Dear friends,

We stand on the threshold of the celebration of Christmas, and look forward to welcoming you to St Mary’s to worship at the manger. As doubtless you are aware, our schedule of Christmas services includes first a short, interactive and family-friendly Christingle Service on Christmas Eve at 4pm, before Midnight Mass at 11.30pm, and the Parish Mass on Christmas Day at 10.30am. All are welcome to these liturgies, including family, friends and guests.

The Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins summed up the mystery of Christmas as ‘Infinity dwindled to infancy’ – Christ, the Word by which all was made, steps into his Creation in the unassuming person of a little child: God, immense and beyond our understanding, is cradled in human arms and nursed at a human breast. From this we can both draw profound comfort as we recognise that our God is not remote, but intimately involved in our world and our lives, and draw inspiration to look for Him in the little things of daily existence.

Whether your plans for Christmas this year are grand or simple, I hope and pray that you will find time also for silence and stillness, to contemplate Infinity dwindled to infancy, to wonder at the Word made flesh. And so may Christmas bring to you and to your families both joy and peace – the gifts of our new-born King.

With every blessing of the Lord’s Nativity,

Fr Richard