“It is better to leave young people alone, pray for them and surround them with love without verbosity”

“It is better to leave young people alone, pray for them and surround them with love without verbosity”

Many of us priests ask: “What is your opinion about young people?” I taught high school for about 20 years and I was asked this question too. Most people want to hear that young people must change, improve, or do this or that. I can’t say that young people today are bad; Usually the bad ones become the best ones.

Some break, break, destroy, swear. Such external manifestations that we have noticed do not express their souls. It's just a disease. If we look closely, we will find that a person was not able to fully feel what it means to love and to be kind. The child did not see the living image of Christ in his parents, mentors, and teachers, because if this had happened, he would certainly have been touched and benefited. After all, now children are very sincere. We can blame today's difficult times for something, but children are more sincere now than before. In order to convince a child of something, you need to provide evidence not only in words, but also in deeds.

Also today, young people do not need authority. A father cannot tell his son: “Just do this and that’s all.” I said!" No. Today, children want dialogue, discussion, they want to understand why they should act this way and not otherwise when they are commanded to do something. When I, for example, say: “Come to the temple. You will find joy there,” the child will search to see if there really is joy there. And if he comes, and I just start making comments to him, he will tell me: “Father, why did you call me here?”

When I taught at school, children were my best teachers, they made me think about many things. Children want to look at things objectively: Father talks about humility, but do I have it? I tell you that near Christ you will find joy, but did I feel it? Anxiety, anger, rage arise, and then I demand that they learn prayer. I tell you that Christ brings peace and tranquility to the soul, but do I have this tranquility?

It seems to me that it is better to leave young people alone, that is, to pray for them and surround them with love without verbosity. Our words often bring the opposite of the expected result. We tell them something, they do the opposite. Usually parents repeat the same thing many times without thinking about the consequences. Leave the child alone. Better show him that you are a happy family, that the Lord makes you joyful - this will be the best sermon.

One young man tells me: “I don’t go to church because I know what they will tell me there.” "What?" - I ask. “Everything is prohibited,” he answers. "What do you mean?" - “It’s forbidden to have fun. Spending time in different companies is prohibited. Smoking is prohibited. A place of prohibitions." However, all this does not reflect the realities of the Church. But, unfortunately, this is the image we create. Instead of showing how to rejoice in Christ, we teach what not to do. Saint Porphyry said: “Darkness does not go away from panic, stress or anxiety. You press the switch and the light comes on. You open the windows and the sun is shining. The darkness automatically disappears." We must bring young people closer to us with our love, sympathy, forbearance, and full understanding. Full understanding does not mean justifying this or that sinful act, but understanding why our children act this way and not otherwise. And they will definitely understand and feel it.

Do you know why Saint Paisius and other ordinary elders attracted so many people to them? Because they had what prompted one anarchist from Thessalonica to write a letter to the Monk Paisius. He began with the words “My beloved daddy.” Not knowing how to formally address the monk, he wrote as his heart told him, feeling the geronda’s love for himself.

I once asked my interlocutor: “Who is your greatest teacher?” I hoped to hear the name of some saint, but the answer was different: “My greatest teacher is my sins, failures and mistakes.” Saint Paisius said: “Difficulties and adversities are like flying rugs that can take us to heaven.” Youth, while diligent in correcting their mistakes, must be optimistic and know that they are on the right path and will soon meet Christ, who is Light and Love.

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Meaning versus comfort

Even when I was younger, I wondered why, if in Christ “there is neither Greek nor Jew,” should special attention be given to any particular age group? The spiritual maturity of people rarely correlates with their physical maturity, and the process of personal maturation for a modern person is very drawn out. On the one hand, already at the age of seven I consider myself an individual, on the other hand, even at thirty-seven I often do not understand that, in addition to rights, there are responsibilities, and those taken on voluntarily. Even many parents today do not understand why their children should care for elderly relatives, create their own families, give birth to children, serve in the army, choose non-prestigious professions (even if they have talent for them)…

If young people today do not understand why they should serve others, how can they understand the meaning of serving God? But what happens in the temple is not called a service for nothing. In the service you can rest your soul, but you cannot “relax”. Therefore, “toiling” or at least “burdened” young people often come to church. They are no longer looking for comfort, but for meaning and true love.

Andrey Popov, project manager of the communication group “Publicity”, Moscow

Do the deed

Young people feel the lack of spirituality of the world around them, look for a way out and find it in faith.
Why do they so often bypass the church? Someone is afraid to step on unfamiliar, unexplored soil: young people simply don’t know what

expect from the church. Will I be welcome there? What will I have to sacrifice? How to react to angry church grandmothers?

Some people put off going to church for an indefinite period of time because they are waiting for some special, bright occasion that will lead them to God. Of course, the Lord calls everyone, but people are so caught up in the world that they do not always hear His voice.

The desire to find Christ must become a conscious, firm position in life, and in order not only to come, but also to stay in the church, one must commit an action

- to change yourself.

Yuri Kubankov, tax consultant in Moscow

Robinson Crusoe

Why don't young people go to church? I think because of the devastation in our heads. A typical representative of a consumer society will go to church en masse if and only then when it begins to be advertised on a par with mass consumer products. Is the church ready to attract young people at this cost? I think no.

Why do young people still come? It is difficult to imagine a person who does not need support. Now, in the era of virtual communication, when connections between people are becoming less and less close, for many people, as if for Robinson Crusoe on the island, the main type of communication is communication with oneself. Such a person either decays in his thoughts or seeks God. Robinson chose the second option and, as is well known, was right. A very instructive book, by the way.

On the screensaver is a fragment of a photo from mochaloff.ru

sources

• O. Dimitry (Pershin) (2004): Problems of children's camps and their solutions. Orthodoxy.Ru. Available online at https://www.pravoslavie.ru/jurnal/print215.htm, updated on 4/14/2011, checked on 4/22/2013.
• Deanery organizations // Orthodox youth. — 2013. — Date of access: 23.4.2013.
• Principles, goals and programs of Christian youth unions in Orthodox countries: Meeting in Bucharest, May 19-22, 1933. Paris, 1933.

Footnotes

1. “PravSoMol” discussed upcoming events // Yaroslavl Metropolis. – 2021. – February 16. – Date of access: 18.2.2017.

Love against objective reasons

It is perhaps easier to answer the second part of the question: why are most young people not churchgoers, although they are baptized and, for the most part, believe in something? The answer to this has long been given in the Gospel parable of the sower. Some have not yet found faith while living in the “cares of this world.” Some are repulsed by imaginary or real illnesses of church life and our sins, Christians. Some people believe that it is enough to “believe in your soul” and be “just a good person,” but churchliness and the sacraments are all unimportant. Some were seduced by the idols of selfishness, hedonism, “free love” and an easy approach to life. But why, despite all this, the rest still go to church is much more difficult to answer. After all, it seems that the people are the same - from the same social strata, with the same level of education, grew up in the same country and cultural environment, but they believe, and do not alter the faith in a form convenient for themselves. It is difficult to explain such faith.

Of course, there are secondary reasons. For example, the fact that there are now many young priests serving in parishes. That talented missionaries and apologists appeared. That interesting and profound Orthodox books and magazines are published. This is true, but the mystery of faith still remains unsolved.

Everything here is like in love. There are many objective and subjective reasons why two people don’t love

each other.
But how to explain if they love you
?

Tutta Larsen, TV presenter, Moscow

For no apparent reason

Most of the guys I know came to Church for no apparent reason. In adulthood, people are often brought to church by misfortune, shock, or worry about loved ones. Many of those who came out of such need, having tasted the grace-filled help, remain in the Church. Elderly people tend to prepare for eternity; they have their own path to the temple. Another thing is youth. Both joys and sorrows are brighter, more complete; everything that is not completely true is not true. This youthful maximalism makes louder the call of Christ, which sounds in the soul of every human being. You ask - what brought you here? - you will most often hear: thirst, impulse, inexplicable interest... It is obvious that the young soul is especially susceptible to the action of grace. However, this same maximalism can lead a person in the opposite direction. With the same scope, youth is capable of both accepting and rejecting. Conversations that, supposedly, everything is wrong in the Church are excuses and self-justifications. I am convinced that the point here is not in the Church, but in the mystery of the human soul: everyone has their own time and their own path. Although, of course, our task is to sow and wait for shoots. And to create all the conditions so that young people not only come to us, but also stay in the Church.

Ivan Demidov, Academician of the Academy of Russian Television, Moscow

How can you be pushed away from the Church?

There are moments in life when a person finds himself in a dead end, feels crushed by something soulless, alien to him... At these moments you understand that you can only hope for a miracle. And you start to pray. The alien is everything dark that is in you. A dead end is the absence of God, meaning, and love in life. Joy can be found in the Church; you can find your own good and useful deed. But, unfortunately, often, when crossing the threshold of a temple, a young man meets people there who push him away simply by their appearance: unfriendly, dejected, stooped. And they are even more repulsive with their attitude: parishioners refuse to accept secular youth as they are, and strive to show that their own despondency and unfriendly behavior is an example of “Christian piety.” It is not surprising that in the soul of a young man this gives rise to rejection of everything that can be called Orthodoxy!

Vitaliy Koisin, Research Fellow, University of Leuven, Leuven, Belgium