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Primus: Christmas Message Primus: Christmas MessagePrimus: Christmas MessagePrimus: Christmas Message
Southampton, Hampshire, England, UK - December 18, 2015
One of my favourite Christmas carols is 'In the bleak mid-winter frosty winds made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone...'Well, with warm air reaching Europe from the Azores, it is hardly mid-winter with temperatures reaching 17 at times. We might begin to wonder whether Christmas has lost its winter significance. Yet, it does now provide an opportunity to see the festival in its proper light : the celebration of the Word made flesh. Perhaps the frosty winds might even have a non-meteorological meaning in that the present day problems facing the planet in terms of global warming and war in the Middle East surely must no doubt make life seem 'as hard as iron' for many people across the world. At the heart of the Feast of Our Lord's Nativity is the awareness that God so loved the world. And that love, in spite of the errors of human weakness, is still the all-pervading truth of God's relationship with everything He has created. As we are reminded in the Book of Genesis he saw all that He had made as good - very good. The extension of that goodness was the enlightening of the world by Our Lord Jesus Christ who is our Saviour from sin and the way-shower on the path of light and love. When we look upon a broken and fragmented world, saturated by sickness, pain and sorrow it is easy to ask why God does not intervene. He sees all that He has made as good. We have marred that beauty and only we can rediscover our heritage as made in His image and likeness. Reflections of His glory. Jesus, by his Incarnation, has revealed our true purpose, and we need not look in any other direction. He has conquered death and declared the resurrection. He has told us that God's love is there for us, even when Earth's frosty winds make moan. Let us trust Him. At the centre of His reality there is a love that will never let us down or ever let us go, whatever might befall us or our world.
May the joy of this season embrace us in all its fullness. With my love and prayers to all in our Communion,
+Richard Archbishop Primus