My dear brothers, sisters and children

Christmas reminds us that God still loves each one of us. We can experience this love only when we love Him in return by loving our fellow beings. When such genuine love begins to rule our hearts and direct our lives we can say that Christmas is taking place in our lives and Jesus is being born in our hearts. With every act of compassion and forgiveness the birth of Jesus takes place in our life. Whenever we do an act of sharing with others, Jesus is born anew in our hearts. In our every act of charity God’s love is being incarnated amidst us and it helps us call him Emmanuel “God with us”. At Christmas, being the followers of Christ, it is our duty to help others to experience the presence of the incarnated Love of God; “Emmanuel-God with us” through our kind words and deeds. This can only happen when we have place for others in our hearts and we can then truly experience the spirit of Christmas from within. Hence let us open our eyes and see the needy who are next to our door waiting for our helping hand. Let us open our ears and hear the cry of the oppressed among us who are being oppressed by the unjust system of our society. I, being your pastor, feel that you and I should take a pledge this Christmas that we would always stretch our hands out to help our less fortunate brethren and lend our ears to give a patient hearing to the cry of the oppressed. If some of our brothers and sisters are less fortunate and deprived of the comforts you and I enjoy, it is partially because of our lack of readiness in sharing things that God has entrusted to us. Today with the advent of globalization a social structure is being created where poor become poorer and rich become richer. We cannot ignore this reality for we are also part of such an unjust structure, knowingly or unknowingly. Let us, knowing this fact, make place for others in our life by shedding our ego, arrogance, hatred, greed etc....that we may have Christmas in our hearts and celebrate this Christmas meaningfully. To conclude I quote Helen Keller: “The only blind person at Christmas time is he who has no Christmas in his Heart.” Let us not be ‘blind’ at this Christmas.

This is the 149th Christmas in our church, the oldest Catholic Church of Delhi and NCR. I take this opportunity to request you to make use of your God given talents and blessings to celebrate this Christmas in a big way. Let this Christmas be an event that can be remembered always.

May the Babe of Bethlehem bless each one of you and your near and dear ones. Wish you all a Happy Christmas and joy filled New Year 2014.