December 22 , 2003

Christmas Message

By Bishop Vincent Rizzotto
 

My Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

I want to send to each of you my best wishes for a blessed Christmas and a prosperous and grace-filled new year. These are “family times” and in the family of the Church of Galveston-Houston, we must rejoice in God’s unique and holy gift to us.

We are just now concluding the annual preparation for the celebration of the birth of Jesus. You know, I am sure, that we call this time, Advent. While the Advent season is frequently no more than a few weeks, it is one of the truly significant seasons of the Church’s liturgical life. There is no word that is more prevalent in the Advent liturgies than “Come.” This yearning for God and for Christ is beautifully enunciated in that spiritual hymn, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” It seems that I have been singing this hymn daily and so I stopped and asked myself, What and who is it that you want to come?” So, I wanted to articulate for you my desire:

• I really want that Christ, the Prince of Peace, would come into this world again. I am often ecstatic over the beauty and charm of our universe. However, I sometimes feel great sadness when I see our world torn with violence and terrorism. Just the fact that there is still the presence of war in so many parts of our world should bring us great sadness. The lives and families of so many have been terribly affected. These circumstances make us come to our knees and raise our voices in prayer. So, I ask you to join me in prayer, especially at Christmas. May our prayer be that Christ, the Prince of Peace, will come again into our world and bring a peace that is so sadly missing. Pray also that the Holy Spirit will guide the deliberations and actions of all world leaders, enabling them to be agents of peace.

• Jesus Christ was born into a human family. His mother was the tender virgin of Nazareth and his earthly father was the sturdy carpenter of that same town. Together they were a family, acted like a family, and even prayed as a family. This reality should make us treasure this human institution of the family. It is the basic community of our lives and can have so many consequences for our stability. Thus, I am praying for you and for your family. Pope John Paul II has said, “As the family goes, so goes the Church and the nations.” Each day, it becomes more difficult to ensure the stability of the family. It should make us re-double our efforts to treasure our own families and to do all that is possible to guarantee the stability of the family. We should waste no effort in our personal response to keep our families intact and in touch with God.

• Finally, I pray that each of you will experience the joy, love and peace of Christ, who is the living icon of God’s love for us. It is my conviction that we can never become tired of hearing of God’s love for us. I can’t help but feel that therein lies the cause of so much personal suffering in the world. When we lose sight of our personal values, we can easily become despondent and live without hope. We need to hear the Christmas message again and again: “I love you,” says the Lord God, “and to prove it, I have sent my Son to love you. Yes, you!” I pray that no person will go through this Christmas without hearing and being convinced of God’s love for them.

May you have a truly joyous Christmas,

+Bishop Vincent M. Rizzotto

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