“My life is not my own”
“Motherhood is a most beautiful vocation–one that can be compared with that of the martyrs, monastics, and teachers of the Faith. In motherhood, aspects of all three of these vocations are required if one is to fulfill the awesome responsibility of bringing a new life into the world, nurturing it and guiding it towards the Kingdom of God. This kind of motherhood is a means to salvation: it is hard work, and offers endless opportunities to practice the Christian virtues of selflessness, patience, perseverance and love.”
—Fr. Vasili & Pres. Maria
Motherhood
A Blessed Vocation
“I heard it said once that motherhood is a type of asceticism. Like the ascetics, mothers find themselves in a situation that requires their utter devotion, self-denial, daily emotional exercises, facing extreme challenges, and much prayer.” —Annalisa Boyd
“The life of a woman in the Church is the ultimate, the fullness. This applies even to a mother. Look at the mother of a family, raising her children. First of all, to bear children. God asks you to give birth to His children and then to raise them. Every moment for fifteen or twenty years, the mother is the priest at home, the priest to that child. She’s giving him complete spiritual guidance and upbringing—emotional, physical, educational, but also spiritual. So, your prayer life, your intimate relationship with God is passed onto your children. You’re praying for them; you are their total connection with God. They are too young to speak, to say their prayers, even too young to make the sign of the cross. We love watching children making the sign of the cross. They are one or two years old. They sort of hit their head, tap their chest with their fingers, they know there’s something there to do, but slowly the mother takes the hand of the child and shows how to hold the three fingers, and how to put two down, then to touch the forehead, and the heart, the chest, and each shoulder, teaching the child little by little to come to God or kiss the icon, or to receive the Holy Communion, to be respectful when they go to the chalice. This is a fantastic role in the Church. It’s the ultimate role—to be a mother. You might think as an abbess I have a great spiritual authority. I only have as much authority as a sister will allow me to have in her life, but the mother of a family is everything to an infant, to a baby—everything they receive is coming through you, through your hands, through your breath, through your prayers. This is the greatest thing. You’re not only becoming a saint to yourself, but you’re also raising up saints for the Church, you’re raising up perhaps priests for the Church or even a bishop; even monks and nuns, or singers. This is a wonderful gift, a wonderful thing that God asks us to do as women.”
Mother Christophora
“To all who are called by God to motherhood, may it be granted that you not only be worthy servants of His chosen flock, but also to take part in raising that God-glorifying generation. Let us not forget that to be called by God to serve Him in motherhood is a holy calling. A woman worthy of being called “mother” is also worthy of being deemed “martyr,” because raising children is a great sacrifice of self. The path of motherhood is a serious and holy service that you render when you accept from God to raise the little ones that He gives you.”
Mothers and the up-bringing of children
St. Nektarios of Aegina
(Translation of: Ἡ ἀγωγὴ τῶν παίδων καὶ αἱ Μητέρες)
Translation © 2014 by Thomas Carroll
All Rights Reserved
“The education of children must begin from infancy, so that the child’s mental faculties may, from their very first appearance, be directed right from the beginning toward the good, the gentle, the true, and may be removed from the evil, the obscene, and the false. This age can be regarded as a most immovable foundation upon which the child’s moral and intellectual formation will be built. This is why Phocylides says, “You must while he is yet a child instruct him in good works, for it is from childhood, as from a starting line, that a man sets off on the race he is to run in life.” And Basil the Great declares, “The soul, while it is still easily molded and soft, while it is still like wax that is easily melted and that easily receives the impression of the shapes that are pressed upon it, must straightway and from the beginning be urged on to every exercise of virtues; so that, when the faculty of reason has come and the habit of discrimination has appeared, the soul’s course may proceed from first principles and from the impressions of piety that have been handed down to it, with the faculty of reason suggesting that which is useful and the moral character producing an ease of accomplishing it.” And who, indeed, does not acknowledge that those first impressions that have come during childhood prove indelible? Who doubts that in early childhood influences are so powerfully impressed on the child’s tender soul, that they remain vivid throughout his whole life?
[…] It is necessary, then, that we form our daughters religiously and intellectually, so that we may present them worthy of their vocation. It is necessary, then, that reverent education and educated religion exist side by side, for these two things are the only sure provisions for travelling in this life, provisions that are able to help a man in manifold ways.
An Abbess once quoted:
“You greatly delude yourself and err, if you think that one thing is demanded from the layman and another from the monk; since the difference between them is in that whether one is married or not, while in everything else they have the same responsibilities. . . . Because all must rise to the same height; and what has turned the world upside down is that we think only the monk must live rigorously, while the rest are allowed to live a life of indolence.”
—Saint John Chrysostom
“When we accept a little child in His name, we are accepting the ascetic life of motherhood. The “rules” of motherhood include the two commandments Christ gave:
The first of all the commandments is: 'And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no other commandment greater than these" (Mark 12:29–31).
How do we apply these commandments to the mothering of our children? Consider the virtues taught by the Church and how they apply to your own life. These are spiritual habits we can pursue at any time. They are tools to help us as we endeavor to “work out our salvation with fear and trembling” (Phil. 2:12), both for the salvation of our own souls and so that we may be light-bearers for our children as we help them walk along the way. Each “rule” is given with the understanding that you will seek out the guidance of your own spiritual advisor, the person who knows you and your life and family situation, for the specific ways to walk forward in Christ.”
The Virtues
Humility
Humility is the weapon used against pride. It is thinking of others before yourself. You might be thinking, “Wait, I’m a mom. I’m always thinking of others before myself!” I agree. We do spend a lot of time thinking of our children and providing for them day in and day out. Humility is tied in with the virtue of happiness. When Christ endured the cross, it was “for the joy set before Him”(from Heb. 12:2). Letting our joy be evident as we serve in our homes or in our churches shows our children the blessing that comes from service.
Liberality
Liberality is living generously; it serves as a weapon against greed. Give freely to others when it is within your power to do so, without any expectation of getting something in return. This includes giving to the homeless, friends, enemies, neighbors, and those in our own families.
Mildness
Mildness is used to fight wrath and anger. It consists of kindness, gentleness, and calm in word and action. Whether you have one child or many children, home can become a chaotic place. Mildness is closely related to temperance and humility because it requires a lot of self-control and humility to address the myriad of issues each home faces with kindness, gentleness, and calm. Of course there will be those days you are tempted to lock yourself in the closet and curl up in the fetal position, but the God of the universe is there on those days, too. As we seek the Lord, through prayer and the observance of the sacraments, we can be the calm in our homes. His power is that big!
Chastity
Chastity is a weapon against lust; it isn’t only for virgins. Chastity is purity of heart, mind, and body. This means being mindful of what we watch, read, listen to, and say. We don’t want to hide our heads in the sand or make some alternate reality for our children, but we do want them to understand the world around them in a loving and godly context.
Temperance
Temperance is a weapon against gluttony. Practicing self-control, moderation, and restraint as a mother sets a good example to your children in how they should approach life. These lessons are taught each church year through the observation and celebration of the fasts and feasts. Learning to celebrate without gorging ourselves helps us to appreciate the sacrifice of the fast and embrace the blessing of the feast.
Diligence
We use diligence to fight against sloth or laziness. Diligence is doing any task (work/chore/job/responsibility) until it is completed to the very best of our ability. Of course, as mothers, we have times when emergencies come up and plans must change, but if we strive to set the example of managing our time well so we can be diligent in our responsibilities, we will find it time well spent.
Happiness
Happiness protects us from envy. There is a time for great rejoicing and a time for sorrow. For Christians, even the times of sorrow are tempered with joy, because we know this world is temporary and we press on toward the world to come. We can help our children embrace happiness by being, well, happy. We can be happy because we are thankful to the Lord for all His blessings, for our family and for how He provides for us. We can also be happy for how He provides for others. The Bible tells us to rejoice in the Lord always. Because of His great sacrifice for us, we can truly rejoice even in the midst of trials.
“Standing in the newly built church I was drawn to the icon of the Annunciation. There was Mary in the presence of the Archangel Gabriel willingly accepting the call to be the mother of Christ! She was called and her response made it possible for mankind to be saved! At that moment I realized that my responsibility as a Christian wife and mother was to be an imitator of the Theotokos. Of course I would not be called upon to bear the God of all creation, but, I realized, I had been called upon to be mother to the children the Lord had blessed me with and He daily awaits my answer. Will I surrender my will and follow Him as our own Blessed Mother did?
Each of us, mother or not, has a calling to embrace the life Christ has called us to. We are not forced to submit or coerced into obedience. We are presented with a question. We are each asked if we will follow Him. He leaves the answer to us.”
Annalisa Boyd, The Ascetic Lives of Mothers
The Spiritual Role of the Grandmother
"If your heart overflows with love for God, you will find a thousand ways to communicate and pass on these feelings to your children."
“These are the words of St. Irenaeus, one of the most important theologian of the second century. He was from Asia Minor, probably Smyrna. He studied in Rome and became Bishop of Lyon in present day France, and he understood that what counts is not so much what we do with our children and our grandchildren as who we are in Christ. “Faith,” as the saying goes, “is caught rather than taught.”
When we stay connected to Christ by receiving the Sacraments and attending as many worship services as we can, when we stay connected to Him through regular prayer and through prayerful reading of Holy Scripture, little by little our heart does indeed begin to overflow with love for God. If we seek God in our lives, if we abide in Christ, if we turn often to the Holy Spirit for guidance, if we opt for a godly book rather than a silly sitcom, we are bound to feel God’s warmth in our hearts—and our grandchildren will feel it too. This isn’t something we can necessarily always show our grandchildren, but they will see our faith.
It was often stated that the old women of the Church, the grandmothers, kept the faith and traditions alive in Russia during the communist era. However, one can say that no oppressor was ever going to win the war against these “babushkas.” Like the Myrrhbearing Women, who, after the burial of Christ, were left to go to the tomb with their costly spices in their hands, these women were left to anoint the persecuted Church of Russia with their courage and faith. They guarded the small eternal flame of life in the Church, and with both their faith and obedience to God, managed to become living images of holiness for the younger women and children to follow. From their example, came in later years a constant flow of strong, selfless, and pious old women—the old women who “never died” because their faith has never died to this day.
Where are these faithful grandmothers today?
Did their daughters and granddaughters get lost in “the land of plenty” and fail to pass on the spiritual life and holy traditions of the Church? Why aren’t our women today maturing into the role that is so needed in our lives? In many Orthodox parishes across North America, Grandma is gone. We need desperately the return of pious, fearless, courageous, and godly women to help protect the interior life of the Church and home. Saint Paul wrote, “Older women . . . [are to be reverent in behavior . . . teachers of good things— that they admonish the young women” (Titus 2:3, 4). No one has more experience and wisdom to pass on to a younger woman than an older woman. It is always tragic to come upon a young mother who has gone through needless agony because she failed to understand this divine order—or could not find an older woman willing to teach her.
Women are to take the responsibility for stoking the flame of Faith at home, in the “little Church,” as it tends to be called. It is the woman that ensures her family keeps to the spiritual calendar that sets us apart from this world, rather than the secular calendar which leads to separation from God. Worship, feasts, fasts, prayers, pilgrimages, and festivals should shape our lives more than sports, restaurants, television, and movies—the pleasure and entertainment calendar of Secular culture.
The faithful older women also are called to help beautify and guard the House of the Lord. The pious old women of Russia and other Orthodox lands unabashedly take it upon themselves to correct anyone—even a priest—whom they see behaving improperly toward the things of God. It is the proper place of older women to admonish the younger women concerning the proper dress and behavior in church. You won’t catch a young Russian woman entering a church without a headcovering, or wearing shorts in a holy place, or venerating an icon with lipstick on. The “babushkas” would never let them get away with it!
These women have earned the right to correct others’ behavior not by their age alone, but by their lifetime of selfless and devoted service to the Church. They are a living testimony to the words of the psalm: “Those who are planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bear fruit in old age; they shall be fresh and flourishing, to declare that the Lord is upright” (Psalm 92:13-15, emphasis added).
Let me exhort the older women of the Church to make every effort to model themselves after the godly women of Orthodox lands. Further educate yourselves in the traditions of the Church. Thus, cultivate your own spiritual life so that you will have good fruit to share with others. Be willing to give of yourself to help younger women (beginning with your own daughters and daughters-in-law, if you have them) to live out the Faith in their homes and with their children. Spend time with your grandchildren, teaching them the traditions of the Church and their meaning. Serve the Church in whatever way you can, not disdaining the lowlier tasks, such as scrubbing floors, nor shrinking in false humility from more difficult tasks which you may be called and gifted to do. Finally, don’t be too intimidated to speak out (in love and humility, not in self-righteousness) if you see others in your parish failing to give proper reverence to the things of God.
To the younger women, I would say, try to find older women to model yourselves after, and receive their advice and correction with humility and respect. If you cannot find any such women in the flesh, read the lives of women saints and the writings and biographies of modern godly women. Do all you can to make your home a domestic church, and strive to grow into the sort of older woman you would want to emulate.
—with excerpts from Fr. John Weldon
The prayers of our grandmothers are salvific.
Their prayers are alive, and they revive our calloused souls unto eternal life.
“One time they brought a thirty-seven-year-old woman to our monastery—they brought her as they bring a sick person to a hospital. She told me her story. Her husband cheated on her, and so that she wouldn’t hinder him, he started to get her drunk. Then he left her, and she took some pills. She was in the ICU and experienced clinical death.
She felt how her soul departed from her body, and she saw her great grandmother kneeling before God and tearfully entreating: “Give her more time, Lord!” And she felt her soul return to her body. They were already planning in the ICU to take her to the morgue. Then they looked and saw that her heart started beating again.
Our grandmothers have boldness before God…” - Abbess Xenia
A Yia Yia’s Will
The following message is from a pious Yia Yia, who fell asleep in the Lord not very long ago in Greece at the age of 90. This precious vessel of Christian faith left a handwritten “will,” in simple language and with multiple spelling errors (in the original Greek). As you’ll see, it’s not an ordinary will; rather it represents the spiritual legacy that this grandmother wanted to bequeath to her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and their spouses.
“My dear children [and she names all her children, grandchildren, their spouses, etc.], I embrace you and say farewell. You will open and read this letter after my death…
“The first thing you should do early in the morning is wash your face, light the vigil lamp and cense the whole house. Then you should pray, like I taught you, from the Prayer Book…Next, you all go to work. Only then God will protect and bless your work and your family. Every Sunday morning all of you go to Church; the same goes for every great feast. Every night, young and old, before you go to bed read the Compline, the Salutations, [from] the New Testament, the Psalter, and the ‘Salvation of Sinners.’ Do not forget the periods of fasting; keep them all, as I used to since I was six and on.
“When, my dear children and grandchildren, you do all these it will be like lighting a candle for me every day. It will be the best daily memorial service held for me. Thus, you will remember me in your prayers…Follow our country’s religious customs and do not take any delight in secular things but put all of it aside and follow the heavens for all [the secular things] are temporary and futile.
“All good deeds and charity that are done secretly will be received in eternity. Everything else will end like a dream. You will not be able to take anything with you; neither riches, nor splendor and glory, nor houses. You shall take merely your good deeds and patience.
“May you have my blessing and may there be love, first between you brothers and sisters, then between your families, but also among your relatives and your neighbors and the entire world.
“Do good deeds as much as you can and never stay away from Church. And always be forgiving to those who want to harm you. These feelings of hostility will remain here on earth but also in heaven. For as many years as we live, it will be like yesterday. Hence, do deeds that are good and done in secret. Lies and injustice to no one, not even your enemy. Never leave the Church and a good spiritual father…
“May you have my blessing, my embrace, I bid you farewell and see you again soon in Paradise.
Your Mother and Grandmother.”
