Dear Diocesan Family
We send to you all greetings and blessings for a joyous Christmas celebration and a happy and prosperous New Year 2025.
Christmas tide is always preceded by Advent the season of hope, joy, peace and love and we are always overwhelmed by the lack of these wonderful values in our day-to-day encounters with one another. If we have need, it is for hope, joy, peace, and love if not more of these. And as an important part of this would be our need to be reassured that whatever our circumstances may be this Christmas, God the Father is with us. This surely is the message of Christmas and thus the message of our faith. I love the way one writer put it:
“What begins in the stable ends in our salvation. That is why we celebrate Christmas, and it’s the best and only reason the human heart needs” (Charles J. Chaput).
Jesus is with us! This is what our children really need to know. Jesus is not only the Baby of Bethlehem, but He is also the Son who was born to live for our justice, and to die for our sins. Christ is the missing piece to life. Without Him our lives are incomplete. With Him our lives, even in their most difficult or inadequate parts, make sense.
Jesus is with us! This is what our primary and high school children and college age young people need to know. In the middle of their trials, identity issues, betrayals by friends, struggles to find their way in the world, and dreams for a great future, the Baby of Bethlehem, now the enthroned Christ of all Creation, is with them. His salvation gives hope to them and to you. This is the message of hope to single people, and single-again people, and young marrieds, and families with children and families without children, empty-nesters and retired people and senior saints. Even ministers need this message. The light we long for is the Light we have been given. To receive Him is to be warmed by that Light and shown a new way through the trials and sorrows and even joys that we have on our journey.
Our ministry for 2025 will be built on our collective experiences of 2024 and how we encountered the One, True, Living God whose commission we accept to build a Diocesan Family where we give hope to our Parishes, communities and our country. We hope, trust and pray that 2025 will be a happy New Year and send you our love and best wishes for the season of goodwill and assure you of our prayers for a prosperous New Year 2025.
The Right Reverend Edwin Desmond Pockpass
BISHOP OF GEORGE
