By St. Nazarius of Valaam
Self-knowledge is needful; this is the knowledge of oneself and especially of the limitations of one’s talents, one’s failings, and lack of skill. From this it should result that we consider ourselves unworthy of any kind of position, and therefore that we do not desire any special positions, but rather accept what is placed upon us with fear and humility. He who knows himself pays no heed to the sins of others, but looks at his own and is always repenting over them; he reflects concerning himself, and condemns himself, and does not interfere in anything apart from his own position. He who is exercising himself in self-knowledge and has faith, does not trust his faith, does not cease to test it, in order to acquire a great and more perfect one, heeding the word of the Apostle: "Examine yourself, whether ye be in the faith" (II Cor. 13:5).
From Abbot Nazarius by Fr. Seraphim Rose, p. 88
http://agapienxristou.blogspot.ca/2013/11/look-at-thyself-before-judging-others.html
Geronta, if a mother gives holy water to her child and he spits it out, what should she do?
—She should pray for her child. Maybe the way in which she gives the holy water to her child causes a reaction. For the child to be on the path of God the parents must also live right spiritually. Some parents who are religious strive to help their children to become good, not because they are concerned for the salvation of their souls, but because they want to have good children. In other words, they are more worried about what people will say about their child instead of whether they might go to hell. So how can God help? The aim is not for children to go to church through compulsion, but to love the church; not to do good through compulsion, but to feel the need to do good. The holy lives of parents (husband and wife) instruct the souls of their children and they naturally follow. In this way they grow up piously, with health of both soul and body and without spiritual injuries. If parents force their children out of fear of God, He helps and the child is benefited. If, however, they do it out of egoism, then God does not help. Children are often troubled because of their parent’s pride.
—Geronta, some mothers ask us what prayer should a child of three or four years old do?
—You should tell them: “You are the mother; see how much your child can handle.” They shouldn’t give them a rule.
—Geronta, what if the little children get tired when their parents bring them here for vigils?
—During Orthros they should let them out a little to relax, and during Divine Liturgy bring them back into the church.
Without forcing their children mothers must teach them to pray. Villagers in Cappadocia* intensely lived the ascetic tradition. They would take their children to hermitages, do prostrations and pray with tears, and in this way, the children learned how to pray. Chetes would sometimes go by night to rob them; and when passing the chapels they would hear crying and stop in surprise. “OK, what’s going on?” they would say. “During the day they are all smiles and at night they cry?” They couldn’t understand what was going on.
Miracles happen through the prayers of small children. Whatever they ask of God He gives them because they are guileless and He hears their pure prayer. I remember one time our parents had gone out into the field and had left me in the house with my two younger siblings. The sky suddenly darkened and a torrential rainstorm began. “What will our parents do now?,” we said. “How will they get back home?” The two little ones began crying. “Come here,” I told them, “we will ask Christ to stop the rain.” The three of us knelt down before the family’s icons and prayed. In just a few minutes the rain stopped.
Parents must use discernment to help their children draw near to Christ from their early years, and from their childhood to live the joy on high—spiritual joy. When they start school they should learn, little by little, to read spiritual books to help themselves live spiritually. In this way they will become little angels, and their prayers will have greater boldness before God. Such children are spiritual heads of the home. The lives of saints especially help small children in their spiritual lives. As a small boy I found a little book of the lives of saints which they had back in those days. I went out into the forest to read and pray. I was flying with joy. From the age of ten to sixteen, when the Greek-Italian war began, I lived the spiritual life without restraint. Childhood joys are pure; they leave an imprint on a person that greatly affects him when he grows up. If children live spiritually they will live joyfully in this life, and in the next they will rejoice eternally with Christ.
St. Paisios
In Egypt, in whose ancient Christian past there had once been many grand monasteries, there once lived a monk who befriended an uneducated and simple peasant farmer. One day this peasant said to the monk, “I too respect God who created this world! Every evening I pour out a bowl of goat’s milk and leave it out under a palm tree. In the evening God comes and drinks up my milk! He is very fond of it! There’s never once been a time when even a drop of milk is left in the bowl.”
Hearing these words, the monk could not help smiling. He kindly and logically explained to his friend that God doesn’t need a bowl of goat’s milk. But the peasant so stubbornly insisted that he was right that the monk then suggested that the next night they secretly watch to see what happened after the bowl of milk was left under the palm tree.
No sooner said than done. When night fell, the monk and the peasant hid themselves some distance from the tree, and soon in the moonlight they saw how a little fox crept up to the bowl and lapped up all the milk till the bowl was empty.
“Indeed!” the peasant sighed disappointedly. “Now I can see that it wasn’t God!”
The monk tried to comfort the peasant and explained that God is a spirit, that God is something completely beyond our poor ability to comprehend in our world, and that people comprehend His presence each in their own unique way. But the peasant merely stood hanging his head sadly. Then he wept and went back home to his hovel.
The monk also went back to his cell, but when he got there he was amazed to see an angel blocking his path. Utterly terrified, the monk fell to his knees, but the angel said to him:
“That simple fellow had neither education nor wisdom nor book-learning enough to be able to comprehend God otherwise. Then you with your wisdom and book learning took away what little he had! You will say that doubtless you reasoned correctly. But there’s one thing that you don’t know, oh learned man: God, seeing the sincerity and true heart of this good peasant, every night sent the little fox to that palm tree to comfort him and accept his sacrifice.”
The Tale of the Prayer and the Little Fox- from the little prologue.
http://agapienxristou.blogspot.ca/2013/01/the-tale-of-prayer-and-little-fox.html
An instructive image: Christ, the Most-holy Theotokos and St. Stylianos blessing and protecting those who carry the blessed Cross of family life in Christ. A repentant woman wails of her sin of abortion. To the right, the New Herod of Abortion is depicted personified, with the physician helping her, and women bringing them their babes out of love of pleasure, hardness of heart, indifference, etc.
Note: Here Elder Paisios, with the divine illumination that he has, shares what a terrible sin and blight upon the entire world the sin of abortion is. He (and I) are not using this as a ruse to support any specific political candidate or party. And the Elder would never support those who would use violence to make a statement against abortion providers or patients. But may his words grant us all the contrition to realize how great a sin abortion is, and how we might all return to Christ in repentance, acknowledging the sacred image of God that is every human being, even from our mother's womb.
Elder Paisios: "Abortions are a terrible sin"
-Elder, one forty year-old woman, who has grown children, is three months pregnant. Her husband threatened that, if she does not have an abortion, he would leave her.
If she has an abortion, her other children would pay with sicknesses and accidents. Today, parents kill their children with abortions and do not have the blessing from God. In olden times, if a small child was born sick, they would baptize him, and he would die like an angel, and was more secured.
Parents had other older children, but they also had the blessing of God. Today, they kill their older children through abortions, as they strive to keep them alive while they are sick. Parents run to England, to America to heal them. And they continue to bear children even more sick, because they, if they sought to make a family, they could again give birth to sick children, at which point, what would happen? If they bore a few children, they would not run so much for the one who is sick. He would die and go forth as a little angel.
-Elder, I read once that every year, in total there are 50 million abortions and 200,000 women die from complications.
They kill the children because they say that, if the population would increase, there would not be enough to eat, in order for humanity to be preserved. There are so many uncultivated areas, so many woods, so that, with today's tools, for example, they could plant olive groves to give to the poor. It's not that they would cut the trees and there would be no Oxygen, because there would be trees to replace them.
In America, the wheat burns, and here in Greece, the fruit falls into the rubbish heap, etc. while in Africa, the people are dying from hunger. When people were dying from hunger in Abyssinia, because they had a great drought, I told a well-known ship-owner friend to help in these circumstances, to go to the rubbish dump and to load up a boat to take [the surplus foodstuffs] there for free. They didn't allow him to do this under any circumstance.
-How many thousands of embryos are killed every day!
Abortion is a terrible sin. It is murder, and of course a very great murder, to kill unbaptized children. Parents must understand that life begins from the instant of conception.
One night, God allowed me to see a terrible vision, to inform me regarding this matter! It was the evening of the Tuesday of Bright Week 1984. I had lit two candles in two tin cans, as I always do even while asleep, for all those who suffer spiritually or bodily. To those I include the living and the reposed. At midnight, as I was saying the [Jesus] Prayer, I saw a great field surrounded by a fence, studded by wheat that had just begun to grow. I stood outside the field, and I lit candles for the reposed and placed them on the wall of the fence.
To the left there was a dry place, full of rocks and cliffs, which was shaking continuously from a very strong cry from thousands of voices that break your heart and make you shudder. And even the toughest man, if he would hear it, would be unable to remain unmoved. As I was experiencing these heartbreaking cries, I asked within where these voiced were coming from, and what was happening with all that I saw, and I heard a voice tell me: “The field studded with wheat that has just sprouted, is the Cemetery with the souls of the dead that would be raised. At the place which was shaking from the heartbreaking cries are found the souls of children who were killed through abortions!”
Following this vision, I was unable to rest from the great pain that I experienced for the souls of the children. I could neither lie down to rest, though I had been busy that whole day.
-Elder, can something be done to remove the law regarding abortions?
Yes, but the Nation, the Church, etc. must be moved to inform the people about the consequences of declining birth rates. The Priest should explain to the world that the law regarding abortions is against the commandments of the Gospel. Doctors, from their own positions, should speak of the risks that follow the woman who has an abortion. See, the Europeans had royalty, and left this as an inheritance for their children. We had the fear of God, but we lost it and did not leave an inheritance for the next generation, and for this we legalize abortions, political marriage, [etc.]...When a man disobeys one commandment of the Gospel, he alone is responsible. When, however, something that clashes with the commandments of the Gospel becomes the law of the land, then the wrath of God falls upon the whole nation, that it may be chastened.
St. Paisios
Your immediate concern should be with yourself. Strive hard to be a Christian wife and a Christian mother. This is not easy. If you do strive for this, you in your world will find as many snares and pitfalls as we [i.e., monastics] do in ours. Yours may be a different kind, but they are no less difficult to evade.
Starets Macarius of Optina
“How can I, living in the world, dwell in the presence of God?” The elder answered” “Do everything as one cooperating in God’s work.” To be a fellow worker with God in the task of marriage and bringing up Christian children is a grandiose and holy role…. All you learn about marriage, all your work for your marriage, is work for the salvation of your children, and this is not something small, but something which is of eternal value.
A contemporary monk
Remember that love of the neighbor is the first work you must strive for. And you do not even have to leave your house to find that neighbor; your husband is that neighbor; your mother is that neighbor; and so are your children.
Starets Macarius of Optina
The question for Christians who are already married and raising children is not: “How can I reduce to a bare minimum my family obligations so as to be “free” to lead a “more spiritual” life?” It is rather: “How should I nurture within my family life my love for God and my neighbor?”
Sister Magdalen
The joint prayer of husband and wife is a great force.
Starets Macarius
Not merely by living with him as a wife will she be able to save her husband, but by openly demonstrating a life lived according to the Gospel…. It is possible in the case of wives to display the same zeal and enjoy the same advantage [as Saint Pricilla in teaching Apllos: Acts 18:24-26]… The display of a grand philosophy and much patience, the scoffing at misfortunes of marriage, and the determination to follow this task through from beginning to end–this is to make the soul of one’s partner to be saved.
Saint John Chrysostom.
http://agapienxristou.blogspot.ca/2013/05/just-for-mothers.html
