A message from His Grace, Bishop Thomas, about the 2012 Creative Festivals:

The Bible Bowl for 2012 will be centered on the Epistle to the Romans. Materials to help prepare your teams can be obtained here. Please remember, all Bible Bowl questions will come directly from the text and not from the website.

Please also encourage your senior and junior SOYO members to participate in all of the festivals of the conference. Please go to the Festivals web page for additional information on the festivals contests, which will be added to the site in the coming weeks.

Lastly, please talk to your church school directors, youth directors and Teen SOYO advisers, and encourage them to include time in their activities to prepare for the Oratorical, Creative Arts, Photo, Writing and Poetry contests for the upcoming church year.

On behalf of the Metropolitan, thank you for your cooperation in making next year’s PLC a success!

Yours in Christ,

+Bp. THOMAS

After the Hierarchical Divine Liturgy. Flanking Bishop Thomas, Fr. Ted Pulcini and Dn. Evangelos Prieston. In the front row: altar servers Herman Makosky, Kosta Sideras, and Nicholas Kauffman; Sbdn. Joseph MerlinaAs the parishioners of St. Mary Church in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania were concluding their observance of the Dormition Fast in preparation for the Great Feast of the Dormition, their parish nameday, Bishop Thomas arrived in Chambersburg to celebrate with them.

Fr. Ted Pulcini, St. Mary’s pastor, drove His Grace into Chambersburg during the afternoon of Friday, August 12. That evening Bishop Thomas presided over the final Paraklesis service of the fast, leading a group of parishioners in their supplications to the Mother of God.

The next morning, Fr. Ted accompanied Sayyidna to the St. Seraphim Center, a FOCUS-affiliated ministry conducted by the parish to feed the needy in the Chambersburg area. The Center serves lunch to some 35 to 45 guests twice a week (on Thursdays and Saturdays), complementing the lunch schedule of the local Salvation Army. The Center will be observing its second anniversary this fall and is now well recognized as a welcoming community center in the Chambersburg area. Since last fall, the Center has also offered recycled articles of clothing, free of charge, to men, women, and children who need them. Bishop Thomas commended the work of the Center and gave his enthusiastic blessing to its continued efforts.

Please join us at the Antiochian Village from September 23-25, 2011 for the Patronal Feast of St. Thekla Convent. This is the 33rd Annual Pilgrimage at the Village and the 3rd since the founding of the monastery.

As Orthodox Christians, our lives are a type of pilgrimage, so why set time aside to attend the St. Thekla Pilgrimage? The key is in "setting aside." We invite you "to set aside all earthly cares" and to join us in refocusing and refreshing ourselves in our Orthodox life. Like St. Thekla, Protomartyr and Equal to the Apostles, together we will pray at the Divine Liturgy and services, obtain guidance and direction from the Gospels for our lives at home, and enjoy fellowship with other pilgrims.

Through the intercession of Saint Thekla, may this Pilgrimage be blessed!

Speakers and Workshops

The speakers for the weekend are His Grace, Bishop Thomas, who is our guest Hierarch and Mother Alexandra, who will offer a talk on prayer.

There will be four workshop sessions offered concurrently:

Orthodox Family Life

This session will discuss the daily Pilgrimage of Orthodox life in our homes, how faith directs us and how the love of God binds us.

His Grace prays over newly tonsured Reader Jude Hobbs

On Friday, June 24, 2011, on the Feast of the Nativity of St. John the Baptist, Bishop Thomas, the bishop of the Diocese of Charleston, Oakland, and the Mid-Atlantic, made an episcopal visit to the faithful at St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church in Lewistown, Maryland. St. John the Baptist Mission is the only Western Rite church in Maryland, and is one of only four Antiochian Orthodox churches in the United States that has taken the Forerunner of Christ for their name and patron saint. Bishop Thomas’ visitation coincided with the mission’s celebration of their annual patronal feast.

The celebration began with evening Vespers, followed by the tonsuring of Reader Jude (Marty) Hobbs by Bishop Thomas. The fact that Marty keeps a shaved head gave occasion for a bit of levity as Bishop Thomas took up the scissors, looked at Marty’s head, and proclaimed, “We’ll see what we can do here!” A bit of Marty’s goatee was sufficient for the ritual tonsuring, and with the prayers of consecration said by His Grace, the newly tonsured Reader Jude chanted his first epistle reading from Philippians 2 before Bishop Thomas and the people of St. John the Baptist.