St John Chrysostom's Simple Advice to Parents

St John Chrysostom is my Name Saint. He is one of the Three Holy Hierarchs in the East and the West considers him a Doctor of the Church.

From Aleteia

By Philip Kosloski

St. John Chrysostom provides some timeless advice to parents who want to raise their children in the Christian faith.

Often parents are looking for a secret formula that will encourage their children to be faithful to the Christian faith for the rest of their lives.

But usually what is needed in raising children is not something extraordinary or some sort of secret knowledge, but simple things that can impact a child for a lifetime.

St. John Chrysostom provides this simple and timeless advice in many of his recorded homilies.

Seas of life

Pope Benedict XVI introduces this wisdom of Chrysostom in a general audience he gave in 2007:

John Chrysostom was anxious to accompany his writings with the person's integral development in his physical, intellectual and religious dimensions. The various phases of his growth are compared to as many seas in an immense ocean: "The first of these seas is childhood" (Homily, 81, 5 on Matthew's Gospel).

St. John Chrysostom believed passing on the faith needs to occur at the earliest of ages:

Indeed, "it is precisely at this early age that inclinations to vice or virtue are manifest". Thus, God's law must be impressed upon the soul from the outset "as on a wax tablet" (Homily 3, 1 on John's Gospel): This is indeed the most important age. We must bear in mind how fundamentally important it is that the great orientations which give man a proper outlook on life truly enter him in this first phase of life.

He then explains how parents need to, "from earliest life encompass them with spiritual armor and instruct them to make the Sign of the Cross on the forehead with the hand: and before they are able to do this with their own hand, do you imprint upon them the Cross."

It is a reminder to all parents on how important early childhood is for cultivating a love and trust of God. It's one of the reasons why Catechesis of the Good Shepherd was developed.

Parents don't need to try and reinvent the wheel, but to simply model for their children the faith that they want to pass on to them.

Early childhood is so important because, as St. John Chrysostom explains, "Following childhood is the sea of adolescence, where violent winds blow..., for concupiscence... grows within us."

We need to plant the seeds early on in our children's development so that they are prepared for the rocky sea of adolescence, when their faith will be tested.