About the Upbringing of Children
4th Sunday of Great Lent
Hebrews 6:13-20; Mark 9:17-31
In The Gospel, it is written:
“How long has this been happening to him?” And he said, ‘From childhood’.” (Mark 9:21)
A severe illness tormented the boy “from childhood”. It is very painful for parents, for the family, when someone from childhood suffers from some severe, incurable illness. Such a condition is often a heavy cross to bear for a father and mother.
From observing life, from radio, television, and the press, we know that there are quite a few such cases when a child suffers from some illness from birth or early childhood, either a common physical or mental illness. Recently, for example, I read that a child had to have heart surgery on the third day after birth. Even before that, a ten-year-old boy had to have his kidneys removed and a donor kidney transplanted.
For doctors, and all the more for us ordinary people, it is difficult to determine why such ailments occur at an early age. From The Holy Scriptures, we are aware that the punishment for the sins of the parents passes on to children and grandchildren, to the third and even fourth generations (Exodus 20:5).
Sometimes it becomes clearly manifested: children of alcoholics (father or mother, or both) acquire severe bodily illnesses, whether mental or physical, in the womb. Young fathers and mothers must always have a Christian consciousness and responsibility that their lack of restraint, their sin, can lead to grave consequences when their children and grandchildren will be handicapped for their entire lives.
Recent research and conclusions of scientists affirm that young fathers and mothers who use drugs, and in the case of mothers, even when they smoke during pregnancy, can cause brain damage, circulatory defects, and various bodily ailments. Young women should be especially aware of this, as they often strive to be equal to men in their negative habits. But every thinking person knows that a child can grow only in the womb, and therefore any poisoning of a woman’s body will be reflected, inevitably, in the child.
We are obliged to raise such an unpleasant concern even in church, especially during Lent, so that people can strive to eradicate their sins and bad habits, and to prevent those sins in the future, to prevent crippling and serious illnesses in our children and grandchildren--for they are the future members of our Church of Christ, the future members of the Body of Christ.
The Church of Christ is the spiritual mother of all Christians, which through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ gives a new birth to her children, which washes and purifies the souls of her children in the Sacrament of Penance, which gives them spiritual nourishment in the Sacrament of Communion, and therefore has the duty to teach the Word of God, to bring up her children in the fulfillment of the will of God.
The Church of Christ also reminds us that it is the duty of fathers and mothers -- especially of the latter -- to teach and care for the teaching of the basics of the faith of Christ to their children, to teach and instill in them the fundamentals of Christian morality -- not only by word, but also by their own good example. Fathers and mothers must know that if they do not do this, they sin before God.
We must also remember that in the Christian way of family life, the mother was always the greatest teacher of the language, faith, and customs of her people. Traditionally, the father worked more outside the home, so the mother did most of the raising of the children. Now, when many mothers also work outside the home, like fathers, children are left without proper upbringing. They are still taken care of in terms of being fed, given drink and clothed, but otherwise, children remain outside the influence of the family. We must always think about this, especially during Lent, because while our families may become materially wealthier, they become spiritually poorer—poorer in their children.
Nowadays, especially in school education, attention is drawn to the physical similarity of humans to various animals—that conclusion is undeniable, but we must pay attention to another similarity of humans, which is, at the very least, left unmentioned in school education:
Man is created with his spiritual endowments similar to the image of God (Genesis 1:27): “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.”
Both fasting and the entire range of Sacraments and blessings in the Church, as well as the services themselves, are means by which we maintain and restore in ourselves that image of God and union with God. A person who does not use those gifts and means of God becomes a creature and loses his image of God.
The life of animals is limited by their time or age on earth; no animal understands either the past or the future. An animal perceives and feels only the environment in which it exists bodily. An animal, no matter how physically similar to a human, does not feel its Creator; it does not know Him, because it is created only to enable either human life or to fulfill certain functions in nature.
Man is able to think and understand the world beyond his immediate environment, to understand not only the planet Earth on which he lives, but the universe. Man is capable of learning from the experience of the past, capable of creating, looking up to his Creator, capable of feeling and creating beauty, goodness, and justice. But, as already mentioned, when a person becomes a creature, he can also lose his spiritual inclinations given to him by God at creation.
And let no one try to explain that humans have a bigger brain, for elephants have four times the brain of humans--4370-5340 grams. And an ocean whale, the largest animal in the world, has a brain 5-6 times larger than that of humans (4673-7000 grams); yet, humans are given the ability to have dominion over these and other animals of the globe — that gift is given to them by God the Creator.
Parents who care only about the bodily needs of their children (“And do my children lack anything? -- I have prepared varenyky (perogies) and cabbage rolls for them for the whole week...”), thereby rob them spiritually, sometimes without realizing it.
In modern civilization, much attention is paid to physical development, to muscle training, to acquiring formal knowledge in various fields of human learning, but few people care about the development of the spiritual endowments of young people, about maintaining their connection with the Creator, about knowing and fulfilling His will. As a result, we have moral decline, downfall, and thus we are witnesses to disgusting distortions and contempt for the image of God in many people […].
We, members of the Church of Christ, must ensure that the education of children and young people is based not on the shifting sands of human speculations and bodily passions, but on a solid foundation: faith in the One God, faith in the One Lord Jesus Christ, and the fulfillment of God’s will. When we have all of this, then, as the Lord testified,
“‘all things are possible to him who believes.’" (Mark 9:23)
Amen.
Very Rev. Fr. Taras Slavchenko
Taras Slavchenko was born on March 8, 1918 in Nikopol, Dnipropetrovsk region in Ukraine. After graduating from school and the Pedagogical College, he entered the language and literature faculty of the Scientific Pedagogical Institute. Having successfully completed it in 1938, he served as a teacher in a secondary school.
