I have been on the move a great deal this year- up and down to London far too many times as well as several visits abroad.
There have been early mornings, late nights, and countless hours waiting in airports and on station platforms.
I have visited Rome five times: during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, to attend the funeral of Pope Francis, to join other ecumenical leaders in welcoming the Pope Leo XIII, to lead a service in the Sistine Chapel with Their Majesties King Charles III and Queen Camilla, and to attend the service for St John Henry Newman being declared the 38th Doctor of the Church.
These were moments of profound joy – glimmers of the unity we seek and strive toward. I also represented the Church of England at a conference for the persecuted church in Nagorno Karabakh, a region in Azerbaijan.
I spoke at the United Nations in New York about the shameful legacy of transatlantic chattel enslavement.
I visited the ecumenical community in Taizé and went to Malines in Belgium with Lord Halifax to help celebrate the centenary of the first ever ecumenical conversations between the Roman Catholic and the Anglican Church that his great Grandfather helped to establish.
Much of this travelling has been because for just over a year we have been without an Archbishop of Canterbury and many national responsibilities of the Church of England have fallen to me. It has been a challenging time, and I rejoice that Sarah Mullally, Archbishop of Canterbury Elect, will begin her ministry shortly.
However, even on the most difficult days it has been a privilege to serve in this way and to do my bit to help make the Church of England a simpler, safer, and humbler Church. This, too, is a journey we must make.
At the time of writing, I have just returned from a pilgrimage in the Holy Land, a place that holds the deepest resonance for any Christian – the hills and valleys, towns and villages where the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary, where our Lord Jesus Christ was born, and where the angels first sang to shepherds keeping watch by night.
During my visit, I met people and visited churches enduring struggles most of us can scarcely comprehend. I travelled with my friend and colleague Archbishop Hosam, the Anglican Archbishop in Jerusalem, whose diocese includes Gaza and the West Bank.
For me, spending time with Christian families and church leaders living amid upheaval, poverty, and violence is important. I know what I say or do cannot change daily life, but I want them to know that they are constantly in our thoughts and prayers, and that we stand with them in their suffering.
Which brings us to Christmas – and to yet another journey, with setbacks and challenges unlike any I have faced. Christ was born into a land under occupation. His parents endured a long journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem to comply with tax regulations; and then had to make an even longer journey into exile when Herod in his fury, sought to kill every child in order to eliminate a rival to his throne.
Preparations for Christmas are rarely simple for any of us; for Mary and Joseph they were unimaginably difficult. For Christians in the Holy Land today they are fraught with tension, and, yet, remarkably, still marked by joy and hope.
Some of my travelling this year has happily been in Yorkshire and across the North, in parishes and cathedrals, teaching and exploring what the Lord’s Prayer means and how we live this out. I’ve called it the Lord’s Prayer Tour, and it has been a huge joy to teach people about this prayer and to provide resources for schools to share it with children.
In October, hundreds of schools shared in a Lord’s Prayer moment, as thousands of us said the prayer together across the North. From this, moving encounters have taken place.
Travelling along the East Coast main line on a crowded commuter train one morning, a young man asked me to pray the Lord’s prayer with him on the train. On another occasion a man came and sat in an empty seat opposite me and told me that his father was dying.
When we got into York, I accompanied him to the hospital and we prayed around his father’s bedside; and because at times like these none of us really know what to say, we reached for the prayer that Jesus taught us and said the Lord’s prayer together.
When we say this prayer, we are saying the words that Jesus himself taught us. What God wants is coming down to earth in us as we make his words our own.
Unlike the communities I visited in Palestine, here at home, we are fortunate to enjoy freedom of movement and can gather with family and friends and enjoy our Christmas traditions, and the simple pleasures of lights, carols, and festive food.
We are free to worship and free to pray. We must therefore seek God’s will for God’s world, remembering that the message of peace and goodwill came first to the vulnerable, the persecuted and the overlooked.
Christmas reminds us that God does not stand apart from human suffering. God comes among us in vulnerability and love, choosing the loneliness of the stable to save us.
If we put the needs of the vulnerable first, reach out to those who are lonely, marginalised, excluded, far from home or without a home at all, then we will come close to the true meaning of Christmas and the perils and challenges the holy family faced when Jesus was born and the world was changed.
Simple acts of kindness – giving food, offering companionship, or simply speaking a word of comfort – are not only transformative, they demonstrate that the meaning of Christmas is taking root in our own hearts, as we emulate the perseverance of the wise men, the joy of the shepherds, the faithfulness of Mary and Joseph and even the lavish generosity of God, who in giving us Christ, gives us Himself.
We need these gifts this Christmas; the gift of the prayer that Jesus taught us; the gift of Christ himself, born as one of us. The gifts of perseverance, unity, faithfulness and generosity. The gift of peace.
You won’t find these gifts under a Christmas Tree or in a stocking. But you will find them in a manger. They are there for everyone. The only journey that is required is that -sometimes long one – from your head to your heart.
My prayers and blessings to you and your families for a happy and holy Christmas. May we all, in our own ways, be answers to each other’s prayers. And may there indeed be peace on earth.