CHAPEL MEDITATION

St. Alopen’s Chapel on the Last Night of Advent

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

Sitting in silence in our chapel tonight, commemorating Emmanuel, “God With Us” (Matthew 1:23), my thoughts turn to the breathtaking hope of a universe transformed by the union of God and Man. In the vastness of a cosmos spinning with unfathomable complexity - billions of stars, trillions of planets, and an immeasurable expanse of space - we, mere specks of dust, are filled with yet greater universes of order: cells, molecules, and atoms. 

Into this grandeur and mundane materiality, the eternal Word entered. The Creator stooped to His creation, stepping into the drama of this tiny blue world. Here, in the fleeting history of human consciousness, is encapsulated the whole divine history of salvation. “When the fullness of the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman” (Galatians 4:4), not only to redeem mankind but to infuse all creation with divine life, bringing the cosmos into harmony with its Creator. 

The Incarnation is not just the solution to the Fall; it is the mystery of the union of Creator and created, Spirit and matter, God and man. Christ, the Second Adam, has inaugurated a New Creation, recapitulating all things in Himself (Ephesians 1:10). His throne in Heaven is not a throne of abstract divinity but one where a man - Jesus of Nazareth - now reigns forever (Hebrews 1:8). He is both fully God and fully man, and in His glorified body, He bears the marks of His passion (John 20:27), eternally testifying to and bridging between God and humanity. 

This union began in the humble submission of the Theotokos, the Virgin Mary, who bore the infinite God within her finite womb. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14), and in that flesh, He reconciled the world to God (2 Corinthians 5:19). By His Incarnation, Passion, and Resurrection, Christ has established a New Covenant in His Blood (Luke 22:20), inaugurating a new race of redeemed humanity - those who are “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). 

Emmanuel - “God with us” - was not a passing moment of a defeated man. but an eternal reality of a God-King. Christ is the Head of a new humanity (1 Corinthians 15:45), and through His Body, the Church, we are being conformed to His image (Romans 8:29). As we partake of the Holy Mysteries, we are drawn deeper into His life, becoming what He is by grace: the redeemed, deified sons and daughters of God. 

This is the great mystery of salvation: that God has not only come to dwell among us but has made us His dwelling place (1 Corinthians 3:16). The end of history is not an ending at all but the eternal return of God among men, when “the dwelling place of God is with man” (Revelation 21:3). Heaven and earth will be united, and the cosmos itself will be transfigured by His glory, as “God will be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). The great hope of final restoration and reconciliation is found in the Name of Christ! 

This is Emmanuel. This is God with us - and us with God.