Contemporary Youth and Orthodox Sanctity

VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, EXCEPT YE BE CONVERTED, AND BECOME AS LITTLE CHILDREN, YE SHALL NOT ENTER INTO THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.
—Matthew 18:3

CHILDREN AND SANCTITY are very closely related. The innocence, guilelessness, and purity of heart which are the normal attributes of childhood, are also the basic qualities of Saints at any age. Almost all Orthodox Saints, save for those who were converted in later life, preserved the purity which had developed naturally in them in their younger years. Orthodox Christian asceticism is precisely the practice of keeping one's heart pure, requiring a constant battle against the assault of the forces which strive to adjust one to this world that lies in evil.

Growth into adulthood and the acquiring of worldly knowledge need not be a process of adjusting oneself to evil. The primary function of education is precisely to teach a child what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil, and likewise to give him the true Christian hierarchy of values according to the teaching of the Orthodox Church, thereby equipping him to live in this world while preparing for the next world. The pastors of Christ's Church, which alone is competent to guide the education of children, are the guardians of their flock's guilelessness and purity; keeping the wolves from devouring the flock, they conduct the rational sheep to Paradise. And an Orthodox child, receiving through the Church's education the means of understanding the attacks of this world, and being guided by pastors experienced in spiritual life, can preserve his purity and in it acquire the Holy Spirit and Orthodox sanctity.

However, "education" today has become precisely the adjustment of the young to the evils of this world. The criminal experiments in sex education, the use of newspapers as educational material, the presentation of worthless, unprincipled contemporary writing on the same level as, or even in place of, classical literature all deprive the young soul of a balanced hierarchy of values, confuse his taste and judgment, and instil in him a totally unnatural instability and disorientation. The formation of the young soul is to a large extent taken over by television and newspapers and similar media, and the undeveloped mind and imagination are stunted by imbecile "comics" and "cartoons," "sports," cheap comedy and senseless violence, not to mention the increasingly acceptable pornography and occultismall pervaded by a profoundly anti-Christian philosophy and intent: the adjustment and slavery of the child to this world, even in its ugliest and most evil aspects. As examples for emulation the child is given, not the heroes of asceticism and Orthodox principle and conviction, but only the cheap heroes of modern decadence, the "stars" of sports and movies, glamorized political figures, demonstrators for the worldly causes which take the place of religious values in the modern soul: imitation heroes as false and empty as the fashions they inspire.

The anti-Christian philosophy of popular education has now penetrated religious education as well. One need only examine the periodicals for children and youth of the "Orthodox Christian Education Commission" in the United States (representing the Greek Archdiocese, Metropolia, and other "canonical" jurisdictions) to find an educational philosophy which is exactly the opposite of Orthodox Christianity. In "Young Life" (for children), "Upbeat" (for teenagers), and "Concern" (for college youth), there is no attempt whatsoever to discern the nature of today's reality by the standard of Orthodoxy; on the contrary, the Church's standard is adjusted to fit today's reality, and Orthodoxy is "jazzed up" to make it palatable to the corrupt modern taste. It in "Young Life" at least some attempt is made to present Lives of Saints (including heterodox "saints" and cartoon "lives"), it is only in the spirit of "fairy tales" which the child is obviously expected to outgrow; and the magazines for older children and youth are wholly absorbed in contemporary concerns, as indeed their titles indicate, and both in content and presentation they are almost entirely of this world that lies in evil. Serious pastors and parents forbid their children even to look at such magazines, recognizing them as a source of corruption for the unformed Orthodox soul.

The young generation of today, raised on the philosophy of meaningless change, and even taught this philosophy in the guise of "Orthodox education," has been deprived of a sense of stability, sobriety, concentration, inward peace and silence of soul. The older generation today is confused and without principle, although it still hides its inward emptiness behind a remnant of law and order inherited from the past; but the younger generation is entirely exposed to the naked power of the prevailing philosophy of anti-Christianity. Especially in boys just growing into manhood can the deadly results of this philosophy be seen: so many of them are in a state of utter confusion, deprived of Christian manliness and resolve, and run aimlessly to and fro at the mercy of their own uncontrolled passions or of the newest pseudo-religious movement. Parents who are Orthodox only in name are totally unable to help these young people, whose desperate thirst for real spiritual life can only reject the "moderate" path of lukewarmness and hypocrisy.

The situation of contemporary youth is desperate; but it is not hopeless. It is natural to youth to be inspired by high ideals, to seek and find the meaning of life, to have a deep spiritual thirst which finds genuine satisfaction only in the one true religion, Holy Orthodoxy. Contemporary youth can find truth and salvation if only, having "stumbled across" true Orthodoxy, or having rediscovered the religion it was so often improperly taught in childhood, it makes the resolve to sell everything else in order to purchase the field in which the treasure of living Orthodoxy is buried. The sooner in youth this happens, the better; for the endless intellectualizing and the self-worship which one breathes in with the spiritual atmosphere of our times, easily kill the first tender shoots of spiritual aspiration in a young soul.

Man is made to worship the One True God with all his mind and heart and soul. This is the Creator's First Commandment. And this must be done in the true way – in the right worship of Orthodoxy, which alone gives the greatest joy and the deepest satisfaction on earth, and opens the door to Paradise. In this is the soul's union with God, which nothing and no one can take away. This experience of true worship has been handed down to our own days by all the Saints and Fathers of the true Orthodox Church as an inheritance which we must enter into and claim as our own. Every Orthodox person has such a Saint as his patron, bearing his name from the Mystery of Baptism in which he was reborn. This patron Saint, being alive in God, is able to help and guide one who knows him and loves him and entreats his aid. As one fills one's soul with knowledge and love of one's patron Saint, the other Orthodox Saints, the Holy Scriptures and writings of the Holy Fathers, the defilement of the soul peels off and the new and wondrous Divine world opens up for him, into which no fallen human wisdom can penetrate.

Let the Saints themselves tell our contemporary youth how to lead a meaningful Orthodox life, how to worship God and acquire sanctity!