01.12.2021
Pastoral Letter in Advent from the Archbishop of Dublin
Dear friends,
The early days of December in any year seem unending in their darkness for those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere. For many people, this is a great trial and a great strain. The early days of December also coincide with the foothills of that most evocative of Seasons, The Season of Advent, in The Christian Calendar. It is the beginning of The Christian Year after all and therefore a time of celebration. In Advent, we grapple with preparation and with penitence, with the coming of Jesus Christ in infancy and hope along with the recognition of the consequences in judgement and ultimacy of his being one of us and of his life lived on earth among folk like us. So it was in their day; so it is in our day. There is a great deal going on in this time of encircling gloom. Seize it!
The days of December understandably seem long but need not be boring. But we can use these long days to take hold of the light and to be a light to others. This is the gift that Christian people are and need to be to our world today – and no money is required to do this. The loss and the grief that people carry as a result of the on–going impact of the coronavirus and its many mutations, as it works its way speedily through the Greek alphabet, are incalculable. However hard they are to calculate, nevertheless they are increasingly tangible and increasingly visible. The zoom platform, once a novelty of conducting and of attending meetings from the security of one’s own home, is fast approaching saturation of use. Many people have taken advantage once too often of the fact that others are working from home by making assumptions that, because they are at home, they can slot in more and more meetings without any sense of being able to say: Enough! Please stop! Others are subject to unbreakable cycles of loneliness and unending cycles of domestic abuse. Many feel a despair they never expected to have to own.
Into this world which is fast becoming a shadow world, a landscape of wraiths, people want light and warmth to shine and to be felt. It is the comfort of which the prophet Isaiah speaks so fervently and so dynamically. People want and need a smile, a glance, a recognition that they are there and are doing their best to make something of life and of living. My encouragement to those of us who are still functioning well is that we shed and share such light for others in Advent and at Christmas in whatever ways are possible, sensitive and appropriate. These are times of urgency. These are times of generosity. These are times to ‘put on the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life …’ You and I carry the gift of light. This is the time to offer it and to share it and to ignite it.
People want a Christmas that they can enjoy and that they can remember. Being at church remains for many people still today woven into the experience of Christmas. And, unthinkably, for two years in a row, this experience of being in church has not been there for people in the ways people, whether they came often or occasionally to church throughout the year, expect. This too is a form of bereavement and loss right across our society. It also weakens for everyone the connection between the social and the religious Christmas, making the commercial Christmas the dominant and overarching one. And this creates further and deeper exclusions once we introduce economic expectations. And there is something more. Christians are energized in their outreach and their engagement with those of Faiths other than their own and with people of no faith or no expressed faith by Christ, shedding his light and love in The Twelve Days of Christmas: Christ the Light of The World connecting the year we know with the year we are still to get to know. This is our faith and this is our time and this is our opportunity to share the core of our Faith.
I am well–aware of the fact that clergy along with others in parishes right across The United Dioceses have moved from open churches shrinking in numbers beyond recognition, to streamed worship to worshipping on–line, to offering significant encouragement to their parishioners to return to church. For all of this I, along with countless others, am extremely grateful. Let us all remember that we led the way when there really was no way! We are all of us uneasy now about what sort of worship will be possible at Christmas 2021. Inventiveness and sensitivity have come together in ways many had never envisaged. These new ways of worshipping have enabled us to offer genuine encounters with God within a framework of community gathering on–line. Many have also found that their sense of parish family has grown throughout this time. Those who were parishioners in time past and who now live elsewhere have been able to join in and participate – present from afar. People have been able to connect again with parishes and communities for whom they previously had an affection. This also has been a real enhancement of our self–understanding as children of God and as children of the light. The old ways need to be respected too as there are clergy and people who effectively live in black holes of connectivity where there is no functioning Broadband worth talking about. Whatever good things you offer this year, I can guarantee that people will appreciate them, so please be assured of this. Whatever simple steps you take to make Christmas meaningful for the people in your care, they will rejoice that you have done so.
A long time ago, in one of the letters I wrote, I suggested that, in these pandemic times, not only does the conventional wisdom hold that it is more blessed to give than to receive but that there is a new wisdom too: it is equally blessed to receive as to give. Our relationship with neighbours as people we perhaps never knew or felt we needed to know before, nearly two years on, cuts both ways: giving and receiving now greatly need one another. We are all in this together; we are still all in this together. So, I ask that you be willing to receive from others whatever their act of kindness might be to you as well as feeling that you must give to them. It is in these surprise encounters of take and give that Christ will be shared this Christmas. It will be a Christmas like no other but, then, every Christmas is like this – differently each time.
St Luke 2.15: Come, let us go straight to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.
With good wishes for Advent and for Christmas and for the New Year 2022
+Michael
Dublin & Glendalough
1 December 2021