Last month I urged everyone to get “unplugged” from electronic media and spend their time in other ways. What other ways?
First of all, we have to do a reality check on whether we pray every day. Saying regular morning and evening prayers is not an extra, but rather a normative practice for every Orthodox Christian. Do we set aside some time – say 10 minutes – every morning and every evening, for prayer? We can read the prayers in the Prayer Book, read the Psalms, or say the prayer rope. But the important things are regularity and the struggle for attention. (Go to our website and read the article in
My Orthodox Notebook
on establishing a daily habit in prayer).
Second, do we spend more or less time now with our families? I never tire of repeating: the daily family meal is essential to family life. It is not a coincidence that Our Lord based the most sacred act of our worship – the Eucharistic Sacrifice – on a meal – His Mystical Supper with the disciples on the night before He died. The daily meal binds together parents and children. It is the school of communication and respect. It is the school of thanksgiving to God for all that we have. A Christian family should never fall into the habit of its individual members “grabbing something to eat” and running off to eat it alone while staring at the TV or computer screen, in place of daily dinner with the family. This is the destruction of our very humanity, for, while animals eat, only human beings dine.
Third, for information and entertainment, we must force ourselves to continue to use books. Most importantly, parents
must spend time with their children, especially pre-school and primary grade age children, READING TO THEM!!! The most important reading material is, above all, the Holy Scriptures and the Lives of the Saints. These are abundantly available now, as never before, in versions appropriate for children, and I will be happy to help any parent find the right version for your children! Unless they are ruined by addiction to some kind of video screen medium, children normally LOVE to 1. Spend time with their parents, and 2. Hear their parents read to them!!! After the sacred writings, the best reading material for children consists of old-fashioned paraphrased versions of the secular classics of our civilization – Homer, the Greek myths, famous heroes, standard (non politically correct!) histories of the ancient world, the Byzantine Empire, Greece and other Orthodox countries, Europe, and America. Throw out the junk the public schools peddle to the children and get them real things to read!!!
Fourth, parents and children need to work and play together. From the earliest possible age, children should have age-appropriate chores to do, and the older children should teach and encourage the younger children. Fathers should teach their sons, and mothers their daughters, the work that needs to be done around the home and yard, and in the family business, as well, if the family has one. Family “play” time should be spent on real things, like outdoor activities, games (real, not electronic), stories, songs, and creative hobbies.
With ALL of this to do, there is really little time left for TV, net-surfing, and Facebook!
Why not start today?
The Home: a Bastion of Salvation
Eternal salvation is the goal of our earthly life. This goal requires our constant striving to live as Christians—a task, in any age which is difficult to accomplish. The influences of our contemporary world with its atheistic, humanistic and secular approach to all aspects of human life has made it extremely hard to live as a true Christian. The parish church and the home are the only bastions where God can be praised, glorified and entreated. These are the only places where Christianity can be taught and where one can gain the courage to begin living a Christian life.
The home is the place where people spend a great deal of their time; therefore, the environment of the home is important if we wish to keep in contact with our Faith and eventually attain eternal salvation. For this to happen, the home must be converted from an ordinary home into something more—the family church. The family church provides us with an environment in which we can grow and develop into mature Christians. The proper understanding of the responsibilities in Christian marriage and in the establishment of the family church does not bring us any closer to actually being mature Christians. This is only the rationalistic, theoretical aspect of the matter, not an implementation of it. What God seeks are actions, not lifeless reasonings and abstractions. From Marriage and the Christian Home by Fr. Michael Henning
