“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 Nash, From his Christmas Message 2024.
“This is what we celebrate at Christmas. God became human in Christ so that we might become divine”.
St Athanasius
"Only if people change will the world change; and in order to change, people need the light that comes from God, the light which so unexpectedly entered into our night".
Pope Benedict XVI, 25th December 2008
“Man cannot see God and live
His glory’s brightness would be too much
So He turned its volume down in Christ
For him to hear and see and touch.
No president, king or queen
Was present at his birth
Just an ox, an ass, some shepherds
The poor of all the earth
For so God always willed it
To include the greatest and the small
The rich, the poor, the slave, the free
His kingdom not for some but all”
Fr Billy Swan from the Poem ‘Through the Eyes of the Father at Christmas'
“It is truly a marvelous exchange: the Creator of mankind, taking a body, gives us His Godhead. The Redeemer has come into the world to do this wonderful work. God became man so that men might become children of God. One of us had broken the bond that made us God’s children, one of us had to tie it again and pay the ransom. This could not be done by one who came from the old, wild and diseased trunk; a new branch, healthy and noble, had to be grafted into it. He became one of us—more than this, He became one with us. For this is the marvelous thing about the human race, that we are all one. If it were otherwise, if we were all autonomous individuals, living beside each other quite free and independent, the fall of the one could not have resulted in the fall of all. In that case, on the other hand, the ransom might have been paid for and imputed to us, but His justice could not have passed on to the sinners; no justification would have been possible. But He came to be one mysterious Body with us: He, our Head; we, His members. If we place our hands into the hands of the Divine Child, if we say our ‘Yes’ to His ‘Follow Me’, then we are His, and the way is free for His divine Life to flow into us”.
St Edith Stein
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