As I look back on the year that is now drawing to a close, one moment stands out, full of impact and resonance.
On 8 September, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died. On that day, we mourned the loss of a unique and gracious mother, grandmother and great-grandmother. We cherished her life of unstinting service, her example of devotion to duty, her steadfast witness of faith in Jesus Christ and his promises.
From the moment of her death carpets of flowers, messages and mementoes grew by the day. People lined our roads to pay their respects as her coffin passed by. It is estimated that half of the population of the world watched the funeral service from Westminster Abbey. But the four days during which more than 350,000 people queued, for up to fourteen hours, to honour the late Queen at her lying-in-state in Westminster Hall were the most telling.
This procession became a pilgrimage. For many a personal sense of grief and loss was united in a communal movement and in a shared desire to find and give meaning to a unique and powerful moment. Suffering and death always challenge our sense of purpose and meaning. This unique death laid bare our longing for clear signposts by which to continue the journey of life.
It was a moment for facing the dreadful possibility that life is, ultimately, futile or - alternatively - for remembering an ancient hope. Many priests took part in that pilgrimage. They told how, while queuing, they heard many confessions and spoke and prayed with many of those whom they met. And theirs was an experience shared by many.
In a similar way the magnificent processions of those days lifted us out of personal reflection towards a greater horizon. With each person playing their own part with true selflessness, they showed us the vital importance of ritual in forging us into something greater. In those ten days vital human and spiritual needs, often hidden or ignored, became increasingly evident.
Like an underground stream bursting into the sunlight, we saw something of our deeper characteristics as people and a nation: our esteem for service, our desire for coherence, our wish for an answer to isolation. From birth to death, and at all the significant milestones in between, celebration, communal ritual and community matter. They matter whether we are religious or not. They matter because they speak to life itself in all its joy and griefs.
In this light we should rejoice in the wonderful gift of our Catholic faith, in our liturgical rites - especially the Mass - and in our spiritual traditions and devotions. Through them we understand ourselves and our world in the light of Christ's death and resurrection. We learn how to read our own lives into the great narrative of our redemption. We must treasure the rituals we receive and the reality they bestow. We always need to nourish and refresh them, handing them on to our children and those who will come after we are gone.
This faith makes us into a people of profound hope: immersed fully in this life, yet with hearts attuned to God's kingdom and to the truth and beauty of heaven. In this faith we can enter thoroughly into the ebb and flow of existence, with all its failings, sorrows and joys. We are not afraid.
Another lesson is to be drawn from those remarkable days. The Gospel we are commissioned to announce may be unfamiliar to many today. But we must never think of it as foreign or alien to those around us. On the contrary, the Gospel meets the deepest yearnings of the human spirit, yearnings which only to surface at times such as these.
Living as an adult human being means accepting the burden of mortality, with its suffering and death. Yet even these darkest moments rarely extinguish our profound longing that, in the end, nothing has been totally in vain. The Gospel tells us that what we long for is true. Every last drop of our effort, in weariness and tears, is brought to fulfilment in and through Christ Jesus. His promise is the response to the deepest instincts and yearning of humanity, a response that brings freedom and consolation to all who will embrace it. It is ours for the receiving.
These days of Christmas, then, give us great encouragement in the task of announcing this Gospel of Jesus Christ, for it is indeed the Good News for which humanity longs. Our shared humanity is the bedrock of the work of evangelisation. And it is our privilege to undertake that work every day. A very happy Christmas to you all, and may God bless you.