Română
Fr. Claudiu gives us a stunning Orthodox Christian interpretation of a classic story for children, “Little Red Riding Hood”.
Subtitles: English, Romanian
Full text of the story: https://americanliterature.com/childrens-stories/little-red-riding-hood
Fr. Claudiu Melean:
The story has some very delicate questions, for example:
Which mother who loves her daughter sends her alone through the forest to her grandmother? Alone… at the risk of getting lost, and she says, “Be careful not to get lost!” A very high risk… would you send your child alone through the forest? No…
This is a first question… Then another question:
If you know there are wolves in the forest, why would you send your child alone?
This is a big problem… Another question:
Which wolf waits and talks with a child, “where are you going, what are you doing?” Well, what does a wolf want? To eat her… why didn’t he eat her? Why did he wait to go far away, to grandma, to eat grandma first… did not eat directly the child… another question …
There are a few more but I’ll talk about them along the way…
Do you know the Person who loves His child very much and sends him through the forest alone?
God…
Yes, this is what God does with us… He sends us into this world like in a forest, in which he knows there are wolves, so that we can learn to survive…
Think about it like this… We are sent as the Little Red Riding Hood, to gain, the symbol of the grandmother, the image of the eternal life… that is what we must acquire.
To get through the forest, to escape from the wolf and to gain eternal life.
But He gives us supplies, you know? Do you know what her mother put into the little girl’s bag?
I was angry when I first read it to my daughters… I read them differently: cake and bread… But in the story we have “cake and wine”…
Wine for a kid? Alcohol for a child? How it comes? And her grandmother? Why does she need wine? If she is sick, poor woman… Well if she takes antibiotics… this even makes things worse… No, that’s the symbol of Holy Communion! It’s not random… “Provision for the journey of eternal life.” [1st Prayer, St. Basil the Great]
Now, look! Do you know why the wolf didn’t want to eat the girl?
Because he was not satisfied with her body, but wanted to eat her eternal life…
That’s why he talks with her, he is the “noetic wolf”, this is how he is called in one of the pre-communion prayers. [2nd prayer] “I may not become a prey to the noetic wolf” The wolf who understands…
But what her mother tells her? “Do not deviate neither to the left nor to the right, so as not to get lost!”
God gives us a way, the way of eternal life, with His Spirit… How can you not turn to the right or to the left?
When you see beautiful flowers and small mushrooms… Do you know what these are? These are sweet sins… “Ah, I have to taste a bite, just a little…”
If little girl had not sinned she would have gone directly to her grandmother, would have taken eternal life and all the happiness, the wolf wouldn’t have touched her…
When we start to sin… here is our struggle since we are baptized: How to get rid of the wolf? To avoid being deceived by him, because he is evil. The Savior says:”Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul… but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” [Matthew 10:28]
This is the sin, this is the hell which wants to swallow us, to eat us.
The wolf goes to her grandmother, we know, he eats her and then he enters her bed.
This is the delusion of the world, the devil pretends that he is the grandmother, the eternal life, the true happiness.
He pretends… and when man starts to ask himself some questions, the devil has some answers prepared, most of them funny, but he manages to convince many of us…
Why do you have such big eyes? To watch TV and computers, right? Isn’t that why they are so big?
Why is the mouth so big? To swallow you better… This is a lie of a false life that the world brings us. It is nothing but the deceit of the devil who seeks to swallow even the chosen ones.
But here we go again… the hunter is coming…
I was thinking who is the hunter? Do you know the troparion of the Pentecost? “Blessed art Thou, O Christ our God, Who hast revealed the fishermen as most wise by sending down upon them the Holy Spirit through them Thou captured the world…
Well, who is the hunter who wants to capture the world? How to hunt it? Well, not to shoot it, but to take it for the Kingdom! This is Christ! Christ comes and cut open the stomach of the wolf.
The Fathers of the Church say that Christ came down to hell and cut open the stomach of hell and He pulled out all those from the Old Testament, all those who were swallowed by hell…
This story of the Little Red Riding Hood seems very nice to me if we understand it like this…
