International Chaplain Christmas Message 2022

We always speak of Christmas celebrations as being a time of joy and happiness, and a time to gather

with family and friends. We see this in the weeks leading up to the feast – a time of preparation when

people want to make sure that everything is perfect. This year may have to be different – Throughout the

world people will be cutting back on Christmas celebrations against a backdrop of rising food prices and

energy costs. It’s very easy to lose sight of the real meaning of Christmas amidst the tinsel, glitter, food

and drink, and yet the realities of the first Christmas are all around us today and we don’t have to look far

to see them.

Life was uncertain for Mary and Joseph too as they travelled the long road to Bethlehem where they had

to take part in a census called by an occupying power. Christ was born in a stable on a cold winter’s night

– not an ideal time or place for our saviour to be born. His first visitors were shepherds who had been

looking after their sheep on a cold, bleak hillside, not the visitors you might expect.

Our times may be uncertain, and our Christmas may be different this year but the reason for our

celebrations remains unchanged.

Our annual celebration of Christmas is one of love and peace and nothing can change that. We believe

that our love for one another is a sign of God’s love for us – ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only

Son’ – and through our celebrations we give thanks to God for sending us Jesus, born of Mary in

Bethlehem, announced by the angels, and visited by those shepherds and later by wise men.

It is the love of God that shines through this great feast, and we show that love by the ways in which we

reach out to those around us. To our relatives and friends, to those alone at Christmas, to those in need

who have much less than ourselves and by the way in which we welcome those seeking refuge in our

respective countries.

While some things may have to change for us the message of Christmas remains the same, precious

moments with those we love and care for, this is the warmth, the comfort and the joy which Christmas

brings to us and those around us.

Above all Christmas is, has always been, and always will be a time of hope. The hope which the birth of

Jesus brings is for all time and eternal. In his Gospel St John says, ‘the light shines in the darkness, and

the darkness has not overcome it’. Jesus is the light of the world shining through any darkness in our

lives. May this Christmas be a time of hope for us all.

I wish you a happy, peaceful and blessed Christmas.

Archbishop of Liverpool

International Chaplain