St. Thomas the Apostle
Orthodox Church
With the blessing of Metropolitan NICHOLAS of Eastern America & New York
St. Thomas is a parish of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia. We are a small part of the Orthodox Church, presenting ancient Christianity & proclaiming the Gospel message through the tradition of the Russian Church.
All services are primarily in English.
For more information on upcoming services and events, please reference our calendar.
You can find information on daily readings, fasting, and today's featured saints - HERE.
Current parish announcements can be found on our our weekly bulletin.
Donations to the parish and contributions to the Building Initiative can be made HERE.
Founded in the summer of 2019, St. Thomas is growing. We are now meeting at our permanent home: 6151 Tobaccoville Road, Tobaccoville, NC 27050
The Triumph of Orthodoxy
The following are excerpts from the
Sermon given on the First Sunday of Lent
by St. Luke, Archbishop of Crimea
You can read the full sermon HERE.
"On the first Sunday of Lent, our Holy Church celebrates the Triumph of Orthodoxy, of true faith, which trampled down all heresies and was established. For this reason this Sunday is called the Sunday of Orthodoxy. Heresies showed up even at the very beginning of Christianity. The Apostles of Christ themselves warned their contemporaries, and with them us too, about the danger of false teachers....
The last in the line-up of heresies, the heresy of Iconoclasm, was the one that tormented our Orthodox Church the most. This heresy first appeared during the reign of Emperor Leo the Isaurian, who came to the throne in 717. He ascended the throne with the help of the army, which had many opponents of those who venerate holy icons, within its ranks. Because he wanted to please the army he started a harsh persecution against Iconophiles.
We can not begin to describe the suffering endured by the Church during the years of Iconoclasm, and especially the monks who were in the frontline in the battle for holy icons. The Iconoclast emperors closed many monasteries and turned many churches which had icons into shells. The monks were savagely beaten: they took out their eyes, noses were cut off, icons were broken on their heads. They burnt the fingers of icon-painting hagiographers with burning irons.
The persecution only stopped when Empress Irene came to the throne of the Byzantine Empire, but this was not yet final. In 787 Irene convened the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which set down Orthodox teaching on the veneration of holy icons. But even after this Council Iconoclast emperors still existed, for example, Michael and others. The heresy was crushed only under the God-fearing Augusta, Theodora, when a local council was convened in Constantinople in 842, which upheld the Orthodox teaching. The council pronounced an anathema on all those who dare to say that the veneration of holy icons is idolatry and that Orthodox Christians are idolaters."
