Most people have a superficial view of monasticism. However, we must again stress that all the training developed in Orthodox monasteries consists of attuning the nous. Then all tasks and occupations are sanctified. With a pure and well-adjusted nous, silence and speech, hesychia and mission, work and inaction, life in the cell and life in Church, mourning and joy, sorrow and hope, recreation and repentance are all sanctified. Then a person is a monk wherever he is, whatever he does. There are no specific times dedicated or to work. The whole of life and all the hours of the day are sanctified and blessed, provided the nouse is brought into harmony and the monk acquires spiritual health. Praxis and theoria, obedience and prayer help towards this.
Exactly the same thing should happen within marriage, the family and social life. Basically, before a person begins married life, he needs training to attune his nous so that he can life and behave as God wills. Prayer before marriage brings health and makes a person capable of facing all problems without confusion and without his nous being disturbed. If he is rightly tuned, he is at rest in God whatever he does. Many married people maintain that is impossible for someone to live a Christian life as the head of a family. Apart from being blasphemy towards God, this shows profound ignorance. Monks who live in monastic communities do not have fewer problems than married people. They too have many concerns and many tasks to carry out. The main problem is that many people begin married life without orienting their nous towards God or being spiritually tuned.
There is talk about the need for future parents to learn about child-rearing, psychology and so on, so that they can bring up their children and cope with problems. However beneficial this may be, it is not enough. There are parents who possess such human knowledge in abundance, yet are unable to provide solutions to the problems of co-existence within the home and of bringing up children. What is needed before anything else is spiritual tuning. The nous must learn to hasten eagerly towards God, so that the whole life is sanctified. Nowadays only a spiritually healthy person can deal with difficult problems that arise on a daily basis and continually multiply.
Parents are renowned for agonizing about how to bring up their children. I firmly believe, however, that what a child receives in the course of his upbringing is not the knowledge that his parents happen to have or the advice they give, however wise it may be, but above all what his parents themselves are. We do not offer children what we know; rather, we offer them what we ourselves are. If we have been brought into harmony, if our nous is free and knows how to converse with God, if we are spiritually balanced, then it is certain that the children will develop appropriately.
It is very important to create a prayerful and healthy atmosphere within the home, because an atmosphere of prayer and spiritual health has a profound influence on children’s lives. A medical expert knows how and when to intervene, and the same applies to an experienced parent.
Most contemporary parents bring up their children without praying. Instead they use human knowledge and have a purely human perspective. They do not know how to ask God for solutions through prayer. Their nous is taken up with external problems that children have: it is held captive by the children instead of being captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10-5). Their nous is turned to see the children day and night, not God. The most important issue for many parents is not God and their salvation, but their children. And they take a very superficial view of them.
By writing these things I do not mean that we should abandon our children, since God has entrusted them to us to bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord (Eph. 6:4). But we cannot use this as an excuse to abandon God or to bring children up without God.
We need spiritual tuning. This comes about through prayer and keeping Christ’s commandments, as prayer cannot be isolated from our whole ascetic effort to follow God’s will for our life.
The fact is that nowadays most of us are out of tune spiritually, so instead of solving problems, we make them worse. We are inwardly sick and we pass on our sickness to social institutions and family life.
Our main concern should be how to be brought into harmony, how our nous can be detached from earthly things and turned towards God. This has to happen according to our own desire but, more importantly, with the help and energy of God. Our constant prayer to God should be:
“Purify me, cleanse me, bring me to harmony, and give me beauty, understanding, light.”
~Met. Hierotheos from “The Science of Spiritual Medicine”
