December 25, 2022 - Pastor Message
December 21, 20242022 CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
2022 CHRISTMAS MESSAGE
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through him, and without him nothing came to be. What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1-5).
So begins the gospel of John and his account of the coming of Christ. Unlike Matthew and Luke, John does not give us a story of Christ’s birth. John goes back even further than that, to the very beginning, to show that, before Christ was born into the world, the world was born through Christ, the Word of God through whom all things are made. That Word is light and life (Genesis 1), but human beings, the pinnacle of God’s creation, chose darkness and death (Genesis 3).
God did not abandon his creation to that fate, though. He began a plan for a new creation, promised through the patriarchs, prepared through the Law, foretold through the prophets, and, in the fullness of time, born in Christ, the Word of God made flesh. He came unto his own to shine the light of a whole new life for the world, free from the darkness of sin and death, and the darkness, however deep it may get, has not and will never overcome it.
That light has shone brightly in 2022 here at St. Boniface. After over two years of deepest darkness, we have seen this past year growing signs of new life. More and more people have returned to celebrate Mass together and several new families have joined our parish - we even had to order more hymnals already! More and more people have been attending parish events and activities, including a record-setting fall festival. More people signed up for our various ministries through our parish stewardship drive, and the response to our parish census has been overwhelming - please be sure to return yours to the office by January 1st if you haven’t already done so.
But numbers of people don’t tell the full story of the new life of Christ growing in our midst. I’ve also noticed a growth in charity and generosity among our parishioners, which is really saying something since you have always been amazingly generous. For example, we collected enough turkeys for Thanksgiving to also give a turkey to each family served by our food pantry this Christmas, and we’ve received so many Christmas cards for our homebound parishioners we’ve had to empty the box multiple times to make room for more, including emptying it twice in one day!But above all, I’ve noticed a new sense of hope and joy among many people of our parish. This is not the fleeting glee of children waking up on Christmas morning, tearing into their presents. It is the mature joy of pilgrims who have weathered a terrible ocean storm to see the skies clear and the sun rise over the long-sought shore of a new world. That sun is the light of the world, whose birth we celebrate on Christmas Day, and that shore is the new world he came to bring. May our celebration of his dawning strengthen our hope to continue the journey together in 2023, and on behalf of our entire parish, may you and yours have a blessed and joy-filled Christmas.
Fr. Marc Stokcton
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