My Dear People,

That great time of the year, Christmas, approaches us once again bringing with it business and sales as well as the spirit of peace and goodwill we hardly experience for the rest of the year.  If we ever wish to see the presence of God’s reign we see it best at Christmas as people talk to total strangers, music fills the air, we seek our families and friends, gifts are exchanged, and wonder of wonders we think about God and are attracted to worship.  Christmas is a special time of religion that please God in the future will be regarded as normal.  This year Christmas is unique in that it will lead the Diocese of Queensland towards its Sesquicentenary of existence in 2009.  If Christmas helps us to think of God for a month, perhaps 2009 will help us to think of God for the entire year.  God sent the angel Gabriel to ask Mary to bring Jesus the Son of God into the world.  In a different but similar manner God, through the power of the Holy Spirit, asked the first Bishop, James Quinn, to come to Brisbane in 1859 to lead the Diocese of all Queensland into a community of love for the sake of God’s Kingdom.  Let us pray that 2009 will become precisely that, a time of love focused on God, while Mary, the Mother of the risen Christ will pray as she always has for the continuing ministry of Jesus in the lives of all Queenslanders.  May 2009 be a real time of God’s coming.  Let us open our hearts to that possibility. 

Sincerely in Christ

Archbishop John Bathersby DD
ARCHBISHOP OF BRISBANE

December 2008

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