St Helena : St Helena Bishop's Christmas Message
Submitted by Saint Helena Herald (Juanita Brock) 23.12.2008 (Article Archived on 06.01.2009)
Christmas is the time when we think of the Baby Jesus being born in a stable in Bethlehem. We all love a baby, so much so that we are often in danger of sentimentalising the Christmas story and missing the whole point of Christmas.
ST HELENA BISHOP’S CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
Christmas is the time when we think of the Baby Jesus being born in a stable in Bethlehem. We all love a baby, so much so that we are often in danger of sentimentalising the Christmas story and missing the whole point of Christmas.
The carol says, “Christmas is a time to love”, but then the carol goes on to suggest that the love of Christmas is our love for one another. This is not what the real meaning of Christmas is about. Christmas demonstrates God’s love for us. He loves us so much that he enters into human life in its fullness by being born of Mary. God becomes flesh. He becomes a baby. We know how vulnerable a baby is, depending entirely on his mother and father to care for and nurture him. Mary had to change God’s nappies and feed him from her breast. Because he entered human life in this way God has made human life divine. This is seen perfectly in Jesus.
Think what this means for us all. We have received a divine spark and God is continually revealing himself to us through other people and us to them. The moment we grasp this, what a difference it can make to our whole lives and our relationships with one another. The people we meet day by day are not just ordinary people, they are unique reflections of what it means to be God, though marred by sin and selfishness. Even those irritating people who get on our nerves are reflections of God.
We therefore need to reverence them as we reverence God. Our whole attitude will change towards all those we come into contact with. Irenaeus said, “God became man that man might become God”. Imagine what a changed world we would have if people understood this truth.
When we make the Christmas story our own then we need to nurture our children with it, so that they too can experience God’s love and presence in his creation. Perhaps this will solve our problems at Prince Andrew School and in our society generally. It’s when we turn our backs on this truth that things begin to go wrong.
My Christmas Message to you is cling tightly to the real Christmas story, make it your own and resist any attempt to secularise our society, wherever it comes from.
May God richly bless you this Christmas and throughout the New Year
With all my love and prayers,
+JOHN ST HELENA
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