It is lovely, once again, to be able to share a message of greeting and gratitude as we approach the great celebration of Christmas. I hope the year has been kind to you and that you have been supported and encouraged by friends and family when things were difficult and that in turn, you were able to reach out to those who needed help on the journey of life.
As we prepare to celebrate a New Year in 2025, we are celebrating a Jubilee Year as we do each quarter of a Century. Pope Francis has designated 2025 to be a Jubilee of Hope and the invitation from him to each of us is to be “Pilgrims of Hope”
Hope is a word we are familiar with – we hope our team will win this year, we hope that loved ones will get well, that someone we care about will get a job, a house, a longed-for new baby.
These hopes are very special to us, they show how much we care about others and how we would like our world to be. But the power to make them happen lies outside us, in the gift of others. Christian Hope on the other hand invites us to look inward to ourselves and see ourselves as the source of Hope for the world, for our community, parish and families.
Christian Hope invites us to look at those who despite difficulties in life remain cheerful and faithful and who bring out the best in people through their courage and generosity of life.
This hope is not a fancy or woolly aspiration, a daydream that brightens a dull day or a feeling that makes us look forward to tomorrow, next week or next year.
Christian Hope is rooted in faith and in love of God, seen at this time of the year in the story of Christmas. It is the fulfilling of the promise that God will always be with us, faithful to us even when we are unfaithful and that he will be found on the margins of life, among the poor just as he was two thousand and twenty-five years ago.
Hans Christian Andersen, the great writer of stories for children, began his stories with the words “Once upon a time” and he finished them with “And they all live happily ever after”. Our life stories are rarely that neat, but Andersen who was also a person of deep faith, did say once about real life that “Every person’s life is a Fairytale written by God’s fingers, and they all lived happily ever after”.
The promise of “living happily ever after” in the presence of God is the source of all our hope.
My wish for you and me and all our families and friends and communities of which we are a part, is that we will discover this Christmas and throughout the year ahead, a great deep well of hope within our hearts and communities and that we will bring it, like a deep drink of cool water to a world that is thirsting for Hope.
As we prepare to celebrate Christmas, I send special greetings to those who will work over Christmas, in hospitals and care homes, in the Garda Siochána and the emergency services and those members of our defence forces who will be keeping the peace in different troubled parts of the world.
May the work of all who bring peace and healing be blessed by the Prince of Peace and the Great Healer.
Bishop Ger