Ae we enter December our thoughts turn to Christmas, mind you as far as shops are concerned Christmas begins in September! At the Midnight Mass of the Nativity, we proclaim to all people of goodwill the eternal message that the angels of God bring to us…. Peace; indeed, God’s goodwill towards us. Sadly, today in this increasingly secular and sad country how many people are listening to the real message and meaning of Christmas? Added to that we have the problem of COVID and worries that Christmas may be blighted
It is estimated that businesses alone will send over 223 million Christmas Cards, yet how many of either the givers or the receivers will give even a passing thought to the meaning of those two words that make up the word Christmas, the MASS of CHRIST.
Normally Christmas is a time when we are all smiles and it’s a bit gooey. True it’s a time for families and that is good, as we remember the Holy Family and on Christmas Night we first hear that the Word of God was made flesh, when God came down to earth as a human. So families are very important and we should indeed must value them and also the wider family – the human race; we are the children and family of God.
We say at Midnight, for the first time in the Christmas Season; ‘on this special night, this night when heaven reaches out and touches the earth, a child is born to a young Jewish girl in the poverty of a Bethlehem stable,’ when at this child’s first cry as he comes from his mother’s womb there is, apart from his cry, absolute silence in the fabric of the universe, the noise of planets colliding, of the hiss of the gaseous mass that encompasses the Universe…. the noise ceases, the equations of the physicists and the mathematicians count for nought. God is come in the person of a human baby. The Creator of all this is takes off his Godhead and veils it in the flesh and bone of Jesus the Christ.
The Prince of Peace is come amongst us, the man who is God has come to re-write the rules, to turn the religion of those who first responded, the Jews, on its head, to sweep away the myriad rules and regulations and change civilisation for ever. To give us a promise of eternal salvation, but also to remind us of who we are and what we should be doing with our lives. This Christmas give a moment of thought in the absolute silence of that moment to the gift we are all given, that of life, and thank God for our creation and consider how best we can make this world a better p[lace, a place fit for the Christ Child as the Prince of Glory.
Loraine and Charlotte join with me in wishing you all a Happy and Blessed Christmas and a Happy and prosperous New Year. God Bless
Revd. David Chesters