Christmas Message 2011

Bishop Garry Weatherill, Anglican Bishop of Ballarat offers a Christmas Message.

Transcript

What's your favourite Christmas carol? I have always loved O Little town of Bethlehem because of the line, How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given. There's not much that IS SILENT about most of our Christmas celebrations. Shopping, road rage, menu planning, holiday plans, hot weather, last minute 'everything' and endless "canned music" in every public place all make Christmas very, very, noisy. Even those lazy hot days just after Christmas are usually filled with noise. Kids playing with new toys, raised voices in family arguments, the cricket on the TV or radio turned up loudly, visitors dropping in for a drink - it all seems so busy and so noisy.

At the heart of this maelstrom of frantic activity is the still quiet scene in the stable. New parents, a baby and a few unimportant lookers-on. The Christmas Crib invites us to stop, just for a moment to look with familiar tenderness at a familiar scene. Domestic ordinariness which happens in the deep stillness of the night. God's great enterprise, in coming to live as one of us, happens almost without anyone noticing.

What would Jesus and the Holy Family make of us and what we've done with Christmas? I like to think that they'd be kind. That Jesus would laugh gently and ask us to get our priorities re-aligned. That the Blessed Virgin would be vaguely uncomfortable about the fuss we make of her and that St Joseps would sigh deeply and ask if there was anything new to report. The incarnation, that great act of God, comes to us so simply, so silently, so domestically that we can scarcely believe it.

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given.

In all the bustle and excitement of your Christmas celebrations let's not forget that simple little family; ordinary people with hidden lives who show us how to live in cooperation with God and sustained by faithful self-giving. Try to make some quiet space this year so that you can remember and give thanks for that silent gift so quietly given. God's own self come to us in the baby of Bethlehem.

How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.

I hope you have a happy and holy Christmas, and that you and your family will be blessed as we move into a new year.

+ Garry

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

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• Christmas
• Weatherill
• Ballarat
• Anglican