 5; 14:34), had never sinned and therefore could not “brush off” the cry of this Canaanite woman or pretend that he did not hear her. But he didn’t give an answer right away. “There was no answer to her, and not because mercy ceased, but because her desire increased; and not only so that the desire grows, but so that her humility also receives praise,” says Blessed Augustine.

The Canaanite woman screamed, and we know that most often those who scream are those who are not listened to or heard. She was already driven to despair by the grave condition of her child, she could not control herself, and she did not have that modesty and that shyness that is inherent in all decent petitioners and is very popular with vain benefactors and patrons. In response to cries for help: “Have mercy on me, Lord, son of David, my daughter is cruelly raging,” she hears words that can be regarded as a clear insult: this Jewish preacher of love for God and neighbors, a miracle worker and a disinterested person calls her a dog. The Lord tells her: “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” Many of this Canaanite woman’s fellow tribesmen went to listen to Christ, but He never offended or humiliated any of the sinners who repented and asked for help. He could put in their place the lying and already distraught Jews with His word, He could threateningly denounce them, but Christ had never addressed such simpletons as she, a simple uneducated woman.

The Canaanite woman knew the virtue of humility

When a mother, driven to a desperate cry by the condition of her beloved child, receives an insult instead of the expected help, what will be her response? Either she will cry and leave, completely crushed and humiliated, deprived of her last hope, or she will gather her last strength to respond with a more terrible insult, bad language, and maybe start a fight. But this Canaanite woman was not only an intelligent mother, one whose love “is a black hole that absorbs any criticism, any accusation about her child,” but she knew what the virtue of humility is and when it should be applied. Yes, she agrees without guile or hypocrisy that she is like a dog. Her soul is humble, despite the fact that she is a pagan and lives among people with bad morals. And she answers: “Yes, Lord! but the dogs also eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table” (Matthew 15:27). We also see her humility in the fact that “she did not dare to bring her raging daughter to the Teacher, but, leaving her at home on her bed, she herself begged Him and declared only illness, adding nothing more. And he does not call the Doctor into his house... but, having told about his grief and the serious illness of his daughter, he turns to the mercy of the Lord and cries out in a loud voice, asking for mercy not for his daughter, but for himself: have mercy on me! As if she were saying this: my daughter does not feel her illness, but I endure thousands of different torments; I am sick, I feel sick, I am furious and I am aware of it” (St. John Chrysostom).

Our Lord is “God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation whoever fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him” (Acts 10: 34-35), and He answers the cry of this loving mother with His meek voice: “O woman! great is your faith; let it be done to you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed at that hour” (Matthew 15:28).

Let us remember that not only our aspiration and desire are needed for healing from passions, but also humility before God

The example of the Canaanite wife is an example not only for parents of how to wisely care for their children and approach both God and neighbor with requests for them, but an example for each of us who realizes that “not a daughter, but a flesh imam with passions.” and evil lusts,” and seeks healing for her. Let us remember that not only our aspiration and desire are needed for this healing, but also humility before God. Just as the Canaanite wife waited for an answer to her request from the Lord and, not receiving it right away, humbled herself in anticipation, so in our lives, when making prayer requests, sometimes we just need to humbly wait for the hour of God’s will. Let us remember that “spiritual life is not just piety, not just prayer, not even just a feat or renunciation of the world. It is, first of all, a strict orderliness in development, a special sequence in the acquisition of virtues, a pattern in achievements and contemplations.”

Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt says: “Oh, who would send us such a mother as the Canaanite woman, who would pray for us to the Lord with the same faith, hope and love as she did for her daughter, so that for the sake of her prayer the Lord would have mercy on us and expel from us our passions, healing us from our furies! For our flesh is angry with evil. But, brethren, no match for the Canaanite woman, we have a Prayer Book and Intercessor, unashamed and most merciful, the All-Good and Most Pure Mother of our God, ready to always intercede with Her Son and God to deliver us from the rage and fury of passions, if only we would always be with Her with faith and hope, in repentance, from a sincere heart, they came running with a prayer for help. But we ourselves will refine and increase our faith in the Lord, our trust and our love for God and our neighbors, and constantly resort in repentance to the Lord Himself, like that Canaanite woman; for the Lord gave us all the right to boldly turn to Him Himself: ask and it will be given to you(Matthew 7:7); and further: whatever you ask for in prayer in faith, you will receive(cf. Matthew 21:22).”

Parents who overprotect their children deserve a separate chapter. Often a woman devotes her entire life to raising children. From the moment they are born, all her love and care switches exclusively to them. In this case, the husband becomes like an appendage, a source of material well-being. Sometimes they even look after him - like a cow that gives milk and, accordingly, income.

Such women treat their husband’s infidelity calmly, not seeing any tragedy in it, unless the family is destroyed and there is no material damage. As a rule, they do not hate their husband; they treat him like a naughty child. In general, their husband is somewhere “on the side”. Even when their husbands leave them, they resign themselves quite quickly; they usually do not remarry, devoting themselves to their children and then their grandchildren. And they are promoted in their careers most often for the sake of their children - to give them more.

Already from the first days of a child’s life, the “caring mother” takes up his upbringing, and with special zeal. Care and development according to special systems may be necessary for the mother, but not for the child. She usually does not take into account the child’s desires, needs, abilities and inclinations. Education is carried out through coercion, in conditions of increasing the moral responsibility of the child. Subsequently, the victims of such upbringing are constantly torn apart by contradictions between “should” and “want”...

At first everything looks quite good. The child attends clubs and studios chosen by the mother. But the little man humbles himself and obediently carries out the will of his mother, although at the same time, over time, he unconsciously strives to leave her care. The child, as a pure and trusting creature, idealizes his mother, not fully understanding his contradictory feelings. On the one hand, mom loves, on the other, it’s very stuffy in the arms of her love. Such upbringing can lead an adult son or daughter to nervous breakdowns, depression, and dissatisfaction with their life.

The destructiveness of such upbringing manifests itself with all its force when the child, beginning to recognize himself as an independent person, learns to insist on his own. Since the “caring mother” does not give the child will, he cannot develop harmoniously and satisfy his spiritual needs, for example, the need for independence. Then baby gets sick. Both pediatricians and psychotherapists are unanimous in the opinion that almost all diseases arise due to unmet mental needs.

At the level of consciousness, the “caring mother” worries when she sees that the child is sick, but unconsciously she triumphant. Here it is, a lofty goal - to cure a child! So, while the treatment does not produce an effect, the mother’s actions seem completely justified. This is a search for doctors, medicines, psychics, blessed elders or just priests (the options for “rescuers” can be very different).

But if she accidentally brings her child to the priest, to whom, perhaps, the heart of his son (or daughter), who will subsequently become the child’s spiritual father, will help him find support in life, teach him to communicate correctly, then she will do everything to (sometimes to the maximum gently, so that the beloved child would not even guess!) terminate their relationship. After all, if a child finds support in someone else, he will either leave her or stop psychologically depending on her. Deprived of this dependence, she begins to feel worse.

People who have freed themselves from such care, who have broken psychological dependence, begin to feel more natural, freer, and cease to need maternal support, and “caring mothers” are indignant and promise “come and deal with this priest”.

Such a mother will stop at nothing, for her slogan is: “I will do everything for your happiness, provided that you remain unhappy. I will do everything for your recovery, provided that you remain sick.". In the first stages, recovering children develop hostility, even hatred, towards their parents. Then everything goes away, the relationship normalizes... but this requires patience and time.

“Caring mothers” block the spiritual, mental, moral, and physical development of their children. Feeling abandoned, many modern women try to find solace in a child, especially if it is a boy. He becomes the mother’s only support, interlocutor, friend, psychologically taking the place of the husband who has moved away or abandoned her. But a child cannot be assigned to the role of an adult man, he cannot do it! An overloaded psyche can become strained, and, having strained itself, become distorted.

Men who were in a “psychological marriage” with their mother in childhood often never enter into a real marriage, therefore, they may not have anyone born to them at all. Blinded and suppressed by their mother, they do not find a worthy match. If the mother decides to marry her son, she will certainly select the bride herself, who will later be assigned the role of a maid. The mother will never give up her place as the mistress in such a family.

Today, unfortunately, quite a significant part of our youth is in such captivity. Many mothers raise their sons alone. And, as a result, a manifestation of the mother’s strong emotional attachment to her son. And if a son was once saved from death by his mother in childhood, she becomes so attached to him, so envelops her son in her care that in the future he may not marry.

“In nature there is such a type of mothers - and woe to their sons! A witty and subtle poet, and in life a courageous and brave man, Count Alexei Konstantinovich Tolstoy (one of the creators of Kozma Prutkov), suffered until his death, not daring to marry the girl he loved, because his beloved maman did not want him to marry.

Truly, love is evil. In this case, not according to the proverb “you will love a goat,” but evil literally, primitively. Sincerely believing that she loves her son, such a mother in reality loves exclusively herself - and sacrifices his fate, his own happiness, his life as a sacrifice to this love.

I knew one elderly - already gray - university teacher who lived his whole life with his mother. For many years she did not get out of bed, and he provided all her care. You don't need to have much imagination to imagine what it was like - provided that he worked and was not at home all day. When his mother died, he was left with only students. They replaced his children, grandchildren, family. He went on camping trips with them. You should have seen how he perked up in their surroundings. In turn, they adored him. But then retirement came. And sudden complete loneliness.

The currents of this maternal self-love are so strong that the son completely loses his will, resigns himself and exists with the conviction that he cannot do otherwise. Meanwhile, everything is always possible. There is always something different".

If the son of a “caring mother” gets married, then he cannot understand why, having barely gotten married, he returns to his mother after a month or two. But even upon returning, not every young man finds peace with his mother. A soul striving for freedom begins to look for an independent path in life. Some young men remain completely at the mercy of their mothers, showing infantilism, while the other part still breaks out. Some people leave to study or work in another city, others live in a dormitory or rent an apartment.

It happens that the son seems to have broken away from his mother, but the mysterious connection with her continues and the same youthful infantilism is present in him, but only internal: he behaves like a person completely unprepared for life. Internally His mother never let him go into an independent life. Because of this, he remains attached to her, although he is not aware of this connection. This is manifested in the fact that he absolutely cannot prove himself as a man in anything. He is completely irresponsible, he has no manifestations of will, mentally he still feels himself “under her,” under his mother...

A “caring mother” can have the same relationship with her daughter. When a growing daughter begins to break free from her mother’s emotional embrace (outwardly this manifests itself in the fact that she will contradict her), the mother enters into a very strong, multi-day quarrel with her daughter. Through these quarrels, she only strengthens in her inner desire to keep her daughter with her. And the more the daughter gets out of these bonds, the more the mother controls her. Such a mother does not want her daughter to marry one, another, or a third.

But at some point, being subject to the general rule, the girl is still going to get married. At the same time, the mother certainly wants the young to live with her. Or, if they live in the same city, it is necessary that the daughter visits her mother once a week.

Why does she need all this? It turns out that in this way she little by little, imperceptibly, begins to psychologically separate her daughter from her husband. They begin to find out why the husband is bad, why the son-in-law is bad, why he doesn’t do repairs in the house, why he earns so little. Ultimately, such a mother achieves her goal over a period of time. As a result, the young people get divorced, the mother gets her daughter back and... she is happy again. True, they live in very big quarrels, irreconcilability, sometimes it all ends with the daughter even leaving home. But, nevertheless, the mother is still calm, since she continues to control her daughter and feel like a caring mother. In this communication, her strong-willed nature, her pride, her inner passion, which once appropriated her daughter for herself, turns out to be satisfied.

“The relationship with my mother became a problem for me, and a serious one,” writes a 17-year-old girl. “She constantly interferes in my personal life, trying to protect me from mistakes that she herself once made. I understand that my mother is a person who not only can, but also must advise me, based on her experience and on her knowledge and understanding of me. But recently, these tips have begun to take the form of instructions on the principle “this way and only this way!”

This painfully unbalanced state of the human soul is illustrated by the dream of one young woman. A particular case of her relationship with her mother serves as a metaphor for internal contradictions and reflects the archetypal struggle of heterogeneous principles of the psyche...

The background of the dream is as follows, as far as I can convey it from Tatyana’s words: she, her young husband and newborn child lived with Tatyana’s parents. Her mother sought to implement her ideas about the family way of life, firmly believing in their lack of alternative. The daughter perceived her mother’s activity as a gross intrusion into her privacy, into the life of her own – small, newborn, like a child, family.

Tatyana’s attempts to defend her independence were ridiculed, and she had to listen to a lot of offensive things. Finally, Tatyana - with her husband, daughter in a stroller and a cat in a bag - left home, fortunately there was somewhere to go.

The mother was killed - by the collapse of the ideal of a large family in which she is the mistress, by a terribly empty house, by her daughter’s sudden hostility towards her and by the indifference of her son-in-law, by the disappearance of a long-awaited toy - her granddaughter.

The young couple began to live independently, sharing responsibility for the child and providing for the family. The creative act of liberation (read: growing up and realizing much of what was previously hidden by the veil of infantile attachment to parents) took place...

That's when Tatyana had a dream. The sea waves carry it about a hundred meters from the shore. She sees everything as if she were not immersed in water, but standing on the surface, only Tatyana does not feel her body at all.

The shore is a sheer cliff on which a huge black female silhouette is depicted. “Mother,” Tatyana knows and feels that, although the woman is drawn, she is alive. The flat image is animated even somehow to a more human level of animation. And there is no portrait resemblance to her own mother; her face cannot be seen at all. This is simply Mother.

A voice sounds in Tatiana's head. A confident baritone says: “You can’t be offended by your mother.” And immediately Tatyana understands that since the voice said it, it means it’s true. She doesn’t think about who the voice belongs to, but the indisputability of the truth is as if it had been proclaimed by God.

However, the spoken truth still has to be accepted - not on faith, but in one’s heart, that is, to agree with it, to be imbued with it. And Tatyana knows that this is her last task and goal in life. That she will continue to rush here on the waves until she manages to accomplish this.

And so, as Tatiana conscientiously tries to “feel” more and more into the meaning of the phrase, the wave carrying her on the crest accelerates more and more, rushing the girl onto the rock in order (Tatiana knows) to break her at the feet of the black Mother, as soon as the insight comes . Tatyana is not afraid, on the contrary, she understands: this is the last thing she is destined to do in life.

But at some point in the final truth, despite all Tatyana’s diligence, another thought appears in my head, objecting in a spoken voice: “But I couldn’t do otherwise!” (This refers to the break with her real mother).

The wave immediately rolls back into the sea, and everything - more than once - repeats itself from the beginning. The dream ends.

Whether the formula of cultural prohibition was uttered by the voice of God or conscience is immaterial. The important thing is that sincere acceptance of the repentant role of the “prodigal son” (prodigal daughter) in this case leads to death, contrary to traditional ideas. To the death of what? Individuals, of course, individuals".

The mother, who once felt like the savior of her child’s life, grows close to him and, regardless of the distance, retains an invisible umbilical cord. It is not surprising that such a mother senses the condition of her child thousands of kilometers away. Something happened there, and she was already worried. Her heart feels. This spiritual connection mysteriously connects them to each other. It can be extremely difficult to escape from this grip. In most cases, girls and boys, having matured, unsuccessfully try throughout their lives to escape from these maternal embraces.

A person brought up in an atmosphere of such attachment feels his lack of freedom and subsequently involuntarily tries to free himself from the people around him: husband, wife, friends, girlfriends, co-workers. It seems to him that his relationship with them is too dependent and unfree, and that he needs to get rid of them too.

Such people, tightly connected to their mother, simply cannot become deeply close to other people. No matter how their relationships with others develop, in the end, everything breaks down. As a last resort, the relationship remains distant...

Examples of this phenomenon can be found on the pages of classical literature. Here is the conversation between the mother, merchant Kabanikha, and her son in the drama by A.N. Ostrovsky "The Thunderstorm":

	Kabanova	...I have seen for a long time that your wife is dearer than your mother. Since I got married, I don’t see the same love from you.
	Kabanov	Yes, we pray to God for you, day and night, that God may give you health and all prosperity...
	Kabanova	Well, that's enough, stop it, please. Maybe you loved your mother while you were single. Do you care about me: you have a young wife.
	Kabanov	One does not interfere with the other: the wife is on her own, and I have respect for the parent in itself.
	Kabanova	So will you exchange your wife for your mother? I won't believe this for the life of me.
	Kabanov	Why should I change? I love both of them.
	Kabanova	Well, yes, that's it, spread it! I already see that I am a hindrance to you... You see what kind of mind you have, and you still want to live by your own will.
	Kabanov	Yes, Mama, I don’t want to live by my own will. Where can I live by my own will!
	Kabanova	Why are you standing there, don’t you know the order? Tell your wife how to live without you.
	Kabanov	Yes, she knows it herself.
	Kabanova	Talk more! Well, well, give the order! So that I can hear what you order her! And then you’ll come and ask if you did everything right.
	Kabanov	Listen to mommy, Katya.
	Kabanova	Tell your mother-in-law not to be rude.
	Kabanov	Do not be rude!
	…
	Kabanova	So that you don't stare at the windows!
	Kabanov	But what is this, mummy, by God!
	Kabanova	(strictly). There's nothing to break! Must do what mother says. It’s getting better, just as ordered.”

And here is a letter about modern Kabanikha I received from God’s servant Lyubov. It became another argument in favor of the relevance of the book conceived five years ago, which you are holding in your hands today. I will quote the letter preserving the style of the original.

“Divine Providence turned out to be such that I encountered pathological maternal love in my life to the point of bleeding. I don’t know how to describe how much I suffered because of this. This question is very, very important. Because of this, destinies, souls, lives are broken. It needs to be illuminated urgently, it needs to be shouted outright. I consult about everything with my spiritual mentor, Fr. Alexander. But I hope to receive a more detailed answer from you. I would like this issue to be reflected in the books of your publishing house.

I'll start with my friend. She fell in love with her son (he is 9 years old, she is 44 years old). Late, sickly (heart defect), born without a father. She is a cripple with asthma. But she is very merciful, she works as a nurse, she walked towards God slowly, but when she came to faith, she saw the whole nightmare of her upbringing. She is very cowardly, she poured all her love on her son (she never had a husband). Kissed him. I slept with him until I was 9 years old. The boy, seeing such love, turned into a fiend of hell (you can’t think of better words). But this can still be fixed. I struggled with this for a long time and consulted with my father. Father said that now we need to correct it, like the crown of a tree when it grows. You just need to break your character with rods. But this is clear. Thank God that my mother understood everything.

And recently I came across an adult “mama’s boy” (he is 47 years old) and his loving mother. I tried to create a Christian family with him. It was some kind of nightmare. The end is my broken life. I have never read about this anywhere in Orthodoxy. I found the answer to this question in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. The article is called “Mama's Boy is a Diagnosis.”

It is written: “...He will separate himself from his mother and from his father, and will cleave to his wife...”. What if it doesn’t come off? Some women have such maternal love that they cannot even imagine their son getting married; they only need him to love his mother. They, like priestesses, devour the will of their sons; any woman with whom a son wants to start a family is not like that. About my case, the priest said briefly: “Maternal jealousy.” The mother intervened all around, called the church, asked: “Well, did they leave together or is he alone? Did you stand together in church?” She gradually, slyly, insidiously broke us apart. And she achieved her goal.

He is 47 years old and has not been married. The parishioners immediately warned me that my mother would not let us live. I couldn’t even imagine that this could happen. How blind she is! After all, true motherly love is sacrificial, she sacrifices everything for the happiness of her son. I also have a son, he is now married, I always really wanted him to start a family and have children.

And at the end of this article it is written: “If you notice this, then leave immediately, because the mother will win anyway - instinct will win over reason.” And so it happened. I thought I would win, but this is such an avalanche (double-mindedness, deceit) that I simply cannot win. I had to break up.

What about son? What did he do in this whole story? He imitated his mother in everything; he could not live without her and without her advice. She suppressed his will, it was as if he was not a man.

I still cannot understand and am tormented by the question: “Why and why are men similar in character to women?” After all, he had and does not have any debt or responsibility to his family. He did not participate in the family budget. My mother did not allow him to bring me food, she said that we should live together. “You are a ten, she is a ten,” - that’s how she taught. I supported my family and fed him by working several jobs. After work, I dragged heavy bags across the city, trying to arrive home on time so that there would be no complaints from him. One day I had to go to an appointment with a general practitioner, and when he listened to me, he noticed blue marks-stripes on my shoulders from my bags. The doctor looked at me questioningly, but didn’t ask anything. I was embarrassed. When she came home, she told her husband about this incident, thinking that she would regret it, her conscience would break through, and she would help. And do you know what he answered me? “Yeah, that’s not the point, I need to buy you a trolley bag...”

Sometimes my husband and I went to visit his mother. Ridiculously interesting stories happened there too. They left me in the living room to watch TV, while the two of them retired to the kitchen to have lunch or drink tea. And this was considered quite normal, natural. I didn't exist for them. And when his mother came to visit us, she always brought her mayonnaise and half-liter jars of food for her son. This is what a caring mother my former life partner is... Maybe, reading my letter, someone will not believe all this. But it was, it was...

Once on Easter, my husband and I went to an early service, prayed at the Liturgy, and returned home very happy and inspired. But what coldness and darkness wafted from the face of his mother, who was waiting for us at home, who, with resentment and reproach, immediately began to reprimand him for leaving for work at a time when she was rushing to him. You should have seen this guilty face of my husband, his abrupt phrases of apology. In front of his mother stood not a forty-seven-year-old man, but a fifth-grader who was being reprimanded for getting a bad grade. “It’s all her, she, you exchanged me for her, she takes you to churches...” the mother said irritably to her son, without even bothering to look at me.

And at the same time, his mother is a believer, kind to other people, sympathetic...

But how many such mothers are there in our city alone! How many are there in the whole country?!

With respect to you, Lyubov Nikolaevna".

We hope that not only you, dear Lyubov Nikolaevna, but also many others will find this book useful, written with a feeling of deep compassion for the problem you raised.

Any adult who has authority with the child, be it a teacher, coach, priest, friend, bride (groom) - anyone, can become a hindrance for a “caring mother”, the object of her jealousy and hatred. The most cruel, most insane attacks and actions towards a “rival” in the eyes of others can be justified by “maternal love and care for a son who has fallen under bad influence.” In fact, we are dealing with a special case of mental attachment.

“We often think that we love a person, but to him our love seems like captivity,” writes Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, - How often would he like to say: love me less, but let me breathe! Or learn to love me differently, so that your love will be freedom for me, so that I will not be a captive of another person who knows better than me how I should live, what my happiness is, what my spiritual or everyday path is. Each of us can do this; each of us can ask ourselves the question of what constitutes the love that he talks about, that he experiences.

I have already said this many times, but I will repeat it again. So often, when a person says: “I love you,” the entire emphasis is on the word “I,” “you” are the object of my love, and “love” is the chain with which I have entangled you and hold you captive. How often it happens that the love of one person for another turns him into a captive or a slave. Then “I love” is not a creative, life-giving principle; the word “love” is like a link, a fishing rod with which another person is caught. And if we discover that such is our love for people or for one, especially loved one, we must first of all realize the horror of the fact that I consider myself the center, that everything comes down to me: both events and people - everything is viewed from from the point of view of my benefit, my joy, my life, and no one and nothing exists except in some relation to me.

If we realize this, if we are overcome with shame and horror, then we can begin, turning away from ourselves, look towards the other person and try to discern his features, understand him, realize his existence as a person separate from us, other than a person who connected with God mysteriously and outside of us; and behave accordingly towards him.”

Perhaps the mother will try to soberly analyze her actions in order to understand what their motivation is and what is happening to her. To do this, she should temporarily “move away” from the child so that the lost true maternal feeling and understanding of the need to respect the freedom of the child’s personality will supplant the unhealthy psychological attachment...

How do young men who find themselves in such “sweet” maternal captivity behave? The weaker, melancholic ones enter into the game imposed by the mother, are completely suppressed by the mother’s personality, are immersed in the world of women’s experiences and concerns, and, as a rule, grow up to be candidates for homosexuality. Their consciousness, psyche, healthy sexuality necessary for life changes under the influence of overprotective maternal upbringing.

Since the problem of homosexuality is increasingly manifesting itself in modern life, and the modern pastor has to accept repentance or answer questions related to this problem, we will consider it in the context of the main theme of our book.

There is no single reason that can comprehensively explain the formation of homosexuality. But researchers from different psychological schools see one common pattern: a power-hungry mother and a passive, loser father are the main figures against which homosexuality is formed.

Let's take for example a situation where only the mother controls everything in the house. Like a pilot, she leads her home in the stormy sea of ​​life, towing small boats (her husband and children). She has a commanding voice, she commands the family, she is determined and ambitious about the future of her children. When disputes arise, she usually insists that she is right. Other family members try to express their own opinions, but no one can resist her confident pressure.

In other situations, her lust for power may not be so obvious. She can act more subtly, although no less tyrannically. Fragile and graceful, she at the same time rules the house thanks to her iron will, her moral leadership (how skillfully she can sometimes put a person in his place with a well-thought-out phrase!) or even cunning (for example, referring to a headache at the right moment).

However, in order not to be too hasty in attributing to her the role of the main culprit of her son's homosexuality, we must note that the mother is only one of the characters. Without the support of the entire cast, she would hardly have been able to successfully cope with the main role in this painful drama. Her husband indulges her with his non-interference. He knows only two ways to react to her actions: either feign anger, or go underground: TV, reading newspapers, dominoes, alcohol. Often the husband spends most of his free time outside the home.

Children in this situation may behave differently. But the image of the “mentor mother” on which they base their behavior is inherently unhealthy. They have nowhere to take an example of normal relations between parents. Is it possible to hope that, having started their own family life, they will behave correctly in their own family?

Of the many options for family relationships, one is especially important. If a mother chooses her son (or one of her sons) to be her special confidant, she can lay the foundations for his future homosexual behavior. However, to do this, he must conform to the pattern of behavior that his mother expects from him.

In this case, the son becomes (not physically or sexually), but in an emotional and psychological sense, her husband. The mother subtly instills qualities that are not sufficiently expressed in her real husband in her son. Without realizing what is happening, the son learns to dance to his mother’s tune and adapt to her moods.

From time to time, his ability to satisfy his mother's emotional needs is rewarded and encouraged. But because the son can never give his mother what she truly (but unconsciously) seeks, his affection for her ultimately disappoints them both. The son will never be able to become her real man. He learns passive behavior instead of active behavior. His desire to please his mother's wishes will never allow him to become free and independent. His sexual desires are under strict maternal control. On the one hand, he learns to confidently show his masculine perseverance to protect his mother, and on the other hand, to throw this perseverance aside if it contradicts his mother’s interests. He is constantly tied to his mother's skirt, and because of this, both remain losers.

If the young man had had a strong father who supported him and served as an example for him, everything could have been different. But the father, as we remember, is hiding underground; he has taken a secondary role, being an example of surrender to a strong and powerful woman.

More strong-willed young men, when attempting this kind of manipulation, understand that it is not maternal love that is being manifested here, but a harsh dictate. Intuitively sensing the substitution, they turn over the rich table of excessive care and affection, lined with maternal worries, withdraw into themselves and, over time, make an independent choice of life path. This is the most correct and healthy reaction on the part of the child! Further guardianship and courtship will only worsen his irritability, which often develops into open hatred.

In both cases, responsibility for the crippled psyche of the child rests solely with the adult, that is, with the mother. A woman who strives for emotional intimacy with her child at any cost can go so far as to severely humiliate him, even to the point of forced placement in a psychiatric hospital. Such mothers have an extremely developed ability to persuade, built on passion and strength of character. They easily find allies and comrades-in-arms among a variety of people in their “struggle” for the child.

A woman came to see a psychologist. Complains of insomnia. During the session, it became clear that she had a very difficult family situation. The son is disabled. Moreover, as she says, everything turned out to be her fault.

About five or six years ago, without her knowledge, her son went to a monastery, where he found a priest who answered the questions that worried him. I really wanted to become a monk. Before that, I was in my last year at a prestigious university and had a brilliant career ahead of me. The mother ran the family business in the food industry and saw her son as her successor.

After repeated attempts to “influence this priest” through the diocesan administration, the mother decided to take a desperate step. She asked her son to pick up winter clothes, which she allegedly gave to him through the train conductor. After the son entered the compartment, two strong guys tied him up and escorted him home. An ambulance was waiting for the prisoner at the railway station. At the insistence of his mother, the guy is forcibly placed in a psychiatric hospital.

Having been discharged, he never returned to the monastery; he was engaged in the automobile business, never fully submitting to his mother’s will. In the process of resolving a conflict between criminal groups that control the transfer of cars, an explosion occurs and as a result the guy receives a severe traumatic brain injury, but miraculously survives. He loses his eye and has been undergoing treatment for a long time in the most prestigious clinics. The young man underwent many complex operations, but the wound turned out to be so severe that he remains disabled for life.

The mother perceives what happened as God’s punishment and experiences a deep sense of guilt. She has critical blood pressure, insomnia, and heart pain. She has also been treated in hospitals for a very long time, but the treatment provides only temporary relief.

The mother thinks that all this suffering is returning to her like a boomerang and does not know what to do. She is afraid to go to church because she thinks that God will not forgive her for what she did to her son.

The son never reproached her, because he is very attached to his mother. However, what happened did not improve their relationship; on the contrary, alienation appeared. Entering a monastery was the first independent choice for him in his life.

And now, my mother is seeing a psychologist.

The sessions lasted for two months, as a result of which the woman’s psychological state improved. The psychologist advised her to forgive herself first, forgive and bless all those people who participated in this story. And since the woman felt guilty before God for what had happened, he suggested going to the temple and talking to the priest. Indeed, in such a situation one cannot do without experienced spiritual guidance.

A child, so attached to his mother, does not even suspect how deep his dependence on “maternal warmth” is, completely paralyzing the will to live independently. Only the irretrievably gone time of youth spent under the “reliable” protection of a “caring mother”, most often a failed personal family life, will eventually force a sober assessment of such anomalous relationships and open their eyes to them.

Usually, children who grew up in an atmosphere of maternal affection, having matured, after the death of their mother, experience an unexpected novelty of feelings. The death of their mother seems to free them from something. And although such a death is experienced very strongly and dramatically, subsequently the person becomes free inside. It is the maternal ties that are broken; with the death of the mother, her power dies.

Not every woman has the courage to soberly assess the cause of what is happening. In a confidential conversation, the shepherd can try to explain to the mother (if she is able to hear anything other than her experiences) that true love seeks only the good of the beloved in the form in which he imagines this good, desires good, not possession, does not smother in his arms. And the Apostle Paul says even better: genuine “love does not seek its own” (Rom. 13), i.e. your own good, your own happiness through the subjugation and suppression of your loved one, no matter who he is. True love prepares a child as separate, as independent, which means living in his own way, having his own path in life, personality. The true, innermost feeling of love in a mother or father knows that she was born not my property, and a separate God-created personality, which, by its personal nature, is not “I” and cannot be my property . It is important for a mother to realize that her child is a separate person, and not an integral part of the parent. Sometimes it is especially difficult for a woman to come to terms with this, and if she has an authoritarian character, then it is doubly difficult, because “My child, I do what I want, and it doesn’t matter how old he is - twelve, twenty-three or thirty-seven.”

In order for the process of developing a person’s psychological autonomy to be completed successfully, it is necessary that his parents are sufficiently literate, and each of them is aware of the need to help the child in his separation from his parents at a certain stage of his development. In order for a child to successfully undergo a “second birth”, psychological separation from his parents, they need:

Perceive the child as he is, and not as they would like him to be;

Respect the child’s desire to independently explore the world around him, allow him to do this;

Encourage the expression of independent thoughts, feelings and actions (age-appropriate);

Be able to express understanding and support when the child needs it;

Be an example of a psychologically mature person, openly express your own feelings to the child;

Clearly define what you forbid your child to do and say directly why, rather than resort to forceful methods.

Do not forbid him to openly express his feelings, recognize and understand these feelings and the need for their disclosure;

Help and encourage the child’s actions aimed at healthy exploration of the world around him, using the word “yes” twice as often as the word “no”;

Do not fall into despair or depression if the child refuses to use your help;

Don't try to live your life for your child;

Recognize him as an independent person with his own views, desires and aspirations.

To conclude this chapter, I will give one more quote from K.S. Lewis: “Who hasn’t seen how a woman wastes her youth, maturity and even old age on an insatiable mother, listens to her, pleases her, and she, like a true vampire, considers her unkind and obstinate. Perhaps her sacrifice is beautiful (although I’m not sure of this), but no matter how you look for it, you won’t find beauty in your mother.”

13. K. Mikhailov “Patient care with elements of psychotherapy”, Rostov-on-Don, “Phoenix”, 2000, pp. 147-160.

14. S.N. Lyutova. Mother. Negative aspect of the archetype. Excerpt from the book “Social psychology of personality (theory and practice): Course of lectures.” M., 2002.

15. A.N. Ostrovsky. Plays. M., 1979, p. 167.

16. By the way, now such mothers justify their behavior with their “Orthodoxy”: they say that in Rus' young people always lived with parents who taught them the wisdom of family life, and that this is sanctified by tradition, everything that is not so is a sin. Among my friends, things got to the point where the husband took his wife abroad for some time to bring the family back to normal. So, before leaving, he told his wife: “You will come with me.” The wife’s mother told her daughter: “if you go, you are a bad daughter, you don’t love me and are leaving me.” Result: just before the trip, a young woman developed a strange illness; the doctors found nothing, but she could not get out of bed. Mom ran around to all the doctors, made a terrible noise, but her husband saved the situation: he still took his “sick” wife with him (note from one of the first readers of the manuscript).

17. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Man before God, M., 1998. The Law of Life. Attitude towards others.

18. K.S. Lewis. Love, suffering, hope. M., publishing house "Respublika", 1992, p. 224.

– Does the problem of fathers and children sound different today than before?

– I think these are problems that are natural for all people. The severity and context may change depending on the time, the specific family, but the essence still remains the same.

Separation and misunderstanding between people began a long time ago, from the time of the Fall. People began to lose touch with each other. The story of the Babylonian Pandemonium is a prime example of this. They suddenly begin to speak different languages, and this is a very characteristic expression, which since then has probably been preserved in a figurative meaning. We, speakers of the same language, can speak “different languages” even within the family.

Disunity and misunderstanding, unfortunately, are a characteristic sign of damage to human nature, what can you do? The Church contrasts this with another unity - in Christ and the feast of Holy Pentecost itself, which shows the opposite perspective: suddenly people who speak different languages ​​begin to understand each other perfectly. Because the Holy Spirit brings everyone together. And we have no other way to unity than only in Christ, only through Christ, through the Gospel, through our own development of hearing, through the development of our heart, painful and unpleasant, because as soon as a person begins to open up in our world, he immediately receives under the breath.

– You have said more than once that people replace life with its imitation, including in the family. How to understand where is the real thing and where is the fake.

– Usually this is understood when everything starts to collapse. When people who tend to live in ideas about something or someone, create ideas for themselves, are deprived of these ideas. That’s when the fall of the house happens great, and from that moment someone becomes able to see the light.

We are faced with situations where a family lives, and instead of love there are ideas about love. When people perceive life for themselves according to certain pre-formed patterns. These patterns can be formed in the previous family in which they grew up and they repeat the image of the parental family in relation to their own.

It happens that this is a pious desire to live according to the rules. For example, the image of an “Orthodox family”, which is read from very pious literature.

But the most pious literature and the best examples can be false helpers here. Let's say, books by Nikolai Evgrafovich Pestov. He himself is a wonderful teacher, created a wonderful family, raised children. But his advice, his experience and experiences may be perceived by someone as a general scheme, needed for everyone and transferred onto his own family thoughtlessly, like a stencil. Or, for example, people read how St. Sergius of Radonezh was raised by his pious parents and again - they attached a stencil. A certain artificial idea begins of what a real Christian family should be like. At the same time, parents may not see the children themselves, their own, with their characteristics. Who are they, their children? What conditions do they live in? How old are they? What are their interests?

Children begin to be trained according to a given pattern. At the same time, parents have pious and very correct desires to make their children real Christians. Although latently, most likely, there is also a desire to show others what our wonderful Orthodox family is like and how we must live up to this image of an Orthodox family. Because the parents themselves never lived up to this, and so they are trying to create these ideas artificially.

Children are left without real attention, without real love, without understanding, without hearing, without seeing by their parents, and all the time they begin to try - to fit in, fit in, fit in. Because children want to please their parents, they want to receive praise from them, they want their parents to notice them, love them, pat them on the head, praise them, and give them gifts. But it turns out that in this situation everything has to be earned and the means of earning money is piety. This works for a certain period, but then it inevitably breaks down, leading to conflict, to terrible misunderstanding.

Often there is alienation of parents towards their children, parental dislike, because suddenly the children stopped conforming, destroyed the parental dream, destroyed this ideal made-up world, which, according to the parents, was supposed to bring the children to the level of holiness, and, in the end, a little maybe until canonization? But the children, even in their teens, destroyed all these dreams.

And then it is very often difficult, even impossible, to break this alienation that has appeared.

Children suddenly begin to behave extremely ungodly, moreover, they move away from the Church, begin to fall into sins, to live completely incorrectly, ugly: the spring is unclenched in the other direction, and their parents hate them for it. They become alienated, close themselves off, and believe that their children are lost to them. They may say to themselves internally: “I don’t need such a child.” And at this moment they cease to be parents, at this moment the child is left completely alone. He must cope with the attack of temptation, for which he is completely unprepared, on his own, without parental help. And he falls under this attack, cannot cope, becomes a toy in the elements of this world and there is no one to help him...

– Even if the grown-up child later returns to the Church, will he still be internally cut off from his parents?

– It often happens that no understanding or connection arises between children and parents later.

I'm not even talking about those cases when parents will never become parents to their child, when they do not perceive their child as a child. “I have a problem with my daughter”, “I have a problem with my son” - what kind of expressions are these! It’s not my child who has problems, but me with him, “I” comes first here.

The relationship develops in such a way that the child is perceived as a problem for the parents, which must somehow be leveled out. Make the presence of the child in the life of the parents convenient and comfortable. Often these children are separated from their parents very far and for a long time. Moreover, if funds allow, they can do everything financially for their children - hire a nanny, enroll them in a good school, and so on. But parents will have their own lives, and children will have their own. What kind of parents are these? Why should you love them? To honor is necessary, but to love is impossible. Because where there was no love, there will be no love.

We are given the commandment “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12). But it doesn't talk about love. Because, unfortunately, not every parent can be loved by children. And not every parent truly loves. If a parent is not ready to give his life for his child, then something is wrong in this family.

– Often grown children are tormented by the contradiction that they cannot truly love their parents.

– Because, on the one hand, it is initially so natural for a person to love his parents. But when parents don’t give enough love, don’t connect themselves with their child with true love, the child’s thirst for love still remains. The potential of love is not exhausted and therefore a person finds himself in a strange state when he cannot connect his own life with the life of the one whom he wants to love and is obliged to love. But there is no meeting, no one to love, no parent. Although physically he seems to be nearby...

“But we need to love our enemies, and people can’t even love their own parents.”

“We have no orders to love our enemies.” We have a commandment. The commandment is a very high state to which a person must be able to approach and learn to love his enemies. Not every Christian succeeds. From which it does not follow that since it fails, then it will be good and right not to love. We just have to understand that the commandment to love our enemies is a superhuman commandment. It puts man on a par with God. This is a very high calling, you can strive for this, you need to know about it, you need to go towards it.

No child can say, “I don’t have to love my parents.” Must. But if there are no parents, then who to love? Yes, there are some people who are called parents (thank God, not everyone has this situation), but how to love them? How are the parents? Or as enemies? Or how in general as some kind of stranger?

I recently happened to give communion to a teenage girl who died of cancer a day later. The girl is from an orphanage, her blood parents abandoned her, and then her adoptive mother took her in. According to the girl’s recollections, her father died, although it later turned out that it was not her father who died, but some person with whom her mother lived at that time.

Some time after the girl came to her adoptive mother, it turned out that she had fast-growing cancer.

Mom managed to find out that the blood father of her adopted daughter had been found, he was alive, he was just in prison. And then this woman came to him, thinking that it would be important for the girl to know: her blood father was alive.

And he thought that now they would demand alimony from him and said: “Prove that she is my daughter.” There were also her blood brothers and sisters who also did not want to meet this girl.

After I gave Holy Communion to Polya, I talked for a long time with her mother, she told me all this and was very worried that she had not told her adopted daughter anything about the existence of relatives, after all, “native blood.” I said that she did the right thing, there was no need to tell the girl anything, because these people are not father, brother or sister. In this situation, inventing a relationship means once again hitting the unfortunate child. The relationship between parents and children cannot be imagined; they either exist or they don’t.

Yes, this situation may be special, although, unfortunately, it is not uncommon. And here the question of honoring parents can arise, but only as a strong, strong feat for a person who, realizing that there is some uncle or aunt who once threw him in the trash, will be able to pray for them as parents.

One of my parishioners approached me - a young woman whose children are schoolchildren. She grew up without a father: her mother said that he was a pilot and died. Suddenly it turned out that he had not died at all, he just didn’t want to know anything about his daughter for almost forty years, and then suddenly he showed up (and he has another family, other children) and wants to communicate. "But I do not want! What should I do, how should I treat him?” she said. I answered: “If this person is in trouble, in need, in some difficult circumstances, then you will have to help him. But if everything is fine with him, he lives surrounded by grandchildren, some of his other children, I don’t see the point in any communication. There was not a note of repentance on the part of this man. It’s just like, “Hey, baby. I'm your dad. Don't you want to be friends with me? Do you have borthers and sisters. Let's play the story that we are all friends, family. Let’s imagine such a prosperous, cloudless world.” No, you can’t, that’s a lie.”

– But if parents, without internal closeness, nevertheless raised a child, invested something in him when he was sick - treated him, clothed him, and so on, he should be responsible for this?

- Yes, I am obliged to something. I have to read it. It’s crazy when a person doesn’t help his parents who raised him. But it is impossible to love if you have not been loved. If you were raised but not loved. If you were dressed, but not loved. If you were treated with medications, but were not loved at that moment.

Imagine, here you are a sick child, you have a mother, you are sick, and she gives you medicine, but what you need from your mother at this moment is not medicine, but for her to sit with you and pat you on the head. As a result, she did not give the most important medicine.

Yes, of course, parents can count on children who were raised this way to respond to them with medicine, food or some kind of financial means. But there is nowhere to get the love that they now lack so much, if it did not exist before. The love between parents and children is special. You won’t get it “later.”

You can cultivate love for the people you meet on the street, thereby struggling with your shortcomings. Forcing yourself to new feats, forgiving insults, and so on. To love people who are not close to you or complete strangers.

But love between children and parents comes from too far away, from the womb, from early childhood. The consequences of early childhood deprivation and lack of love are the sources of all future conflicts in life, the collapse of destinies, misunderstanding of oneself, mental illness...

Let’s say the mother left the child at the age of three for some time, for six months with grandmothers or a nanny, and took care of herself - that’s all, this is a trauma for the child, and maybe he will never recover from it.

Or a terrible situation took place when, before the eyes of a small child, a family broke up and parents divorced. This trauma cannot but manifest itself later in the fate of this person. Many things missed by parents kill a child’s soul and leave an unhealed mark for life…. We need to talk about this, understand that the lack of love is the most important, terrifying problem of humanity. After her everything goes to hell.

– Still, how to overcome these childhood wounds?

– An adult must be able to understand what is happening to him, where and where his problems are coming from, and how to deal with it. It's not an easy matter. For this there is the science of psychology, and I think that in many cases the help of a good specialist is needed. I’m not talking about the Church: participation in church life is a matter of course...

ABOUT RAISING GIRLS

It is important for a mother to remember that her own behavior, the way she interacts with the world, her female script is a role model for her daughter. If a mother behaves rudely, often yells at her daughter, and conflicts with her father in the presence of her daughter, the girl is more likely to learn not her mother’s correct words, but her way of reacting.

The psychology of a single mother, unfortunately, is often passed on from generation to generation. A woman who is unsuccessful in interacting with her husband will unconsciously cultivate character traits in her daughter that will almost one hundred percent make her incapable of getting along with her own husband in the future.

In order to become a happy woman, a girl needs to have a role model in front of her eyes in the form of a happy mother. If mom does not feel happy, you need to analyze what is causing this. Behind the feeling of unhappiness there may be, for example, old grievances hidden in the depths of the heart (against your parents, your husband, your child). And the roots of resentment go back to such a passion as pride. By realizing what the cause of her own difficulties lies, and by changing her life through repentance and forgiveness, a woman will help her daughter become truly happy.

To develop femininity, a girl needs the love and attention of her father. It is generally accepted that a boy raised without a father is bad. And it's hard to argue with that. But a lack of male education for a girl can also have long-lasting negative consequences. Everyday communication with her father teaches a girl to understand male psychology, to adapt to it (and for a woman this is very important if she wants her marriage to be successful), and teaches her not to be afraid of men. Ideally, it gives that human warmth that many women who did not have a father try to find by early entering into a love affair and “hanging themselves” first on one man, then on another.

It is very important that from childhood a girl sees the correct family hierarchy: the father is obedient to God, the mother is obedient to the father, the children obey their parents. If this hierarchy is violated (for example, a woman takes on the functions of the head of the family), the child often grows up insecure, fearful, neurotic, and the girl does not have the correct idea of ​​how a woman should behave in society, or what a real man should be like. .

True feminine charm lies in the purity of a girl's soul. But the purity of the soul is preserved if the girl is raised in chastity. Chastity is brought up through such seemingly banal things as clothes, toys, books

It is important to dress the girl in feminine clothes: dresses, skirts. Nun Nina (Krygina) speaks on this topic in some detail. Nowadays there are a lot of girls of preschool age wearing trousers. From a psychological point of view, clothes that can be worn by both men and women (trousers, jumpers, etc.) are hermaphrodite clothes. Even an adult, a woman, when putting on trousers, psychologically feels more independent and relaxed. And since preschool age is the basic age for gender formation, it is very easy for a child to “knock off” the gender.

At the same time, the dress is different. There is no need to dress a girl as if she were on a catwalk: an excessively low-cut, open dress, translucent material, and an abundance of jewelry can harm the girl’s state of mind. Therefore, parents need to control what their daughter wears, as long as their opinion is authoritative and meaningful. If we talk about teenage girls, then when choosing clothes they are no longer guided by the opinion of their parents, but by the so-called fashion.

Priest Ilya Shugaev writes about the messages conveyed by women’s clothing: “What is modern women’s fashion talking about? A short skirt says the following to all passing men: “I have already shown you half of my legs, you will get the rest later if you want.” It's a shame that a girl, putting on a short skirt, thinks to show everyone only that she knows how to dress fashionably, and does not realize that her clothes carry a completely different message to all the men around her. In general, clothing is always a kind of silent appeal to all people you meet. When meeting, the message encrypted in clothing must be read. “They greet you by their clothes.” A girl appears in tight trousers. I read: “I seem to have hidden my body, but you can already guess about my lovely forms...” There are also more insidious messages. These are long skirts reaching to the toes, but with an equally long slit along the entire height of the skirt. I read this message: “I hid my body, but left a small slit, you can peek a little if you try, and you will catch with your gaze all the movements of my gait, but the rest can be seen later if you want.” Having expressed something like this with her clothes, it will be very difficult for a girl to meet a good husband. Therefore, dear parents, you have a very big responsibility to teach your girl from childhood good taste in clothes, love for dresses, but at the same time it is important to develop a sense of proportion. And please don't encourage a girl's interest in cosmetics.

Another important point. Parents need to carefully select toys for their daughter. The modern industry often offers toys that are essentially aimed at corrupting the child's soul. It is very harmful for a preschool girl, for example, to play with dolls like Barbie.

Let me remind you that the Barbie doll was originally intended for the amusement of adults. True, she had a different name and was much larger. In the mid-twentieth century, they tried to sell her in Germany as a “sexual partner” for sailors. However, the number did not go through - morals had not yet been shaken, and a storm of indignation arose in Germany. The toy had to immigrate to America, where it was greatly reduced in size and acquired a new name. But the appearance of the “sex bomb” remained.

The Barbie doll has the proportions of an adult woman, and the girl is forced, when playing with this doll, to reproduce adult stories: going to a restaurant, talking with Ken, etc. Whereas a traditional doll is a prototype of a child. And while playing with her, the girl learns to be a mother. She reproduces the actions of adults: she swaddles her “daughter”, feeds her, rocks her to sleep, and thus, from childhood, prepares to fulfill the main purpose of a woman - motherhood.

Now there are toys for so-called “sex education,” that is, these are dolls with genitals. Parenting magazines claim that this is very useful for a child’s gender identity. Orthodox psychologists, including Tatyana Shishova, claim: “In fact, such toys are one of the initial links in the chain of measures to reduce the birth rate. Many Western psychologists and psychiatrists took part in the development of global anti-demographic policies, and hundreds of experiments were carried out. “Toys for sex education” really educate. Just not a good family man or a harmoniously developed personality, which is what parents who believe in progressive magazines hope for, but their opposite.”

Parents of girls can be advised to buy traditional dolls with child proportions, baby dolls. If we talk about soft toys, then it is worth purchasing baby animals that awaken maternal instincts; in addition, they are soft, warm, create a sense of security in the child, relieve anxiety, and carry a certain therapeutic load.

The child actively masters the world, transforming it in his own way, feeling like a creator, and play for him is a necessary means of understanding the world. Therefore, the wider the range of uses of a toy, the higher its value for creativity and the more it can develop the potential of the child himself.

As girls grow up, they begin to show interest in books and television. I would like to talk about novels for women, which are now filling the shelves. Not only do they spoil the literary taste, which is already underdeveloped in modern children. Also - and this is the main danger - by absorbing such literary products, girls become imbued with knowledge that is completely unnecessary at their age, learn the “art of seduction,” and acquire views and attitudes that, as a rule, do not lead to good.

Sex and romance are often intertwined in these books. Taking advantage of the fact that teenage girls, like a hundred years ago, dream of love, the authors make a clever substitution: instead of chaste, pure love, they aim readers at something completely different.

Most modern literature for teenage girls inflames sensuality, instills the idea of ​​the permissibility and even desirability of close relationships in adolescence and presents as a standard the image of an assertive, self-confident, impatient heroine who does not hesitate to impose herself on boys, often behaves like a girl of easy virtue, and puts above all else own pleasure, and therefore naturally violates “outdated” moral norms. At the end of the book, the heroine, as a rule, is lucky.

A teenage girl, seduced by such literature, falls into a trap. Starting to imitate the heroine of the novel, she abandons her natural feminine qualities: modesty, gentleness, caring, and the ability to sympathize. At first it seems to her that she has gained freedom and independence, but it quickly becomes clear that the guys look at her as a thing, an object of consumption.

Parents need to carefully monitor what the girl reads and watches. And it is important that parents themselves do not read such books or watch dubious films. Because everything secret becomes clear. If a father reads an obscene magazine, the children, due to their natural powers of observation and curiosity, will sooner or later find this magazine. Then it will be very difficult to explain to them why this is bad if low-quality printed materials were found, say, in a parent’s secretary.

It is very useful to give examples of holy wives who achieved holiness in marriage. The life of the holy noble princes Peter and Fevronia, the holy royal passion-bearers Nikolai Alexandrovich and Alexandra Fedorovna, their correspondence before marriage are a wonderful example of the purity of relationships.

Parents need to try to raise a girl so that she can understand and accept her feminine destiny, her high role in the life of the family and society, so that, figuratively speaking, the girl does not play games on someone else’s field, trying to imitate men. Parents must show by their example and sensitive upbringing that a girl will be happy only if she is herself and realizes the potential and purpose God has placed in her. And the main purpose of a woman is to give love and give life - to be a wife and mother. And if we can reveal to our girls this highest calling of a woman, teach them to love family and children and prepare for this feat from childhood, we will save them from many mistakes, disappointments and life tragedies, which means our lives will be weighed on the scales of God’s Truth according to to another. After all, as we know, “a tree is known by its fruit.”

Vovka's letter

There is no sadder place in the world
What a shelter for orphans.
But also to them in black and white everyday life,
The Lord comes daily.

When noses quietly sniffle them,
He puts love in their palms.
And erases from freckled faces
Imprints of melancholy and anxiety.

After all, His heart is good for them,
Never gets tired of burning.
As a Father, He is always with them,
And he can hug and warm everyone.

He finds letters under his pillow
And today I found one...
It was written by little Vova
"To Jesus for Christmas"

He didn't ask for sweets and toys,
He promised to always be obedient
If only a miracle happened to him,
If only his mother would come for him.

Daily in prayers to God
The boy only asked for this.
And more than once tears rain from his eyes,
It drizzled onto the pillow.

And today with a letter two sweets
He put it in an envelope for God.
— It’s the Savior’s birthday...
- It’s a pity... there are no other gifts.

- All I have are two candies...
“I took care of them,” the baby said,
When at night quietly in an envelope,
I put them under the pillow with the letter.

—You also like candy, don’t you?
- My gift to you from the bottom of my heart...
- I know that you are very kind.
- Just find me a mommy!

- Let her be kind and bright,
- I will love her very much...
- I need her very, very...
- Good God, help!

I stood by the crib for a long time
And the Lord looked at the boy.
His gaze filled as before
Endless love for all of us.

He couldn't help but come to the rescue
He is always there where people believe in Him.
Motherly affection and tenderness.
God has already prepared for him.

A year later, on the same festive night,
The Savior opened the letter again
And when he read, with a bright light,
His smile lit up.

- Hello God! This is Vova!
- I am the happiest person on earth!
- Imagine, my mother was found!
- Good God! Thank you…
author Tatyana Denisenko

——————————————————————————————

RAISING AND SCREAMING

Wrong parenting methods are inherited and passed on from generation to generation. They shouted at you, and you start screaming. But should someone try to stop this chain? For example, you already know from experience that a few more moments and your child, say, will hit another - decisively approach him before he hits, take him by the hand, take him aside. Without getting angry or swearing. Parents can very often prevent undesirable developments in the situation. Then there is no need to shout.

When a child succeeds in something, he must express gratitude with all his heart. So that the child understands the difference: when they are happy with him, when he really did something nice, or when he is unhappy with him. Children, in fact, are creatures striving for the ideal. If they understand that this ideal is achievable, that parents respond, that they are happy and grateful, then the children will strive to meet the requirements.

What if screaming has already become a habit in the educational process?
Wean yourself off this habit! and this may take months. Weaning a parent away from such unreasonable pedagogy will require effort, work, and analysis of their strengths and weaknesses.

You need to learn to anticipate the development of the situation, switch yourself and switch the child. You must always be in search of new techniques that allow you to resolve this situation. Parenting is generally a creative process; here you won’t be able to get by with techniques you’ve once found.

If you have a positive attitude, if you know that you can do “without fighting, fights and bloodshed,” as they say in fairy tales, then you will achieve this peacefully. And if you think that you need to take it by the throat or wave your arms, belts, or anything else, you will grow up either an aggressive or downtrodden or unfriendly creature that will get out of your control at the first opportunity. You will reap the fruits of your unkind, stupid upbringing.

Archpriest Alexander Ilyashenko
(Source: Pravmir)

_

I pray for my children.

God forbid they have bad weather along the way.
Warm them with your breath.
Send some simple happiness to them.
Simple, like bread taste,
Like the hubbub of birds at dawn.
Protect them from temptation
All the bad things in the world.
God bless my children.
May their road be smooth.
Don’t fill your cup of wealth,
And just give them a lot of health.
Send warmth to their hearts.
And give them selflessness.
Defense from wars and evil.
Don't deprive me of pure love.
Lord, I pray for the children -
With dawn.
At the end of the day.
Forgive their sins - have pity.
For those sins, execute me...__

___________________________________________________________________

Children in the temple

Source: Excerpt from the book of Archpriest Vladimir Vorobyov “Repentance, Confession, Spiritual Guidance”

...much more difficult problems arise in another case: when children grow up in a believing family. This is a problem that I don't know how to deal with. This is perhaps the most difficult and relevant thing for us.

Children raised in believing families eventually become bored with what their parents offer them. Parents and the priest must be prepared for this. Having become accustomed to everything churchly, as ordinary, ordinary, as something that is imposed by elders along with many other things, which is unpleasant, uninteresting, but necessary to do, they begin to not quite consciously reject all this. Such children begin to exhibit some kind of centrifugal energy. They want something new for themselves, they want to comprehend some unknown ways of life, and everything that their mother, or grandmother, or father says. all this already seems fresh.

Such children very easily find faults with church people, who begin to seem to them like hypocrites and boring moralists.

They very often no longer see anything bright enough in church life. Such a vector, such a direction from the church makes them essentially unable to perceive the grace of God. Participating in the sacraments, even in communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ, essentially speaking, they do not experience anything; they turn out, oddly enough, in childhood they are unlikely to experience the communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ as a union with God, as a meeting with God. For them, this is one of the usual, Sunday, holiday states. For them, church often becomes a club where they can meet and talk with each other. They can talk about something interesting here, wait impatiently for the service to end and they will run away together somewhere in secret from their parents into the outside world, at least not the church world.

Sometimes it’s worse: they like to play pranks in church, even this happens, or make fun of various people who are here in the church, sometimes even the priests. If they know how to do something, if they study in a church choir, then they will be very happy to discuss how they sing today. endlessly all sorts of ridicule of choirs, of different singers, who sings how, who hears something, who can do what, who understands what. They always feel like little professionals who are able to appreciate all this. And in such ridicule, they can go through the entire liturgy and the entire all-night vigil. They may completely cease to feel the holiness of the Eucharistic canon. But it won’t hurt, when the Chalice is brought out, to be the first, or maybe not the first, on the contrary, let the little ones go ahead and very decorously approach the Chalice, take communion, then just as decorously leave, and after three minutes they are already free, everyone has already forgotten and again indulge in what is truly interesting. And the moment of communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ... this is all familiar to them, everything is known, all this is of little interest.

It is easy to teach children to always appear Orthodox: to go to services, to let the younger ones go to the Chalice first, to give up their seat. They can do all this, and this, of course, is good. It's nice to see such well-mannered children. But this does not mean at all that they live a spiritual life, that they truly pray to God, that they seek communication with God. This does not at all mean striving for a real union with the grace of God.

According to this way of life, difficulties arise in confession. A child who comes to confession from a young age (usually seven years old) receives communion very often according to tradition. Let's say, in our church, children receive communion at every liturgy to which they are brought or to which they come themselves. In fact, it happens once a week, sometimes more often.

Confession for them at first is very interesting and longed for, because it seems to them that when they confess, it means that they have grown up, that they have already become big. And the five-year-old child really wants to start confessing as soon as possible. And his first confessions will be very serious. He will come and say that he does not obey his mother, that he beat his sister, or that he did his homework poorly, or that he prayed to God poorly, and he will say all this very touchingly, seriously. But very soon, literally in a month or two, it turns out that he is completely used to it, and then whole years go by when he comes up and says: “I don’t obey, I’m rude, I’m lazy.” This is a short set of common childhood sins, very generalized. He blurts them out instantly to the priest. The priest, who is tortured by confession beyond all measure, naturally forgives and resolves it in half a minute, and all this turns into a terrifying formality, which, of course, harms the child more than helps.

After several years, it turns out that for such a church child it is no longer clear that he should somehow work on himself. He is not even able to experience a real feeling of repentance in confession. It is not difficult for him to say that he did something bad. He says this quite easily. Just like if you bring a child to the clinic for the first time and force him to undress in front of the doctor, he will be embarrassed and it will be unpleasant for him. But, if he is in the hospital and every day he has to lift his shirt so that the doctor listens to him, then in a week he will do this completely automatically. It will not cause any emotions in him. So it is here. Confession no longer causes any distress in the child. The priest, seeing this, finds himself in a very difficult position. He doesn’t know how to deal with this, what to do so that the child comes to his senses.

There are some very striking examples when a child not only disobeys, is lazy and offends younger ones, but... he is blatantly disgraceful. For example, at school he interferes with the whole class’s activities, in the family he is a living negative example for all younger children and he simply openly terrorizes the family. Then he begins to behave disgracefully in society: swearing, smoking. That is, he begins to have sins that are completely unusual for church families. However, the priest does not know how to bring him to his senses. He tries to talk to him, tries to explain to him:

You know that this is not good, it is a sin.

Yes, he has known all this well for a long time, he knows perfectly well that this is a sin. He can even tense up for five minutes and say:

Yes, yes, I will try, I won’t do it again...

And you can't say he's lying. No, he's not lying. He will actually say it in the usual way, just as before dinner he can read the Lord's Prayer more or less seriously in one minute, but no more. After this familiar “Our Father” has passed, he again lives outside of prayer. So it is here. He can say something so that later he will be allowed to take communion. And after a day, after two, he returns to his tracks and continues to live the same way he lived. Neither confession nor communion bear fruit in his life.

In addition, the priest notices that the more he gets excited and begins to talk to this child more carefully, more seriously, the faster his funds are exhausted. And he will give almost everything he can, but will not achieve the goal. The child “eats” all this very quickly and continues to live the same way as he lived. We give him stronger medications, he absorbs them all, but they do not affect him. He is not sensitive to these drugs, he does not perceive anything. This is such a degree of petrification of conscience that is simply amazing. It turns out that with a believing child, the priest can no longer find any adequate language. He starts looking for another way, he gets angry with the child. But as soon as he starts to get angry, contact with him is completely lost. And such a child often says: “I won’t go to him again, to this Father Ivan. Well, he’s angry all the time, and here they are angry with me, and there they are angry with me”...

You see, this problem is one of the most difficult for a confessor. Here you need to think very hard about what you need to achieve here, what you need to strive for. It seems to me that we should strive to delay the start of confession as long as possible. Some naive mothers (there are a lot of them), if a child behaves badly at six years old, say:

Father, confess to him so that he begins to repent, maybe it will be better.

In fact, the sooner we start confessing him, the worse it is for him. We must remember that it is not for nothing that the Church does not impute sins to children until they are seven years old (and previously it was much longer). Children cannot be entirely responsible for everything in the same way as adults. Moreover, their sins, as a rule, are not mortal. They just behave badly. And it is better to allow them to take communion without confession than to profane the sacrament of repentance, which they are not able to truly perceive due to their small age.

You can confess such a sinner once every seven years, and then at eight years, and again. at nine. And delay the start of regular, frequent confession as long as possible, so that confession in no case becomes habitual for the child. This is not only my opinion, this is the opinion of many experienced confessors.

There is another very important limitation. Perhaps such children, who clearly suffer from addiction to the shrine, should also be limited in the sacrament of communion. In this case, it is better that children do not receive communion every week, then communion for the child will become an event. I'll tell you about my personal experience. When I was little (it was still Stalin’s time), the question was this: if I go to church all the time, then the schoolchildren who live nearby, my classmates, will definitely see me, they will report this to the school, and then, most likely, they will put me in prison. parents, and I will be kicked out of school. I grew up in a believing family, and my parents were believers from birth, almost all of our relatives were in prison, my grandfather was in prison three times, in prison and died: so there was a real danger, going to church was often impossible. And I remember every time I came to church. This was a great event for me. And, of course, there was no question of being naughty there... If you like, I went to church a few times as a child. It was very difficult, so it was always a huge holiday. I remember very well what a great event the first confession was for me. Then the second one (probably a year later), in general, throughout my entire childhood, I went to confession several times, just as I received communion several times throughout my entire childhood. For many years I simply did not receive communion or received communion extremely rarely; each time I had to suffer through it. Even as an adult, I experience the communion of the Holy Mysteries as a great event for myself. And it has never been otherwise. And, of course, I thank God that the Lord did not allow me to get used to the shrine, to get used to the church, to church life.

Oddly enough, the conditions of persecution, which prevented many from being believers, were more favorable for those who were still in the church. Not so now. I will say that my mother taught me to pray from birth, as soon as I can remember, I remember that I prayed to God every day in the morning and evening. I remember that she taught me to read “Our Father” and “Virgin Mother of God,” and I read these prayers almost until adulthood. And then I added “I Believe” and a few of my own words when I commemorated my loved ones. But this: morning prayers and evening prayers. I didn’t read as a child until quite late, that is, I began to read them when I wanted to do it myself, when it seemed to me that my prayer was not enough, I wanted to look at church books, and I saw morning and evening prayers there myself I discovered them for myself, found them and began to read them of my own free will.

I know that things are not like that in many families now. Now, on the contrary, parents try to force their children to pray as much as possible as early as possible. And aversion to prayer arises in a surprisingly quick time. I know how one wonderful old man directly wrote on this occasion to a big child: “You don’t need to read so many prayers to you, read only “Our Father” and “Rejoice to the Virgin Mary,” and don’t read anything else, nothing else is needed.” .

It is necessary that the child receives the holy and the great in such a volume as he is able to digest. What is the reason? My mother was raised in a religious family. And she taught me the same way she was taught. She remembered her childhood and taught her children from memory.

As it usually happens in life. And then there was a break in the continuity of spiritual experience and several generations dropped out of church life. Then they find church life as adults. When adult girls or women come, they are naturally given big rules, they truly repent. And when they get married and have children, they give their children everything that they once gave them when they came to church. Obviously this is what happens. They do not know how to raise children, because no one raised them in church life as children. They try to raise children the same way they raise adults. And this is a fatal mistake that leads to the most disastrous results.

I remember very well one of my mother's friends from a close church family who had many children. And I remember that she took her children to church from childhood. But how? She usually brought the children to the moment of communion, or very shortly before communion. They entered the church, where they had to behave absolutely reverently, there they had to tiptoe, fold their arms, take communion and immediately leave the church. She did not allow them to make a single turn of the head or say a single word in church. This is a shrine, this is the holy of holies. This is what she instilled in her children and they all grew up to be deeply religious people.

This is not how we do things anymore. Our mothers want to pray to God, they want to stand the entire all-night vigil, but there is nowhere to take the children. Therefore, they come to church with their children, let them go here, and themselves pray to God. And they think that someone else should take care of the children. And the children run around the temple, around the church, causing mischief, fighting in the temple itself. Mothers pray to God. The result is atheistic education. Such children will easily grow up to be revolutionaries, atheists, immoral people, because their sense of sacredness has been killed, they have no reverence. They don't know what it is. Moreover, the highest thing was knocked out of them - the shrine in its highest expression. Even the church, even the liturgy, even the communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. nothing is sacred to them anymore. What other authority will then be able to turn them towards the church is unknown.

That is why, it seems to me that it is very important for children to limit their visits to Church, the number of visits, and the time of visits. And maybe in communion, in confession. But this is very difficult, because as soon as we start giving the children communion without confession, there will be indignation, they will say: “How is it possible to take communion without confession after seven years?”

And so the disciplinary norm, which was introduced for adults, and which also has some irregularity in itself, turns out to be disastrous for children. We need to turn the lives of children around so that they deserve their church life. If you don’t suffer, then deserve it. You need to work hard somehow in order to be able to go to church.

It often happens that a child doesn’t want to go to church, but his mother grabs his hand and pulls him along:

No, you'll go to church!

He says:

I don't want to take communion.

No, you will receive communion!

And this causes complete disgust for everything in the child. The child begins to blaspheme and blaspheme right in front of the Chalice and beats the mother with his hands and feet and breaks away from the Chalice. But it should be just the opposite. Child says:

I want to take communion!

And the mother says:

No, you won’t take communion, you’re not ready, you’ve behaved badly this week.

He says:

I want to confess.

And she says:

No, I don’t allow you, you can’t go to church, you have to earn it.

It happens that children are taken from school to go to a church holiday. And it seems that this is good and I want them to join in the holiday and the grace of God. I have children myself, I do this myself, so I understand this very well. But here again there is a very big problem. This is only good when the child deserves it. And if he can always skip school and go to a holiday, then for him this holiday is already a holiday because he skips school, and not because it is, say, the Annunciation, or Christmas, or Epiphany, because he doesn’t need to go to school and prepare homework.

That is, all this is devalued and profaned to no end. And this is unacceptable. Perhaps it is better, more useful for the soul of a person, for the soul of a child, to say:

No, you will not be at the holiday, you will go to school and study.

Let him cry better at his school because he didn’t make it to church for the Annunciation. This will be more useful for him than coming to the temple and not appreciating anything at all, not feeling anything in the temple. Everything in a child's life must be rethought from this point of view.

And confession should not be so much persuasion, the priest should not so much shame as he should put everything in its place. He needs to take courage in spite of his parents, to say:

No, let your child not go to church yet.

Calmly, don’t get angry, don’t persuade, but say:

Such children bother us in church. Let your child come to church and receive communion once every few months...

When a young man wants to evade the army, his parents try in every possible way to protect him and save him. And the confessor says:

No, let him go serve. This will be more useful for him.

So it is here. The child needs to be given harsh conditions so that he understands that the church is an elusive goal for him.

During confession, the confessor should communicate with the child with great love. Don’t be a boring, strict teacher, try to convey to the child that he understands him, understands all his difficulties, I must tell him:

This is all true, of course. It’s really difficult for you, you really can’t cope. But what does this mean? This means that you do not need to take communion every week. If so, then come back in a month or two. Maybe you will come differently. You need to talk to the child quite seriously and force the parents to put all this in its place.

Church can only be a great, joyful, festive and difficult experience. Church life and confession should become desirable for the child, so that the child perceives communication with his spiritual father as something very, very important for him, joyful and difficult to achieve, very long-awaited. This will be so if the priest is able to find personal contact with the child at the right time.

Very often you have to wait out the transitional age, you have to reach 14, 15, 16 years. Not always, but it happens. Especially with boys, they can be incredibly naughty, and it’s simply impossible to talk to them seriously. It is necessary to reasonably limit their presence in church and participation in the sacraments. And then the time will come when it will be possible to say:

Well, now you’re big, you’ve grown up, let’s talk seriously...

And a kind of common life develops with the confessor, a personal relationship on a serious level, which becomes very valuable for a teenager.

All of the above about children can be summarized very briefly. Under no circumstances should confession be allowed to become simply a part of church life for children. If this happens, then this is a profanation, this is a very difficult problem to correct. Since we do not always have the opportunity to do what we think is necessary, we must be in the general mainstream, and in our church general confession is actually allowed, you can explain to the child that if he knows that he has no serious sins, then in this since he must be content with a prayer of permission.

Now let's move on to a similar problem with adults.

It is a great, great joy for a priest when some sinner or sinner comes after some misfortunes or life catastrophes that forced them to reconsider their life and find faith. He or she usually comes with very serious sins and cries at the lectern about his sins. And the priest feels that this person has come to truly repent, and now his new life begins. Such repentance is truly a holiday for the priest. He feels how the grace of God passes through him and renews this person, gives birth to him for a new life. It is in such cases that the priest understands what the sacrament of repentance is. This is truly a second baptism, it is truly a sacrament of renewal and union with God.

Such cases happen, and not so rarely. Especially when adults come. But then the person becomes an ordinary Christian. He began to go to church often, often confesses and receives communion, and over time he gets used to it.

Or maybe this is the same child who grew up in a believing family and has now become an adult. Maybe this is some good chaste girl. Nice, bright, look at her - a sight for sore eyes. But at the same time she does not live a spiritual life at all. He doesn’t know how to repent, he doesn’t know how to confess, he doesn’t know how to take communion, he doesn’t know how to pray. She reads out some of her own rules, often takes communion, but at the same time she does not know how to do it as she should. She has no spiritual work.

Such people, of course, do not behave like children. They do not run around the temple, do not talk or fight. They have a habit of championing all services. If from childhood, then it is already quite easy, it becomes a need. And you can stand like this all your life in church and be a good person in general. Don't do anything bad, don't kill, don't commit fornication and don't steal. But there may not be spiritual life.

You can go to church all your life, take communion, confess, and still not truly understand anything, not begin to live a spiritual life, or work on yourself. This happens very, very often. And, thank God, this is prevented by sorrows, of which there are quite a lot in our lives. Some difficult experiences, even serious sins and falls, turn out to be providentially allowed into a person’s life. No wonder there is such a proverb: “If you don’t sin, you won’t repent.”

It turns out that a person who grew up in the church often discovers for himself that real repentance is only when he somehow sins seriously. Until then, he had gone to confession a thousand times, but he had never understood, never felt what it was like. This, of course, does not mean that you need to want everyone to fall into serious, mortal sins. This means the need for our church life to be very clear. It must be something difficult for a person to begin to work internally. And the task of the confessor is to make sure that the person works, works, so that he does not just carry out some of his usual everyday routines, serving some holidays, some services. He needs to have a goal so that he can achieve this goal. Each person should have his own program of spiritual life.

If we don’t bring a baby to church, don’t teach him to pray, if we don’t have an icon or Gospel at home, if we don’t try to live piously, then we are preventing him from coming to Christ. And this is our most important sin, which also falls on our children.

priest Alexy Grachev

FOR CHILDREN ABOUT PRAYER. "Our Father".

What does it mean to ALWAYS remember God? Of course, this means never forgetting that He is nearby and sees everything. It would be good to think more often, especially when it’s difficult for you or, conversely, if you are very carried away by some kind of self-indulgence, to think like this: “Right now God is looking at me.” And immediately talk to God - and this is called PRAYING - tell Him: “Help me, Lord,” “Lord, have mercy,” or simply “Forgive me, Lord” (if you feel that you did something wrong). It’s also very good to thank the Lord more often: “Glory to God for everything!”, “Thank you, Lord!”

But this is not the whole conversation with God. You like to talk with your dad, mom, and friends, right? So sometimes you need to talk with Heavenly Father longer. These conversations especially happen in the morning, when you just woke up, and in the evening, before going to bed. They are called: morning prayers and evening prayers. These prayers are very wise, kind and beautiful - over time you will definitely learn them. But among them there is one most important, most holy prayer, which Jesus Christ Himself gave us - it is called the Lord’s Prayer “Our Father.” It’s time for you to start learning this prayer now - after all, you are not so small anymore. Listen to how it sounds:

Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, as it is in Heaven and on earth! Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors, and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one!

Of course, now you understand almost nothing in this prayer, but don’t be embarrassed, it won’t last long. Soon you will understand everything very well, and I will briefly explain it to you.

What does it mean? “Our Father” seems understandable, but at the same time somehow unusual. And it’s not surprising - after all, the “Our Father” prayer, like other prayers that you will read at home and hear in church, are written in Church Slavonic. This is not a foreign language; many centuries ago our ancestors prayed this way on our holy land. This ancient book language gave a lot to our modern Russian language, embellished it and spiritualized it.

“Our Father” in Russian means “Our Father.” It's clear? It’s very similar to how we’re talking now, right? Now listen further:

“Who art thou in Heaven” - Who abides (is, lives) in Heaven (of course, not on the clouds, but in the very depths of the universe, or rather, above everything that is in this world).

“Hallowed be your name” - may your holy and bright name always shine for all people, just as it sanctifies the entire universe, all the angelic and heavenly worlds - abodes of love and joy.

“Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, as it is in heaven and on earth” - and may the same order be restored as soon as possible in this world on earth and may there be beauty as in those worlds in Heaven, and may all people see Your holy good will (that is, what You command them to do) and they will fulfill it in everything with joy and gratitude.

“Give us this day our daily bread” - Grant us, our Heavenly Father, earthly food for our body and heavenly food for our soul, so that every day of our life we ​​do not suffer from physical or mental hunger.

“And forgive us our debts, just as we forgive our debtors” - Oh, this is very important! Listen: And forgive us our debts to You, that is, our sins, just as we forgive those who have offended us. Think about it - in these words we ask God to forgive us our sins (bad deeds, even thoughts), but on the condition that we forgive everything to our neighbors: parents, relatives, friends, and in general, random people we meet. Know that if we are offended by someone (how often this happens “out of context”), or even if someone really offended us, or was somehow unfair to us, then we must forgive him with all our hearts, honestly , and not to be offended, and not to be angry, and not to take revenge - after all, we promise this to God. Only then will he forgive us, we have enough bad things to do, right?

“And do not lead us into temptation” - Help us, Lord, to refrain from all evil within us and protect us from all evil around us.

“But deliver us from the evil one” - You, Lord, as the All-Powerful Defender, protect us, Your children, from the attack of our most terrible enemy - the devil. He is called the evil one, that is, a deceiver, because when he does mean things, he always pretends to be kind - like the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood”, and strives to deceive us, lead us away from God and destroy us.

So the Lord’s Prayer has become clearer to you. Listen to the whole thing again, as it sounds in modern Russian:

Our Father who lives in Heaven! Hallowed be your name, let your kingdom come, let your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us the bread we need every day, and forgive us our sins, as we forgive every debtor we have, and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.

Priest Mikhail Shpolyansky

Trusting, pure, simple

The soul of a child is given by God
To parents, like an empty vase,
Open from edge to bottom.
A word spoken carelessly
Which, like a bird, cannot be returned,
Trust can shake its foundations,
Like the most blatant lie.

You said one thing, but you do another,
And he condemned his neighbor in front of the children...
And with this the heart is pure, simple
He littered his own child.

And, using caution inappropriately,
I imposed a preconceived understanding,
And thus personal judgment is possible
And he took away the freedom of choice.

The character of children is malleable, flexible,
But you can bend it and break it.
Parental mistakes can't be counted,
And yet they can often be avoided.

Spiritual flower garden - The Bible of the Lord,
The honey of wisdom in her flows over the edge,
And with what I collected for myself today,
Feed your children's souls.

Trusting, flexible, simple,
Those who do not know the true paths, -
What do you fill empty vases with?
What are you sowing in the souls of pure children?

V. Kushnir

CHILDREN'S HAPPINESS AND THE FIFTH COMMANDMENT

Children's happiness, in my deep conviction, is when children grow up in an atmosphere where the Fifth Commandment is observed. I will remind you of the Fifth Commandment - everyone knows it well, I am convinced that the vast majority of our viewers are believers. The fifth commandment is: “Honor your father and your mother, that good may come to you, and that you may live long on earth.” It is good for a child to obey his parents; it is true happiness when a child has a father and mother. And now, unfortunately, there are many “well-wishers” who, for any reason, try to take away this happiness from a child, take away his father and mother. There are many possibilities for this: either at school or in another place the child will be told: you know, you have rights, think about it, when you come home, think about it, look carefully: are your parents violating your rights? Maybe they force you to wash your hands before sitting down at the table? Or maybe you get up in the morning - they force you to make the bed behind them? They are grossly violating your rights! Maybe you want to go out as long as you want, and with whoever you want, and come back whenever you want, but your parents say that you have to be home at 21.00? Know, child, that your parents are grossly violating your rights! Such well-wishers, no matter how high, noble, but in fact deeply deceitful motives they may be guided by, are true enemies for the child. Why? Because they change the child’s consciousness, they paint his own parents in negative colors. And since the child’s soul is still malleable, and malleable for both good and evil, therefore, if a child is taught from childhood: “baby, you have rights, but not to talk about responsibilities,” then the child’s psyche is deformed. Then the child will start knocking his legs and waving his arms - thereby the child destroys himself, without noticing, thinking that he is marching under the banner of the freedom of his rights. Therefore, such children need to be explained in time that the most important right a child has is the right to obey and honor their parents. And those who are trying to take away this right from him are his enemies, in fact. Because they deprive him of the blessing that the Lord commanded those who honor their parents, and they deprive him of hope for longevity. Look - in Rus', and especially in the republics of the North Caucasus, there are many long-livers. You ask any person who has lived over 80-90 years - he has a clear memory, good eyesight and hearing, and even a strong handshake, which would seem unusual for a 90-year-old man. You ask: how did you achieve this? He doesn’t say that there is clean air and good water here, but he says: I honored my parents. And for this the Lord rewarded him with longevity. Therefore, even in a big noisy city, where the environment may not be entirely desirable, a person can achieve longevity provided that he honors his parents. An example of this is the holy myrrh-bearing women, who not only served the Lord during His earthly life, but also after His Resurrection worked hard to preach the Gospel among the pagans. Holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene, for example, after the Ascension of the Lord, preached the faith of Christ in many countries and even visited Rome. A legend has been preserved that, while in the city of Rome, the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Mary Magdalene appeared before Tiberius Caesar and told him everything about Christ the Savior; from Rome she arrived in the city of Ephesus to Saint John the Theologian and there also preached about Christ. Another myrrh-bearer, Saint Mariamne, sister of the holy Apostle Philip, accompanied her brother and shared with him and with the Apostle Bartholomew the labors and sufferings of preaching the Holy Gospel; in some cities, the three of them tirelessly preached the Word of God day and night, instructed the unfaithful on the path of salvation and led many to Christ. After the martyrdom of her holy brother, Saint Mariamne went to Lycaonia to the pagans, preached the Holy Gospel there and rested in peace. Saint Junia, a relative of the holy Apostle Paul, together with Saint Andronicus, who belonged to the ranks of the seventy apostles, also worked zealously in preaching the Holy Gospel. Saint Irene the Great Martyr was such a great evangelist of the Holy Gospel that she converted her parents, the entire royal house, and about eighty thousand inhabitants of the city of Mageddon to Christ; in the city of Kallipolis she led up to one hundred thousand people to Christ, and in Thrace, in the city of Mesemvria, she converted the king and all the people to the faith of Christ.
Some of the women, for their zeal in spreading the faith of Christ, received the name Equal-to-the-Apostles in our Church; this is Saint Mary Magdalene, the holy first martyr Thekla, the holy Queen Helen, Saint Olga, the Grand Duchess of the Russian Land, and others. In general, it must be said that women worked hard to spread the faith of Christ on earth.
Christian women! And you must imitate the high example of the holy myrrh-bearing women, collaborators of the holy apostles, and other holy women who worked to spread the faith of Christ. Your preaching about Christ is still very necessary and can be fruitful. To whom will we preach the faith of Christ? - you ask. To your children; your family is the place for your preaching. And how much good a Christian mother can do for her children! How easily she can instill in the hearts of young children the fear of God, love of neighbor, obedience and many other Christian virtues and rules of piety! A pious Christian mother will be able, better than anyone else, to teach her children to believe, and love, and hope in God, and to work, and to take care of their parental property - in a word, to live according to the law and commandments of God. For to whom are children closer, if not to their mother? Let every Christian mother, who feeds her children physically out of a feeling of love for them, also feed them with spiritual food. If a son grows up to be a believer and pious, then he will fear God, and will love, respect, obey his parents, and take care of them in their old age, and will not dare to disobey his father or mother and offend them.
From the time of pagan persecution of Christians, many examples of firmness in faith, love and obedience of children raised by Christian mothers are known. One mother said this to her son during persecution: “My son! Do not count your years, but from a very young age begin to carry the true God in your heart. Nothing in the world is worthy of such ardent love as God; You will soon see what you leave for Him and what you gain in Him!” And the mother’s suggestions were not in vain. “From whom did you learn that there is one God?” - the pagan judge asked one Christian youth. The boy answered: “My mother taught me this, and the Holy Spirit taught my mother, and taught me so that she could teach me. When I rocked in the cradle and sucked at her breast, that’s when I learned to believe in Christ!”
Read also, for example, the life of the Roman Saint Sophia with her three daughters: Faith, Hope and Love - there you will see a great example of a Christian woman worthy of attention and imitation. Saint Sophia tried and did sow in the hearts of her young daughters the seeds of the true faith of Christ: they proved the firmness and immutability of their faith, enduring terrible torment for the name of Christ... In vain, the heartless tormentors persuaded them to betray the Christian faith: they gave their lives for the faith that their pious mother, Saint Sophia, instilled it in their hearts.
After the death of her husband, Saint Emilia left nine children. She raised all of them in deep faith and piety. Three of them later became bishops and great teachers of the Church: Basil the Great of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa and Peter of Sebaste.
The pious Christian Nonna, the mother of St. Gregory the Theologian, converted her husband Gregory, who was later bishop of the Cappadocian city of Nazianza, to Christianity. Righteous Nonna prayed to the Lord to give her a son and promised to dedicate him to His service. The Lord fulfilled her fervent prayer: a son was born to her and was named Gregory. The pious mother tried to instill in her son, from his adolescence, faith in God, love for Him and the rules of Christian piety. Having been brought up in faith and piety, Gregory became the bishop of Constantinograd, was a great teacher and was nicknamed the Theologian.
And the pious Anfusa, the mother of St. John Chrysostom, having become a widow in the twentieth year of her life, did not want to enter into a second marriage, but began raising her son and especially tried to ensure that he studied the Divine Scripture. And nothing later could erase this Christian pious upbringing from the soul of her son: neither the bad examples of his comrades, nor the pagan teachers.
The example of Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, shows especially clearly what a Christian mother can do for her children. Blessed Augustine received his first instruction in faith and piety from his mother. But, not having time to strengthen himself in the truths of the holy faith, living in a circle of depraved comrades, he became carried away by their example, began to lead a disorderly life and even fell into heresy; however, thanks to the care and fervent prayers of his mother, he was again directed to the true path and returned to God.
This is how great, beneficial and soul-saving the influence of a Christian mother is on her children!.. Therefore, Christian women, teach your children the main and fundamental rules of the faith of Christ, the commandments of God, prayers, raise them in the fear of God and, thus, prepare from them true children of the Christian Church, good and zealous workers for society and faithful servants of our Fatherland; This is your main responsibility, this is your preaching of the Holy Gospel! By Christian upbringing and teaching children the faith and fear of God and your own example of a good and pious life, you will ensure the well-being and happiness of your children, for which you will receive mercy and blessing from God in this life, and in the future life you will be rewarded with bliss and glory. Oh, blessed is that Christian mother who gave birth to temporary life and prepared her children for eternal life! Such a mother will fearlessly appear before the Righteous Judge and boldly say: “Here I am and the children whom You gave me, Lord!”

Priest Alexander Dyachenko (excerpt from the book)

Pray, mothers, for your children, when they see the light of God, when they are enlightened by holy Baptism... Oh, how necessary is maternal prayer at this time! “Will something happen this boy?” - everyone said at the birth of John the Baptist. Doesn’t a similar question come to mind when you see every child? Will something happen to him, to this newly born one, then to the newly enlightened one, and finally to this carelessly smashing little one? How will he get through the slippery and thorny path of life that he has embarked on? Will he overcome the dangers? Will he overcome the temptations awaiting him here, will he fulfill the vows given at baptism? Will he be a Christian in life or only in name? What if his mother carried him under her heart only so that he would later destroy the name of God with his life, live to the detriment of others and his own destruction? But you, Mothers, are afraid to even imagine this.

So pray for the child, pray precisely at the time when he is just entering the whirlpool of life.

Holy Righteous John of Kronstadt
ABOUT RAISING CHILDREN. CHILDREN ABOUT GOD.

Parents and educators! Protect your children with all care from the whims before you, otherwise the children will soon forget the value of your love, infect their hearts with malice, early lose the holy, sincere, ardent love of their hearts, and upon reaching adulthood they will bitterly complain that there is too much in their youth. cherished them, indulged the whims of their hearts. Caprice is the germ of heart corruption, the rust of the heart, the moth of love, the seed of malice, an abomination to the Lord.

Saint John of Kronstadt Do not leave children without attention regarding the eradication from their hearts of the tares of sins, nasty, evil and blasphemous thoughts, sinful habits, inclinations and passions; the enemy and the sinful flesh do not spare even children, the seeds of all sins are in children; Present to your children all the dangers of sins on the path of life, do not hide sins from them, so that, through ignorance and lack of understanding, they do not become entrenched in sinful habits and addictions, which grow and bear corresponding fruits as children come of age.

In education, it is extremely harmful to develop only the reason and mind, leaving the heart without attention - the heart needs to be paid attention most of all; the heart is life, but life spoiled by sin; you need to cleanse this source of life, you need to light a pure flame of life in it, so that it burns and does not go out and gives direction to all the thoughts, desires and aspirations of a person, his entire life. Society is corrupted precisely because of the lack of Christian education. It’s time for Christians to understand the Lord, what He wants from us - it is He who wants a pure heart: “Blessed are those who are pure in heart” (Matthew 5:8). Listen to His sweetest voice in the Gospel. And the true life of our heart is Christ (“Christ lives in me”) (Gal. 2:20). Learn all the wisdom of the apostle; this is our common task - to instill Christ in the heart by faith.

Man, they say, is free; he cannot or should not force himself either in faith or in teaching. Lord have mercy! What a diabolical opinion! If you don’t force it, then what will come out of people after that? Well, what will come of you, herald of newly invented rules, if you do not force yourself to do anything good, but live the way your vicious heart, your proud, short-sighted and blind mind, your sinful flesh wants you to live? Tell me what will become of you? Don’t you force yourself to do anything, I don’t say directly good, but even though it is necessary and useful? How can you do without forcing yourself? How can Christians not be encouraged and forced to fulfill the requirements of faith and piety? Doesn’t it say in the Holy Scriptures that “the Kingdom of Heaven is in need,” that “the needy delights it” (Matthew II, 12)? How can we not force boys, especially, to study and pray? What will come of them? Aren't they sloths? Aren't they naughty? Will they not learn all kinds of evil?

The goal of Christian education is to gain the fullness of spiritual existence, the joy of spiritual existence, because when a person’s soul rejoices, he needs little in this world; and when the soul grieves, nothing in this world can bring him joy.

Christian education consists of teaching a person to please God with his life, just as a child tries to please his parents.

prot. Evgeny Shestun