Dear sisters and brothers in Christ,

 

The incarnation of Jesus is for us one of the great and overt expressions of God's desire for intimacy and reconciliation with all of creation. It is by Jesus' birth, two millennia ago in Bethlehem and today in each of us, that the divine intention of universal justice, mercy, and peace comes to life. In the nativity of Jesus, we are challenged to become new ourselves, transformed and empowered by God's own spirit of holiness to be agents of the Holy, vehicles through which the world might be healed and made whole.

 

If a hay trough in a livestock stable two thousand years ago was worthy of receiving the God of all creation, then surely your heart and mine can be as well. I pray this Christmas that, following Mary, Joseph, the angels, and the shepherds, we might open our hearts to the love, both infinitely powerful and infinitely vulnerable, that took on flesh in the infant Christ, to the end that, through us, fear might be met with faith, violence disarmed by charity, power leavened by mercy, poverty overwhelmed by generosity, self-interest dismantled by self-sacrifice, and desperation replaced with hope.

 

With every Christmas blessing,

 

The Rt. Rev. Mark Hollingsworth, Jr.

Bishop of Ohio

 

 

 

                                    12.24.16

 

Tonight,

passing your trembling flame from wick to wick,

once again recreating the thing that God is doing all the time:

being born in you in the smallest, most vulnerable way,

a flame of love flickering against the dark.

 

This is what God has been doing

all the time since that time in the stable when,

amidst ox and ass and shepherds whose eyes were well accustomed to the dark,

the light of Bethlehem's star found its way to the holy and human Child,

not bathing him in gentle moonlight,

but piercing his tiny and infinite being with a clear, pin-prick radiance of hope

emanating from an obscure darkness.

 

The small and piercing light of Christ

is born in you relentlessly, again tonight and always,

making every night and day holy,

that you, too, might dispel the world's darkness,

you, too, a holy child of God,

you, the light of Christ.