Orthodox online course “Steps to God” of the Patriarchal Center for the Spiritual Development of Children and Youth at the Moscow Danilov Monastery

Online courses about Orthodoxy for adults

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You:

• Have you recently been baptized or are you planning to get baptized...
• You’ve been baptized a long time ago, but you’re just starting to become a church member...
• go to church, but you lack knowledge about Orthodoxy...
• would like to raise children, grandchildren, godchildren in the faith...
• got confused in the variety of books, websites, programs about Christianity...

...and want to understand the Orthodox faith?

Then the online program “Fundamentals of Orthodoxy” can help you.

The educational program “Fundamentals of Orthodoxy” is designed specifically for learning via the Internet and is the most popular distance learning course at the Orthodox St. Tikhon’s Humanitarian University.

The Fundamentals of Orthodoxy program will help you:

• lay the foundation of basic ideas about the Orthodox faith
• obtain and systematize knowledge on Orthodox doctrine, Holy Scripture, church history, worship
• find reliable landmarks in the sea of ​​​​various information about Orthodoxy
• decide on the future direction of personal development

How does the program work? 3 blocks of disciplines, 3 teachers, 4 months of classes:

The Sacred History of the Old Testament: The main events of the sacred history of the Old Testament; the meaning of the Old Testament books for Christians; the connection between Old Testament history and Orthodox worship.

Sacred History of the New Testament: Gospel History; Acts of the Apostles; understanding the events of the New Testament through the interpretations of the holy fathers and liturgical texts.

Fundamentals of Orthodox doctrine, church history and worship: Church teaching as set out in the Creed; main stages of church history; arrangement of the temple, worship; Church Sacraments.

What is needed for successful study?

• Desire to learn
• Willingness to set aside time in your schedule each week to study.

What is needed for admission?

• Secondary specialized or higher education
• Computer and Internet access
• Register in the PSTGU Distance Learning System and apply for the program
• Take a free introductory course on working in the PSTGU distance learning system.

Apply now

Enrollment for the program takes place twice a year , classes begin in January and September.

After completing the training, you will be able to:

• find guidelines for choosing your own path of serving God and others
• answer questions from friends and family about the Orthodox faith
• independently continue to study the Holy Scriptures and Tradition, relying on the patristic heritage
• understand what areas of theological knowledge you want to study more deeply, and continue your studies in other online courses of the Institute of Distance Education of PSTGU.

Read more about the conditions of study and the program here: https://orthodox.education/distantsionnoe-obuchenie-i-distantsionnoe-obrazovanie/osnovy-pravoslaviya/

Orthodox school

Priest Alexy Krasavin, clergyman of the Resurrection Novodevichy Convent, answers questions from TV viewers. Broadcast from St. Petersburg. Broadcast February 21, 2014.

— Good evening, dear TV viewers, the Soyuz TV channel is broadcasting the program “Conversations with Father.” Presenter: Mikhail Kudryavtsev.

Today our guest is the cleric of the Resurrection Novodevichy Convent, Priest Alexy Krasavin.

Hello, father.

- Hello, Mikhail, hello, brothers and sisters. This Friday evening we gathered in front of the television screens in order to enrich ourselves spiritually. We hope that the Lord will bless us with today's broadcast.

— The topic of today’s program is “Orthodox School.” Call our studio and ask questions about the Orthodox school, just school and raising children.

Please tell us, Father, about your obedience at the Novodevichy Convent.

— My obedience is a cleric of the Novodevichy Convent and the head of the Orthodox Center at the monastery. Our center includes St. Vladimir's School, which has a long history. In 1889, our school was founded by the well-known Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev, a personality known not only in church history, but also in the history of our state. Our school has since been a church school, which included a parish school in which both boys and girls studied. In the bloody year of 1917, our school was closed, and only at the beginning of the 21st century our school, through the efforts of obedience in the Novodevichy Convent, found a second wind and brings the Christian faith to people.

Our school has four departments. The first is a comprehensive school, currently from grades 1 to 6, where education is carried out according to the state program “School of Russia”. We are growing every year, and we hope that in 2021 we will graduate eleventh graders.

There is also a department of choreography and performing arts. Children participate in the studio theater, which carries out its missionary service not only in St. Petersburg, but also performs performances outside of it. We hope that children's participation in Orthodox art provides that core that many people do not have. We are trying to instill in our children a love for the highest art, for the beauty that was created by God. We are performing the play “Voices”, based on the “Siege Book” by Daniil Granin, and this is very relevant for modern youth, it is to them that our performance is addressed. So that they do not forget what the city in which they live has experienced. There are still people alive who leave the performance with tears in their eyes, because they saw that the live connection was not interrupted, there are young people who remember their feat.

The school also has a Sunday department, where priests conduct classes, and we are trying to instill a love of church history and church culture in those schoolchildren who can come to the Novodevichy Convent only on Sundays. Currently they are conducting lessons in the Law of God and church singing. They also participate in the church choir, which sings in our school Church of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The temple is located right in our school building and has its own history. It was desecrated, like all the churches of Rus', but now it is being restored.

The fact that the school is located in a historical building, where children prayed the same way a hundred years ago, is very important for preserving the connection between times. Now the temple and school building are being restored, but there are not enough funds. Unfortunately, in a country where 70% of the population considers themselves Orthodox, there is no proper attitude towards the Orthodox school, so now its building is even in unsatisfactory condition. A lot of money is needed to restore its original historical appearance.

The year 2015 is celebrated in our country with the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of the repose of the great holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir. A working group and program was created under the President of the Russian Federation, in which our school also takes part. We hope that with God’s help by this time we will complete the restoration of the school so that children can study in proper conditions. We hope that in 2015 the restored premises of our school will be consecrated by the Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' Kirill himself, and in our garden a monument to the holy Equal-to-the-Apostles Prince Vladimir will be erected.

Our school was founded by Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev for the 900th anniversary of the Baptism of Rus', but on the occasion of the 1000th anniversary in 1988, the authorities had not yet allowed us to restore the school, so the celebration of the 1000th anniversary of our patron is especially significant for it.

— Doesn’t the general education program suffer from its proximity to the monastery? Isn’t the Orthodox school for the monastery a kind of small seminary?

— Of course, the monastery does not set as its goal the education of monks or nuns. Of course, we hope that some of the children will continue their education in church universities. First of all, the school is aimed at missionary work.

Children spend a lot of time at school, and this is very important, because the environment has a huge influence. Those children who study in secular schools are very susceptible to the influence of others; they do not have that steel core, like, say, Vanka-Vstanka, who, although he falls, still gets up. We hope that children who have studied at our school, even if they are cut off from Orthodoxy - no one is immune from this - will know that there is an alternative path, that there is God. Last week we remembered the prodigal son, so our children can return with repentance, and God will accept them.

A secular school cannot provide this core. Even if she talks about ethics, we understand well that ethics does not exist without God, who gives it. Because there is no criterion. If there is no God, then everything is allowed to me. This permissiveness continues into adulthood. We see that now the god of people is wealth, and they go to him over the heads of others.

We are trying to plant at least the grains of gospel truths in the souls of children. We may not be sinless ourselves, but God himself acts through us. And we hope that our children will have a vivid memory of what they heard, what they participated in, and they can always return to it.

We have a preschool department where we accept children starting from the age of three. Here they undergo developmental classes four times a week. From the age of three, a child enters conscious life and begins to feel Divine grace within himself. We believe that our efforts in the preschool department will not be in vain. Many preschoolers themselves ask their parents to send them to our Orthodox school, where the spiritual maturation of the individual is already taking place.

— The ages of three, seven and ten years are malleable ages. But adolescence is already different. Next year, as you said, your children will reach seventh grade. What happens if teenagers do not want to continue studying in an Orthodox school?

— I’ll start answering your question from afar. The Book of the Apocalypse says “remember your first love.” First love is that childish sincere faith that was in children of three, seven, ten years old. Then they grow up, and we know that there is a teenage crisis of denial of all ideals and absolutes. The Orthodox school is trying to curb this while respecting their right to choose. We have not had such cases yet, but we understand that this is a choice to which a person has the right.

In addition to the kind attitude that a student at an Orthodox school receives, there is also a very significant point: general participation in the Sacrament of the Eucharist in the school church. This is what unites and is the core. The participation of everyone at the Chalice of Christ, the memory of this will live in the hearts of those teenagers who want to leave in search of imaginary freedom. They will remember the priest to whom they poured out their childhood faith.

When you listen to the confession of these children, you remember your childhood faith, which was pure faith. Therefore, an Orthodox school is a school for us: teachers and priests. When a little person talks to you about God, we see how the Lord himself acts in these little ones. We remember how the Lord, pointing to the child, said to everyone: “Truly I tell you, unless you are converted and become like children , you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 18:3). You always remember, looking into children's eyes, full of love and kindness, and, indeed, you remember your first love for the Lord.

— Please tell me how many parallels exist in your school, and is it possible for children to study in depth not only church disciplines, but also, say, mathematics and biology?

— There are not many children in the comprehensive school, we cannot create parallel classes, since we do not have enough premises, we are huddled only in part of the historical school building. But we hope that by the grace of God we will return to the school what was taken from it.

We are waiting for children who could come to our school. Before admission, the child undergoes an interview with the confessor and the head of the school. Only if we understand that he is truly Orthodox do we accept him into school.

— Question from a TV viewer from Simbirsk: My nine-year-old grandson goes to Sunday school and says that he is ready to go to it all five days a week, instead of general education. Why are there such good relationships between children in Sunday school, and why is there so much hostility and hostility between the same children in a secular school?

— Since I myself teach at Sunday School, I see with what joy and greed children turn to the priest for the knowledge that a regular school does not provide. If a regular school talks about ethics without understanding why all this is needed, with distance from the absolute, then in Sunday school children acquire that core on which all the laws of physics and mathematics are attached and they begin to understand why, all this is necessary. To know the all-good Creator, Who created man and the whole world, to know His will for the world and man. Sunday school gives understanding of this world, compassion and patience for the weaknesses of loved ones and students with whom he studies and who have not yet come to God. A child can bring the seed of Christ's truth into his classroom.

— There are not many children studying at your school, and there are few Orthodox schools in St. Petersburg. How, in your opinion, should Orthodox schools emerge and develop?

“There are about two hundred children studying in four departments of our school, maybe this is not a lot within the city, but for an Orthodox school this is a lot, the main thing is that the children strive to come to our school.

The disciplines taught are no different from those taught in a regular school. The main principle in churchliness is that a person feels like a member of the Church, the community. Orthodox schools are distinguished by the fact that they create community not through empty words and reflections, but precisely at the Chalice of Christ.

Our school is the only school in the St. Petersburg diocese established by a monastery. The spirit of the monastery in the city, the spirit of missionary bonding of our students. The monastic tradition is the root of the entire Orthodox tradition. Monasticism is often called the salt that makes all of Christianity strong. Children are nourished by this monastic tradition, and it helps them move towards God.

— Question from a TV viewer from St. Petersburg: Please tell us about the selection criteria for your school, including for the preschool department. Tell me, how can I sign up for an interview?

— Selection sounds completely mundane. The competition is not great because few people know about our school. When we take a child to school, we talk not only about his relationship with God, but also with his parents. Do parents go to Church or is this a fashion statement? The main criterion for our school is collaboration with parents, how often they attend church, and what community they are members of.

School is half of the day, half of a child’s life, what he sees when he comes home. We do not want a split in the child’s soul. First of all, the child’s educators are the parents; the school helps the parents. Returning home, the child should see that the love that he meets in the Church, at school, is also in his family, the Small Church.

In order to get an interview, you need to come to the address: Moskovsky Prospekt, building 104 on a weekday or Sunday, ask the janitor how to get to St. Vladimir’s School. Go to the director, who is there almost every day, and arrange a day for the interview. If the director is absent for some reason, then leave your phone number, and then the director himself will call you back.

— Does it happen when a child from a secular school comes to study with you not from the first grade?

- It happens, but such cases are rare, and everyone is under the close attention of the clergy. Why? Children who study with us from the first grade already have the beginnings of that “core” that we talked about. A child who comes from a secular school most often does not have it, although there are still old-style schools that still retain the purity of morality. Control over what the child brought from the previous school, since very often the behavioral paradigm that he learned in the previous school is transferred to the church school. We are wary of this and therefore give children a probationary period. If a child was raised in a devout Christian home, the school may not have left its mark on him, such a child becomes an active member of our school and community.

— Question from a TV viewer from the Perm region: How can I explain to my grandchildren what God is for, how can one maintain faith when you see what surrounds you, if you yourself cannot change in any way, and the more you live, the more you sin?

- Of course, this is a very pressing question, which is asked not only by children, but also by adults, seeing everything that surrounds us. The Lord called us out of oblivion so that we could live and enjoy life, realizing that all the evil that is happening around is not from God, but from people. But you must first of all turn to yourself, and there is always time to repent, that is, to change.

In the eyes of old people you can often see the joy that they received from God as children. Maybe a person’s task is precisely to carry this joy through the hatred and evil that surrounds us, and from which none of us is immune. Carry to the end of your life, like is known by like. If we have joy, there is a desire to serve other people, if we have this criterion, then let God’s will be in everything. "Thank God for everything!" — with these words on their lips, those people who did not abandon God until the very end and already came into contact with Him here on earth left.

I wish you that your children feel this love of God, even despite what they do in their lives and what they will continue to do. So that they remember that there is that loving Father who accepted his prodigal son, not remembering any of his sins, but ordering him to bring the best, because the man was dead, but he came to life.

When we sin, we understand that sin is nonsense, something that separates us from God, Who is meaning. If we have this core, then we are not afraid of either the evil or the hatred that surrounds us. None of us are immune, we too fall into the mud, but a Christian knows that he can get up, wash his face and move on. Even if he falls again, he always has the opportunity to get up. People who do not have faith in God, having fallen, will not be able to rise, but will say that they are depressed, have no strength, and the whole meaning is lost, because they have no core. When such people lose their loved ones, children, they do not understand that there is a God who will unite us all in his love in the Kingdom of Heaven.

Therefore, I wish all the children who are listening to us now to keep within themselves the spark of the faith that you receive from adults. I myself received my faith from my grandmother, who took me to Church. When I was in the second grade of a regular school, I told a friend that I would become a priest, and by God’s will it happened. Trusting in God's will is the meaning of Christianity.

— There is a saying: “A slave is not a pilgrim.” Many seminarians know that it is better to pray somewhere in the parish than under the supervision of the administration. Do you think your schoolchildren have a feeling of control that prevents them from praying?

— Of course, teachers monitor discipline. Children tend to get tired, especially if they are not busy. Therefore, in our school church we try to keep the children occupied: someone sings, someone is a sexton, they are busy doing what they love. Together with the entire community they serve God.

You cannot force them to pray, but if children come to an Orthodox school and have believing parents, it is natural that the children themselves are drawn to the Eucharist. I talked to many children, and almost everyone said that most of all they like the Sacrament of the Eucharist, they like to all approach the Chalice of Christ together, and this, it seems to me, is the most important thing. Every person is free, free to leave, no one is holding anyone, the Lord Himself is holding them.

There is a stereotype that Orthodox schools are a kind of ghetto where children are driven, and where everyone is strict and serious. Nothing like that, children are children everywhere. If they have the Lord in their hearts, then they themselves become sources of love. They say that only a secular school can give you a broader perspective, but ours is no worse. It's more a question of freedom. A secular school gives freedom. But what kind of freedom does it give? Freedom from the inner core, you must be tolerant. What is freedom based on? On tolerance for sin. Notice not to the sinner, but to the sin, let it spread further. In Orthodoxy there is no rejection of the sinner, and there is love for him, but not for sin. Just like the stereotype of an Orthodox schoolboy who does not react to sin, but sits humbly in a corner, a false stereotype. Is this what Christ taught?

— A school that has a state license is required to allocate the required number of hours for teaching general education subjects. When, in such a case, are church disciplines taught?

— What is missing in a regular school is included in such subjects as the Law of God and Church singing. Our school does not reduce the number of hours on public school subjects, but supplements them with its own disciplines, while expanding our horizons. The main thing, of course, is communication with the priest, confessor, head of the school and, of course, participation in the Divine Liturgy.

— Is education at an Orthodox school paid?

— Thank God that there is a wonderful person Anatoly Aleksandrovich Turchak, who has financially supported our school for many years. Of course, we have difficulties and problems, but we see that the Lord does not abandon us. Education in our school is free; 70% of children from large or socially vulnerable families study in our school. These children find something here that they might not find in other schools. After all, in other schools, if you have jeans or a phone of the wrong brand, they hammer into you that you are poor. We cannot have anything like this.

At the end of last year, a Board of Trustees was created at our school, the chairman of which is Anatoly Alexandrovich. We hope that with the help of God and the help of believers, our school will be transformed, we will be able to fully fulfill our mission, to carry the faith, because it is in childhood that the seeds are laid, the fruits of which are reaped in adulthood.

— Father Alexy, what do the children of the Orthodox school do during the holidays?

- Of course, we don’t monitor what the children are doing. In the summer, our school organizes both pilgrimages and summer camps. The schoolchildren themselves participate in church life in their parishes, with their friends.

We have an after-school group where children study independently, communicate with each other, and also have meetings with the priest. The school organizes religious processions. Recently, before the celebration of St. blzh. Ksenia Petersburgskaya from the Vasileostrovskaya metro station, we walked in a religious procession with icons and banners to the chapel at the Smolensk cemetery, where we all prayed together.

Like any Orthodox school, we celebrate Christmas and Easter holidays. The trouble is that our assembly hall, in which we are forced to huddle, cannot immediately accommodate everyone. God grant that we have a new assembly hall, where we could all celebrate children’s holidays together, which leave an indelible mark on the soul.

— On the eve of Lent, I would like to ask a question about how this time is different in your school?

— Entertainment events are cancelled. We are trying to fast, this is not a strict fast, since we understand that these are children, but at least limit ourselves in some way, so that children from an early age understand that fasting is not about food, but about sacrificing to God the daily excess with which they are filled. our ordinary life. Thus, we say to the Lord: all this is unnecessary, we only need You. In order to instill in children this understanding of Lent, there is something of a limitation. On Maundy Thursday, all children receive communion at the Sacrament of the Eucharist and then all together celebrate the Bright Resurrection of Christ.

— In an Orthodox school, unfortunately, Bright Week is not non-educational, as in a seminary?

- No, but we have a few days on Holy Week so that the children can enjoy the Easter days.

— Thank you for coming to us, let’s hope that your school will develop, and its graduates will have the core that you spoke about. In parting, I ask you to bless our TV viewers again and repeat how to get to your school.

— Thank you very much for the conversation, Mikhail, to you, dear TV viewers, for spending this evening with you. I hope that the Lord will not leave your and our hearts barren, and we will find a response and understanding that children need to be raised in Christ.

Let me remind you once again that our school is open to everyone: St. Petersburg, Moskovsky Prospekt, building 104. We are waiting for you and your wonderful children.

Guest of the program: Priest Alexy Krasavin.

Presenter: Mikhail Kudryavtsev.

Transcript: Yulia Podzolova.