To the Venerable Pastors, God-loving Monastics and Devout Faithful of our Diocesan Family:

Christ is in our midst!

On September 1st, we celebrated the beginning of the Ecclesiastical Year with the prayer that our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ would make all things new by His Divine Grace. For the Orthodox Church in America, the past year has been full of turmoil and struggle, and so we should offer even more fervent prayers that the merciful Lord would grant us the newness of His Grace and the wisdom and strength to pass through the coming year with faith, with courage and with hope.

The revelations of financial impropriety within the central administration of the Church, as well as the ensuing controversies that have spread throughout the Church, have scandalized, hurt and saddened all of us. Our faith has been overshadowed by doubt, our courage has given way to faintheartedness and our hope has been clouded by the events of the past months. Some of us have been further hurt and frustrated by the long process that has brought these problems to light and the slow path to their resolution.

In all of these temptations, we can truly say that we have endured much humiliation in the eyes of the rest of the Orthodox world, in the eyes of the secular world, and in our own eyes. However, our task now is to respond to this humiliation in the most spiritually beneficial way. The Holy Fathers of the Church remind us that temptation and humiliation can lead either to despair or to humility. The way of the world leads to despair, the way of Christ leads to humility. I am therefore calling upon everyone within our Diocese of Eastern Pennsylvania to follow the way of Christ and not to follow the way of the world.

• Let us strive for love and not for justice. We can most truly fulfill the law of Christ by bearing one another’s burdens. The justice of the world can never comprehend the depths of Christian love, which assumes responsibility even for the sins and mistakes of others. If we blame ourselves, we preserve the unity of man through love; if we blame others, we become slaves to the justice of the world.

• Let us work towards the reconciliation of our wounded family by overcoming our own passions. In a family, conflict can either bring about the destruction of unity and love or it can conversely bring about healing and reconciliation. The most direct path to this healing and reconciliation is the nurturing of the virtues within our hearts and in our actions.

• Let us think positively and not negatively. As a result of the financial scandal, many good measures have been implemented to allow for honest and open discussion of the life of our Church. This discussion should be carried out in a spirit of mutual love and respect and not in a spirit of suspicion and anger. Just as the words of the Gospel are meaningless if we do not act upon those words through our life of virtue, so “Best Practices” and other such tools are useless if they are not used with a discerning mind and a pure heart.

• Let us not become paralyzed by our current financial troubles, but let us rather be inspired by the Precious Cross of Christ by which our Holy Church has always overcome temptation. The Lord of Glory Himself was nailed to the Cross and we should not imagine that it is possible for us to attain His Glory without bearing our own cross, nor should we fear that the enemy of mankind can separate us from Christ, Who has overcome the world.

• Most importantly, let us work: let us recall the rich history and tradition of our own Diocese, and of the Autocephalous Orthodox Church in America and continue to offer of our time and our talents for the spiritual growth of our families, our parishes and our deaneries. The spreading of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the responsibility of all within our Diocese. We must begin with repentance in our own hearts and with love for God, which will bear fruit in our love for our neighbor. We must support our own parish priest and his family in his ministry; we must work to bring back the lost sheep of our parishes; we must offer hospitality to those who are seeking the True Faith; we must increase our inter-parish cooperation and come together as often as we can within our deaneries; we must support our diocesan programs and departments and our seminaries as they work towards increasing our missionary and educational activities.

Finally, as we make our way through this new Church year, let us strive to be watchful rather than judgmental; let us strive for honesty and truth in all things, without descending to the level of gossip and slander; let us strive for true humility, which is not defined as unquestioning acceptance, but rather as the boldness before the Lord in seeking our salvation and the salvation of our brother. Above all, let us show our love for one another through our prayers for one another: let us pray for our Metropolitan, let us pray for the Hierarchs of the Holy Synod, let us pray for the Members of the Metropolitan Council, let us pray for our clergy and our faithful and for one another at all times, so that we may indeed receive God’s mercy and His grace. For it is only by the power of Almighty God that we will find rest and peace from our earthly struggles and from the tempest of life. May this be so by God’s great and abundant love for mankind.


With love in Christ,

+ TIKHON

Bishop of Philadelphia and Eastern Pennsylvania