Bishop's Message - January 2025

Dearly beloved in Christ,

The sense of time is a uniquely human experience. As we begin a new year, with all its promises and challenges, we may have to deal with the challenges like guilt, anxiety and boredom. Thomas C. Oden, emphasises that anxiety, guilt and boredom are emotions, which have the potential to heighten personal and psychological challenges. Anxiety reveals a lack of trust in God’s providence, boredom points to a loss of connection with divine purpose, guilt exposes the need for repentance, and the need to trust in the grace of God. These challenges are also linked with the human experience of sin, the longing for God, and the search for meaning. Consequently anxiety, boredom, and guilt are not mere emotional states but points to deeper spiritual realities.

Standing at the beginning of a new year we can also feel anxious, guilt and boredom. It is like an unfamiliar and dangerous mountain road. We do not know what lies ahead. There is another angle to anxiety. When we pass through chronological pathways, we are reminded that our lifetime on earth has an end. Anxiety, could be a sign of our withdrawal from God’s presence. God speaks to our anxieties and promises to be with us. He will never leave us nor forsake us. Jesus Christ invites us to trust in God’s grace, and promises in our life journey. Anxiety is a product of forgetting that God holds the future and provides comfort in the midst of uncertainty. Trust in the Lord always. Guilt and emptiness also affect our life journey. The assurance of God’s presence in our pathways help us to move with Him without guilt, boredom, and guilt. Let’s move with Christ to the unknown by trusting Him wholeheartedly.

The Church observes all fasts and feasts that are related to the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Great Lent begins on March 2, 2025 this year. By observing the Great Lent, we remember forty days fast of our Lord in the desert. It will be followed by the commemoration of the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus during the passion week services.

What is the purpose of Fasting? Fasting is not just about giving up food, but it’s often about redirecting one's focus from worldly concerns toward God, prayer, and spiritual renewal. The purpose of fasting is often to seek a deeper relationship with God, engage in repentance, grow in self-discipline, and focus on prayer and reflection. Like so many Christians today some of us also believe that worship and fasting are merely private, inward act. All of the focus of fasting is on personal dimensions. However, the purpose of fasting is to transform us towards a holy life, which have social, communitarian and interpersonal impacts. It is for being empowered to change the world through our lives in the church and society. The real fast is to view our life in the prism of the life of Christ and to make changes within us to transform the world. (Isaiah 58: 6-8). In this sense, fasting is seen as a way to humble ourselves before God and to express our dependence to Him and our commitment to His Body – the Church.

I urges you all please observe the great lent with a passion to humble ourselves before God and to express our utmost dependence on Him. This would lead us to an in-Christ life experience as a true disciple of Christ in the Church and society.

This year’s Maramon convention is scheduled to be held on February 9, 2025 to 16, 2025 on the banks of the river Pampa. The aim of the convention is to deepen our faith in Christ through receiving the word of God, encourage Christian fellowship in our parishes, and inspire personal and corporate spiritual growth in the church. Let’s pray, participate and renew ourselves in the Lord.

In our fast-paced contemporary world, where our responsibilities and distractions abound and the demands of daily life often pull us in many directions, it is easy for us to lose sight of what truly matters—our relationship with God, age-old traditions, true church living and the strength of our families. The family is the basic unit of our church: Church is a family of families formed under the cross. “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” (Colossians 3: 1-3). Family is the first place where basic values like love, faith, and prayer are nurtured. As a called-out members of the Body of Christ – Church -, we are called to make our homes a place of prayer, worship, and communion. With this end, I am pleased to announce that this year has been chosen as the “Year of Family Prayer” in our diocese. I urge every family in our diocese to please accept this call, and consciously dedicate time in the morning and evening of everyday to family prayer, and to draw closer to God and to one another.

May the Lord God bless you and your families abundantly. Let’s continue to remain as a Liturgical or worshipping community.

With Prayerful regards

Yours’s in Christ’s service

Rt. Rev. PD. Dr. Joseph Mar Ivanios Episcopa

22nd January, 2025

MD/L/82/1/25