Blessings for Christmas

This year my Christmas Greetings to you will be brief but no less heartfelt. The angels who raised the joyous hymn that first Christmas night can be heard again this Christmas in the hearts of us all. “Glory to God in the Highest” echoes in our hearts and lives because we all are thankful that God so loved the world that He sent His only Son. He so respected us, created in His own image, that He wanted “one like us in all things but sin” to become our redeemer.          

 “One like us” is truly that because, like us, He is born of a human mother. Mary, like all mothers, carried her beloved Son in her womb from the day the Angel Gabriel announced to her God’s plan of salvation to the moment in that Bethlehem stable when she, the perpetual Virgin Mother, gave birth to Him Who is the light of all humankind.

This is the gracious and wondrous gift who comes to dwell in our hearts as surely as He dwelt in her womb and as surely as He lived his days on earth. He is “God with us.” He knows us and we know Him if only we open our hearts to Him as the Magi opened their gifts to honor Him.

The best way we honor Him is to do what He calls us to do: celebrate the Eucharist, the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. My full Christmas message to you can be found in my Advent/Christmas Pastoral Letter, Belong More Deeply. You can find it in your parish church, as an insert in parish bulletins, in “The Long Island Catholic” and on our diocesan website, www.drvc.org. Telecare is another source where it can be found.  

Please read it at your leisure. I wrote it after the priests

of our diocese urged me to do so. They shared their thoughts which helped shape my words. I did so with eager longing for the implementation of the new Roman Missal which will begin on the First Sunday of Advent next year. I did so because I believe this coming year will offer us many opportunities to deepen our personal and ecclesial ties to the Lord and to one another.

No place and no moment is more precious in bringing all this about than when we gather in our churches to celebrate Sunday Mass. My deepest Christmas wish for all of us is that this Christmas we discover how deep is the love God has given us through His Son and how much He calls us to belong more deeply in Him and the church through the Mass where Jesus is born and re-born every time we gather to proclaim our faith in the Lord Who calls us to be one with Him.

A happy and blessed Christmas to one and all.

William Murphy

Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese

of Rockville Centre