5th Sunday after Pentecost

Good morning to all of you.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

So today I wanted to speak a little bit about our obligation to our children and the miracle, of course, of children. I'm going to start by reading a little bit from the book of Hebrews, which maybe is a little bit hard to listen to. It's hard to hear and to take in. But in Hebrews 2:5-18, St. Paul says:

"For He, namely Jesus, has not put the world to come of which we speak in subjection to angels. But one testified in a certain place saying, 'What is man that You are mindful of him, or the Son of man that You take care of him? You have made him a little lower than the angels; You have crowned him with glory and honor, and set him over the works of Your hands. You have put all things in subjection under his feet.'... 'I will declare Your name to My brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You.' And again: 'I will put My trust in Him.' And again: 'Here am I and the children whom God has given Me.' Inasmuch as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same, that through death He might destroy him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and release those who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For indeed, He does not give aid to angels, but He does give aid to the seed of Abraham." And we are the seed of Abraham. "Therefore, in all things, He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For in that He Himself has suffered, being tempted, He is able to aid those who are tempted."

Now this is a lot to take in, and essentially what is being said is that our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ came, first of all, to save us, and to raise us out of this material life of sin and death, and grant us eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven. And this is a very remarkable, high calling. And if we are able to absorb this and understand it—and perhaps we will never really understand it, but we are able to absorb it and to take it in and to contemplate upon these words that we read—it will cause us to look within ourselves and search for life in Christ. For God created us in his own image and likeness, and through our holy baptism and our chrismation and our life participating in the life of the church, which is his body, and partaking of his precious body and blood through holy communion, we are potentially transformed. I say potentially because in reality, we must grasp hold of that which has been given to us. God has offered himself on the cross, he has risen from the dead, he proclaimed everlasting life to his children, we are his children, and he seeks to transform us inwardly and outwardly, and to raise us into the heavenly Kingdom itself.

And so, brothers and sisters in Christ our God, on this day, this very important day, we should consider, I think, the question of our children. How do we take care of our children? How do we train our children? How do we give them the love that they need in order to develop and become children of God, as opposed to children of this very fallen world? How do we do this? And of course, we always need to go to the words of our Savior, and he says, "Assuredly I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven. Whoever receives a little child like this in My name receives Me."

And so we have these remarkable words, and it's very important for us, both individually and as families and mothers and fathers and as a community, to try to understand what our obligations are. And this brings me to looking back to my youth, and I think Ariani can look back to her youth, and Matushka can look back to her youth, and there are others here who can look back. And it was really remarkable because the family was a tightly knit reality. And it was knit together, first of all, by our Lord and God and Savior Jesus Christ, who put the love in the struggles of our parents and those who are our relatives and friends and so on, who cared for us.

And when I was a child, we were trained. We were trained about how to behave, and we were trained vigorously, actually. I remember table manners, and we would sit at the table, and we would have a formal meal. Certainly not every night, but every night the manners were insisted upon. Many times in the year we'd have a formal meal, and we were taught how to sit in our chair, how to hold our hands, how to deal with our napkin, and how to hold our glass, and how to put food up properly, as opposed to stabbing it and jamming it in our mouths. We learned to do it delicately, and in a way that was pleasing and not unclean, in a way that is pleasing on the one hand, but not offensive to others. And you might say, "Well, that's just old-fashioned; we're not there today." Well, actually, I think in general people are not there today. I get that. But the truth of the matter is, it wasn't just about eating. It was about the idea that a child has to be trained. The child has to be trained.

The fact is, our little children, they're born and we're holding them in our arms, and they're so... oh, they're just... we melt with joy, as it were, holding our children. But it doesn't take long before they become demanding, and they want this, and they want that, and you want them here, and they want to be over there, and you have to chase them down. There are a lot of things that happen. And the truth is that, once again, there has to be training. And why? Because they need to be able to control their own desires and, as it were, submit to obedience and to submit to order. Because as they grow a little bit older and they have friends, they need to know how to conduct themselves in relationship to one another. We were taught manners, right? We were taught manners in every situation. We don't snatch that away from someone, and we don't throw this over here, and we don't push people down. And all of these things were taught, and they were taught rigorously. And the end result was, I think, that we were able, even as young children, to fit into adult conversation, and to participate at the table, and to be recognized. There were tremendous rewards given in response to the disciplines that we learned. And I remember so many dinners and people, and I remember sitting in my chair, not being very big at all, but being really taken with the elders of our society in conversation, and then from time to time being invited to participate.

And of course, these are things that were necessary. Even in terms of playing, there are so many ways that kids can play, and they can play on the one hand, following their own passions, and be throwing things around. On the other hand, they can, with a mother or a father who sits with them, learn to play with things in such a way that they can actually build, maybe build a little tower out of the blocks, or maybe a tunnel that a car can go through. And all of this learning, once again, it forms the inner life. It actually forms how a person is going to deal with their own desires as a child, because children have passions, and children get angry, and children get frustrated, and they cry, and they lash out. And what we do is we train our children how to contain the frustrations, and how to take that energy and use it in a positive way. And obviously, this is a very big struggle for the parents. It always has been a big struggle. But it's a struggle worth engaging, because if we want our child to be integrated into play groups on the one hand, they need to know how to act with one another. They can't just go over to someone else and just tear the toys out of their hand and throw them across the room because they're jealous. Jealousy. Can you imagine? Aren't children jealous, or angry even?

And so our children need to be trained, and they need to be nurtured and guided. And in the process of this training, tremendous things can be introduced. Matushka, of course, was a teacher, and she was a special needs teacher who was very beloved by her students, and beloved because she was able to help them with kindness and a calm hand and guide them, so that they were able to, as it were, interact in a successful way with their fellow students, and they were able to learn things that they could not learn without guidance. And we as parents need to guide our children, literally every step of the way. They are the most important aspect of our lives, and they are the charge that God has given us. We just don't have a child, and that's the end of it. We have a child, and we have to bring them up, and it's our first priority.

And so, just to transition, if you look at the world we live in today, parenting is extremely difficult. It really is difficult, because it seems to me that a high percentage of our people are addicted, as it were, to cell phones. You've got to look at the cell phone, see what's going on, and not only addicted to the cell phone, but addicted to the television, and addicted to things that actually are very destructive. So this Tolkien—now I'm having a hard time remembering the trilogy with the Hobbits and so on, but it starts out with a hill, and there's a door, a round door with a brass knob in it, and you turn the knob, and you open the door, and you go down, down, down, down, down. And people don't realize that actually Tolkien was a person who was into the occult. The world he introduces people to through his tunnel, with all these other figures, is a world of darkness. And it's an alternative world. And I say that because it's not that people are reading Tolkien these days—and many Orthodox Christians read these books, and they find them very entertaining—but they don't realize if you were to go and look at Tolkien, where he came from, what he studied, his philosophies, and what he represented, you'll discover, yes, it's a world of darkness. And it's an alternative world.

And I bring it up, for me, it's a very vivid image, because I was introduced to that. I mean, we were adults at the time, but you don't always understand things. And where I was first seriously aware of it, I was assisting in a parish in Massachusetts. And the rector said to me, "You know, we have this group of kids, about 15 or 16 kids, who are taking names from the Tolkien trilogy, and also living out in their fantasies, and they were dressing like hobbits and so on and so forth." And they were serious. I mean, you'd laugh, you'd think, okay, they did that one day, right? No, no, this was going on for months. And there's another one, Dungeons and Dragons, which was another fantasy, and kids were getting into the Dungeons and Dragons thing, and it was leading them into chaos, basically.

And so what's the point here? The point is that, forget about Tolkien, forget about Dungeons and Dragons, what's going on through the iPhone and the material that children are engaging in is ten times worse, and it is a dark, dark, dark place. Do not be deceived. I've seen parents put up cell phones with images on the floor so the kids can play with it. It's a distraction. And you go, what is this? Wait a minute. This is a portal to the place of darkness. And the thing is, we're in a very difficult place. The values that we honor as Orthodox Christians and Christians in general have been eroded. There's no question about it. And it's this massive technology with TikTok—and I've seen it before, but I've heard it's not so good—and just all kinds of images and things that kids can engage in.

And we, and Matushka and John Sturgeon remember, like five years ago, we were on a boat tour up in Maine, you know, out to some islands and so on, and there were these kids on the boat tour on their phones. And the seals were jumping over here, and eagles were over there, and birds were flying, and fish were jumping. They were addicted, flat-out addicted. They couldn't let go. And I remember going to some other restaurant, there were four children, and all of them were on their phone during the dinner. On their phone. And this is a portal to hell. Okay, there are things we need to do on our phones, and we use our phones, and I see we can't get along without them. But it's a portal to hell and darkness. And I'm saying this, and I hope you can understand it, we have a very serious situation, and it's going to take a lot of hard work, individually and as a community—as a community to support one another—to break the bondage of all of this technology that leads to darkness, so that our children can learn the disciplines necessary to function in an orderly way, in church life, in school, and throughout their lives.

And once again, just to reiterate, the disciplines that they need are not something you just can tell them about. You just don't tell a child, this is what you need to do. You have to rehearse with them, you have to guide them, you have to train them. Forgive me, now we know our children are much superior to our dogs, but the fact of the matter is, if you have a dog, if you want the dog to behave in a good way towards your friends, you have to train the dog. And I'm sorry if I insult any of you, because our children are far, far superior to dogs, but they're not unlike dogs in that they need training, and they need guidance. And each time of training has to be accompanied by love, affirmation, sometimes rewards, and little things to make them realize that they did well, and we are very proud of them.

So brothers and sisters in Christ our God, we could go on for quite a long time here, I think. There's a lot to talk about. But I bring this up in love and kindness, I hope, and that we as parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and friends and so on, have a profound obligation to our children and to our families. And in reality, childbearing is necessary for the perpetuation of the family and of the society. And think of it, we are attempting to, one, ourselves find the way into the kingdom of heaven. We want to find the way, and we have found it—we found it in our holy church and its disciplines and so on—but we want to follow that path, and we want our children to follow that path. We do not want them snatched away by the spirit of darkness and taken away from us, as we weep and cry wondering what we may have done wrong and what we might have done right.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.