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ARTICLES - 2011 TIKHONAIRE
A: The only thing you can do is give the most then they can remember the Church loved them, they preparation possible. They need to know that the can remember that we keep the door open, and want Church loves them, they need to know that the them, and bring them back if that happens. Hopefully Church needs them for its future. We have to provide it doesn’t happen, but if we can’t do anything, it them with every opportunity to grow spiritually, to speaks for itself. The other thing, of course, is that these are our grow in the Faith education-wise, and so every opportunity that the parish has to spend its time, kids, as parishes, as dioceses, so when we send them talent, and treasure on youth education, on youth off to college it’s so important that we connect them to the rest of the Church. activities, on youth Our Lord gave personhood to So if they’re not going to fellowship, is so important. be in my parish for the It is the same for the children. Our Church is the only diocese, and the national Church in Christianity that makes a next four years, I have to make sure they’re in some Church. When I was child at the time of his baptism, 40 parish. I have to call the growing up, I was in a days or even earlier, a full member priest of the college they parish where that’s where I are going to, and say, spent most of my time. We sacramentally, with Baptism, “You find a family to pick had a basketball team, we Chrismation, the Eucharist. him up, and bring him to had a young adult Bible study, a junior youth group, a parish ethnic dance church and bring him to dinner,” and he may want go troupe, we had the altar servers… so every day of the to dinner more than Church, but that is all right. week you could be in Church with the services. And Because you are sending your child, the parish’s child, people did that. For us it was a big deal to go to the into an anti-Christian environment… [where they are seminary for a retreat as a junior high school kid. faced with] atheism, evolution, immorality. There are Today if you’re in French I class, you could go to Paris social activities, and things that may be good, but still with your school. How does the Church compete with compete with the Church. All of those things are on that? Rolling over and playing dead is not the answer. college campuses. If there is an OCF, great, but still Okay, so it’s much more difficult times… there probably is not a priest serving the Liturgy there Secularism – the school system playing hockey and on Sundays. We have to do this. Parish councils have soccer Sunday mornings, all these things are real got to help their priests in taking that responsibility of challenges. But the Church has got to think outside not letting kids fall through the cracks. It happens, the box and offer programs where kids know that the but we shouldn’t let it happen – it is a failure on our Church cares about them, and they’ve got to be watch. We have to be there. Our Lord gave personhood to children. Our trained in loving the Lord. It’s not going to happen in any other way. Obviously it begins in the family. We Church is the only Church in Christianity that makes a can’t do in a few hours a week, what has to happen in child at the time of his baptism, 40 days or even the family, but that doesn’t minimize our earlier, a full member sacramentally, with Baptism, responsibility from doing those kinds of things. I tell Chrismation, the Eucharist. That is how important a these kids that the reason we do it is because the child is in Orthodoxy, but we can’t let that be lost. And Church loves them, because the Lord loves them – and the message that Christ died for that person out of they may stray even if you do those things, but love, is not a message you are going to get in the hopefully you will have created a memory, that when world, so if we do not repeat it loud and clear, as the the world which can offer them no meaning to life, clear single message against the cacophony of the but offers them the cold reality of depersonalization,
John Malinchok Trustee, St. Tikhon’s Seminary