Our
lack of wholeness also affects our concept of the family. In our
culture each member of the family is primarily concerned with his own
private interests. Parents nurture a spirit of individualism which, in
our day, has spawned such ideas as "Women's Liberation" (a term which
Kireyevsky knew and analyzed) and "Gay Liberation". This lack of
cohesiveness in the family has produced the most lifeless and sterile of
environments for our children to grow up in: most homes are dominated
by a television, which is often used to baby-sit children even when
parents are at home. At the time of writing, 40% of American mothers
work full or part-time outside of the home. As a result, children are
encouraged to develop more and more outside interests which take them
away from the home and the rest of the family as they "do their own
thing." In the 20th century, the home has really become only a "house"-a
place in which people take their meals and sleep.
Kireyevsky contrasted this with the Orthodox home in which parents are
actively involved with the rest of the family and where children are
taught to live and work for the good of the whole family; where parents
put selfish or private interests after the goal of creating a warm,
living environment in which children actually learn more from the
parents than from school or their peers.
In
a western family, the members rise in the morning and quickly scatter
to their separate pursuits, returning home at different times in order
to eat a quick dinner before again leaving to spend the evening
elsewhere, in worldly pursuits. In the Orthodox family, the members
awaken and gather before the household ikons while the father reads all
or some of the Morning Prayers. Meals are taken together, with the
parents presiding over and directing conversation. If there is a
television at all, it is used with the greatest caution and parental
control. Most evenings are spent quietly, either preparing for a feast
or a fast, or in some other productive and family oriented activity.
Parents read aloud the lives of the saints to their children.
Some have the pious custom of encouraging a child to read a saint's life aloud at a meal (often at Sunday dinner).
As Saint John Chrysostom writes:
"For just as with a general when his soldiery also is well organized the enemy has no quarter to attack; so, I say, is it also here: when husband and wife and children and servants are all interested in the same things, great is the harmony of the house. Since where this is not the case, the whole is oftentimes overthrown and broken up by one ... and that single one will often mar and utterly destroy the whole."
Above
all, the Orthodox home "is the abode where the members of the family
will spend the majority of their lives. It is here, not in society, nor
at the market place, where individuals will learn of the important
things of the Christian life. It is in the Christian home that
individuals will be able to work out their eternal salvation. It is in
the Christian home that children will be raised and taught by word and
action what it means to be a Christian. It is in the Christian home that
all of the teachings of Christ and of the Church can be practiced."
Source:
A Man Is His Faith, p 40
by Rev. Fr. Alexy (Hieromonk Ambrose) Young
About the writings of Ivan Kireyevsky 1806-1856
