Bishop Martin's Christmas messages
In his midnight mass sermon, the bishop reflects on memories of Christmases past. In his Christmas day sermon, the bishop reflects on how nursery rhymes have a capacity to teach us things that we, with our adult sophistication, might overlook.
MIDNIGHT MASS
The Bishop, reflecting on memories of Christmases past, urges us to reflect on the multifaceted importance of the figures of the shepherd in the Nativity story which he lonks fascinating with the importance of the sense of smell.
"The sense of smell arrests us powerfully. We speak sombrely of the stench of corruption the aroma of death and we know that one sign of our damage to the earth is the bad smell that pollution makes and the badness of its consequences in every part of the created order.
By contrast, our fascination with aromatherapy suggests that a new moral code for global living can enable us to breath a different air and a better life, drawing from the presence of God a fragrance which is unique, exquisite, beyond human words or manufacture, which stimulates a vast structure of recollection, enabling us to say, when we look into the crib, “Oh yes, I remember, now: this vision of a new-born child, the most beautiful gift of life that God has to give – this is Christmas, this is Jesus Christ who lives and dies so that I can die and live. This is an unimaginable fragrance, this is the scent of heaven, this is beauty and justice on earth.”
Read the full address here
CHRISTMAS MORNING
The Bishop reflects on how nursery rhymes have a capacity to teach us things that we, with our adult sophistication, might overlook and how , in the festival of Christmas, we are released again into the world of childhood, to be free to discover that the co-incidence between two apparently contrary worlds might be reality and truth.
The imagery of our Christmas carols, says the Bishop, is not an escapist fantasy. It is serious judgement on a government in turmoil, on our disregard for the balance of nature entrusted to us as stewards, and on the causes of human migration and misery on a vast scale. These carols call us to a new education about the only things that matter and on which we as a generation shall be judged: they are justice, peace, freedom and safety, our economy, the attitudes that shape our language, our treatment of animals and of each other – the lessons of the nursery rhyme, actually, but on a global scale as lessons for adults and children alike.
Read the full address here