Archbishop of Sydney

Christmas Message 2007

By + Cardinal George Pell
Archbishop of Sydney
24/12/2007

During the last couple of years God has been attacked angrily here and there in the English-speaking world and believers have been accused of causing most of the wars and crimes in history.

This is an exaggeration as the moral monsters of the twentieth century Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were atheists and Hitler bitterly hated Jews and Christians; but all believers have to acknowledge the down side of their long story, while asking that their positive contributions are also recorded.

While there is only one God, above and beyond history and the universe, the great monotheist traditions do have different understandings of God.  And the start of the Christian answer to the objections of yesterday and today is the story of Christmas.  It is difficult to be angry with a new born baby.

Christians believe that the almighty God has visited us, not just through prophets, saints and humanitarian heroes, but through sending his Son to be born of a virgin in Bethlehem, to live, teach, cure and found a community we call the Church, before dying in Jerusalem.

Babies are vulnerable, more helpless initially than any of the animals.  So too was the Son of God.  But every birth inspires hope, even when it is only hope against hope.

Christmas is above all else a feast of hope; the hope that we are not bound by blind cosmic forces, that evolution is not a meaningless fluke.  An old Roman epitaph found on an ancient tomb laments "How quickly we fall back from nothing to nothing".

The Christ Child's message of love liberates us from this emptiness, because he is not simply another piece of information, but embodies a message which inspires action and service, creates communities, who march confidently through time into the future.  We are free to embrace the truth or reject it.

As Pope Benedict wrote recently, "anyone who does not know God ... is ultimately without hope, without the great hope that sustains the whole of life".

Later next year, in July, all Sydney and Australia will celebrate another expression of this Christian hope in World Youth Day, welcoming tens of thousands of young adults from around the world.   Much more than Mary and Joseph journeying to Bethlehem, many will have travelled thousands of kilometres.  I ask you all to welcome them into your hearts and perhaps, as at the Olympics, into your homes.

As we celebrate again the birth of the helpless newly born Christ child, we should remember the sick and the sad, the lonely and the angry and reach out to help them.  Christians in particular should be agents of hope.

May we all have peace in our hearts at this Christmas, may the celebrations strengthen our faith and above all may we experience an increase of hope, a surge of confidence in life's ultimate goodness.

A happy Christmas to everyone.

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