Dear everyone
This comes with my prayers, and wishing you a merry and peaceful Christmas and a happy new year.
At Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ our Saviour, the Prince of peace. We hear again the message of the angels ‘Glory to God in the highest and peace, goodwill to his people on earth’.
The message of the Christian faith is the proclamation of God’s salvation, God’s forgiveness, God’s mercy and love. This proclamation is shown forth in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ not only proclaims the good news, he is the good news of salvation. In the Christmas liturgies we will hear the message of the angels to the shepherds. This message is nothing more than the new age that dawns with the birth of the Christ Child. The dawning of an age of hope for peace throughout the world.
However, in our current age it is difficult to appreciate the dawning of this new age. Our world is full of conflict, as it always has been. The ‘little town of Bethlehem’, which we sing about in many of our Christmas carols, finds itself under siege. Unspeakable violence in Gaza and Lebanon. In Ukraine we see the most barbaric conflict brought about by human evil. And in recent days we are beginning to understand the horror of the Al-Assad regime in Syria. Nonetheless, the Bethlehem of the Christmas carols is surely the Bethlehem people still long for and dream about. It is also the Bethlehem of the human heart. We realise that both present day Bethlehem and the Bethlehem of the human heart are still hedged in by human violence, fear, sin and death. And because of our human sin, when Christ comes he finds no room for him in the inn. Christ, however never forces himself upon us, instead he waits for us to recognise him and to respond to him in the poor, the vulnerable, the suffering and the powerless.
Let our prayer be this day, and every day, that we may be given grace to let Christ into our hearts and to do our part, however small that may be, in building up God's Kingdom in our world, And in showing forth the light of Christ in the midst of the darkness.
Amen.
