Bishop’s Christmas Message

TEXT OF MESSAGE

First of all, I want to wish everyone a very happy Christmas, and that I do that with all my heart.

 

It is my first Christmas in the Diocese, and it is good to be here. I’m still being welcomed by people all the time, and welcome is the loveliest thing. We all need it, all the time.. And isn’t it at the heart of Christmas?

 

So, for me personally, this Christmas is a time of gratitude, and especially this year for my ordination in Ballaghaderreen on January the 27 last stands out above all else. The profound and moving and beautiful ceremony, so meticulously prepared by priests and people of Ballaghaderreen and the Diocese, the unity of people from all the parishes, my family and friends, fellow priests and Bishops from all over Ireland, all together, united in praise and prayer as one communion, one church. Nothing narrow or inward-looking, just immense welcome, openness and joy. A bit like what we all hope for at Christmas.

And isn’t it true, that’s just what the little child in Bethlehem evokes.. A deep joy and gratitude, the new-born child Jesus who is Son of God, reducing us to silent wonderment and peace… at all the promise his birth holds out for us

 

I’m very conscious as we all are, that though we wish each other happiness at this time and this above all we want for each other, nevertheless  It is so true also that it is often precisely at Christmas we realise that achieving the happiness we so long for is often an unfinished business. For many, the arrival of Christmas brings up only loneliness; it renews and intensifies grief for people who have lost loved ones. Christmas sometimes only serves to sharpen pain.  My prayer is that people, who find Christmas difficult this year, will find in the Crib deep empathy with all they are going through.

 

The idea of a child being born in an outhouse is appalling and Mary and Joseph were all alone, unwelcome. 

Yet we celebrate the birth of the infant Jesus like no other birth is celebrated…the life of this new-born child all the more precious because of the circumstances of his coming to the world. His life redeems all poverty, all desolation, all sorrow, all that is inhuman…

 

So I pray that we be renewed in Hope this Christmas, all of us…

 

There’s a lot of gloomy prediction for the New Year at so many levels. But we remember that we had a great experience of unity at that ceremony in Ballaghaderreen Cathedral on Jan 27 last; and now we remember the Christmas fact that there is a Child born for us who is our true Saviour; These things bring home to us that God has not deserted us, nor is he finished with us at all, but wants us to gather together anew, work as lámh a cheile to support one another, to share with those in need, to give hope and new life in the midst of a world that might seems at times to be about to be falling in all around us

 

It was out of the most unpromising of all situations that the first Christmas happened. That’s why we love Christmas: it fills us with hope, a hope in which we will not be disappointed.

 

So for old as well as young, parents as well as children, people who are on their own and people who will be with family and friends, may the celebration of the birth of Jesus this year strengthen our faith, for whatever our circumstances, the God who is love is with us.

 

Isn’t that the happiness of Christmas?