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You are here: Home / Archives for Bishop Thomas

Nativity 2016 Message of Bishop Thomas

November 17, 2016 By St. Paul Emmaus

nativity-menologion-full

“The Word became flesh:” in this is the ultimate joy of the Christian faith. In this is the fullness of revelation. The same incarnate Lord is both perfect God and perfect man. The full significance and the ultimate purpose of human existence is revealed and realized in and through the Incarnation. He came down from Heaven to redeem the earth, to unite man with God for ever. “And became man.” The new age has been initiated. We count now the “anni Domini [years of the Lord]!” As St. Irenaeus wrote: “the Son of God became the Son of Man, that man also might become the son of God.” Not only is the original fullness of human nature restored or re-established in the Incarnation. Not only does human nature return to its once lost communion with God. The Incarnation is also the new revelation, the new and further step. The first Adam was a living soul. But the last Adam is the Lord from Heaven (1 Cor. 15:47).

– Protopresbyter Georges V. Florovsky, Incarnation and Redemption

Although with the Annunciation we have the moment of the Incarnation itself, the public appearance on this earth of the Lord of Heaven at His Nativity is celebrated most festively in December as the beginning of the story of our salvation. And it is right that we should celebrate. Can there be anything, other than the divine moment of Pascha, which should bring us more joy than the coming of our God?

But our celebration has to be based in an understanding of what is actually happening with the revelation of the Son of God as the Son of Man. It is not the moment where He steps into a story already known and already revealed. It is the moment when the final chapter of the story itself has begun, when we begin to discover how the story will be consummated, how the divine Hero and conquering King makes His appearance and what He is about to do.

This moment of the Nativity of Jesus Christ is fundamentally new content, new narrative, new history. It is in a sense even a “surprise ending,” for neither death nor the devil—nor much of mankind—expected that the Lord from Heaven should come to us as a babe, a babe Whose mission is to destroy death itself. That is why we cry out: Christ is born! Glorify Him!

Yours in Christ,

Rt. Rev. Bishop THOMAS (Joseph)
Auxiliary Bishop, Diocese of Charleston, Oakland, and the Mid-Atlantic

Filed Under: News & Events Tagged With: 2016, Bishop Thomas, Nativity of Christ

Pascha 2016 Message of Bishop Thomas

April 19, 2016 By St. Paul Emmaus

resurrection4

GREAT AND HOLY PASCHA 2016

Beloved brother Hierarchs, Reverend Clergy, God-fearing Monastics, and all my Brothers and Sisters in Jesus Christ our True God:

Christ is risen! Indeed, He is risen!

Yesterday I was crucified with Him; today I am glorified with Him; yesterday I died with Him; today I am quickened with Him; yesterday I was buried with Him; today I rise with Him. But let us offer to Him Who suffered and rose again for us— you will think perhaps that I am going to say gold, or silver, or woven work or transparent and costly stones, the mere passing material of earth, that remains here below, and is for the most part always possessed by bad men, slaves of the world and of the Prince of the world. Let us offer ourselves, the possession most precious to God, and most fitting; let us give back to the Image what is made after the Image. Let us recognize our Dignity; let us honor our Archetype; let us know the power of the Mystery, and for what Christ died.

—St. Gregory the Theologian, Oration 1.4

The great sacrifice that Christ our High Priest has made for us on the Cross, the sacrifice which enables our sanctification when we partake of it worthily, has been fulfilled for us in the resurrection of Jesus, the first-born from the dead (Col. 1:18). What has been offered is shown to be a perfect Offering well-pleasing to God, as Jesus Christ is both Offerer and Offering, the One Who both distributes and is distributed in this sacrifice given for us.

In the context of that mystery of sacrifice, St. Gregory the Theologian urges us to offer not gold or silver or other earthly possessions but rather ourselves. When we are also sacrificially offered with Christ on the altar by being crucified with Christ, when our true dignity is revealed of being sanctified as brothers and sisters with the One Who sanctifies (Heb. 2:11), then we know “the power of the Mystery, and for what Christ died.” He died so that we might rise and be glorified together with Him, that the resurrection He inaugurated may be continued even in us.

Yours in the Risen Christ,

Rt. Rev. Bishop THOMAS (Joseph)
Auxiliary Bishop, Diocese of Charleston, Oakland, and the Mid-Atlantic

Filed Under: News & Events Tagged With: 2016, Bishop Thomas, Pascha

Nativity 2015 Message of Bishop THOMAS

December 14, 2015 By St. Paul Emmaus

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Our Saviour, dearly-beloved, was born today: let us be glad. For there is no proper place for sadness, when we keep the birthday of the Life, which destroys the fear of mortality and brings to us the joy of promised eternity. No one is kept from sharing in this happiness. There is for all one common measure of joy, because as our Lord, the destroyer of sin and death, finds none free from the charge, so He comes to free us all. Let the saint exult in that he draws near to victory. Let the sinner be glad in that he is invited to being pardoned. Let the Gentile take courage in that he is called to life. For the Son of God in the fullness of time which the inscrutable depth of the Divine counsel has determined, has taken on Him the nature of man, thereby to reconcile it to its Author: in order that the inventor of death, the devil, might be conquered.

– St. Leo the Great, Sermon 21 on the Nativity of Christ

The universality of what is begun in Christ’s coming to our earth should give us all hope. He did not come only as the Messiah of the Jews, but also as the Christ Who invites all of us to life. He did not come only to give salvation and victory to the saint but also pardon and gladness to the sinner, transforming him into a saint.

The nature that the Son of God took upon Himself was the human nature, the one nature that we all share with each other and now, as God ordained, with Him as well. We therefore cannot do anything other than to look into one another’s eyes and see our common humanity, our brotherhood which we have had from our very creation. But even more than that, we look into one another’s eyes and see there the very image of God, the face of Jesus Christ according to Whom we were made from the beginning.

So let us love one another as He has loved us by His oneness with us. This is the spirit and the meaning of Christmas, that we set aside our selfishness and join as brothers and sisters in the warmth and love of our universal Savior Jesus. Christ is born! Glorify Him!

Yours in Christ,

Rt. Rev. Bishop THOMAS (Joseph)
Auxiliary Bishop, Diocese of Charleston, Oakland, and the Mid-Atlantic

Filed Under: News & Events Tagged With: 2015, Bishop Thomas, Nativity of Christ

Oct. 10-11: Bishop Thomas to visit St. Paul’s in Emmaus

August 26, 2015 By St. Paul Emmaus

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Wherever the bishop is, the whole congregation is to be present. —St. Ignatius of Antioch

On the weekend of October 10-11, 2015, His Grace, the Right Reverend Bishop THOMAS (Joseph), Auxiliary Bishop serving in the Antiochian Orthodox Christian Diocese of Charleston, Oakland and the Mid-Atlantic, will make his annual archpastoral visit to St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.

His Grace’s biography can be read at this link.

The schedule for His Grace’s visit is as follows:

Saturday, October 10:

  • 8am Men’s Breakfast at the Superior Restaurant in Emmaus
  • 12pm Lunch with the Antiochian Women of St. Paul’s at the 1760 Pub and Grille in Trexlertown (RSVP to Mary Ann Shahda)
  • 5pm Great Vespers, with His Grace presiding from his throne
  • 6:30pm Dinner and Bowling with St. Paul’s teens

Sunday, October 11:

  • 8am Matins, with the ordination of Patrick Maher as subdeacon
  • 9am HIERARCHICAL DIVINE LITURGY, served by His Grace
  • 10:30am Potluck Brunch, with Q&A with church school children
  • 6pm Dinner with Parish Council

Filed Under: Education, News & Events, Services Tagged With: 2015, Bishop Thomas

Pascha 2015 Message of Bishop Thomas

March 27, 2015 By St. Paul Emmaus

resurrection-detail

GREAT AND HOLY PASCHA 2015

Beloved brother Hierarchs, Reverend Clergy, God-fearing Monastics, and all my Brothers and Sisters in Jesus Christ our True God:

Christ is risen! Indeed, He is risen!

There is nothing after Christ and nothing other than Christ. If you are not an extension of Him or an expression of Him, then you are nothing. At Pascha, I become Him or I am nothing. If I have loved Him, then I grow through Him and I grow in Him. I do not want anything in His place because He is everything. All the saints are in Him and unto Him, and if you look at their faces, do not look for them. Search for the face of Jesus traced upon them. How should I conduct myself at Pascha? My only affair with my soul is to bring it to the Lord. With Him it comes into existence. The Father is the beginning and the end and in Him the Christ of history pours forth. I am nothing if I do not become a person of Pascha, one who looks to the Father, the end point.

– Metropolitan Georges (Khodr) of Mount Lebanon, “Who Shall I Be at Pascha?”

As we celebrate Holy Pascha, we also each ask, “Who shall I be at Pascha?” This feast defines who we are, not just as a climax or triumph of the liturgical year, but as the very core of our life and, indeed, not just the core, but the whole of our life. Our task as Christians is to become an “extension” or “expression” of Christ, to become so like Him in communion with Him that the face of Jesus is also traced upon us.

We become ourselves at Pascha. We gain our true selves in the Resurrection of Jesus, that death-conquering act which shook the universe and spelled the end of the power of hell and the devil, freeing us from their domination which distorts us as persons. As the Holy Scripture tells us, “Since, therefore, the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same nature, that through death He might destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong bondage” (Heb. 2:14-15).

Yours in the Risen Christ,

Rt. Rev. Bishop THOMAS (Joseph)
Auxiliary Bishop, Diocese of Charleston, Oakland, and the Mid-Atlantic

Filed Under: News & Events, Slider Tagged With: 2015, Bishop Thomas, Pascha

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St. Paul Antiochian Orthodox Church

Planting the Seeds of Orthodoxy,
Cultivating Christian Community

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Emmaus, PA 18049

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