Dear Holy People of God,

Merry Christmas to you all. I especially greet the old and the sick at home, that cannot come to Church for Christmas.

It clearly has been a very challenging year, with the COVID pandemic. And perhaps we might not feel merry about this Christmas, with all that is going on in our lives. How can we talk about the good news of Christmas with so many challenging situations all around us? This brings me to the question about the real point of Christmas: In the form of a helpless baby, God has entered the world! I bring you news of great joy, the angels proclaimed to the shepherds. Today, a Savior has been born for us. He is Christ the Lord.

The real point of Christmas is therefore, that God exists. Christmas is the story that tells us that there is a God who cares about the sufferings, difficulties and challenges caused by COVID 19. In the baby Jesus, God has entered into the messiness, the uncertainties and the anxieties of human history. And because God has entered history, we are not facing the challenges of life alone.

The central message of Christmas is therefore this: God exists. But there is also a vital implication that follows this central point of Christmas, and that is, in the baby Jesus, God is not distant. God has entered your history and my history, to help us live through life. That is the good news: I am not facing the struggles of life alone. I do not have to. I can get help from outside myself, from God who has come into the world. And that is the difference between the believer and the non-believer: the believer is opened to the help that comes from outside, from God. The believer knows that God has come into history to help me, that God is not an enemy, an opposition, but is a loving person that seeks my good and wants me to live a beautiful life.

This explains why FAITH is the door to experiencing the meaning of Christmas: faith, to see in the form of the baby, the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son. Faith, in seeing that I do not have to have lived 2000 years ago in order for me to know the fact of Christmas, for faith makes the believer a contemporary of the Christmas event. In faith, I am able to make the historical event of Christmas present to me today. And because of faith, there is no advantage in terms of those who lived 2000 years ago over me living today, for faith makes history present. Faith makes me a contemporary of Jesus Christ. And that is why the message of the angels 2000 years ago is addressed to me today: I bring you news of great joy, today, a savior has been born for us, Christ the Lord.

On behalf of Fr. Jim Morris, Fr. Edmund, Fr Denis, Sr. Pauline and Seminarian John, and all the Parish Staff and Volunteers of Ste Anne's, I wish all of you a very merry Christmas and God's abundant blessings for 2021. With profound love and joy, Fr Maurice