Each Christmas, we gather together in great joy and festivity to have our Christmas dinner, our Christmas lunch, to open presents. But if the truth be known, it’s a very hectic, busy time in which we struggle. And in this time of our lives, we’re struggling to put the food on the table this year. We’re struggling to buy the gifts which we want to buy, and as we move towards Christmas, we recognise so much of what we don’t have. We recognise the stress that the world’s under and also our own difficulties.
This Christmas, I ask you to do one very simple thing that is to recognise that all these things that bother us are in fact not about Christmas at all. Christmas is not about Santa Claus, and not about reindeers, not about Christmas trees or presents. It’s about that little image that we often forget of the manger with Jesus, Mary and Joseph, perhaps a few cows looking on, and maybe a few straggling shepherds that happen to be passing by.
“Christmas is about the gift of love, which is taught to us in the silence of the manger.”
I recommend that you enter that manger. Enter the manger and enter the silence of the manger. The manger is in stark contrast to where we come from. We come from noise, we come from stress. We come from wanting things that we can’t have. Enter the manger, where the only thing that matters is who is there and the silence. Take on that silence into your life. Receive the silence of the manger into your hearts, and then you will begin to find direction, proportion, and understanding of what life is.
Life is not the way life is outside the manger, but life’s possibility is given in that silence of midnight. It’s given in that quiet. As you enter that, you will begin to see who you are, what really matters, and that everything that you thought was important fades into nothingness, and you’ll begin to see as Mary, Joseph and Jesus see each other. You’ll begin to see what is important in life. You’ll begin to recognise the people that you love, and in the silence, you’ll begin to know how to love, because Christmas is about the gift of love, which is taught to us in the silence of the manger. Let us go there.
This Christmas, I will pray for you and I give you my blessing, my prayers and my wishes. Happy Christmas.
Bishop Greg Homeming OCD
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