Merry Christmas! This year is a special one for Archbishop Shane Mackinlay as he shares his first Christmas message with us and celebrates his first Christmas in Brisbane. As we celebrate the birth of Christ, he reminds us that God is truly with us and offers his heartfelt wishes for a Christmas filled with peace, hope and joy. May you and your loved ones enjoy a blessed day celebrating the birth of Jesus.
Transcript
This will be my first Christmas in Brisbane. The weather here has certainly been warm, but so has the welcome I’ve received for which I’m very grateful. This year is also the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea, which gave us a clear definition of Jesus as truly divine rather than just a special messenger sent by God. Its wording is contained in the Nicene Creed which we use at Sunday Mass. Proclaiming Jesus as the son of God is particularly significant at Christmas when we celebrate His birth. The humility and vulnerability of Jesus’ birth in the stable of Bethlehem is just as much part of God’s self-revelation as is Jesus walking on the water or being glorified in the transfiguration. Jesus reveals a God who is not only transcendent and all powerful but also intimately close to us. Jesus takes on our very flesh and blood entering fully into our human experience even to the point of His suffering and death on the cross. The God of Jesus Christ is not one who is remote, distant, and inaccessible to us, but one who accompanies us always, even on the darkest and most difficult parts of our human journey. We need to hear again the Christmas proclamation that God is with us. In Jesus’ birth, God enters utterly into our human experience so that everything about our lives can be taken up and transformed in His divine life. I wish you and your families the peace, hope and joy of this Christmas season.