Tuesday, June 02, 2009

Teaching Children to Pray

... from an Eastern Orthodox perspective, from Adventures of an Orthodox Mom. Well worth a read, even for Catholics!
I remembered that in the back of the book Wounded By Love by Elder Porphyrios, there was a fantastic section on the upbringing of children. I opened the book to that section and that is when I read this,
Pray and then speak. That’s what to do with your children. If you are constantly lecturing them, you’ll become tiresome and when they grow up they’ll feel a kind of oppression. Prefer prayer and speak to them through prayer. Speak to God and God will speak to their hearts. That is, you shouldn’t give guidance to your children with a voice that they hear with their ears. You may do this too, but above all you should speak to God about your children. Say, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, give Your light to my children. I entrust them to You. You gave them to me, but I am weak and unable to guide them, so, please, illuminate them.’ And God will speak to them and they will say to themselves, ‘Oh dear, I shouldn’t have upset Mummy by doing that!’ And with the grace of God this will come from their heart.” He also said, “It is not sufficient for the parents to be devout. They mustn’t oppress the children to make them good by force. We may repel our children from Christ when we pursue the things of our religion with egotism.
You know the saying “the truth hurts”? Well, I’m sure in some cases it does but in this case it never felt so good.
Read the whole post. H/T Byzantine, Texas.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

On Pentecost

I hope y'all had a blessed Feast of Pentecost! This is usually the final Sunday for the choir at our parish (of whom my wife is a member) before they take their abnormally long summer break. The liturgy also included a small orchestra working with the choir.

Our parish also welcomed into the Catholic family today an 87 year old woman through baptism, confirmation, and first eucharist. As was reiterated today, and is certainly true, Our Lord never ceases to call us home to the sacraments, even after a full length of life as that - and surely she will have plenty more! And I still pray for those who have left the church, as I have had the blessing to see some of them return.

Now, on to the reflection. From St. Irenaeus of Lyons (2nd century) from Against Heresies (featured in today's Office of Readings):
When the Lord told his disciples to go and teach all nations and to baptize them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he conferred on them the power of giving men new life in God. He had promised through the prophets that in these last days he would pour out his Spirit on his servants and handmaids, and that they would prophesy. So when the Son of God became the Son of Man, the Spirit also descended upon him, becoming accustomed in this way to dwelling with the human race, to living in men and to inhabiting God’s creation. The Spirit accomplished the Father’s will in men who had grown old in sin, and gave them new life in Christ.

Luke says that the Spirit came down on the disciples at Pentecost, after the Lord’s ascension, with power to open the gates of life to all nations and to make known to them the new covenant. So it was that men of every language joined in singing one song of praise to God, and scattered tribes, restored to unity by the Spirit, were offered to the Father as the first fruits of all the nations.

This was why the Lord had promised to send the Advocate: he was to prepare us as an offering to God. Like dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture, we who are many could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven. And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become one in body; through the Spirit we have become one in soul.

The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of God came down upon the Lord, and the Lord in turn gave this Spirit to his Church, sending the Advocate from heaven into all the world into which, according to his own words, the devil too had been cast down like lightning. If we are not to be scorched and made unfruitful, we need the dew of God. Since we have our accuser, we need an Advocate as well. And so the Lord in his pity for man, who had fallen into the hands of brigands, having himself bound up his wounds and left for his care two coins bearing the royal image, entrusted him to the Holy Spirit. Now, through the Spirit, the image and inscription of the Father and the Son have been given to us, and it is our duty to use the coin committed to our charge and make it yield a rich profit for the Lord.
I love that!! Especially this part:
Like dry flour, which cannot become one lump of dough, one loaf of bread, without moisture, we who are many could not become one in Christ Jesus without the water that comes down from heaven. And like parched ground, which yields no harvest unless it receives moisture, we who were once like a waterless tree could never have lived and borne fruit without this abundant rainfall from above. Through the baptism that liberates us from change and decay we have become one in body; through the Spirit we have become one in soul.
Thanks be to God.

Around the house...

When it comes to worrying about all of the troubles in the world, nothing helps more than taking care of business around the house. I've been trying to tackle the lawn, which has started growing again now that the climate is warmer and more moist. The grass is not too easy to keep up with, and you gotta keep it under control before it takes over everything.

I also spent some time during the past week figuring out what to do with my old Pentium 133MHz machine. I've had this machine for many years, since through college. I decided to get a cheap wireless card for it and update the operating system, and this would allow me to stash it somewhere in the house, out of the way, as a headless box.

About 9 years ago, I installed an old distribution of Redhat Linux for it, but this time, I figured I would install something with an extremely low footprint so that I could play with it and add to it as I saw fit. I eventually decided on Damn Small Linux, based on Debian. The basic footprint of DSL is around 50MB even with xwindows and some useful apps. Installing it was a breeze, and the wireless card worked with very little effort. I've now got it stashed in a hidden location, accessible only via ssh. Linux can truly transform an otherwise useless machine. Now, I've got to figure out something useful for it to do!

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