October: Day 21: Teaching 3: The Day of the Accession to the Throne of His Majesty Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich

October: Day 21: Teaching 3:
The Day of the Accession to the Throne of His Majesty Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich
 
(On Children’s Reverence for Their Parents and Their Honor for the Imperial Authority)

By Archpriest Grigory Dyachenko

I. On this most solemn and glorious day, the accession to the ancestral throne of our Most Pious Sovereign, Emperor Nicholas Alexandrovich, the true Father of the Fatherland, whom all his loyal subjects, as obedient and loving children, ought to honor and to whom they ought in all things to render submission, as required by the word of God, the Holy Church, conscience, sound reason, each person’s own welfare, and the good of the state, it will be fitting, my brethren, to speak together about children’s reverence for their parents.

If children learn to honor their parents, they will become not only true citizens of the earthly kingdom but also worthy citizens of the heavenly kingdom.

II. Parents ought to be regarded as a sacred and inviolable sanctuary, which children must not approach with anything disrespectful, whether in deed, in word, or even in thought.

a) First, this is required by the supreme dignity of the parental office.

How does the parental office arise among human beings? The Apostle Paul answers that “every family in heaven and on earth is named” from God (Ephesians 3:15). That is, God is the first Father of both angels and human beings. Thus, although children are born to human parents, their first and highest Father is God Himself, the Father of all.

Do parents, in fact, beget children by their own power? If they did, why would some wish to have children but remain childless, while others wish to limit the number of their children yet continue to have them? Why do some, after years of infertility, ask God for children and receive them, while others ask for a long time and never receive them throughout their lives?

No, parents do not beget children by their own power. Rather, the Lord Himself creates and brings them forth through their parents, using them as living instruments of His providential work of creation. Job and David confessed as much before God: “Your hands have made me and fashioned me” (Job 10:8; Psalm 118:73 in the Septuagint, Psalm 119:73 in most English Bibles). In the fullest and most proper sense, therefore, God is the Father of human beings, as Jesus Christ Himself especially called Him. Human beings are called fathers and mothers only insofar as they serve as instruments in the hand of God in the creation and birth of their children.

Do you understand, then, children, what your parents mean to you and how exalted their office is in your regard? To you, they are living images and representatives of God Himself, the Creator and Father of all, including you. If God Himself is your Father; if the parental office possesses a dignity that is, in this sense, divine, since God Himself bears it; and if God has bestowed this office upon your parents, as though sharing it with them for your sake, can you even imagine that your parents do not deserve your utmost respect, or that you are not unconditionally obliged to show them such respect? Otherwise, nothing would deserve your reverence.

It is precisely from this dignity of the parental office that Scripture derives its solemn expressions of divine anger, by which it safeguards the honor and security of parents against their children.

“Whoever curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death” (Exodus 21:17). “Whoever curses his father or his mother shall surely be put to death” (Leviticus 20:9). “Cursed is anyone who dishonors his father or his mother” (Deuteronomy 27:16). “He who robs his father and drives away his mother is a son who brings shame and disgrace” (Proverbs 19:26). “Whoever curses his father or his mother, his lamp will be put out in deep darkness” (Proverbs 20:20); that is, such a person is threatened with the greatest calamity. “Whoever robs his father or his mother and says, ‘It is no transgression,’ is a companion to a destroyer” (Proverbs 28:24), or, in other words, is a profoundly wicked person. “The eye that mocks a father and scorns obedience to a mother—may the ravens of the valley pluck it out, and the young eagles eat it” (Proverbs 30:17). Such is the fate of those who commit offenses unworthy even of burial in a grave.

These are the curses pronounced against children who fail to honor their parents. But Scripture also offers blessings for children who honor them.

“The Lord has glorified the father through his children and has established the mother’s authority over her sons. Whoever honors his father makes atonement for sins; whoever honors his mother is like one who stores up treasure. Whoever honors his father will rejoice in his own children, and when he prays, he will be heard. Whoever glorifies his father will have a long life, and whoever obeys the Lord will give his mother rest. Whoever fears the Lord will honor his father and will serve his parents as masters. Honor your father and mother in deed and word, that a blessing may come upon you from them. My child, support your father in his old age, and do not grieve him as long as he lives. Even if his understanding fails, be patient with him, and do not dishonor him while you are in the fullness of your strength. For kindness shown to your father will not be forgotten, and it will be credited to you against your sins. My child, glorify your father with all your heart, and do not forget the pains your mother endured. Remember that you were born through them; what can you give them in return for what they have given you?” (Sirach 3:2–8, 12–14; 7:29–30).

If you render to your parents all that is due to them in respect and honor, you perform a kind of act of worship: in honoring your parents, you pay reverence to the heavenly Father Himself.

But if you disregard the most sacred rules of faith, suppress the tenderest feelings of human nature, and despise the judgments of sound reason, showing disrespect toward your parents, it is not enough to call you ungrateful. Your offensive treatment of your parents makes you impious; your insolent words against them are a form of blasphemy; and depriving them of the respect due to them is sacrilege. For all these reasons, such children are moral monsters.

b) Second, just as exalted as the parental office is the authority parents exercise over their children.

For God, in bestowing the paternal office upon parents, also grants them parental authority over their children. Children are born subject to their parents.

Although civil law places certain limits upon parental authority, and this authority does not extend to taking the lives of children or compelling them to commit unlawful acts, it nevertheless remains of the highest importance, because it is a portion of the authority of the heavenly Father Himself, from whom parents receive it.

The primacy of this authority is evident not only from the fact that we are subject to it from the first moment of our existence, but also from the fact that it serves as the model for every other authority to which we submit throughout our lives. Other authorities are even called fathers: church pastors (1 Corinthians 4:14), civil officials (2 Kings 5:13), teachers and guides (2 Kings 13:14), and elders, whom the Apostle commands us to honor as fathers (1 Timothy 5:1).

For this reason, the Ten Commandments, which provide a concise summary of God’s law, give particular prominence to the commandment concerning the honor due to parents: “Honor your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12; Deuteronomy 5:16). Although reverence for all other authorities is likewise required by God’s law, it is not expressed separately in this commandment but is understood by the author to be included under the commandment to honor parents.

The Holy Scriptures speak in the strongest terms about the great importance of parental authority over children:

“Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1). “Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is pleasing to the Lord” (Colossians 3:20). “Hear, my son, your father’s instruction, and do not forsake your mother’s teaching; for they will be a graceful wreath upon your head and ornaments around your neck” (Proverbs 1:8–9).

“Then you will have life, and grace will be around your neck; healing will come to your flesh and strength to your bones. You will walk confidently in all your ways, and your foot will not stumble. When you lie down, you will not be afraid; when you lie down, your sleep will be sweet. You will not fear sudden terror or the assault of the wicked, for the Lord will be at your side and will keep your foot from being caught” (Proverbs 3:22–26).

“Listen to your father who begot you, and do not despise your mother when she is old. Let your father and mother rejoice over you; let her who bore you be glad” (Proverbs 23:22, 25).

After such descriptions, can anything more beautiful, pious, and blessed be imagined than children who honor and obey their parents?

But the importance of parental authority is expressed even more clearly and strikingly from the opposite side, when Scripture depicts the judgment awaiting disobedient and stubborn children.

“A wise son hears his father’s instruction, but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke” (Proverbs 13:1). And here is the judgment prescribed by the Law for such a son:

“If anyone has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, he will not listen to them, then his father and mother shall take him and bring him out to the elders of his city, to the gate of that place. They shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death. So you shall purge the evil from among you, and all Israel shall hear and fear” (Deuteronomy 21:18–21).

Is not this punishment prescribed by the Law terrifying? Is not the offense against which it is directed a grave one? And is not the authority against which this offense is committed of great importance?

Therefore, unhappy son or daughter, you who, instead of bringing joy to your parents through obedience, making their lives sweeter and their old age more pleasant, grieve their souls, darken their days, and hasten them toward the grave through your disobedience, defiance, and foolish, insolent opposition to their every wish, word, counsel, and command—and who then, inevitably, fall into immoral conduct—you would have been publicly stoned had you lived under the Law of Moses.

Although under the present civil order you are not literally subjected to such a punishment, does your guilt thereby cease to be guilt? Are you not still offenders against the very first authority established for you on earth, an authority that descends from heaven? If you escape the punishment you deserve here, you will not escape it in the life to come, when the heavenly Father Himself, whose rights you have dishonored by offending your parents, will exact justice from you for His own rights, which you have scorned in their persons.

Fear, then, the judgment and retribution of the Lord. Be moved by the blessings bestowed upon obedient children. Obey your parents in everything in the Lord, “for this is right and pleasing to the Lord.”

c) Third, to impress upon children even more forcefully the dignity of the paternal office and the importance of parental authority, and thereby dispose them more readily to honor their parents, I draw your attention to a truth with which you are already familiar: God has granted such importance to the blessing and curse of parents in relation to their children that a single word spoken by a father or mother, whether blessing or cursing, can make their children—and sometimes their entire posterity—either supremely and enduringly blessed or profoundly and enduringly miserable.

Holy Scripture expresses the importance of parental blessing and cursing in these words: “A father’s blessing strengthens the houses of his children, but a mother’s curse uproots them from their foundations” (Sirach 3:9).

Whence comes such terrible power in the words of people like ourselves, even when those people are our parents? Certainly, it does not arise merely from the parents themselves as human beings.

Human words do possess a certain power, sometimes a very great one, especially when spoken and received with the full force of the soul. Ordinarily, however, such words affect only the person who hears them. They do not have the power to determine circumstances, the fate of future generations, or the blessing of an entire posterity. Yet parental blessings and curses, as Scripture portrays them, have exercised precisely such power.

Let us turn to Holy Scripture, which explains its teachings through striking examples.

After the universal Flood, the patriarch Noah, the new progenitor of humanity, unwisely drank wine to the point of losing his awareness and lay exposed. Ham, the youngest of his three sons, was the first to see his father in this indecent condition. He immediately went and told his older brothers, Shem and Japheth. Being more modest and prudent—and, above all, more respectful toward their father—they hastened to bring a garment, and, turning their faces away so as not to see his nakedness, covered him.

When Noah awoke, he learned what Ham had done and what his other sons had done. He pronounced a curse upon the former and his descendants, but a blessing upon the latter.

“He said, ‘Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.’ And he said, ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, and let him dwell in the tents of Shem; and let Canaan be his servant’” (Genesis 9:25–27).

In simpler terms, the blessing meant that the descendants of Shem and Japheth would spread, prosper, and rule over the descendants of Ham, who, because of the curse, would suffer, be oppressed, and become subject to the former. This blessing and curse, the preacher asserts, were fulfilled literally: the descendants of Ham, known in history as the Canaanite peoples, were repeatedly struck down, destroyed, and subjugated by the descendants of Shem and Japheth.

Whence, then, came such power in Noah’s words, when in this instance he appears as a man who had himself succumbed to weakness? It came from the fact that his words were not merely the words of a man, but the blessing and curse of a parent.

Know, children who hear me, that a parent’s blessing is not merely an expression of goodwill, just as a parent’s curse is not merely an expression of ill will. A parental blessing is a benevolent word spoken by a father or mother to a son or daughter by virtue of the special authority granted to parents over their children by God, the Father of all. For this reason, the preacher maintains, it is endowed with a mysterious power, so that once spoken it is certain to be fulfilled, just as the word of God does not return empty after proceeding from His mouth (Isaiah 55:10–11).

It is the almighty word of God, spoken through the mouths of parents, that determines or decides the fate of their children. Do not seek a natural power in this word: its power is supernatural, proceeding from God and bestowed by God.

The same understanding applies to a curse, but from the opposite side. It is a hostile and punitive word spoken by parents to their children under a special authority granted by God, and it is, according to the preacher, likewise filled with supernatural power, so that once spoken it inevitably brings its destructive effect upon the guilty children.

The ancients understood the great power of parental blessing and cursing better than we do, and that is why they valued a blessing so highly. Indeed, nothing is more important to children than the blessing or curse of their father or mother, for these are the blessings and curses of the heavenly Father spoken through earthly parents.

“A father’s blessing strengthens the houses of his children, but a mother’s curse uproots them from their foundations.”

III. Therefore, “Child, obey your parents in the Lord in everything, for this is right and pleasing to the Lord, and it will be well with you, and you will live long upon the earth.”

Consider, son and daughter, the full importance of your parents’ blessing and curse. However intelligent, wealthy, or fortunate you may be, if the curse of your father or mother strikes you, all these things will vanish like a shadow, smoke, or a dream. But if the blessing of your father or mother rests upon your head, happiness will flow toward you like a river, and your fortunes will rise and stand firm like everlasting mountains.

Reflecting upon this, “Honor your father and mother in deed and word, that a blessing may come upon you from them; and a father’s blessing will establish your house”—your descendants and your prosperity—for otherwise a mother’s curse will uproot you from your foundations.

Christian brethren! We have seen that the word of God teaches children clearly and unequivocally to obey and honor parental authority. But let us never forget that the same word of God also teaches us clearly and unequivocally to honor the imperial authority and obey it as an authority established by God, and to honor the emperor as the father of the great family that is the state.

The word of God proclaims to Christians—and through them to all nations and to all humanity—“There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Romans 13:1).

For the reverent and impartial inquirer, it is not difficult to discover and understand how, according to the teaching of the word of God, authority proceeds from God.

Whence comes that multitude of people united by religion, law, language, and customs, which we call a “nation”? Evidently, this multitude grew from a smaller tribe, and the tribe arose from a “family.” Thus, within the family, properly so called, lie the seeds of everything that later unfolded and grew into the great family called the state.

Consequently, it is within the family that we must seek the beginnings and the original model of authority and submission, which later developed within the larger family of the state.

The father, who by God’s natural gift has the ability to give life to his son and develop his faculties, is the first ruler. The son, who cannot develop his faculties or even preserve his own life without obedience to his parents and those who raise him, is naturally subject to their authority.

But the father did not create his own authority, nor was it bestowed upon him by his son. It arose with humanity from the One who created humanity. It follows, therefore, that the deepest source and highest origin of the first authority—and consequently of every subsequent form of authority among human beings—is God.

First, according to the word of God, every family in heaven and on earth is named from Him (Ephesians 3:15). Then, when the sons of sons multiplied into a people and peoples, and the family grew into a state too vast to be governed by a father’s natural authority, God gave that authority a new, artificial form and a new name in the person of the king. Thus, through His wisdom, “kings reign” (Proverbs 8:15). And however greatly peoples may multiply and however much states may change, through His all-active providence “the Most High rules the kingdom of mankind” (Daniel 4:17 in most English Bibles; Daniel 4:22 in the Septuagint numbering used by the source).

The king, therefore, is the father of the great family that is the state, and for this reason, the preacher concludes, each person ought to honor him even more than the father of an individual household. Amen.

(Compiled by Priest Grigory Dyachenko from the “Discourses and Conversations” of Nicholas, Bishop of Tambov, pp. 289–300, and from the sermons of Philaret, Metropolitan of Moscow.)

 

Source: A Complete Annual Cycle of Short Teachings, Composed for Each Day of the Year. Translated by John Sanidopoulos.