Metropolitan Cleopas of Sweden: A Tyke’s Head Start

A few days ago, I read on an ecclesiastical news site about an event held near Athens dedicated to young children, the majority of whom were pre-schoolers. And as I looked at the accompanying photo, I saw a little tyke proudly accepting a medal from the Metropolitan officiating the ceremony that afternoon, which subsequently decorated his chest, as he examined it with pride and satisfaction.

Following the award ceremony, the little fellow traversed the entire length of the town square where the event was held with a gait that was reminiscent of a parade marcher. This was his way of displaying his joy over this valuable prize he had won. This was likely the first award he had ever received for his participation in the life of the local Church and its school.

I would call it a head start, because this gait had something unique to it, which cannot be described with words alone. The child seemed very happy and satisfied, probably because this was his first time receiving public recognition. And this occurred within the Church of Christ – inside its spiritual environment – where he is being educated and growing up in Christ.

This is an environment that will give him a head start as he grows up, to serve there as a clergyman or volunteer in parish ministries, as a member of the parish council or the Philoptochos Society, as a religious instructor, team leader, counselor, or benefactor.

As I looked at this photo, my thoughts turned to my younger years at my parish – St. Paraskevi in Nea Smyrni, Athens. It was there that three devoted clergymen – now all celebrants in God’s heavenly altar – taught me to love the Church ever since I was a pre-schooler. I was just four years old.

When I turned 18, the ever-memorable Frs. Evangelos Skordas, Zois Bisalas, and Spyridon Antonopoulos, together with the parish council serving the church at that time, asked me to assume duties of director of the parish’s Youth Center.

At the first youth meeting, only a few young people turned out. To keep me from getting discouraged, Fr. Evangelos reminded me the words of Christ: “fear not the little flock.”

He was right. In a few months, thanks to the love and support of the entire parish, we inaugurated three new programs, in addition to our religious instruction program, with its hundreds of students. We added a music, dance, and theater company, which performed throughout Greece and Europe. Now, you might be wondering: why this reference to my childhood?

Here is my answer. The end of the academic year for Sunday Schools and Christian youth groups is approaching, and each parish will be asked to reflect on its own pastoral ministry. One of the questions they must answer is whether there was essential participation by the youth in parish activities.

If the parish walks alongside the youth and can comprehend their modern attitudes and outlook, if it maintains dialogue with them – including those who label themselves as religiously indifferent, atheists or agnostics; those whose notion of religion has merely been “handed down” to them by their parents, and which operates more as forgetfulness than as a living memory and empirical knowledge. The parish must not become yet another “dependent society,” with dependent young people; a “revolution” that was never espoused; an inner metamorphosis that was never achieved.

Perhaps because we who teach these things do not carry ourselves in a manner that is riveting and promotes enthusiasm.

Perhaps because the youth realize that we do not practice what we preach as a living example of our faith, and act contrary toward the famous adage of St. Gregory the Theologian: “praxis caps off theory;” in other words, that we must experience our ecclesiastical life through action, implementing all that Scripture and Tradition teach in our own life, before we dare pass on this knowledge to others.

Let us responsibly contemplate the percentage of our parish ministry’s adequateness and inadequateness, and let us not deprive our children of spiritual life; the life which we very well may have deprive them of whenever we behave as an undesirable conservative institution sustaining old-fashioned views, walled-off behind the placard of supposed tradition, tailor-made for us, but which is dying in reality precisely because it is not being renewed.

Let us have no doubt that the “prodigal son” from the Gospel parable will cross the threshold of each of our parishes in search of life’s meaning and a foretaste of paradise. Let us be ready to welcome him and say “come as you are,”  helping him “lift off” into saintliness.