“God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only
Son into the world so that we might live through him.” 1 John 4:9
Together we wish you all a very happy and blessed Christmas, and God’s richest blessings in the year that lies ahead.
The world at the end of 2016 seems a very different place than it
did at this time last year.
People speak of a profound and
pervasive sense of uncertainty and insecurity all around us.
Many
are now finding themselves asking questions about their identity in a
new and bewildered way. Is our deepest identity to be found in the
local setting, or in a wider context? How local a setting, and how much
wider a context?
From a Christian perspective, our fullest identity is found in our
being children of God, an identity we share with everyone on this
planet.
This is the central message of the Gospel and it is presented
with a supreme clarity in the Christmas story. God comes among us in
the person of Jesus Christ, not as an outsider but as fully human and
with a perfect love for all humankind.
The story of Christmas is however the story of someone who does not
fit easily into neat categories. Jesus Christ became, for a time, a
migrant child. He and his family fled to a foreign country because
their lives were at risk.
The plight of so many hundreds of thousands of
displaced people in the world today gives us all cause for thought. If
our concern with our own identity allows us to think of others as less
worthy of God’s love or less in his heart of love than are we, then we
are both deluded and dangerous.
But Christmas, with its message of joy
and hope, is a celebration of the real identity we all share in the love
of Jesus Christ for us.
Let us bring that joy and hope into our Christmas festivities and into the coming year.
+Richard +Eamon
Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh Roman Catholic Archbishop of Armagh