Traditions: what is it? Types of traditions - national, social, cultural, religious and others. Orthodox tradition of spiritual and moral formation of man

30.04.2019

Informational and educational conversation “Spiritual traditions of the Russian family”

10/16/2014

MBOU Sukhobezvodninskaya evening (shift) comprehensive school with PKU IK-14

Classroom teacher 10th grade, teacher of biology and chemistry Sayanova Tatyana Leonidovna

Goals:

expand students’ understanding of national family traditions; form a positive assessment of family values; encourage students to self-knowledge, self-education, to study and observe the laws on family and marriage, to respect individual rights.

Form:

Lesson - conversation.

Progress of the event.

Organizing time. Creating the emotional mood of students.

Classroom teacher.

Hello! Today we will talk about happiness. What it is. Each person has his own happiness, his own dreams of happiness, his own priorities. Let's talk about this.

Problematic situation.

Please raise your hands, those who want to be happy. What do you think is needed for happiness? Yes, I agree with you, of course, for happiness you need a family. "Happy is he who is happy at home"- these words belong to Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

Message of the theme of the event.

Today I invite you to talk about spiritual traditions Russian family. It has already become a tradition for us to hold such events.

There is a legend that before there was no separation of the sexes, but there were 2 creatures fused together, carrying both the male and female principles. Perfect harmony great power love was inherent in them. All their thoughts, actions, and aspirations were common. The great god Zeus could not allow such relationships to exist between people outside Olympus and cut these single creatures in half, scattering them across the Earth. But their love did not weaken, the desire to be together intensified even more. And since then, everyone in this world has been looking for their other half, but it is not always possible to find it. A sad and beautiful legend...

But in reality, everything is not so smooth. Russia is the leader in the number of divorces. Just imagine, every second marriage breaks up, every third child is born out of wedlock. Get lost family ties. Nothing remains sacred.

Reading a poem.

In a robe that has already been mended more than once
Made from bright colored fiber
In a crowded hospital ward
An old woman stands crying at the window.

No one consoles her anymore...
Everyone knows the reason for these tears.
They visit their roommate,
And just once, her son brought her a robe.

I forgot about the slippers and said embarrassedly:
- I’ll bring it tomorrow... Can you be patient, mother?
- Of course, I’ll be patient. I'm on a feather bed
And I can lie in wool socks.
Where should I go here? There is not enough space.
The nurses will bring you food.
The disease has left me so exhausted
I wish I could just lie down and relax.

The son sighed and looked away:
- Here... You see... There is something to do with you...
This is all very confusing and subtle...
But don't think badly of me!
Your apartment is empty,
And my wife and I thought about
Why are you here and there... Alone... Sick...
If you get better, we’ll take you in!
And the grandchildren will be happy, you know!
They dote on you, mother!
All! It's decided! You are moving to us!
We will sell your apartment!

He took out the papers and said without a doubt:
-I thought of everything, trust me, mom...
As soon as we see improvements,
From here you will immediately come to live with us.

What can you say here? He is her son, his own blood...
And grandchildren - it’s worth living for them!
And she signed without suspecting
How things really are.

Days pass, weeks pass...
Still no son. And he is unlikely to come.
The old woman was consoled and pitied...
But who and what won’t understand here?

And every day the old lady is getting weaker,
And at night I dream more and more often,
Like warming porridge for my son in the morning,
But he cries and doesn’t want to eat.
And the first steps of the baby son,
And the word that he said for the first time
And the first scratches and bumps,
AND kindergarten, and the school is first grade...

The doctors are silent, trying their best
At least somehow ease her suffering.
And the relatives strictly forbade
Tell the old lady about the diagnosis.
She doesn't know that this hospital is -
Not a simple city hospital,
That there is no longer any chance of recovery...
But for her, ignorance is not a nightmare.
"Hospice" sign on the wall at the entrance
He doesn't say anything bad to her.
Strange words have long been fashionable
And should anyone be blamed for this?

She doesn't know that her son is doing well
Calls doctors twice a week:
- You said he’s dying... Strange...
That she is still alive...

She is alive. She still waits and believes
That the son will come, hug, explain,
The doors of the chambers will open now,
She will understand everything and forgive everything.
WITH last bit of strength she gets out of bed.
Holding onto the wall, he will go to the window.
How much more patience will she have?
So believe the indifferent son?
She is ready to try her best.
And she must find the strength that she doesn’t have.
What if he comes? She must wait!
He will come...Well, how can he not come?
He stands and cries... Waiting for news from his son...
He just casually looks at the sky
And he fiddles with his pectoral cross with his hand -
Like, wait, Lord, don’t take it

- Why is this happening? What to do?

Of course, we cannot ignore the experience of past generations. Let's turn to history.

A serious “document” in Rus', regulating human behavior in the state, in family life, and in everyday life, was the famous “Domostroy” (compiled by Sylvester). In the Moscow text of the 17th century, 64 chapters clearly define a person’s duties in relation to the church and the tsar, to his loved ones, wife, children, etc.

The main idea of “Domostroy” is the idea of responsibility and authority: the husband is the master of his family and is responsible before God and the sovereign for his family and for raising children. The very concept of “Home” in “Domostroy” is much broader; a home is not only a family, but also a society, clan, country, world. The rules of “Domostroy” were given by God himself, the Church, and handed down by the people. People didn’t just read it, they rewrote it, they stopped only in 1940 – 1950.

The mother played a very important role in the family. Peasant children received the basics of spiritual education in the family. It was no coincidence that the family was called a “small church”; here the child was introduced to prayerful communication and learned the basics of the Orthodox faith. The “red” corner of the hut served for children as a visible confirmation of the constancy of the Divine presence. Regular participation in divine services, the sacraments of confession and communion supported the fire of Divine love in young souls.

A blessing before separation, the custom of sitting together in silent prayer before departure is characteristic of the Russian family. The severity of separation is brightened by the bridge of blessing thrown across it. Children sent to foreign lands, sons going to war, were given so many blessings and prayers along the way, and in the old days there were so many stories about how a mother’s blessing - an icon hung on the neck by the mother before leaving - deflected the flight of an enemy bullet. Here we are touching on the most sacred, sacred and intimate in the life of a family. From here grow those invisible bonds and threads that make the family a single spiritual organism and give so much warmth and charm to its inner “air.”

Let's turn to the well-known family of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II.

1894 Nicholas II will write in his diary: “April 8th. A wonderful, unforgettable day in my life - the day of my engagement to my dear beloved Alix.”

1916 Alexandra Feodorovna in a letter to her husband: “My dear, tomorrow I will think about you more than ever, this is the 22nd anniversary of the engagement. God, how time flies... The days and the love you gave me are unforgettable.”

And the children grew up in the rays of this mutual love.

“At 9 o’clock sharp we heard a child’s squeak, and we all breathed freely! We named the daughter sent to us by God Olga! When all the excitement passed, a simply blissful state of what happened began.”

(Nicholas II. Diaries). Despite his enormous responsibilities main family

country, and perhaps precisely because of their deep understanding, both the king and the queen honored the family and were happy in the family. According to the memoirs of the heir’s teacher, Pierre Gilliard, “Nicholas II was at the same time Tsar, father and comrade for his children.” “The very first place for us where we learn truth, honesty, love is our home, the most native place

for us in the world,” Alexandra Fedorovna writes in her diary.

Summing up the conversation. "Foundation" of the family.

Work of creative groups. (3 groups of students are created, led by a teacher. Each group jointly searches for an answer to the question posed).

1 group.

What traditions can you “start” in your family?

2nd group How can you wisely distribute household responsibilities among family members? (Cooking, washing dishes, cleaning the apartment, taking out the trash, buying groceries, supervising children’s studies, visiting parent meetings

etc.).

3 group

What measures, in your opinion, should the Government take to strengthen the family and increase the birth rate?

Report of creative groups.

Summing up.

Classroom teacher:

At Russian weddings there was a custom: when the celebration ended, small gingerbread cookies were distributed to the guests. They were called accelerations. Thus, the guests were hinted that it was time to go home. I also want to give you these gingerbread cookies.

Prepared and taught the lesson

Class teacher of 10th grade

Biology and Chemistry Teacher

A family is a small world, a small society, and our Orthodox ancestors called it a “small church.” There is probably no person who would not like to have a friendly family with whom he could share both grief and joy. Today, when so many families are breaking up, it is simply necessary to tell children about the spiritual traditions of the Russian family.

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Informational and educational conversation

"SPIRITUAL TRADITIONS OF THE RUSSIAN FAMILY"

Goals: expand students’ understanding of national family traditions; form a positive assessment of family values; encourage students to self-knowledge, self-education, to study and observe the laws on family and marriage, to respect individual rights.

Form: conversation.

Equipment: multimedia installation, presentation, books by M. Sholokhov “The Fate of Man”, “ Quiet Don", L.N. Tolstoy "War and Peace".

Progress of the event.

I. Organizational moment. Creating the emotional mood of students.

II. Problematic situation.

Please raise your hands, those who want to be happy. What do you think is needed for happiness?

Yes, I agree with you, of course, for happiness you need a family."Happy is he who is happy at home"- these words belong to Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy.

III. Message of the theme of the event.

Slide 1. Today, on the eve International Day family, which is celebrated on May 15, I invite you to talk about the spiritual traditions of the Russian family.

It has already become a tradition at our school to hold such events in May.

There is a legend that before there was no separation of the sexes, but there were 2 creatures fused together, carrying both the male and female principles. Ideal harmony, the great power of love was inherent in them. All their thoughts, actions, and aspirations were common. The great god Zeus could not allow such relationships to exist between people outside Olympus and cut these single creatures in half, scattering them across the Earth. But their love did not weaken, the desire to be together intensified even more. And since then, everyone in this world is looking for their other half, but it is not always possible to find it. A sad and beautiful legend...

But in reality, everything is not so smooth. Slide 2. Russia is the leader in the number of divorces. Just imagine, every second marriage breaks up, every third child is born out of wedlock.

Family ties are lost. Nothing remains sacred.

Reading a poem.

In a robe that has already been mended more than once
Made from bright colored fiber
In a crowded hospital ward
An old woman stands crying at the window.

No one consoles her anymore...
Everyone knows the reason for these tears.
They visit their roommate,
And just once, her son brought her a robe.

He took out the papers and said without a doubt:
-I thought of everything, trust me, mom...
As soon as we see improvements,
From here you will immediately come to live with us.

What can you say here? He is her son, his own blood...
And grandchildren - it’s worth living for them!
And she signed without suspecting
How things really are.

Days pass, weeks pass...
Still no son. And he is unlikely to come.
The old woman was consoled and pitied...
But who and what won’t understand here?

She doesn't know that her son is doing well
Calls doctors twice a week:
- You said he’s dying... Strange...
That she is still alive...

She is alive. She still waits and believes
That the son will come, hug, explain,
The doors of the chambers will open now,
She will understand everything and forgive everything.
With the last of her strength she gets out of bed.
Holding onto the wall, he will go to the window.
How much more patience will she have?
So believe the indifferent son?
She is ready to try her best.
And she must find the strength that she doesn’t have.
What if he comes? She must wait!
He will come...Well, how can he not come?
He stands and cries... Waiting for news from his son...
He just casually looks at the sky
And he fiddles with his pectoral cross with his hand -
Like, wait, Lord, don’t take it

Why is this happening? What to do?

Of course, we cannot ignore the experience of past generations.

IV. Let's turn to history.

Slide 3.

Slides 4, 5 The main idea of “Domostroy” is the idea of responsibility and authority: the husband is the master of his family and is responsible before God and the sovereign for his family and for raising children. The very concept of “Home” in “Domostroy” is much broader; a home is not only a family, but also a society, clan, country, world. The rules of “Domostroy” were given by God himself, the Church, and handed down by the people. People didn’t just read it, they rewrote it, they stopped only in 1940 – 1950.

The mother played a very important role in the family. (An excerpt from “The Fate of Man” by M. Sholokhov is read out).

Peasant children received the basics of spiritual education in the family. It was no coincidence that the family was called a “small church”; here the child was introduced to prayerful communication and learned the basics of the Orthodox faith. The “red” corner of the hut served for children as a visible confirmation of the constancy of the Divine presence. Regular participation in divine services, the sacraments of confession and communion supported the fire of Divine love in young souls.

Slide 6 . Let us turn to the well-known family of the last Russian Tsar Nicholas II.

1894 Nicholas II will write in his diary:“April 8th. A wonderful, unforgettable day in my life - the day of my engagement to my dear beloved Alix.”

1916 Alexandra Fedorovna in a letter to her husband:“My dear, tomorrow I will think about you more than ever, it’s our 22nd engagement anniversary. God, how time flies... The days and the love you gave me are unforgettable.”

And the children grew up in the rays of this mutual love.

Despite their enormous responsibilities as the main family of the country, or perhaps precisely because of their deep understanding, both the king and queen honored the family and were happy in the family. According to the memoirs of the heir’s teacher, Pierre Gilliard, “Nicholas II was at the same time Tsar, father and comrade for his children.”

« The very first place for us where we learn truth, honesty, love is our home, the most dear place for us in the world,”- Alexandra Fedorovna will write in her diary.

V. Summing up the conversation. "Foundation" of the family. Slide 7.

VI. Work of creative groups. (3 groups of students are created, led by a teacher. Each group jointly searches for an answer to the question posed).

Work of creative groups. (3 groups of students are created, led by a teacher. Each group jointly searches for an answer to the question posed).

1 group.

What traditions can you “start” in your family?

How can you wisely distribute household responsibilities among family members? (Cooking, washing dishes, cleaning the apartment, taking out the trash, buying groceries, supervising children’s studies, attending parent-teacher meetings, etc.).

etc.).

3 group

While the groups discuss the questions posed to them, the audience answers the quiz questions. Slide 8, 9. Discussion of proverbs. Slide 10.

VII. Report of creative groups.

VIII. Summing up.

I also want to give you these gingerbread cookies.

IX. Reflection.

The document page breakdown is based on:

RUSSIAN FAMILY CULTURE AND ITS RELIGIOUS ROOTS

Chapter from the book: “From the Russian spiritual and creative tradition.”

The beauty and comfort and inner warmth of patriarchal family life - what a wealth it is! How a whole world of spiritual and spiritual values is revealed here in this family warmth, in this richness of cultural tradition, in this living connection with the living world of the past. In this quiet, inconspicuous tradition, feeding from the same life sources, that flow in the world of the Russian family, new seeds are thrown, giving sprouts. And we sometimes see - but much more often we do not see - the very throwing of seeds and the first shoots and the ovary of the fruit, and then we see the rich fruit and harvest. A. S. Khomyakov, already an elderly man, admitted that he owed his entire spiritual direction to his mother. 1 The philosopher Prince Evgeny Trubetskoy, in his childhood memoirs, shows in small episodes how their mother influenced the receptive souls of children, so that the consciousness of morality was imprinted for the rest of their lives. impossibility to offend the weak or another equally important consciousness: the all-seeing, everywhere present Eye of God: “I don’t remember what my mother said to this. I only remember that from that moment, with some extraordinary power of hypnosis, a religious sensation slammed into my soul, which forever remained for me one of the central - the strongest - sensations, some kind of

_______________

1 “As for me, I know that to what extent I can be useful to her (my mother) I owe both my direction and my steadfastness in this direction, although she did not think so. Happy is he who had such a mother and mentor in childhood, and at the same time, what a lesson in humility does such a conviction provide? How little of the good that is in a person belongs to him.” (Letter to M. S. Mukhanova).

a clear and bright Eye, piercing the darkness, penetrating into the soul, and into the very depths of the world, and you cannot hide anywhere from this gaze. Such suggestions are the very essence of education, and mother, like no one else, knew how to make them.”

And what monument of gratitude did Leo Tolstoy erect to the one who “with selfless love replaced a mother for him and his brothers and sister. (He lost his mother at a very early age): “Aunt Tatyana Alexandrovna had the greatest influence on my life: this influence was, firstly, in the fact that she taught me the spiritual pleasure of love as a child! She taught me this not with words, but with her whole being she infected me with love. I saw, I felt how good it was for her to love, and I understood the happiness of love."

This is how life is built, this is how great things are accomplished. spiritual fertilization, this is how the often invisible, often little noticeable, but powerful stream of spiritual, vital dynamics flows, constituting the stronghold of the life of the people, its core, the connection between its past and future.

The background - or rather, the nourishing basis or the embracing spiritual atmosphere of such a quiet, imperceptible and at the same time creatively warmed Russian family - is religious life, the stream of faith flowing from the depths of the Church, peaceful and enveloping with blissful warmth. How close this family was to the life of the Church, how intertwined this life of the Church was with the life of the family - both in the first religious instructions, and in the very element of the mother, feeding from this grace-filled stream and saturated with it, and in pious home rituals and, finally, through participation the whole family in church services and fasts, celebrations and church sacraments. The entire fabric of life is permeated with this: the blessing of parents, joint prayers, cherished, ancestral icons passed down from generation to generation, or, for example, icons that were ordered on the birthday of a child according to his height - the “measure of birth” of the child. The latter is a very old custom, going back to the depths of pre-Petrine Rus'. We meet him in family life

Russian tsars of the 17th century. So, for example, in the old records of the Moscow Armory Chamber of the time of Alexei Mikhailovich we read: “September 17 (1666) Foma Borisov brought to the Armory a wooden measure with a length of half-eleven inches, a width of half-a-quarter inches, and he said that this measure was given out to him from the choir of the Queen of Krai, Anna Mikhailovna Velyaminova, and said that V. G. Ts. and V. K. Alexey Mikhailovich, etc., had indicated against this measure to be taken in Arms. The chamber is a shaped cypress board, and on it write the Angel of V.G. Tsarevich John Alekseevich, the image of John the Baptist" 2.

The blessing of parents to children is the core and guiding beacon in the lives of children in all circumstances of life: both in the ordinary, daily atmosphere of family warmth and comfort, and at farewells, and at moments of decisive events in the lives of children - during departures, separations, especially when children found their own new family, and, finally, at the dying farewell of parents and children. The blessing of children by parents or the mutual blessing of all family members for the coming sleep is a feature characteristic of patriarchal Russian families even to this day: I am talking about families that have managed to convey to our time the living treasure of prayerful communication between children and parents. From this warmth of evening family experiences and from the longing for them poured out famous poem A. S. Khomyakova:

It used to be in the deep midnight hour,

Little ones, I’ll come to admire you,

It used to be that I like to sign you with a cross,

Pray that grace will be upon you,

The Love of God Almighty... (1838)

The blessing before separation, the custom of “sitting” together in silent prayer before departure, is characteristic of our family. The severity of separation is brightened by blessings and prayers thrown across it as a bridge. Children sent abroad, sons going to war - so many blessings were given with them -

_______________

2 I. Zabelin. "Home life of Russian tsars in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries." Part II , page 558. Moscow 1915.

There were prayers and prayers for the journey, and in the old days there were so many stories about how a mother’s “blessing” - an icon hung on the neck by the mother before leaving - deflected the flight of an enemy bullet: the icon was bent, and the bullet flew past. Here we are touching on the most sacred, sacred and intimate in the life of a family. From here grow those invisible bonds and threads that make the family a single spiritual organism and give so much warmth and charm to its inner “air.” No, more than that: they give so much depth and religious value to her life, make her the highest of human shrines, make her, as it were, a kind of “home church” in the face of God. The greatest artist of Russian patriarchal family life, L.N. Tolstoy, managed, like no one else, to convey the beauty of this inner “air” of the family, especially in “War and Peace.” The most sacred thing in human relations It’s indescribable, but how authentically and subtly this scene of Princess Marya’s blessing of Brother Andrei, going to the front, is written: “Against your will, He will save and have mercy on You and turn you to Himself, because in Him alone there is truth and peace,” she said, trembling from voice of excitement, with a solemn gesture holding in both hands in front of his brother an oval, ancient icon of the Savior with a black face, in a silver robe on a finely made silver chain. She crossed herself, kissed the icon and handed it to Andrey. - Please, for me... Rays of kind and timid light shone from her large eyes. These eyes illuminated the entire sickly, thin face and made it beautiful. The brother wanted to take the icon, but she stopped him. Andrey understood, crossed himself and kissed the icon."

This scene is inspired by a family legend of the Tolstoy family, according to which Lev Nikolaevich's great-grandfather, Prince Sergei Fedorovich Volkonsky, was protected from a bullet in seven years war an example of a mother's blessing.

One of the heroes Patriotic War 1812, General D.S. Dokhturov, writes to his wife in Moscow immediately after the Battle of Borodino, where he commanded the left flank, replacing the mortally wounded Bagration: “I thank you

Bye, my soul, for the image, I will immediately put it on myself. I clearly see God’s mercy towards me; in terrible danger He saved me. I thank the Almighty" 3.

The notes of A. M. Turgenev (1772-1863), written in 1848, describe how his 14-year-old boy (in 1786) was sent by his parents to the royal service in St. Petersburg: “Before leaving, my parents blessed me with the icon of our Savior, Not Made by Hands called. In addition to this, my mother put a small life-giving cross with a palm around my neck and gave me a bag of copper pennies and money, punishing me strongly so that I would not be able to refuse someone asking for alms for Christ’s sake” 4 .

When Konstantin Leontyev goes to war in the Crimea in 1854, his mother gives him a family golden reliquary with relics for the journey, as a parental blessing.

Or this is how Nekrasov’s “Russian Women” begins (the farewell of the old father, Count Laval, to his daughter Princess Trubetskoy, who is going forever to Siberia to join her husband):

Calm, strong and light

A wonderfully well-coordinated cart,

The Count Father himself more than once, not twice

I tried it first...

Making a prayer, icon

Hung it in the right corner

And he burst into tears... the princess daughter

Going somewhere this night...

An old Russian epic depicts a parental blessing for a hero setting off on his deeds:

It is not the damp oak that bends to the ground,

Non-paper leaves are spread out:

The son spreads out in front of the father,

He asks for his blessing:

“Oh, you are a goy, dear dear father,

________________

4 “Russian Antiquity” 1885 p. 375.

Give me your blessing...

The old peasant Ivan Timofeevich answers:

“I will give you a blessing for good deeds,

But there are no blessings for bad deeds...

Do not think evil of the Tatar,

Don’t kill a peasant in an open field.”

(From the epic about Ilya Muromets).

And in the epic about Duke Stepanovich we read:

To that dear mother

To the honest widow Omelfa Timofeevna,

Then Duke fell into mother's fast legs,

The blessed woman asks her to go to Kyiv-grad...

Even the violent Vaska Buslaev humbly asks for his mother’s blessing:

Vasenka decided to go to Jerusalem,

He began to ask his mother for a blessing,

With his wild head he reaches the damp ground,

How not White birch bends,

Not silken leaves spread out,

Vassenka leans over to his mother.

A new life, a new family begins with the blessing of the parents of the grooms and newlyweds, is built on it, it “establishes the homes of the children.” In all-Russian life, for example, and in peasant life, it was firmly preserved until very recent times - before the revolution and even longer. In the consciously religious tradition of strong Russian families who emigrated, for example, in many families from the old Russian cultural layer, this central role of the parental blessing in building a new family is still fully preserved to this day.

And here are a few sketches of the ritual of blessing newlyweds in Russian peasant life in the mid and late 19th century. R. Tereshchenko in his famous book“The Life of the Russian People” (Part II, weddings. Petersburg, 1848) collected a lot of valuable material.

In the Smolensk province, fathers, native and imprisoned,

and the mother instructs and bless the groom, he bows at their feet, the in-laws sing:

It’s not a black horse that digs the ground with its hoof,

Our young prince asks for blessings:

From Father the Parent, from Father the Blesser,

Mother has parents, mother has a blessing.

In the Nizhny Novgorod province, when everything is ready for the train to church, each of the young people is blessed by their parents in their home as follows: they move the table to the corner under the icons and cover it with white linen, then they put rye bread with salt, pie and white bread on the table, candles and a lamp are lit under the icons, all household and relatives pray with the bride. Then the father and mother put on fur coats, with the wool turned upside down, and the godfather takes right hand The groom or brother takes the groom by one of his hands, holding a fur coat inside out in his right hand, and his friend or brother takes him by the other hand and brings him to his parents, who are standing at the table: the father with the icon, and the mother with bread. Friendly says: “Dear father, bless your dear child, give him the crown of acceptance and take the fruit from the tree of paradise.” He repeats these words three times, and the groom falls three times at the feet of his father, on the spread out fur coat that the matchmaker has prepared. Then the father blesses his son with an icon in the shape of a cross, which he first kisses himself, then gives it to his son to kiss, and finally they kiss each other. In exactly the same way, the mother blesses her son, then the father and mother bless him in turn with bread and salt and release him to the crown 5.

The ceremony of blessing during the celebration of the wedding of Tsar Mikhail Fedorovich on February 5, 1626 was very solemn.

The Emperor listened to early mass, then was blessed by his father, the Holy Patriarch, and gave him a speech: “Our Great Sovereign Father, Filaret Nikitich,

________________

5 See Tereshchenko, p. 448, p. 269, pp. 3, 6, 7, pp. 179, 196, 226, 284, 342, 301. See Collection of information for studying the life of the peasant population of Russia, ed. N. Kharuzina vol. 1. Moscow 1889 pp. 112-113.

His Holiness Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus'. By the will of the All-Blessed One and the permission of you and our mother, the nun Great Empress Martha Fedorovna, our wedding is destined to take place, and this day is my joy. His Holiness Patriarch“Bless your son.” The Patriarch, blessing his son, said: “Almighty and ineffable in mercy, who raised you to royal throne for piety, He blesses you. May He grant you and your wife long life and multiplication of the family. May you see the sons of your sons and the daughters of your daughters on the throne, and may He protect you all from enemies, spread your power from sea to sea, and from rivers to the ends of the world.” Then the patriarch blessed him with the image of the Most Holy Theotokos.

Family icons are visual carriers of parental blessing, and moreover, sacred symbols of God’s blessing for children and families. They are passed down from generation to generation, as if embodying a spiritual connection, the spiritual continuity of fathers and children. Countless strong Russian families, simple and noble, of meager income, wealthy and wealthy, had these treasured family or ancestral icons, “parental” or “grandfather’s” blessing. In the old merchant class, among the Old Believers, in the old noble and princely families, among the clergy, in the strong nests of peasant family life, especially, for example, in the north of Russia. Some family or tribal icons seemed to embody the life of generations, the history of a family or clan on the paternal or maternal side.

In the ancient Russian house, the “red corner” with icons, a shrine, or a home chapel was the center of the religious and spiritual life of the family. What a huge role did these icons play in the life of the house in ancient Rus', is clear at least from the instructions of Silvestrov’s “Domostroy”:

Chapter 8: “How to decorate your house with holy images, and have a clean house. In every Christian’s home, in every temple, holy and honorable images are painted on icons, placed on the walls, arranging a splendid place with all sorts of decorations and lamps, in which candles are lit in front of the saints at every praise of God, and after the funeral they are extinguished, with a veil are closing,

all sorts of things for the sake of cleanliness, and from dust, for the sake of decorum and care, and always sweep them away with a clean wing, and wipe them with a soft lip, and always keep that temple clean, and touch the holy images worthy, in a clear conscience, both in the praise of God and in the holy singing and prayer, burning candles, and burning incense with fragrant incense and incense, in prayers and in vigils, and in prostrations and in all praise of God, always honor them, with tears, and with sobbing, and with a contrite heart, confess, asking for remission of sins.” .

When an Old Russian man entered a house, first of all he looked for icons with his eyes. First he bowed to them, then he only bowed to the hosts and everyone else present. This is what foreigners who visited Muscovite Rus' in the 16th and 17th centuries tell us, for example, Herberstein, who was in Moscow under Vasily the Third in 1517 and 1526, and Meyerbeer, the Caesar's ambassador in 1660-63. to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich. And how much authenticity is there in this scene in Leo Tolstoy’s unfinished novel “The Decembrists,” where a simple village old woman, Tikhonovna, comes to Moscow on foot from a distant village to her masters Chernyshev to plead for her old husband, who, through a misunderstanding, without guilt, went to prison. Timidly, she enters in bast shoes and white boots into the noisy human hut of the Moscow estate of the Chernyshevs, but does not lose her restraint, although she is timid. “Pretentious,” “in the correct village attire,” she first puts down the crosses and bows to the front corner, not embarrassed by the unfamiliar surroundings, then she bows to those present. How in this picture copied from life the “magnificent” “devout” rootedness in the ancient custom of the then strong ordinary people was clearly expressed.

For Konstantin Leontyev, the flickering of the lamp in front of the icon was mysteriously connected with unforgettable memories of his mother, with the best memories of childhood. All Russian domestic life in its true manifestations is alive by this, sanctified by this. Prayer life flowed abundantly within the family. Already in the same “Domostroy” by Sylvester we read:

Chapter 12. “How are husbands and wives and household members in the house?

pray for yourself. Every day, in the evening, the husband and wife and children and members of the household who know how to read and write vespers, vespers, and midnight offices, with silence and with attention, and with meek standing, and with prayer, and with bows. Petit clearly and unanimously. After the rule, neither drink nor eat, nor create rumors... And when going to bed, every Christian should make three bows in the ground before God. And at midnight, always, rising secretly, with tears, diligently pray to God, to the best of your ability, about your sin; and when you get up in the morning, do the same for everyone according to your strength and desire... Every Christian should pray about his sin and remission of sin.” .

Of course, this is an idealized image, this is what the author of Domostroi presents as an ideal - not everyone did it that way. But the prayer system was strong in the old Russian family. The danger for Old Russian piety was, as we know, in religious formalism, in a certain tendency to attach paramount importance to the external, ritual, secondary, and thereby materialize religion, turn it into a rigid ritual law, into a tendency that was the fatal cause of the schism and not always was overcome later. But the inner deep all-acceptance of faith also lived, as we have already partially seen, in patriarchal Russian families, spiritualized them with its breath, gave them strength for the struggle of life, gave inner light and warmth to their entire way of life. How many religiously strengthened, morally strong, enlightened, righteous and good-natured personalities, shining with the quiet light of love, known and even more unknown, who constitute perhaps the highest adornment of Russian national life, have come from the depths of the pious Russian family, have grown together in the most intimate way with this way of life they consecrated it; We will dwell on this in more detail in the chapter on Russian righteous men of different times, varying degrees of culture, different classes and conditions.

The charm of the patriarchal family life of the old Russian educated noble environment of the 19th century - this time of especially magnificent and creative flowering of Russian culture - lies, among other things, in the harmonious mutual combination of two cultural principles - Western European and native Russian - in the bosom of many of these families. Here we achieved that creative synthesis that is so characteristic of the Russian cultural, especially artistic and philosophical tradition of the 19th century. This is also a huge historical merit of family life.

And in Western culture, Russian religious feeling, Russian family culture were looking for this old and undying religiously rooted, creating life. Therefore, in a number of old Russian religiously-minded cultural families, the spirit of true “Ecumenism” was so strong - universality, the search for the rays of the Logos of God - the Word of God wherever they met, and joy in their radiance, spiritual openness for them, the spirit of true Christian fraternal love for the spiritual and religious treasures of the West, for its quests and discoveries, for its great thinkers, artists, religious luminaries and righteous people, with deep spiritual fusion with the bosom of its Mother - the Eastern Church.

The warmth and comfort of old Moscow, old Moscow people, rooted in tradition and at the same time living strengthened cultural life families! However, not only Moscow, but generally Russian Old Testament cultural families. But let us first dwell on Moscow, especially on this unique world of Moscow side streets, filled with enormous charm, for example, in the area of Arbat and Prechistenka, Povarskaya - the center of a concentrated, hospitable, patriarchal-cosy, simple-minded and at the same time often so refined cultural life, so breathing tradition, so inextricably linked with him

busy and at the same time often so dynamic and creative spiritually. This is, indeed, a whole special world, connected with the rest of the world, but at the same time living its own special, concentrated life. Small, sometimes crooked alleys, mansions, partly hidden in the depths of the courtyard or garden, partly facing the street, mostly one-story, with a mezzanine, with several Empire columns and 8-9 windows of the facade (but often this house, which seems small from the street , stretches deep into the yard and turns out to be a huge house). And right there opposite is the parish church (often two in the same lane, sometimes three), small, with green, blue or gold domes or onions, often five-domed, with a small, free-standing bell tower, half-grown into the ground, with a a tree-lined courtyard, sometimes a passageway, in which the wooden clergy houses peacefully stretch on the sides, and in the middle sometimes there is a large puddle with ducks rinsing in it. From here, from this church, you can hear bell ringing at any time of the day - in the morning, and in the evening, and during the day, if, for example, someone is being buried. In the church itself, what a blessed peace, what concentration, especially during the evening services! Parishioners have their favorites, more or less permanent places. They stand and pray, some alone, others in families, the elderly closer to the walls, sometimes with a chair. The lamps flicker, reflected on the frames of the icons, and the church is semi-dark. They sing: “Quiet light, holy glory... Having come to the west of the sun, having seen the light evening, we sing of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit of God”... This collected church life has a joyful and quiet effect, not only calming, but also invigorating. And in these mansions it is so warm and peaceful. A yard with numerous services, a garden on the street, there is often a garden behind the house, sometimes a large one, with a gazebo, dense thickets of lilacs, where nightingales sing loudly in the spring, with silver poplars (there are especially many of them in Moscow). Their fallen buds scent the yard and garden on spring evenings, especially after a short, warm and beneficial rain. A great lover and connoisseur wrote wonderfully in his memoirs about the charm of these mansions and life in them. old Russia and especially old Moscow,

a man of knightly nobility, a fighter for the national cause against Bolshevism, and at the same time an artist at heart - Nikolai Nikolaevich Lvov.

“...Children grew up, studied at home with visiting teachers, rode down the mountains and skated on the Patriarch’s Ponds and Presnya, played with childish joy with simple handicraft toys, a carved wooden horse, funny painted dolls from the Trinity or a rouged Matryoshka doll in sundresses, feasted on raisins, halva, pods, sunflowers, and there was nothing better than wine berries in nanny’s room. On Maslenaya they were taken to a walk in the booths on Podnovinsky, during Great Lent everyone fasted, on Passion everyone fasted, and confessed to their parish priest or in the monastery, where it was so scary to enter a small cell to an old confessor in a black cassock, they celebrated the Holy Resurrection of Christ in their parish and experienced all the mysterious joy of a dark spring night, when the first hum of the bell of Ivan the Great is heard, and the oncoming calling voices of Moscow bells rush towards it from all over the night air and merge into one mysterious joyful overflowing ringing, going far, far into the sky over the darkened city.

Parents were not cut off from their children by their daily activities or service, they lived a common life with them, in the summer in the countryside, in the winter in Moscow in their mansions, and the upbringing of children was warmed by such a warm feeling of love that nothing can replace. The words of the prayer, repeated in a child’s whisper and learned from the mother and nanny, and the child’s fear of the first confession, and the joyful feeling, and the child’s grief, and tears - everything was associated in the memory with dear faces, with the kindness of the old nanny, with the tenderness of the mother, with her in a quiet voice and a soft, affectionate touch of her hand on the hot forehead of a sick child, and then in these general readings and in the music in the evenings in the large living room, the whole impression of reading and playing the piano merges in memory with the sound of the mother’s voice reading aloud, with the smell of lilac and bird cherry flowing into the room through the open window, with laughter and a child’s tear while reading

a sad story or a cheerful story, and the sounds of a Beethoven sonata penetrate deeply into a child’s soul, and just like reading aloud and the words of a prayer, everything remains for life - like one bright, joyful childhood memory” 6 .

Especially on this inner family world I would like to stop. There is so much spiritual light and softness and warmth in it. He was captured, for example, by Leo Tolstoy in an unforgettable way both in “Childhood” and in “War and Peace”. Let me cite, as an example, the inimitable, fragrant scene of Nikolai Rostov’s return to his parents’ home from the theater of war.

And these maternal concerns about raising children, this diary of children's behavior, which is kept by Marie Bolkonskaya, in Rostov's marriage.

Tolstoy got it right. The center of all this life, its inspiring source is the mother. The importance of a mother, a woman in a Russian patriarchal, cultural family is decisive and fundamental. In the Russian cultural family, a woman - mother and wife - plays a spiritually more important role than a man, and not only in raising children. She is the internal center of family life, exuding warmth and affection, pouring out this maternal-feminine affection both on family members and on all household members, on relatives, friends and acquaintances, and on strangers even, especially the lonely, abandoned, unfortunate, who have fallen into the sphere the influence of this family, who came under her hospitable shelter, who came to bask in her warm soulful flame. She is the center of this community, a cheerful and gentle sun in the sky of this small world, a source of affection, compassion and comfort, and at the same time, through her, through her prayers, through her participation in the prayers of children, through her example, through her instruction, a flow religious energy, streams of another - blessed existence, in which all the best that this family possesses is rooted, flow into its daily, most everyday and ordinary, life manifestations. Here we touch upon the deepest, most sacred of the creative roots of Russian

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6 “Old Years”, in “Russian Thought”, Prague, 1923 kN. I - II, pp. 104, 98-99.

family culture and Russian culture in general. And this image of the Russian mother and wife, the center of the family and family charm and the bearer of the religious principle, has not died, has not become obsolete. He lives to this day in many Russian mothers!

The one who replaced his mother from a very early age, his aunt Tatyana Aleksandrovna Ergolskaya, Leo Tolstoy remembers in his old age memoirs with the following words, filled with noble tenderness: “The main quality of her life, which involuntarily infected me, was her amazing, universal kindness to everyone without exception. I try to remember, and I can’t remember a single case when she got angry, said a harsh word, condemned - I can’t remember a single case in 30 years of my life... She never taught how to live, in words, never I didn’t read moral teachings. All moral work was processed inside her, and only her deeds came out - and not her deeds, ... but her whole life, calm, meek, submissive and loving, not anxious, admiring herself, but with a quiet, imperceptible love. She was doing an internal work of love, and therefore she did not need to rush anywhere. And these two properties - love and leisure - imperceptibly attracted her to her company and gave a special charm to this closeness... More than one love for me was joyful. This atmosphere of love for everyone present and absent, living and dead, people and even animals was joyful.” The image of his mother, who, judging by all the data, was an amazing woman, in terms of the benign, gentle radiance of her spirit, but whom he knew only from the stories of those close to him (he was 2 years old when she died), was one of the most cherished and holy; the assets of his inner world. In his memoirs, Tolstoy writes about his mother: “She seemed to me such a high, pure, spiritual being that she often middle period“In my life, during the struggle with the temptations that beset me, I prayed to her soul, asking her to help me, and these prayers always helped me.” N. G. Molostvov says that when in the summer of 1908 in Yasnaya Polyana the conversation turned to what an amazing person Maria Nikolaevna was, Lev Nikolaevich softly and quietly, apparently holding back tears,

said: “Well, I don’t know that; I only know that I have c u lte to her." An entry in Tolstoy’s diary dates back to this time: “I can’t talk about my mother without tears” (June 13, 1908). And a few days before that, he writes: “This morning I’m walking around the garden and, as always, I remember my mother, about “mama”, whom I don’t remember at all, but who remained a holy ideal for me...” (June 10th) 1908). And a day later: “... the most precious... being for me is my mother.” No wonder N.N. Gusev dedicates “her of blessed memory» his “Life of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy” 7.

Prince Evgeny Nikolaevich Trubetskoy, in his childhood memoirs, depicts the spiritual atmosphere that surrounded his childhood years in this way: “Maybe this is self-deception, maybe this is just my personal feeling, but now, 40 years after our last departure from Akhtyrka, it seems to me that we breathed grace there, as if every breath of air there was full of grace. I remember four cots in the nursery, in my very early childhood, when we boys were not yet separated from our sisters; on the beds there are muslin mosquito curtains and little swatches. All sorts of evening village sounds burst through the open window - the monotonous and violin-like unison of mosquitoes, the lingering top note of a song in the distance, the rare and even more mysterious sound of a church bell - and above all this - a loud affirmation of the joy of life - a whole symphony performed by an orchestra of numerous swifts flying out of nests above the windows at sunset manor house 9 . The decisive factor in this atmosphere of peace and grace was his mother. “The more conscious, the more I became, the more of these golden grains there were in my memories of her. I remember how deliberately obscure reading in the evenings gave way to reading the Gospel as we began to grow up. I remember how we started the custom of confessing to her every day in our

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7 N. N. Gusev. “The Life of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Young Tolstoy." Moscow, 1927. Pp. 26, 23, 33-37.

8 Trubetskoy estate.

9 Books E. N. Trubetskoy. "Out of the Past", page 31.

children's crimes. I remember how she knew how to move me to tears and evoke a deep sense of guilt. For someone who had seriously offended, she had words of deep, fiery indignation” 10.

I will finish again with a memory related to my family. What silence and peace the evenings breathed in the house of my grandfather, Vasily Sergeevich Arsenyev, in Moscow on Sadovaya. The old man grandfather reads aloud to two unmarried daughters, my aunts - Nadezhda and Maria Vasilievna (these “Martha and Mary” of our family, individuals of an unusually high spiritual level, great kindness and spiritual radiance) in a cozy living room under the ancient Dolgorukov portraits by Borovikovsky and Levitsky. Both aunts work - knitting or embroidering; I need to go upstairs to study, but I want to sit for an extra 5-10 minutes.

And here, in conclusion, is an excerpt from my grandfather’s letter:

Letter to the eldest son (about the relationship between him and his wife).

“... Our tenderness and love unites us in such a way that it is similar to your ideal love for each other, with the only difference being that we are elders, and that the miracle of Christ in the exaltation of marriage, symbolized by the transformation of water into wine, at the wedding in Cana Galilean, we now feel more and more strongly”...

Here we involuntarily again touched the inner Holy of Holies of this family life.

Family is not the last thing. The atmosphere of family warmth and comfort and mutual self-forgetting love is one of the highest human values, but it itself presupposes a nourishing principle. There are even greater depths that are revealed in the bosom of the same believing family, depths of a life of grace, which I have already spoken about more than once. Here not only were her nourishing roots, but here she touched something Immensely Superior.

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10 Book E. N. Trubetskoy. "Out of the Past", page 34.

walking, to the Last and Highest Reality, where the family principle found its highest limit, but also its overcoming or completion. The ideal of home warmth, a precious reality family happiness were shattered by life, or rather by death, which tore the most dear members of the family from the family circle, and then the image of another, eternal House, the Father’s house, in which “there are many abodes,” grew before the gaze. But this is the great significance of a believing family, that the first news about this House of the Father - the first, still unclear sensation of it and the first internal meeting with this Father took place in its depths. “Every family in heaven and on earth is named from Him,” says the Apostle Paul (Eph. 3:15). In believing families, the bearers of this principle of “Fatherland” - father and mother - looked for the last, decisive point of support for themselves and their children in this heavenly “Fatherland”; they directed the gaze of their children towards it. Therefore, as we have already seen, joint prayer, joint kneeling before the Heavenly Father, surrendering ourselves and each other into His hands is one of the main cores of the life of this family.

We started with the religious, and we end with the religious in this image of the Russian Old Testament family culture. But if at the beginning of our presentation we especially paid attention to the ritual, more external, although deeply saturated with prayer currents, side of this life, that is, to everyday life, to the way of life, the enormous importance of which as a background, as a frame and moral support for family and in general the whole folk culture undoubtedly, now I would like to touch a little more on what is even more important, significant and profound - namely, the living, nourishing dynamics, the element of prayer and the associated life of inner achievement, as they manifested themselves in the family.

I will not, however, dwell on the description, for example, of the joint fasting of children and parents during Great Lent, or the pictures of going to services together Holy Week, on the overall enormous importance of the elements of prayer and the sacraments of the church in the life of patriarchal Russians, including the old cultural

mei, established in this world of religious Reality - all this is known even without books. How, for example, was the religious atmosphere of the Aksakov House reflected in Ivan Aksakov’s famous poetic depiction of Vespers? church service in the village parish church - paintings that were well known and close to him from childhood.

Come, you weak one,

Come, joyful one.

They are ringing for the all-night vigil

To prayer of blessing.

And the humbling ringing

Everyone's soul is asking;

The surroundings are calling,

It spreads across the fields...

And harmoniously clear

Singing rushes

And the deacon is peaceful

Creates a saying.

About gratitude

The work of those who pray,

About the royal city,

About all workers

About those who are destined

Suffering is set...

And there's smoke hanging in the church,

Thick with incense...

There were leaders of these families in religious life. The close connection between patriarchal believing families, especially the mothers of these families and the Russian elders, is a phenomenon of enormous significance in the history of Russian culture and spiritual life, which has not yet been sufficiently studied. The following episode from the life of Ivan Kireevsky is characteristic - this founder of Russian religious philosophy, the first Russian philosopher who fertilized his thought by turning to the inner experience of the great ascetics and mystics of the Eastern Church. As is known, he was first interested in the religious philosophy of Schelling. With delight, he read aloud some passages from Schelling's works to his young wife Natalia Petrovna. She answered him that all this was not new to her, she had already encountered all this in the works of the holy fathers. Kireyevsky then began to read the works of the fathers and mystics of the Orthodox Church himself, and his wife introduced him to the wonderful elder Philaret of the Moscow Novospassky Monastery. After the death of the old

Father Philaret in 1842, both spouses of the Kireyevskys came under the spiritual leadership of the wonderful elder Macarius of Optina. The surviving letters of the Kireevsky spouses, especially Natalia Petrovna, to Elder Macarius are interesting. She confides in him her spiritual difficulties and asks for consolation and encouragement: ... “I’m no good, my heart constantly suffers: fear arises and produces sadness. Sometimes prayer makes it easier, and sometimes there is no strength to pray. Sometimes in the present I see the past and unknown or hidden events, and I am confused by the thought: mental suffering is increasing, while mental and physical strength is diminishing... Behold, father, my worthless sinfulness, I confess to you, as to my merciful father, and I hope to receive from you healing of my spiritual weakness" 11...

Many, many Russian families, especially mothers of families, received spiritual support and guidance from the elders. One of these spiritual leaders was the famous Vyshinsky recluse, Bishop Theophan. Here, for example, is how he writes to one mother, burdened with many family trials:

“God's mercy be with you. Everything that is from the Lord, apart from our arbitrariness, is the best for us. This is not just by faith, in the abstract, but no matter what circumstance you look at in life, you will tangibly see that this is always the case. Now your oppression from everywhere - and your own illness and your son’s, and those difficult things that you hint about - all this is the best for you and for all of yours. Just pray and, while praying, thank God. And for the sorrowful, we must give thanks even more—to kiss the punishing and teaching right hand of God. Our blindness, not seeing anything, and too pretentious pride are the only reasons for your sorrows and the fact that our hearts are too sick under unfavorable circumstances. You, of course, understand all this and know how to put your feelings into a frame that Heavenly Providence creates with inimitable art. I wish you well

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11 See Prot. Sergiy Chetverikov “Optina Pustyn”. Paris, YMCA-Press pp. 149-150 (Letters from N.P. Kireevskaya to the Optina elder hieromonk Father Macarius).

goodness. A heart devoted to the Lord always knows how to find peace. May the Mother of God warm you with maternal consolation in your soul. How are you feeling now? My desire is that the Lord will ease you and clarify your horizon a little.” (November 15, 1872).

And here again is a whole series of letters to another mother - Princess N.I. K-voy (Kudasheva?) with advice, among other things, regarding raising children:

... “It is the duty of parents to admonish children,” it became yours. And be afraid of what? The word of love never irritates. The commanding only does not produce any fruit. In order for the Lord to bless children to avoid danger, they must pray day and night. God is merciful, He has many means of prevention, which would never even occur to us. God rules everything. He is a wise, all-good and all-powerful Ruler. And we belong to His Kingdom. Why be sad? He will not allow His own to be offended. You need to take care of one thing - how not to offend Him - and He did not cross you out from among His... (September 21, 1875).

He gives the mother advice regarding fasting together with her children:

“God's mercy be with you. God bless you all to speak and partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. More contrition for sinfulness is needed than a listing of sins, although this is necessary. There are more prayerful sighs from the heart than reading prayers, although this is also necessary. Fussiness must be driven out of the soul and reverence before God established there. Having established this reverence, then stay with it. Let the beauties read: “Arise, sleep.” Will it be good introduction in the penitential fast... Pray for your husband, but refrain from judging. It is not surprising for the Lord to turn his heart in one minute. And may God grant the high school student success...”

Feofan writes to the father of the family, who has turned to faith, rousing him to works of mercy:

... “Because the Lord has called you to faith, nothing special is required except to be sincerely faithful to the faith. And be grateful that the Lord has called you from darkness into light. Help most of all

those in need. Whoever comes to you with tears, do not let him go without drying that tear. Merciful blessings, for these will be pardoned... Because of the hand of the needy, always behold the hand of the Lord himself, who converted you, stretched out to you. He Himself said: “Whatever you do to them, the poor, you will do to Me”... (September 14, 1874)

We saw how streams of grace-filled instructions and grace-filled inner life poured through parents, especially through the mother of the family, into the family environment and did not remain without influence. To this end I could give a number of examples from personal experience and personal meetings.

And the grief of a mother who has lost her children finds a lively response in a loving spiritual leader and adviser who knows how to support a soul shaken by sadness. In this regard, the correspondence between Ekaterina Vladimirovna Novosiltseva, born Countess Orlova, who lost her only son in a duel, with her spiritual mentor, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, is characteristic. On September 21, 1825, Filaret writes to Novosiltseva from the Lavra:

“May the God of patience and consolation grant His servant not to faint in the struggle of patience and may He send His consolation in sorrow, in which human consolations fail. “May the Mother of the Crucified for us, who experienced the greatest of the Mother’s sorrows, accept the prayer of the grieving mother in order to bring it to the throne of Her Son and God.” (September 21, 1825) 12.

Reassessment of values occurs in this internal struggle, in this grief and loss of those dearest and closest. And the gaze is directed to different, the highest plane of existence, to the House of the Heavenly Father, when the most precious thing that was in this life, that gave comfort and value to the hearth, went there from this life. The soul is shocked, wounded, the crust of earthly well-being and some earthly, even the most innocent, self-sufficiency, concentration primarily on one’s earthly happiness has been cut through.

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12 Letters from His Eminence Philaret Metropolitan of Moscow to E.V. Novosiltseva. Moscow. 1911, p. 61.

and comfort, and the impulse is revealed - in the most real, albeit painful way - into the depths of the highest and decisive Reality, not as before, but with all its strength, with all its will, with all its understanding. And earthly love is transformed and grows and helps the soul in this new life of service, and itself visits the soul in its yearnings - undying, already purified and deepened love. Such a revaluation of values, such an overcoming of attachments to earthly warmth and comfort occurred in Khomyakov’s soul after the death of his infinitely beloved wife. A recording made by Yuri Samarin of his conversation with Khomyakov, which took place shortly after this event, and published many years later in the Tatev collection of S. A. Rachinsky. This is perhaps one of the most significant documents of Russian intimate and family life, and at the same time mystical life. I bring the full story of Samarin 13.

“...Khomyakov understood Christian revelation as a living, continuous speech of God, directly addressed to the personal consciousness of each person, and he listened to it with intense attention. Our conversations often touched on this topic regarding the general question of the significance of Providence in the history of mankind, people or individual Person, but he never introduced me into the realm of my own inner sensations. Only once was it possible for me to penetrate into the secret of this continuous conversation between him and God. This conversation is so deeply etched in my memory that I can repeat it almost word by word.

Having learned about the death of Ekaterina Mikhailovna, I took a leave of absence and, having arrived in Moscow, hurried to see him. When I entered his office, he stood up, took me by both hands and for some time could not utter a single word. Soon, however, he regained control of himself and told me in detail the entire course of the illness and treatment. The meaning of his story was that Ekaterina Mikhailovna died despite all probabilities due to a necessary confluence of circumstances. He himself clearly understood the root of the disease and,

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13 See “Tataevsky collection” by S. A. Rachinsky, St. Petersburg. 1899, pp. 128-133.

Knowing firmly what means were supposed to help, contrary to his usual determination, he doubted using them. Two doctors, not recognizing the disease, the signs of which, according to him, were obvious, fell into a deep mistake and, through incorrect treatment, produced a new disease, first depleting all the strength of the body. He saw all this and gave in to them. After listening to him, I noticed that all this seemed obvious to him now, because the unfortunate outcome of the illness justified his fears and at the same time erased from his memory all the other signs on which he himself, probably in the last minutes, based his hope for recovery. I added that, now reproducing in my own way and in reverse order consequences to causes throughout the course of the disease, he only exposes himself to fruitless torment. Then he stopped me, taking me by the hand: “You didn’t understand me; I didn’t mean to say that it was easy to save her. On the contrary, I see with crushing clarity that she had to die for me, precisely because there was no reason to die. The blow was directed not at her, but at me. I know that she is better now than she was here, but I forgot myself in the completeness of my happiness. I neglected the first blow; the second is such that it cannot be forgotten.” His voice trembled and he lowered his head. A few minutes later he continued: “I want to tell you what happened to me. Several years ago, I came home from church after communion and, unfolding the Gospel of John, I attacked the last conversation of the Savior with the disciples after the Last Supper. As I read, these words, from which a stream of boundless love flows with a living spring, came to me more and more strongly, as if someone was pronouncing them next to me. Having reached the words: “You are my friends,” I stopped reading and listened to them for a long time. They penetrated right through me. On this I fell asleep. My soul felt unusually light and light. Some force lifted me higher and higher, streams of light poured from above and washed over me; I felt that a voice would soon be heard. Trembling ran through every vein. But in one minute everything stopped; I cannot tell you what happened to me. It was not a ghost, but some kind of dark, impenetrable curtain that suddenly dropped...

appeared in front of me and separated me from the region of light. I couldn’t make out what she was wearing; but at the same moment, like a whirlwind, all the idle moments of my life, all my fruitless conversations, my vain vanity, my laziness, my attachments to everyday squabbles flashed through my memory. Which was not the case here. Familiar faces with whom, God knows why, I met and broke up, delicious dinners, cards, a game of billiards, many things that, apparently, I never think about and which, it seemed, I did not value at all. All this merged together into some kind of ugly mass, fell on my chest and pressed me to the ground. I woke up with a feeling of crushing shame. For the first time, I felt like a slave to the bustle of life from head to toe. Remember, in the passages, it seems to be John Climacus, these words: “Blessed is he who has seen an angel; a hundred times more blessed is he who has seen himself.” For a long time I could not recover from this lesson, but then life took its toll. It was difficult not to lose myself in the completeness of the undisturbed happiness that I enjoyed. You cannot understand what this life together means. You are too young to appreciate it." Here he stopped and was silent for some time, then added: “On the eve of her death, when the doctors had already hung their heads and there was no hope of salvation left, I threw myself on my knees in front of the image in a state close to frenzy and began - not to mention praying, and ask God for it. We all repeat that prayer is omnipotent, but we ourselves do not know its power, because it rarely happens to pray with all our soul. I felt such a power of prayer that could melt away everything that seems to be a solid and impenetrable obstacle; I felt that God’s omnipotence, as if caused by me, was meeting my prayer halfway and that the life of a wife could be given to me. At that moment the black curtain fell over me again; what happened to me the first time was repeated, and my powerless prayer fell to the ground. Now all the charm of life is lost for me. I can't enjoy life. Joy was available to me only through her, as what consoled me was reflected on her face. All that remains is to fulfill my lesson. Now, thanks to God, you won’t have to do it yourself

remind myself of death, it will go with me inseparably to the end.”

I wrote this story word by word, as it was preserved in my memory; but, having re-read it, I feel that I am not able to convey the calmly focused tone in which he spoke to me. His words made a deep impression on me precisely because it was in him alone that not a shadow of self-delusion could be assumed. There was no person in the world who was so disgusted and uncharacteristic of being carried away by his own sensations and yielding clarity of consciousness to nervous irritation. His inner life was distinguished by sobriety - this was the predominant feature of his piety. He was even afraid of tenderness, knowing that a person is too inclined to take credit for every earthly feeling, every shed tear; and when tenderness came over him, he deliberately doused himself with a stream of cold mockery, so as not to allow his soul to evaporate in fruitless impulses and to direct all its strength to work. That everything that he told me really happened to him, that in these moments of his life his self-awareness was illuminated by a revelation from above - I am as sure of this as I am of the fact that he was sitting opposite me, that it was he, and not anyone else, who spoke to me.

His entire subsequent life is explained by this story. The death of Ekaterina Mikhailovna produced a decisive turning point in her. Even those who did not know him very closely could notice that from that moment on his ability to get carried away by anything that was not directly related to his calling had cooled. He no longer gave himself free rein in anything. Apparently, he retained his former cheerfulness and sociability, but the memory of his wife and the thought of death did not leave him. How many times have I noticed, from the expression of his face, how this thought interrupted the cheerful stream of his good-natured laughter. His life was split into two. During the day he worked, read, talked, minded his own business, and gave himself to everyone who cared about him. But when night came and everything around him settled down and became silent, another time began for him. Here memories of former bright and happy times rose up.

In the early years of his life, the image of his late wife was resurrected before him, and only in these moments of complete solitude did he give vent to restrained melancholy.

Once I lived with him in Ivanovsky. Several guests came to see him, so all the rooms were occupied, and he moved my bed to his. After dinner, after long conversations, enlivened by his inexhaustible gaiety, we lay down, put out the candles, and I fell asleep. Long after midnight I woke up from some talking in the room. The morning dawn barely illuminated it. Without moving or uttering a voice, I began to peer and listen. He was kneeling in front of his traveling icon, his hands were folded in a cross on the chair cushion, his head was resting on his hands. I could hear suppressed sobs. This continued until the morning. Of course, I pretended to be asleep. The next day he came out to us cheerful, vigorous, with his usual, good-natured laugh. From the person who accompanied him everywhere, I heard that this was repeated almost every night."

Here, for a moment, the hidden, intimate depths flashed before us, where the highest rise of human feeling touches the highest and ultimate Reality, that Reality from which the meaning and life of an individual and the entire spiritual and creative tradition of a family and people are fertilized and receive meaning.

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1. Introduction

2. What is a family?

3. Family forms

4. Why start a family?

5. Family functions

6. The main condition for finding happiness in family life

Introduction

Where does the life of a person who comes into incarnation begin?

As a rule, from the family.

In the family he receives care and love, takes his first steps, and gains experience interacting with the outside world.

Everything that happens in a family is firmly imprinted from the first minutes of incarnation and is then reflected in a person’s future life. This includes the lifestyle of the family, the emotional reactions of family members to different situations, and the range of their interests. All these ideas and habits are passed on from generation to generation, forming family traditions.

The family is strong, first of all, by spiritual traditions.

The family is the basis of any society. And therefore, the prosperity of society or its decline as a whole depends on how strong the spiritual traditions of the family are.

Family traditions are aimed at consolidating intra-family ties and strengthening the family as the main basis of society. Traditions are an indispensable attribute of family happiness and well-being. They allow all family members to feel their importance, devote time and attention to their relatives, and show them respect and love.

Spiritual traditions reflect moral position all family members.

Probably every person is familiar with these traditions to one degree or another. They have existed for thousands of years as moral rules bequeathed by the wise teachers of mankind. They were carefully preserved and passed on in the monuments of ancient literature, in the customs of peoples, in religious rites. And in this lecture we will look at some of these traditions.

But the very understanding of morality is gradually becoming shallower, sometimes reduced to ritualism, to the performance of ritual actions bequeathed by ancestors without awareness of the true reasons for the need for certain behavior.

And we are also observing, both in the family and in society, a complete decline in morals.

And above all, this is due to the lack of sexual culture, which should be part of the general culture of society. And sexual culture is directly related to the reproductive function of the family - one of its main functions. We will touch on these and other questions in the lecture.

First, let's look at what a family is and answer the question why create a family.

What is family?

There are many definitions of the concept family . If dictionaries from the middle of the last century ( Dictionary Ozhegov, Ushakov’s Explanatory Dictionary) called a family a group of close relatives living together, then modern encyclopedias give a more expanded definition.

Thus, the Philosophical Encyclopedia and the Bolshoi encyclopedic Dictionary give this definition:

Family – based on marriage or consanguinity small group, whose members are connected by a common life, mutual moral responsibility and mutual assistance.

And under marriage implied “a historically conditioned, sanctioned and regulated by society form of relations between a man and a woman, establishing their rights and responsibilities in relation to each other, to children and to society”.

That is, marriage is a kind of contract concluded by three parties: a man, a woman and the state. It specifies only one date - the date of conclusion of the marriage agreement, but does not indicate the expiration date of the agreement. This implies that marriage bonds bind people together until the end of their lives.

In many countries, the consecration of marriage is performed by the church. The spouses take an oath of fidelity to each other before God and take upon themselves the responsibility of mutual care “in sorrow, in joy, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.” The consecration of marriage in front of the church altar is considered a very powerful form of strengthening marriage.

Marriage is a sacrament. Through marriage, spouses can work off karma with their life partner and bear the burden of their neighbor. This understanding of marriage is now almost lost in the Western world.

In 2006, the Lords of Wisdom gave us the opportunity, during the dispensation on the 23rd, to work off the karma of someone close to us. And we can choose, for example, our spouse as such a person.

Maintaining an immaculate concept of your partner, thinking of him as God, is the duty of every spouse. Otherwise people just focus on mistakes and negative aspects life together, and not on each other’s Divine potential.

Nowadays, the convergence of karma has intensified, and therefore many relationships, including family ones, are becoming strained. And hence there are so many divorces. But you should never even entertain the thought of divorce: while you are not thinking about divorce, your thoughts are aimed at overcoming the problems that arise. Divorce is the easiest way to solve problems, as it seems to spouses. But it only creates new problems, new karmic debts. Therefore, you should not allow difficulties to become the reason for the dissolution of your marriage.

A person is an arena of struggle with his ego (and not with the outside world). In marriage, this struggle is especially acute because the spouses are connected to each other. And each of the spouses has to daily control the manifestation of their ego and find mutual language with family members, thereby protecting your marriage.

Family forms

Family forms gradually changed due to changes in the socio-economic conditions of society.

Thus, in the 19th century in Russia, where the peasantry represented the largest class, families were large, included several generations (up to four or five) and resembled a community. There was such a family multi-family, and included several families related by blood, living together and running one household under the management of one person, who was called a householder.

For example, the family of Voronezh peasant Leon Izmailov numbered 54 people. It consisted of a householder and his wife (76 and 74 years old), 6 married sons (from 36 to 55 years old), 7 married grandchildren, 9 unmarried grandchildren, 10 unmarried granddaughters, 3 young great-grandchildren and 4 great-granddaughters. There are 26 men and 28 women in total.

Having a large family gave peasant farming stability and was a guarantee of economic well-being.

With the development of scientific and technological progress and in connection with the industrialization of society, the need for hard peasant labor has disappeared in many families, and at the same time the need for several generations to live together.

The modern family is for the most part nuclear, that is, one that consists of parents and their children (until the children get married). Moreover, when children create their own family, they strive to live independently, and their family also becomes nuclear.

Increasingly, there are families who live in the so-called civil marriage. In this case, the man and woman do not register their marriage, although in all other respects their union performs the same functions as the family that formalized its relationship.

The society did not stop there. Representatives of sexual minorities advocate the legalization of same-sex marriage and its legalization at the state level. There is serious debate in society about whether such a partnership can be called a family. But, as one of the participants in such a discussion held in Lithuania said, “the question is not whether this bill will be passed, the only question is when it will be passed”.

Thus, we are witnessing the rapid degradation of the family institution. In just some 130-150 years, a family from a patriarchal-communal family turns into a civil marriage, not legalized before God and before the state. And, moreover, into cohabitation of people of the same sex who cannot perform one of the most important functions of the family - childbearing. If this continues, then in a few generations the population of developed countries will simply die out.

Why start a family?

Thus, the right motive for creating a family is to help and support each other, as well as having children and raising them in the best traditions.

And not at all receiving sexual pleasure. Please note: this is not just about creating a family, but about legal

creating a family - about getting married.

In modern society, the reasons why people join families are very diverse.

Here is the result of one small student study. The table shows that the most common motives for marriage are love and community of interests. First of all, people are looking for love and hope to consolidate this feeling through family relationships. To a greater extent, young people want to receive love and to a lesser extent - to give, i.e. and in love, as in other aspects of life in a consumer society, there is consumerism. In addition, many people associate this feeling with and strive to have a stable and harmonious sexual relationship with a partner in family life.

By creating a family, a person hopes to find in it a joy for his soul and a source of happiness. Spiritual intimacy makes spouses truly happy. The same or similar views on life lead to mutual understanding. Are common interests give a lot interesting topics for communication, create the opportunity for joint self-realization. Spiritual communication promotes mutual enrichment, personal, intellectual and spiritual growth of family members.

Emotional support and mutual understanding in the family help a person feel more confident, calm and safe, which helps maintain and restore the mental health of all family members. When entering into marriage, a person hopes to find in his partner true friend, who will accept him as he is, support him in all his endeavors, empathize and sympathize, share all his joys and sorrows.

Sooner or later, spouses think about children, about continuation of a kind. A person needs a family in order to be able to have offspring, raise and raise happy and healthy children.

Creating a family allows a person to improve the household and economic aspects of life. A general budget is formed in the family, allowing it to satisfy the material and biological needs of its members for nutrition, acquisition and maintenance of household property, clothing, shoes, home improvement, creation home comfort. Each spouse has their own area of responsibility. An established and stable life greatly simplifies a person’s life and helps support family members if they encounter economic difficulties.

Let us remember the pyramid of the American psychologist Abraham Maslow - a model of human needs.

The family satisfies the above needs at all levels:

– are realized on the physical plane household and economic aspects of family life that provide physical health to family members, as well as satisfying sexual relationships that bring pleasure,

– on the astral plane – this is emotional support and mutual understanding, which gives psychological stability and mental health to all family members,

– on the mental plane, the need for love and respect is ensured: even if not all the people around you understand you, then in the family group they will love you for who you are;

– on the etheric level – this is self-realization in procreation and raising children.

And these four levels of needs subject to their implementation give a person the opportunity to grow and develop and for more high plans. Because in the family - as in a small model of society - the development of those qualities of a person takes place, which will then remain in his higher bodies and pass into his new incarnation. That is, the family provides a person with numerous opportunities for development on all planes.

At the fifth level, a person can fulfill his mission in the family, realizing the spiritual side of life and helping loved ones elevate their consciousness. We will return to consideration of this issue later, in the section “Balance of spiritual and physical.”

Family functions

Thus, we found out that a person strives to satisfy a number of needs by creating a family. And the family is precisely endowed with these functions. Psychologists note about one and a half to two dozen family functions. Moreover, the authors of textbooks on family psychology distribute them by importance in a different order, starting with the reproductive and educational functions. Then come (in different sequences) communicative, emotional, spiritual, household, economic, protective, status, socialization and other functions.

Much attention is paid to the first two main functions of the family: reproductive and educational.

Reproductive the function is associated with the reproduction of life, that is, with the birth of children, the continuation of the human race. The conception of children occurs with the help of sexual energy.

Educational function is associated with the formation of the child’s personality. Also in the family there is a systematic educational influence of the family collective on each member. Parents constantly influence their children, and they, in turn, influence their parents and other family members.

The younger generation is educated in the family. Here they learn to speak, walk, read, count, etc. They also teach how to acquire qualities: developing willpower, the ability to overcome difficult life situations, and showing care for elders and younger ones.

In the family there is a distribution of responsibilities and involvement in work. The initial experience of community life is acquired: the experience of sharing something common or finding something in common with another person. An understanding of the concept of the Common Good comes - first as the common good of the family.

The main condition for finding happiness in family life

So, whether people will be happy in family life depends on how correct the motive is at the very beginning of creating a family. And happy family life extremely important for humans. So, according to sociological surveys Russian women, it is this indicator that ranks first in their scale of life values.

But there is one condition - the most important condition for finding happiness in family life:

Worship of the Divine Law should become the main spiritual tradition of any family and the basis for all other family foundations. Without this condition, it is impossible to carry out the mission (the fifth level in Maslow's pyramid).

The lecture was prepared by E.Yu. Ilyina

SPIRITUAL TRADITION

In India until the 19th century. the only way to exist, broadcast and develop spiritual culture. T. assumes that teaching its content covers the entire personality of a person, in all its aspects - intellectually, emotionally, behaviorally, and actively. The possibility of learning is opened by initiation; it continues in a close personal connection with the teacher (guru), including in everyday life, and implies learning by imitation, that is, reproducing in oneself the essential features of his personality. Such personally-related content is often extremely significant for the purely intellectual field of activity, especially for spiritual experience. It has never been translated into text form and is poorly suited for this. Without it, however, the textual content is often not understood at all, understood partially or distorted. Different specific spiritual traditions of India are characterized by different ratios of elements, which in Europe. in terms are called philosophical, scientific, religious, spiritual-practical, etc.: a tradition can be a school of logic, Advaitian metaphysics, a community of Vishnu worshipers or a sect of Hatha Yogis. Tradition has the positive side the highest professionalism and such a level of personal development of the adherent, which in Europe seems almost a miracle (in Europe, only circus performers and sorcerers have an analogue to this way of being of culture); its disadvantage is the difficulty of exchanging contents between individual traditions and its fragility: if the chain of generations is interrupted, then it will be impossible to restore the tradition from the texts.
A. Paribok

Hinduism. Jainism. Sikhism: Dictionary. - M.: Republic. M. F. Albedil, A. M. Dubyansky. 1996 .

See what “SPIRITUAL TRADITION” is in other dictionaries:

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Books

, Skvortsova, Elena Lvovna, Lutsky, Alexander Leonidovich. The book is dedicated current problems traditional and modern spiritual life of Japan. The authors consider the formation of theoretical aesthetics in Japan, which has passed the path from tradition to philosophy in...
Spiritual tradition and social thought in Japan of the twentieth century, Skvortsova E.. The book is devoted to current problems of traditional and modern spiritual life in Japan. The authors consider the formation of theoretical aesthetics in Japan, which has passed the path from tradition to philosophy in...