Sophia P. | Former Communications Manager

The Christian family is a koinonia of persons who exist together in unity and love, a community arranged in imitation of the Holy Trinity. That's a high calling! But family life is also an everyday calling, a daily and mundane thing. Navigating the waters of family dynamics is something that each of us must learn to do with patience, humility, and trust in God.

According to Realm, St. Mary's has received over thirty new members into the faith in the past five years alone. Our parish is filling with families, many of whom are beginning, or deepening, the journey of expanding their families. But expanding a family is more than a biological act—it requires formation of body and soul. What does it mean to form a soul for the Kingdom? How can we raise children to fix their eyes on the age to come?

With Fr. David's blessing, The Veil this summer is pleased to present you with some of the wisdom of those at our parish who are seasoned as both parents and Orthodox Christians. Their stories, humbly offered, are not necessarily prescriptions, but you may be wise to take note.

The Home as the Little Church

In Orthodox tradition, the home is often called the “Little Church.” Like the temple, the home is a place where the rhythms of the Church year, the fasts, feasts, and times of prayer create the structure of daily living. Icons in every room orients us as we do our chores, our homework, and gather with friends. And when obedience to these structures falters, mercy and repentance offer a humble path of return, and we have the opportunity to receive God’s grace. In this way, our religion becomes the central ordering force for all other activities in the home.

Dn. Nicholas and Dsa. Cathy offered a picture of the faith forming the heart and structure of their household. Dsa. Cathy found that her upbringing by devout Catholic parents served her well in creating a similar atmosphere for her own children.

“We tried to have the same Christ-centered life with prayer, reading the lives of the saints, observing the fasts and the feasts of the Church, and lots of time at church," Dsa. Cathy said.

But the construction of such religious scaffolding can be challenging if you don’t have a strong background to support your efforts (and even if you do, it can remain so). So where can a new family begin?

Watering the Garden of the Soul with Good Habits

Again and again, seasoned parents pointed to the power of small habits kept faithfully.

A simple habit: going to church.

“My younger son wasn't able to stay in the church for a whole service until he was in the altar,” Dsa. Cathy said. “He liked to move around a lot. He wasn't an early fan of fasting food either.”

Still, due to consistent effort, their older son memorized the liturgy by age three and played church at home with a toy censor and colorful vestments. Their younger son, initially resistant to altar service, began joyfully serving after being handed a bread basket one Sunday. For their family, persistence bore fruit.

Fr. David’s advice on parental endurance adds gentle humility: “You do what you can where you can while you can, and trust in the Lord for the rest.”

However, Fr. David also emphasized that parents’ own habits shape children more deeply than the ones they try to impose, and most of the interviews reflected this piece of wisdom.

"The most powerful thing is for your children to see you worship," Dn. Nicholas noted. "Not just be there—worship."

Our parents also strive to foster intellectual habits that deepen the family’s understanding of the faith. Regular reading of Scripture and spiritual writings, thoughtful reflection, and meaningful conversation were mentioned as household norms.

“The most edifying conversations I've had with each of my three children have occurred during long trips the two of us took together, without the distractions of work, school, social media, or even other family members,” said our Church School high school teacher Jonathan J.

That said, a good family structure and strong education set the stage for a rich faith, but Fr. David observed that they cannot replace experiencing Christ and seeing His reflection in others.

"Studies have shown," Fr. David said, "that kids are most likely to stay in the faith when they see their parents worship, when they have a good mentor figure in another faithful adult who is not their parent, and they have had an experience of the holy. The young people I see fall away often have trouble with one or more of those three: their parents aren't good examples, they don't develop that mentorship (or worse, are betrayed by it), or they never experience the presence of God deeply."

Our parents navigating complex family circumstances all have to fight hard for their children with discernment and faith. Men's Fellowship head Jonathan C. converted later in life, and once married to Anna C., they found themselves with a new, blended family, where their children were older and more independent.

"We live in an age of little faith and even outright hostility to Christianity," Jonathan C. said. "When our children go to college, the prevailing worldview is nonreligious or even anti-religious. Parents must give careful thought to how to handle this dilemma.”

Water is Thicker than Blood

It is a wonderful grace, then, that so much of God’s mercy is dispensed to us through His Church, where our familial shortcomings can be softened and healed by the community of His body. Spending meaningful time with godparents, godsiblings, and other Orthodox friends and relatives helps children grow deep roots in a faith that they can authentically call their own.

“The best thing my parents did for me was expose me to the family tradition,” said Fr. David. “[But] being a priest and raising children far from my family has meant that I had to expand the meaning and role of family to the wider parish.”

Spending a few days at Antiochian Village is another way that many children are able to experience the faith on their own terms. Through retreats, conferences, and youth camps, children can find new ways of connecting to God. Some parents even mentioned that their children kept in touch with camp counselors throughout the year.

Jonathan J. works with the same principle in his high school classroom in Church School. Each Sunday, he asks the teens to share their highs and lows from the past week in order to build relationships based on honesty and empathy.

“This helps me rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep,” he said. “We shouldn’t try to make other persons duplicates of ourselves, but encourage each of us to find our unity as fellow members of God's household.”

The Larger Church Family

Other relationships within the Church emerge organically. From intentional godparenting, to offering advice when asked, to simply existing in the same space, your presence affects others.

Our Ecclesiarch Katherine M. experienced this when she found herself as a mentor and friend to many younger women in the parish without going out of her way to form such relationships.

“I never sought to mother to anyone,” she said. “They chose me.”

She learned that young people notice everything—strengths, foibles, and failures—and sought to engage their interests and problems from an authentic angle. Eccl. Katherine said that she tries to ask open-ended questions, listen to their responses, and always resist the urge to offer advice too directly—which she noted can accidentally be passed on in a condescending tone, effectively closing the door to growth.

“There are so many younger people who want an older person's friendship,” she said.

Anna C., wife of previously-mentioned Jonathan C. and head of several ministries including Community Connections and Reel Women, has chosen to take this reality of influence seriously. She shared that after her children were grown, turning her nurturing instinct toward the community became a way to foster deeper Christian love.

“I now believe that perhaps our greatest role as Christians is to support, uplift, love and nurture each other," Anna said. "It is wonderful whenever we are able to discern the ‘child’ in another person, regardless of age or position. Suddenly, any feeling of conflict, contempt, jealousy, or irritability toward others dissolves, and the ‘parent’ comes out in us.”

For men in particular, Dn. Nicholas emphasized the power of example in the Church. “There [is sometimes] a sense that going to church is What Mom Does. [But some] studies indicated that Mom's faithfulness is not as much as a factor as Dad's presence and participation in terms of the kids' staying faithful in the Church.”

Watching men worship, pray, and serve with seriousness of heart, then, is a gift to all the children of the parish, whether or not they are sons or daughters by blood.

Have Patience and Enjoy the Journey

It should be a great comfort to all parents that we don’t raise our children alone. Our parenting—however imperfect—is aided by the grandparents, godparents, our clergy, and the Church at large, whether by direct assistance or by example. While this is not an excuse for laziness, we can and must trust our children to the Church, the saints, the angels, and to the mercy of God. After all, not even God is alone—Love Himself exists in three persons in perfect community.

“Metropolitan Kallistos Ware teaches that the Holy Trinity is the basis for all forms of Christian community," Jonathan J. points out. "This truth means we need to recognize both what we share together as a family, and also what distinguishes each of us as a unique person.”

Fr. David encourages us to endure this process with patience, and to enjoy the journey. His perspective is that it's not a sprint or even a marathon. Parenting is, as he put it, “a backcountry hike over many miles and days.”

“Keep camp with your fellows,” Fr. David said. “Sing songs and share meals. God will reveal to you what He has revealed to others before you, and you shall join the saints on the road to happy destiny!”