What is most valuable to us and to our children? Making the things of God most beautiful, and giving them first place in our life and in our children’s lives, will show our children what is most valuable and what we most value. Our home is not only our castle, but the evangelical witness of our values. Therefore, our icon corner should be more beautiful than our entertainment center. We should hold to the times of prayer more assiduously than getting to soccer practice on time. We should keep the feasts and fast more definitively than vacations and days off. Little by little the edifice of values is erected in the psyche of the family and children. Instead of filling them with stories about men who went from rags to riches, or praising people who succeeded in worldly pursuits, show them rather the people who overcame vice, stood up to untruth, and became holy as a result. Otherwise, what is the message?
With the best intentions we are trying to give our children wonderful experiences. We drive them to soccer, ice-hockey, karate, baseball, gymnastics, and ballet–even on Sunday mornings and Feast-days–but we have trouble getting them and ourselves to Church on time (or to Church at all)!
We can only squeeze so much juice out of the lemon of time. Time is even more valuable than money. How we spend the time of each day affects our whole family and ourselves. Make time for the most valuable things; set aside and guard the time for Church, for prayer, for study, and for time together as a family and community. Guard it as you would your most precious treasure. The day has so much meaning to it, and it too often passes in front of us like a blur.
St. Seraphim of Veritsa said that the persecution of our times will be a subtle turning away from ‘the way’: “… There will come a time when not the persecutions but the money and the goods of this world will take people far from God. And many more souls will be lost than in the time of persecutions …”*
Therefore, we need to pay attention and give first place to the things of God, the things that are of most value. Beware the whirl of unfruitful business.
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*(Life – Miracles – Prophecies of Saint Seraphim of Viritsa, trans. Fr. Nicholas Palis. Greece: Orthodox Kypseli Publications.)
