At what age should you go to confession?
Traditionally, the moment of a child’s first confession is determined in the Church at the age of seven years. This seven-year mark marks the conditional transition from infancy to adolescence. Around this age, children begin to consciously evaluate their actions. They can already distinguish bad from good. From now on, they are responsible for everything they do.
You can often hear the opinion that children up to the age of seven are sinless. But this is not true at all. At birth we all acquire bad habits, our spiritual garments become darkened by sin over time. However, in infancy, parents are solely responsible for all the misdeeds of their children.
Reaching seven years of age is not at all an indicator that your son or daughter is ready for the first confession. For each person, such a moment comes individually; it can happen either earlier or later. All children develop differently. And here it is important for parents to determine when such a favorable age has arrived.
The main criterion that determines a child’s readiness to begin the Sacrament for the first time is awareness. As soon as the boy learns to analyze his actions from the position of “good or bad” and begins to answer for them as if they were his own, consider it time for him to go to confession. We must also remember that girls at this age grow spiritually faster than boys.
How to prepare a child for the first confession?
First of all, you should never scare your beloved child. The French atheist writer Jean Paul Sartre recalled that as a child he was very frightened by the stern God, who seemed to always be closely watching him. This left an imprint on his entire future life.
It is easiest to explain God’s attitude towards man before confession to your child using the example of a family. Just as a father cannot rejoice at the bad deeds of his son, so God does not only look for a reason to punish them. And just as a parent loves his child, no matter how careless he may be, so the Lord covers all our sins with His boundless mercy.
God expects complete trust from us—that’s all. Such a trusting relationship between a person and the Creator is, first of all, established through the Sacrament of Repentance. Parents can help their child prepare for it by offering to write down a small list of their sins on a piece of paper. Just don’t need to dictate this list yourself, much less write it instead of your own child. You can only suggest something to him, lead him to think.
It is important for parents to remember that neither the “stick” nor the “carrot” method in this case can give the expected result. A child cannot be forced to confess; this may cause a backlash. There is also no need to try to bribe him. Although it won’t hurt to “praise” your son or daughter a little for repenting and deciding to improve.
It would be good to approach the priest in advance and agree with him on the time of the child’s first confession. It will definitely be better if the clergyman knows that the boy is confessing for the first time, he will be able to pay more attention to him.
What is Communion
Communion (Eucharist) is the main Sacrament in Orthodoxy, during which a person, through partaking of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, is united with God. “Body and Blood” is not a figurative expression.
“Eucharistic bread is the medicine of immortality, the guarantee of non-dying in eternal life in Jesus Christ” (Eph. 20).
According to the dogmas of the Orthodox faith, bread and wine are in an incomprehensible way to the human mind into the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. For a Christian, spiritual life without the Eucharist is unthinkable. Therefore, every Orthodox parent tries to unite their children with Christ through Communion.
For a person far from the teachings of the Church, this seems incomprehensible and impossible. However, this is not a matter of rational knowledge and factual evidence. This is a matter of faith, it is through the eyes of faith that this Great Sacrament is revealed. The Sacrament of Communion was established by Jesus Christ himself at the Last Supper. The Lord took the bread, blessed it and, distributing it to the apostles, said: “Take, eat: this is My Body.” Then he took a cup of wine and, giving it to the apostles, said: “Drink from it, all of you, for this is My Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.”
Communion of a child
Advice from priests
Since confessing for the first time is a very serious matter for a child and can determine a person’s entire subsequent life in the Church, it is necessary to approach repentance with full responsibility. Experienced priests name a number of traditional mistakes that parents most often make when preparing their child for this Sacrament. In this regard, we can give some basic tips.
- Under no circumstances should you force a child to confession. It is worth remembering that only free confession of sins and sincere repentance is accepted by the Lord.
- There is no need to use a child's confession as an additional lever of pressure in the method of education. This task lies entirely with the parents. Neither the priest nor the Sacrament itself can automatically change a child if the correct values and norms of behavior are not instilled in him from childhood.
- In the list of sins, one must carefully avoid “adult” vices. This applies, for example, to the seventh commandment (about adultery), such sins that a child cannot yet know due to his age. Otherwise, it may arouse unnecessary curiosity in him and cause harm.
- It is unacceptable to question the boy about what he said during his repentance before God. By doing this you will violate the secret of confession and harm both yourself and your child.
- Moreover, there is no need to advise the priest or ask him whether your son or daughter has named any offense known to you. Such interference will certainly cause disappointment and mistrust of the child in the Sacrament of Repentance. Parents should do their parenting, and God's business should be left to God.
Children's confession: do no harm!
Article by professor of the Moscow Theological Academy and rector of the Church of St. Martyr Tatiana at Moscow State University by Archpriest Maxim Kozlov touches on the delicate issue of children's confession.
1. At what age should a child go to confession?
In my opinion, a rather important problematic point in the life of the Church today is the practice of children's confession. The norm that children must confess before Communion from the age of seven has been established since the synodal era. As Father Vladimir Vorobyov wrote in his book about the sacrament of Repentance, for many, many children today, physiological maturation is so ahead of spiritual and psychological that most of today’s children are not ready to confess at the age of seven. Isn’t it time to say that this age is set by the confessor and the parent absolutely individually in relation to the child? At the age of seven, and some a little earlier, they see the difference between good and bad deeds, but it is too early to say that this is conscious repentance. Only selected, subtle, delicate natures are capable of experiencing this at such an early age. There are amazing children who at five or six years old have a responsible moral consciousness, but most often these are other things. Or the parents’ motivations related to the desire to have an additional educational tool in confession (it often happens that when a small child behaves badly, a naive and kind mother asks the priest to confess him, thinking that if he repents, he will obey). Or some kind of apeishness towards adults on the part of the child himself - I like it: they stand, approach, and the priest tells them something. Nothing good comes from this. For most people, moral consciousness awakens much later. I don't see anything catastrophic in this. Let them come at nine or ten years old, when they have a greater degree of maturity and responsibility for their lives. In fact, the earlier a child confesses, the worse it is for him - apparently, it’s not for nothing that children are not charged with sins until they are seven years old. Only from a fairly later age do they perceive confession as a confession, and not as a list of what was said by mom or dad and written down on paper. And this formalization of confession, which occurs in a child, in the modern practice of our church life is a rather dangerous thing.
2. How often should a child be confessed?
Partly through my own mistakes, partly by consulting with more experienced priests, I came to the conclusion that children should be confessed as rarely as possible. Not as often as possible, but as little as possible. The worst thing you can do is introduce weekly confession for children. For them, it most of all leads to formalization. So they went and simply received communion every Sunday, or at least often, which is also a question of whether it is right for a child, and then - from the age of seven - they are also taken almost every Sunday to the prayer of permission. Children very quickly learn to say the right thing to the priest - what the priest expects. He didn’t listen to his mother, was rude at school, and stole an eraser. This list is easily restored. And they don’t even come across what confession is as repentance. And it happens that for whole years they come to confession with the same words: I don’t obey, I’m rude, I’m lazy, I forget to say my prayers - this is a short set of common childhood sins. The priest, seeing that besides this child there are many other people standing next to him, absolves him of his sins this time too. But after several years, such a “churched” child will have no idea what repentance is. It is not difficult for him to say that he did this or that badly, to “mumble something” from a piece of paper or from memory, for which they will either pat him on the head or say: “Kolya, no need to steal pens.” ”, and then: “You don’t need to get used (yes, then get used to it) to cigarettes, look at these magazines,” and then on an increasing scale. And then Kolya will say: “I don’t want to listen to you.” Masha can tell too, but girls usually mature faster; they manage to gain personal spiritual experience before they can come to such a decision.
When a child is brought to the clinic for the first time and forced to undress in front of the doctor, he, of course, is embarrassed, it is unpleasant for him, but if they put him in the hospital and lift up his shirt every day before the injection, he will begin to do this completely automatically without any emotions. Likewise, confession after some time may no longer cause him any worries. Therefore, you can bless them for Communion quite often, but children need to confess as rarely as possible. Indeed, for many practical reasons, we cannot share Communion and the Sacrament of Repentance with adults for a long time, but to children, perhaps, we could apply this norm and say that responsible serious confession of a boy or girl can be carried out with a fairly large frequency, and otherwise time to give them a blessing for communion. I think it would be good, after consulting with a confessor, to confess such a little sinner for the first time at seven years old, the second time at eight, and the third time at nine years old, somewhat delaying the beginning of frequent, regular confession so that in no case does it become a habit. For adults, for many practical reasons, we really cannot share Communion and the Sacrament of Repentance for a long time, but to children we could probably apply this norm and say that responsible serious confession of a boy or girl can be carried out with a fairly large frequency, and the rest can be given to them blessing for the sacrament, introduce this not into the initiative of the priest, but into the canonical norm.
3. How often should young children be given communion?
It is good to give Holy Communion to infants often, since we believe that the reception of the Holy Mysteries of Christ is taught to us for the health of soul and body. And the baby is sanctified as having no sins, uniting with its physical nature with the Lord in the Sacrament of Communion. But when children begin to grow up and when they already learn that this is the Blood and Body of Christ and that this is a Sacred Thing, it is very important not to turn Communion into a weekly procedure, when they frolic in front of the Chalice and approach it, without really thinking about what they make. And if you see that your child was capricious before the service, annoyed you when the priest’s sermon went a little too long, or got into a fight with one of his peers standing right there at the service, do not allow him to approach the Chalice. Let him understand that it is not possible to approach Communion in every condition. He will only treat him more reverently. And it’s better to let him take communion a little less often than you would like, but to understand why he comes to church. It is very important that parents do not begin to treat their child’s communion as some kind of magic, shifting onto God what we ourselves must do. However, the Lord expects from us what we can and should do ourselves, including in relation to our children. And only where our strength is not there, God’s grace fills it. As they say in another church sacrament, “he heals the weak, he replenishes the poor.” But what you can do, do it yourself.
4. Parental participation in preparation for confession
The main thing that parents need to avoid when preparing a child for confession, including the first one, is telling him lists of those sins that, from their point of view, he has, or, rather, automatically transferring some of his not the best qualities into the category of sins for which he must repent to the priest. And, of course, under no circumstances should you ask a child after confession what he said to the priest and what he said in response, and whether he forgot about such and such a sin. In this case, parents must step aside and understand that Confession, even of a seven-year-old person, is a Sacrament. Interference by anyone in the Church Sacrament, especially such a delicate one as the Sacrament of Confession, is completely unacceptable. And any intrusion into where there is only God, the person confessing and the priest receiving confession, is harmful. The child can share what he said if he wants to. But there is no need to show our extreme interest in this. He told it - okay, no - it’s okay... More often than not, children say not what they themselves said in confession, but what they heard from the priest. There is no need to stop them in this, but it is impossible to enter into any discussion and interpretation of the priest’s words, or, especially, criticism, if this does not coincide with what, in our opinion, our child would need to hear. Moreover, based on these words of the child, it is impossible to then go and find out something from the priest. Or try to help him treat his own child more correctly: you know, father, Vasya told me that you gave him such advice, but I know that he didn’t explain everything to you quite correctly, so you didn’t quite understand, and it would be better Next time you should tell him this and that. Of course, you need to restrain yourself from such maternal pressure. In cases where this consciousness needs to be cultivated in parishioners, it must be cultivated through preaching, through the very organization of confession, through repeated prior notification that one should not come too close, one should not react in any way if you do something accidentally heard during confession. Maybe hold special conversations with parents and grandparents about their delicate attitude towards confession of children and grandchildren. All this, of course, can take place in one form or another.
5. How to teach a child to confess correctly
You need to encourage your children not on how to confess, but on the very necessity of confession. Through your own example, through the ability to openly confess your sins to your loved ones, to your child, if they are guilty of it. Through our attitude to Confession, since when we go to receive communion and realize our unpeacefulness or the insults that we have caused to others, we must first of all make peace with everyone. And all this taken together cannot but instill in children a reverent attitude towards this Sacrament.
And the main teacher of how a child should repent should be the performer of this Sacrament - the priest. After all, repentance is not only a certain internal state, but also a Church Sacrament. It is no coincidence that confession is called the Sacrament of Repentance. Depending on the degree of spiritual maturation of the child, he must be brought to the first confession. The parents’ task is to explain what confession is and why it is needed. They must explain to the child that confession has nothing to do with his reporting to them or to the school principal. This is that and only that which we ourselves recognize as bad and unkind in us, as bad and dirty and which we are very unhappy about, which is difficult to say, and which needs to be told to God. And then this area of teaching must be transferred into the hands of an attentive, worthy, loving confessor, for he is given in the Sacrament of the Priesthood the grace-filled help to talk with a person, including a little one, about his sins. And it is more natural for him to talk to him about repentance than for his parents, for this is precisely the case when it is impossible and unhelpful to appeal to one’s own examples or to the examples of people known to him. Telling your child how you yourself repented for the first time - there is some kind of falsehood and false edification in this. We didn’t repent in order to tell anyone about it. It would be no less false to tell him about how our loved ones, through repentance, moved away from certain sins, because this would mean at least indirectly judging and evaluating the sins in which they remained. Therefore, it is most reasonable to entrust the child into the hands of one who has been appointed by God as a teacher of the Sacrament of Confession.
6. Can a child choose which priest to confess to?
If the heart of a little person feels that he wants to confess to this particular priest, who may be younger, more kindly than the one you yourself go to, or perhaps attracted with his preaching, trust your child, let him go there, where no one and nothing will prevent him from repenting of his sins before God. And even if he does not immediately decide on his choice, even if his first decision turns out to be not the most reliable, and he soon realizes that he does not want to go to Father John, but wants to go to Father Peter, let him choose and settle on this. Finding spiritual fatherhood is a very delicate, internally intimate process, and there is no need to intrude on it. This way you will help your child more.
And if, as a result of his internal spiritual search, a child says that his heart is attached to another parish, where his friend Tanya goes, and what he likes there better - how they sing, and how the priest talks, and how people treat each other, then the wise Christian parents, of course, will rejoice at this step of their child and will not think with fear or distrust: did he go to the service, and, in fact, why is he not where we are? We need to entrust our children to God, then He Himself will preserve them.
In general, it seems to me that sometimes it is important and useful for parents themselves to send their children, starting from a certain age, to another parish, so that they are not with us, not in front of our eyes, so that this typical parental temptation does not arise - with peripheral vision check to see how our child is doing, is he praying, is he chatting, why was he not allowed to receive Communion, for what sins? Maybe we can understand this, indirectly, from our conversation with the priest? It’s almost impossible to get rid of such feelings if your child is next to you in church. When children are small, then parental supervision is reasonably understandable and necessary, but when they become adolescents, then perhaps it is better to courageously stop this kind of intimacy with them, moving away from their lives, belittling yourself in order to be more of Christ, and less than you.
7. How to instill in children a reverent attitude towards Communion and divine services
First of all, parents themselves need to love the Church, church life and love every person in it, including little ones. And those who love the Church will be able to pass this on to their child. This is the main thing, and everything else is just specific techniques.
I remember the story of Archpriest Vladimir Vorobyov, who as a child was taken to Communion only a few times a year, but he remembers each time, and when it was, and what a spiritual experience it was. Then, during Stalin’s time, it was forbidden to go to church often. Because if even your comrades saw you, it could threaten not only the loss of education, but also prison. And Father Vladimir remembers every time he came to church, which was a great event for him. There was no question of being naughty during the service, talking over each other, chatting with peers. It was necessary to come to the liturgy, pray, partake of the Holy Mysteries of Christ and live in anticipation of the next such meeting. It seems that we should understand Communion, including small children who have entered a time of relative consciousness, not only as a medicine for the health of soul and body, but as something immeasurably more important. Even a child should perceive it primarily as a union with Christ.
The main thing you need to think about is that attending services and communion becomes for the child not something we force him to do, but something he must earn. We must try to restructure our intra-family attitude towards worship in such a way that we do not drag our youth down to receive communion, and he himself, after completing a certain path that prepares him for receiving the Holy Mysteries of Christ, would receive the right to come to the Liturgy and partake. And, perhaps, it would be better that on Sunday morning we would not bother our child who was having fun on Saturday evening: “Get up, we are late for the liturgy!”, and he would wake up without us and see that the house is empty. And he found himself without parents, and without a church, and without the holiday of God. Even though he had previously only come to the service for half an hour, to the communion itself, he still cannot help but feel some inconsistency between lying in bed on Sunday and what every Orthodox Christian should do at this time. When you return from church, do not reproach your youth with words. Perhaps your inner grief over his absence from the liturgy will resonate in him even more effectively than ten parental urgings “come on,” “get ready,” “read your prayers.”
Therefore, parents of their child, even at his conscious age, should never encourage him to confess or take communion. And if they can restrain themselves in this, then the grace of God will certainly touch his soul and help him not to get lost in the sacraments of the church.
These are just a few points related to the modern practice of children's confession, which I presented simply as an invitation for us to continue to discuss this, and probably in a very weak discussion form. But I would like people who are significantly more spiritually experienced and have had spiritual practice for decades to speak out on this matter.
Source: Portal Bogoslov.ru
