Christmas Greetings

"For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
- Isaiah 9:6

Dear Friends and Faithful of the Missionary Diocese of East and Southeast Asia, 

As we enter into the Christmas Season, our minds are filled with gratefulness for the goodness of God over the last year. We have been through a lot. In many ways, our time in 2020 has been the most challenging in many of our lives. 

We’ve lost good friends, some to natural causes, but a few to the dreaded scourge of COVID19. Our prayers go out to all those who lost family, who are facing this season of winter cheer with nagging emptiness in their chests, and our hearts are with the many friends and family who have slid into depression and despair because of the isolation of these quarantined months. 

Yet, in the midst of these sobering reflections, we also rejoice in the beauty and grace that God has revealed to us in the midst of struggle and sorrow. Many new babies were born, many new converts were made, and our diocese grew exponentially in Southeast Asia, as God brought many faithful priests onboard our mission. 

Our rejoicing this year is for the hope that the Incarnation brings to us. Our “weary world” is plunged into darkness and depression. If God does not come to us in the midst of this fallenness, we have no hope of ever lifting ourselves out of this dark pit. Christ’s incarnation as a little baby in Bethlehem shows us God’s love for us, His desire to seek and save that which is lost, and to suffer with us. 

Jesus came, born of a young Virgin, born as a slave, as a marginalized and disregarded man in an insignificant place. He made friends with beggars and fishermen. He was hated by the religious elite and the political figures of the day. He spoke in simple words, in a creole of Greek and Aramaic, and not in the persuasive Attic Greek or the powerful Roman Latin of His contemporary world. By all accounts, He was a failure, unmarried, unloved, associating with other losers, whose life or death meant nothing to anyone. 

And, yet… 

The flame of the glorious Gospel, the incendiary and unstoppable power of the Word of God, and the hope that all mankind was valuable and loved by Him, turned the world upside-down and brought about freedom, justice, hope, and an outpouring of divinely inspired worship that made human culture and the world beautiful! There is nothing like it, ever, in human history. 

“God became Man, so that men could become gods”, as St. Athanasius and St. Irenaeus both said about the Incarnation. 

God became Man, so that we could see the indescribable, the unfathomable, the completely unknowable. We could know Him and be known by Him. We could love Him and be loved by Him. God broke the Apophatic God of the Philosophers, and spoke to the peasant in their own language! 

And all of this started in a feeding trough, a bed made of dry grass, a metaphor for our short, miserable, painful existences, in a little cave in an insignificant little town on the edge of a cruel and self-important Empire. God began the process of re-creating the universe from a hole in the ground! 

Christ is born! Glorify Him! 

Bp. Joseph

(Ancient  Church of the West)