Fr. Rafail Noica: On educating children
"How can I give them a word from myself, a human, if they don’t have the Word of God in them first?”
To have a correct understanding [of love], a person must have the Word of God within him. I will give you an example: when I was in Paris, a young priest–he was an Englishman married to a French woman, and they had become Orthodox–had a parish in which he decided to gather the children of the parish on Wednesdays when children had the day off at that time in Paris. That is how it was in Paris–maybe in all of France–some schools had Wednesdays, others Thursdays off, as well as Sundays. Thus, Wednesday and Sunday or Thursday and Sunday–I believe it is now Saturday and Sunday–but, finally, on Wednesdays when they were free he would have Liturgies for children. And he would ask whomever he could from the mothers and fathers that were there to come help at the chant stand. I also participated in one of these Liturgies, on Wednesday, and he had children from four years old up to 12, 13, 14. And I was amazed by home much talent this priest had–I was about to say this boy because he was young–to gather the children and to look after them. He would serve in Frech because the children were all francophones, of course.
After the Gospel, he would give a short sermon explaining the Gospel reading, in a general way, as the Spirit inspired him. And what I liked about him was that he was very spontaneous and he spoke on the level of the children’s understanding. But what he said was deep dogmatic theology. After the Liturgy–they had some benches–all the children would sit on the benches, including their mothers who chanted at the chant stand, and he would comment on the New Testament; he had reached the Acts of the Apostles at that time, and pericope after pericope, every week, he continued this form of teaching. And I was impressed by how he spoke, for example, about Church life, that we say in the Creed “I believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church,” and he said that this doesn’t only mean that the Church was established by the Apostles, but also that we can live the life of the Apostles today. And in this way, very simply, he showed the perspective, the understanding of Christianity to children.
After, there would be a meal with treats, sweets, or whatever the children liked–the mothers would take care of this–and then they would go home. And all the children would commune. And at the end, I told him how impressed I was that the children were so attentive–you know how little children are, looking up and around and who knows where–but all were calm, attentive, and I was also impressed–I knew this from the monastery [in Essex]–how they would come to Communion with the smallest in front, the bigger ones after, and the even bigger after that; if there was a smaller one behind a bigger one, they would bring him to the front. And it was so cute there because it was only children, except for two or three moms. And I was impressed that all the children communed.
What did the priest tell me? He said: “of course they commune! How can I give them a word from myself, a human, if they don’t have the Word of God in them first?” His words convinced me, but I can’t say that I understood them at the time. But in time I began to understand, and now I see it much more clearly than I did then.
A human word, from mouth to ear, informs to a certain degree–it would be good if it went deeper than just informing to imparting something. If a word imparts something because the person is connected to God through prayer, and if it isn’t just dry, intellectual information but comes from the heart, then through this kind of imparting we can return to the word “information” in the sense that it is used in genetics, in hospitals. A cell receives information from both parents, and this information makes it so that the child bears the parents’ characteristics. If “information” is used in this sense, then yes, a word is information.
The Word of God: God knows when, to whom, and in what way to speak. In a prayer by Saint Ambrosius of Milan, he asks the Holy Spirit to speak the unspeakable things of the Liturgy’s great mysteries in his heart, and this is the word that opens the heart, and after God has set the foundations in the other’s heart–a child or adult–then a moment can come when I too, as a human, can add something. But if I, thinking that I do well, give a person all the good that I have when he is unprepared, then in the best case nothing happens, and in the worst case, I can provoke a negative reaction in him and lead him astray.
So, parents, seek to work with God. I had the following experience as well: I was speaking with a girl and was trying to explain something to her. She wouldn’t accept it. I said “it’s like this,” and she gave a counterargument. And I said, “no, like this.” And I tried to explain it further, to use everything I knew to convince her. I couldn’t; she was dense, to say it like that. And at one point I got tired spiritually, and I sighed: “oh Lord, You tell her something.”
And at once she said: “oh, father, you mean to say this…”
“Yes, that is what I wanted to say!”
And, explaining it a bit more, I thought: “Wait, Lord! God answered me!” He had responded so immediately–He doesn’t always respond immediately: why? Because the terrain is not ready. He responded so immediately that I ran the risk of not seeing that He had responded. I could have thought, “oh, I was lucky” as Romanians say. No, God answered. God put a word in her [heart] and then all that I had tried to explain to her bore fruit. I learned this lesson and tried to do it, and I continue to do it, sometimes with apparent results and other times with zero. But I continue to do this. Someone asked me why God sometimes doesn’t seem to respond. And I encouraged him to have– guess what–patience, patience, patience. As I said yesterday, sometimes I’m not prepared, or the other person is not prepared, or who knows, there are many reasons, but I continue with this: when a person doesn’t receive [what I am saying], I tell God, sometimes I shout internally, “Lord, You do something; You see that I can’t do anything.” And although I don’t always see results, I’m sure that it’s a good method, and I encourage everyone to use it.
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