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DIOCESE

A Letter from Bishop Hugh Gilbert OSB

Brothers and Sisters,

May I wish all the readers of the Light of the North a good Christmas – happiness
with family and friends, pleasant times at table and the joy of faith in a God who
is with us and doesn’t give up on us.
2024 was not the best of years from a geopolitical point of view, far from a good
time for people in the Middle East and Ukraine and Sudan and, and… Closer to
home we may have felt another level of dismay as the Westminster Parliament voted
in favour of assisted dying, making Black Friday truly black. Why do we human
beings do these things to ourselves? Why flout such a life-giving commandment as
“Thou shall not kill”?
Strangely though, all of this can be an Advent-like call to hope. A summons, as
it were, to “dig for victory”, to rediscover the well-springs of trust and confidence.
To sense the dimensions of what God calls us to. The precious good things that
keep peppering our daily lives are another prompt in the same direction. We need
to have eyes for them.
The Incarnation of the Word, as it’s grandly called – God becoming human in
the person of Jesus Christ – is either true or not. If true it changes everything. It
has, as it were, the size of a single baby held by its mother, a tiny pinpoint of light
in the vastness of time and place, but with it comes a space with room for all of
us. Christmas means that God has married us indissolubly, will never let us go, has
‘written’ us one and all into his eternity, will not just love us till death do us part
but beyond, and holds us as dear as his beloved Son.
So much of the preparation for Christmas is urging us to get “more” – so often
just more of the same. What we really long for, though, is something “other”. And
this “other” comes wrapped in swaddling clothes. A simple glimpse, an inkling, a
flash of him, a taste of his love, is enough to make a Christmas and carry us into
another year.
And please enjoy this edition of our diocesan magazine…

Devotedly in Christ,

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