Your immediate concern should be with yourself. Strive hard to be a Christian wife and a Christian mother. This is not easy. If you do strive for this, you in your world will find as many snares and pitfalls as we [i.e., monastics] do in ours. Yours may be a different kind, but they are no less difficult to evade.
Starets Macarius of Optina
“How can I, living in the world, dwell in the presence of God?” The elder answered” “Do everything as one cooperating in God’s work.” To be a fellow worker with God in the task of marriage and bringing up Christian children is a grandiose and holy role…. All you learn about marriage, all your work for your marriage, is work for the salvation of your children, and this is not something small, but something which is of eternal value.
A contemporary monk
Remember that love of the neighbor is the first work you must strive for. And you do not even have to leave your house to find that neighbor; your husband is that neighbor; your mother is that neighbor; and so are your children.
Starets Macarius of Optina
The question for Christians who are already married and raising children is not: “How can I reduce to a bare minimum my family obligations so as to be “free” to lead a “more spiritual” life?” It is rather: “How should I nurture within my family life my love for God and my neighbor?” Sister Magdalen
The joint prayer of husband and wife is a great force.
Starets Macarius
Not merely by living with him as a wife will she be able to save her husband, but by openly demonstrating a life lived according to the Gospel…. It is possible in the case of wives to display the same zeal and enjoy the same advantage [as Saint Priscilla in teaching Apllos: Acts 18:24-26]… The display of a grand philosophy and much patience, the scoffing at misfortunes of marriage, and the determination to follow this task through from beginning to end–this is to make the soul of one’s partner to be saved.
Saint John Chrysostom.
The upbringing of children must begin during infancy. This is necessary in order to direct the child’s powers of the soul—as soon as they begin to emerge—toward good, virtue, and truth, while simultaneously distancing them from evil, indecency, and falsehood.
This age is the secure foundation upon which a child’s moral and intellectual understanding will be erected. Thus, Fokilidis says: “It is necessary to teach someone to do good work while he is still a child,” because man sets out from childhood, as from a starting block, to run the race of life.
St.Basil the Great affirms: “It is necessary for the soul to be guided right from the very beginning toward every virtuous exercise, while it is still soft and moldable as wax; so that, as a child begins to speak and to acquire discernment, there exists a road comprised of the elemental concepts and devout etiquette that were initially imparted, giving him the ability to speak good and useful things and inspiring him to acquire a proper moral conduct.” Truly!
Who will not agree that the first impressions during childhood remain permanently ingrained and unforgettable? Who doubts that various influences during early youth become so deeply imprinted upon a child’s tender soul, that they continue to exist vividly throughout the duration of his life?
Nature has appointed parents, but especially mothers, to be instructors during this early stage of life. Hence, it is necessary for us to suitably teach and diligently raise virtuous women, on account of their supreme calling to become teachers; for they will serve as the images and examples that their own children will follow. A child mimics either the virtues or bad habits of his mother—even her
voice and manners, even her ethos and conduct to such an extent, that one can very appropriately liken children to phonographic records that initially register sound, and then play it back as it was originally voiced, in the identical pitch, the same quality, and with the same accent and emphasis.
Each glance, every word, every gesture, and every action of a mother becomes the glance, word, expression, gesture, and action of her child. Hence, Asterios notes: “one child speaks exactly like his mother, another bears a striking resemblance to her personality, while yet another takes on his birth giver’s manner and conduct.” By being in the constant presence of her child and through her repeated counsels, a mother profoundly affects the soul and character of her child, and she first provides him with the initial impetus toward virtue.
Saint Nektarios of Aegina
Mothers know how to express anxiety, offer advice and talk incessantly, but they haven't learned to pray. Most advice and criticism does a great harm to them. You don't need to say a lot to children.
Words hammer at the ears, but prayer goes to the heart. Prayer is required, with faith and without anxiety, along with a good example.
Saint Porphyrios
Your immediate concern should be with yourself. Strive hard to be a Christian wife and a Christian mother. This is not easy. If you do strive for this, you in your world will find as many snares and pitfalls as we [i.e., monastics] do in ours. Yours may be a different kind, but they are no less difficult to evade.
Starets Macarius of Optina
“How can I, living in the world, dwell in the presence of God?” The elder answered” “Do everything as one cooperating in God’s work.” To be a fellow worker with God in the task of marriage and bringing up Christian children is a grandiose and holy role…. All you learn about marriage, all your work for your marriage, is work for the salvation of your children, and this is not something small, but something which is of eternal value.
A contemporary monk
Remember that love of the neighbor is the first work you must strive for. And you do not even have to leave your house to find that neighbor; your husband is that neighbor; your mother is that neighbor; and so are your children.
Starets Macarius of Optina
The question for Christians who are already married and raising children is not: “How can I reduce to a bare minimum my family obligations so as to be “free” to lead a “more spiritual” life?” It is rather: “How should I nurture within my family life my love for God and my neighbor?”
Sister Magdalen
The joint prayer of husband and wife is a great force.
Starets Macarius
Not merely by living with him as a wife will she be able to save her husband, but by openly demonstrating a life lived according to the Gospel…. It is possible in the case of wives to display the same zeal and enjoy the same advantage [as Saint Pricilla in teaching Apllos: Acts 18:24-26]… The display of a grand philosophy and much patience, the scoffing at misfortunes of marriage, and the determination to follow this task through from beginning to end–this is to make the soul of one’s partner to be saved.
Saint John Chrysostom.
http://agapienxristou.blogspot.ca/2013/05/just-for-mothers.html
