Congratulations to all our children for completing the school year. May God bless all they do.
As we start summer vacation, we need to pay more attention to our children and youth. In today's world, our children are not being taught the importance of God or the church in their lives and are often asked to turn away from Him. We must teach our children to keep the faith and obey the commandments of God.
As all of our children are on Summer vacation we should use this time wisely and not waste it. We should use it to remind our children the importance of God's word, prayer, hymns, the saints and the Church in our lives.
Some things we can do are listed below to help and encourage a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. You don’t need to do everything, try one or a few or try them all, God will bless all you do. We should really take this seriously and do what we can to help our beloved children.
+Attend Sunday School:
- Sunday school is very important for our children these days. Education in schools is distorted when it comes to moral principles. The whole world is drifting away from God. Therefore when there is strong education in the Church, it will counteract and overcome the corruption in the world.
+Read the Holy Bible:
- Younger children should read a chapter from the Holy Bible each day. Start with the New Testament and see how many books you can finish over the summer. After every chapter they read, ask them to choose a verse they liked and write it down.
- Older children should be able to read the entire New Testament by reading 3 chapters a day over the summer. They should also write down one verse they liked from each chapter they read.
- They can also use the time in the summer to study just one book in the Holy Bible. Start with the Catholic Epistles like the Epistle of St. James for example.
- To help them, there are many Orthodox apps and books available for commentary and to explain the book to them. If you need help finding them they can ask their servants and Abouna, Some things they should know about the book for example are:
- Who is St. James?
- Where did he preach?
- Who did he write his epistle for?
- Date of writing? Etc.
- If they spend a few minutes a day studying just one book they will feel accomplished by the end of the summer. They will learn how to study the Bible on their own and feel that they finally understand the Bible. They will love studying the Bible and will continue to study it on their own.
**A good source for you as a parent is the diocese website www.suscopts.org there are studies for most of the books of the Bible. I do not advise you to give the children this website as an easy resource but rather use it yourself and guide them while they research other sources **
+Prayer:
- Using the verses they wrote down from the Holy Bible help them to make a prayer. This will help them to improve their prayers. They can ask their father of confession for guidance on what they should pray from the Agpeya.
+Hymns:
- They can learn hymns and Midnight Praises.
- Younger children can learn the responses and hymns of the Liturgy, and deacon responses.
- Older youth can learn the Second or Third Canticle (hoos) so they can get used to the midnight praises and go to church and attend tasbeha.
- They will enjoy the Liturgy and attend more if they sing and know the hymns.
**Learning the midnight praises keep us close to the church, we have seen this with many of our church fathers and youth.**
+Teach them to love the Saints:
- Learn about the saints, read their stories, watch a movie or cartoon about them. Know the saints of the church, learn about the saint they are named after, read the synaxarion, ask for their intercessions, hang icons of the saints in your home and their room, tell your children about the many miracles they have done either in your life or the life of others. Learn about their virtues, like love, purity, humility, meekness. There are so many ways to make the martyrs and saints as a close friend in their lives and learn from them.
+Attend Vespers, Midnight Prayers and Liturgies:
- Remind our children the importance of these holy days in our church by attending more, especially in the summer. When we don't attend in the summer it teaches our children that during the summer when we are free and enjoying our time, attending prayers in church are not important. When they were in school they were too busy. When will we have time? Summer is a great time to start attending Saturday night and Sunday morning.
- Attend more Liturgies during the week as well as Sunday. There are many feasts during the summer that they will be able to attend since they don't have school, like The Lord’s Entry into Egypt, the Ascension Feast, Pentecost, and Apostles Feast.
+Participate in St. Mark Festival:
- Encourage your children to participate in St. Mark Festival (i.e. Coptic, hymns, rites, dogma, church history, etc.)
- If registered for Summer Camp, don’t miss any of the days
- If you are traveling, use the e-book on the smf website and encourage them to study the topics.
- Remind them that we are attending the summer camp not only to know the topics to take the exam and receive a trophy it also builds their personality. When they pay attention and learn the topics it will have an impact on their life and get them closer to the Church. They will learn how to live according to God’s commandments and conduct oneself as being in the image and likeness of God
Time is much more valuable than money; if one minute is passed it is never coming back. We should teach our children to “invest in their time” and make the best possible use of it. Children who get addicted to videogames and social media grow up having weak personalities, and suffer many issues in their lives.
Sit with your child and set a plan with him/her for their summer and follow through for both spiritual and non spiritual beneficial activities.
We pray that all our children have a safe and beneficial summer. May the Lord bless you!
