“How do we prepare for Christmas in our homes, in our places of work and recreation? From our replies to this question we will know whether the teaching of Christ succeeds in prevailing over the commercial pandemonium”. The question implies “the urgent need to re-introduce the Christian message and the genuine meaning of Christmas into our society”, declares the Archbishop of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Cardinal Keith O’Brien. It is also, he says, one of the “challenges that Advent poses to the United Kingdom”. But it’s not the only one: “I hope continues Cardinal O’Brien that it may also change people’s attitude to marriage and the family: too many couples in our country live together outside the sacrament of matrimony; children are no longer considered a gift of God, but almost a burden; attacks are being mounted on family life from all sides”, yet ” Christ’s message remains unchanged; we only need to be willing to listen to it”. “Gary Cassidy, 28 years old, died on Christmas Day 2002. While everyone was celebrating the new life and birth of Jesus Christ, Gary was called to his new life”. His life was remembered by the bishop emeritus of Derry, Msgr. Edward Daly, who acknowledged that he had “never realized before” how “the time of Advent with its liturgies in preparation for Christmas, also represents, paradoxically, an extraordinary preparation for death. A death that opens us up to the mystery of salvation”. Breda O’Brien, journalist of the Irish Times, asks: “Are we renouncing Christmas? It would be tempting to write this, but something obstinately prevents us from doing so. Much of the ‘madness’ of Christmas derives from a confused attempt to express love; even in the midst of the frenetic preparations there are moments in which” we perceive “the gentle invitation of He who does not compel, but proposes. The Christ Child speaks to the child’s heart in each one of us”.
