2-3-23 Bulletin

On any given Sunday morning in an Orthodox Church, something takes place that is exceedingly rare in America: the gathering of multiple, cross generations. What I mean is that our parishes become places where we see a spread of 1st to 3rd (and possibly 4th) generations as grandchildren, children, parents, grandparents and sometimes even great-grandparents come together for liturgy and fellowship. Nowhere else do we see this happening on such a regular basis. And from my perspective, this is an exceedingly valuable experience.

How so? Because younger and older generations need each other like never before. They need to converse and spend time with each other so they might offer to each other the blessings belonging to their age. In the “old country,” it was a given that a household was constituted of 3 generations—children, parents, and grandparents—all living under one roof. This, of course, is what we now call the “extended family.” But here in America, this is no longer the norm. Instead, we have the so-called “nuclear” family, a family composed of just children and parents (or a single parent).

Even so, from the view of the Church, these generations help each other in order to be healthy and whole. Grandparents are especially helpful to their grandchildren as they are growing up. Children growing up today in America have been submerged in a “youth-culture” that defines itself in its own terms. The only valuable age—it is assumed—is the age of “youth.” There is no place for old-age and for this reason, many Americans take draconian steps (i.e. surgical) in order to gain “eternal youth,” to appear younger than they really are. Women, especially, are placed under intense pressure to remain “girlish” for as long as possible. And this again is a purely American fixation (fetish) that is not found in other non-western cultures where human beings are blessed to age and mature in healthy ways and where the elderly are valued for their knowledge and wisdom.

Yet the very presence of Orthodox grandparents with their grandchildren helps to dispel all these worldly and fleshly expectations. Loving grandmothers prove for their grandchildren that beauty and virtue are one and the same, and that beauty cannot be separated from faith, love, and grace. Grandfathers prove that the kind of wisdom gained from a long life is an indescribably precious thing, in that Information is not necessarily wisdom. Many, indeed, may possess ever increasing sums of intelligence. But there is no guarantee that this “intelligence” will be useful, let alone moral. To illustrate, Ted Kaczynski, the infamous “Unibomber” who maimed and killed dozens through his mail-bombs, had an IQ of 167, was accepted to Harvard at the age of 15, and was the youngest Ph.D. (25) to be hired at Berkeley.

Wisdom, on the other hand, is the godly application of all knowledge towards ends that are profitable both in this world and the next. So yes, grandfathers model simplicity and patience. They teach their grandchildren the essential wisdom of faith: that this life is not “all there is,” but that it is a preparation for the life of the world to come. Grandmothers, again, model the (long forgotten) virtue of piety: a dedication and zeal to all things belonging to the life of the Church. In this way, the presence of grandparents enriches family life in an untold number of ways.

Fr. Paul Jannakos