MAY I wish the readers and staff of the Catholic Herald every blessing and joy at Christmas. It has been in many parts of the world a dark a id painful year. Violence, hunger, poverty and enforced idleness, each in different ways has caused death or great suffering. There are, of course, also signs of hope and evidence of new life.
Each Christmas we reaffirm our faith in the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ into our world. He came once in Bethlehem, burn of Mary, son of the Most High. He comes now into the present, not only sacramentally, but through the life and action of the Church which is his Mystical Body. He will come again in glory at the end of lime to bring all human history to its conclusion. It is our vocation through baptism to bring Christ to our world and to prepare ourselves and the world for that second coining.
So Christmas is a time for rejoicing and a reminder of all that needs to be done. May we find encouragement and a renewed sense of purpose from celebrating the Birth of Our Lord.