Listen to St. Nektarios explain how critical the role of the mother is in raising children and how firm the foundation she can lay down in the hearts and minds of her children. Fathers, let us love and sacrifice for our wives and co-struggle in the holy labor of child-rearing!

0:10 Introduction
0:27 The education of children must begin from infancy
2:06 A mother’s influence on her children is beyond measure
3:44 The mother is best suited to impart the conception of God in her child’s heart
5:36 Just as the virtues of the mother are imparted to the child, so too the passions
7:20 The passions (sinful inclinations) of children must be subdued at a young age, just a potter molds clay before it hardens
9:20 If the formation of either the heart or the mind is neglected the child turns out “defective and impaired”
11:30 The examples of the mothers of The Great Hierarchs: St. Basil the Great and his mother, St. Emmelia, and St. Gregory the Theologian and his mother, St. Anthusa (and how the fire of their faith in Christ was not overcome by higher education given by pagan teachers)
13:54 On St. John Chrysostom and his mother, St. Anthusa
14:50 “What radiant examples we have before us in these pious mothers!... Who can deny it is the mothers who produce great and virtuous men?” -St. Nektarios
15:51 “It is necessary, then, that we form our daughters religiously and intellectually, so that we may present them worthy of their vocation.”
16:17 A one-sided upbringing leads either to superstition or atheism
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-EDUCATION: Orthodox education resources at Saint Kosmas Orthodox Education Association: [ Ссылка ]
-PREGNANCY RESOURCES: ZOE for life! is a support center (in person and online) for women needing recourse for unplanned and planned pregnancies, adoption, and more: [ Ссылка ]
-BOOK: Orthodox Christian Parenting by Zoe Press: [ Ссылка ]
-PRAYER: Akathist to the Mother of God, "Nurturer of Children": [ Ссылка ]
-PODCAST: Admonitions for Parents - St. John Chrysostom: [ Ссылка ]
-PODCAST: The Holy Childhood of Archbishop John Maximovitch (OW podcast): [ Ссылка ]
-TEXT OF THIS PODCAST: [ Ссылка ]
-FIND A CHURCH: Find an Orthodox parish and monastery near you: [ Ссылка ]
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St. Nektarios writes:

“The child, nurtured in his mother’s bosom and warmed in his mother’s embrace, begins to love before he learns the concept of love, and he begins to subordinate his will to the moral law before he learns the concept of the moral law, and it is the mother alone who is most suited to arousing in the child’s heart his first conception of God. Because of this, Basil the Great says (Letter 223), ‘The conception of God which I received in childhood from my blessed mother – it was this conception, brought to maturity, that I had within myself. For I did not change from one set of opinions to another in the maturation of my reason, but rather I brought to completion the beginnings handed down to me by her.’”

Speaking of St. John Chrysostom, his mother St. Nonna, and the other two Hierarchs and their mothers: “Libanius, John’s teacher, was greatly pained at his failure to convert John to his own religion, and, ‘Alas!’ he exclaimed, ‘What manner of women there are among the Christians!’ indicating by these words the cause of this failure. How truly beautiful! What radiant examples we have before us in these pious mothers! What wondrous images! What wondrous models! Who can deny that it is the mothers who produce great and virtuous men?”

“It is necessary, then, that we form our daughters religiously and intellectually, so that we may present them worthy of their vocation. It is necessary, then, that reverent education and educated religion exist side by side, for these two things are the only sure provisions for traveling in this life, provisions that are able to help a man in manifold ways…. For if attention revolves around the mind only, sickliness of the man’s religious perception is unavoidable. But if our care revolves around religion only (and that not the educated kind), the intellectual faculties will wither and become dull. The result of the first situation will be irreligion and atheism, upon which follow boundless horrors; the result of the second, however, will be superstition, that curse of humanity, which, holding in its hands fire and the sword, threatens death to everyone who has a differing opinion. Such are the results of a one-sided education and the incomplete upbringing of mothers.”
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