Let us celebrate the Feast of Christmas this year, with the fruits of our journey through Advent.
Christmas comes just after the shortest, darkest and sometimes bleakest days of the year. It celebrates God’s salvation, which has come into our world. The coronavirus at this time has a particularly powerful hold on us, and does represent an awareness of the greater kingdom of evil that Jesus came down from heaven to redeem and save us from. It is always important to keep our attention on the amount of goodness and people of great goodwill who are always at work among us.
At the moment life is very challenging and difficult. So a simple, “thank God”, for the vaccine with the hope that it brings light at the end of the tunnel. I remain with my old faults of communication, and particular difficulty with visiting in place, so I ask for patience and understanding.
I am grateful for all the help that is provided to our parish, helping with our celebration of Mass, providing the essential service of our parish, and help with streaming, which remains a particular challenge. Thanks be to God and to you all that financially and administratively our parish is functioning very well. I am very grateful to you for your gifts, greetings and donations to me this Christmas.
So sincerely, thanks be to God for Christmas and for salvation, for the fruits of our journey through the Sundays’ Advent Prayers. The First Sunday with its focus upon ‘hope’, the second ‘peace’, the third ‘joy’ and last Sunday ’love’. Let them be the fruits of our Christmas and Bishop Richard has presented us with a vision and a challenge for the next few years, so let us give it our full attention when we return in the new year.