“But Father!” objected the disturbed aspirant. Instruct me, please, holy Father, that I may attain to spiritual advancement.” Going to the bookshelf, the Abbot pulled down a copy of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. In talking with the venerable abbot of the monastery where he wished to stay, he told him, “Holy Father! My heart burns for the spiritual life, for asceticism, for unceasing communion with God, for obedience to an Elder. Not too many years ago a young monastic aspirant went to Mount Athos. It begins to also understand spiritual music. Music aids the development of the acceptance of spiritual lift.

When you have children, teach them music of course, real music and not dances and songs. It would be shameful for us in the case of food to reject the injurious, and at the same time, in the case of lessons, to take no account of what keeps the soul alive, but, like mountain streams, to sweep in everything that happens to be in our way. we must not take everything indiscriminately, but only what is profitable …. So in later days Daniel at Babylon was wise in the Chaldean philosophy, and ultimately apprehended the divine instruction…. The illustrious Moses is described as training his intellect in the science of the Egyptians, and so arriving at the contemplation of Him Who is. No source of instruction can be overlooked in the preparation for the great battle of lift, and there is a certain advantage to be derived from the right use of the heathen writers.

Seraphim Rose by Monk Damascene Christensen (ch. Taken from Not of this World: The Life and Teaching of Fr. This article exp lains the importance of good literature, art, music, and movies on the formation of a young child’s soul and has many wonderful suggestions throughout.

Young souls film