The Lord has given us another chance and we are grateful to Him, to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus, leading us to the New Year 2025. It is wonderful to celebrate this great feast as it reminds us of a lot of things we have forgotten, done wrongly and how we can make our journey of repentance.

This marks a new way of living our lives as we remember why Christ came into the world, which is to save us. You can imagine that Christ was born for the purpose of saving us, through suffering. We celebrate this great event which we call Christmas on 25th December; the word became flesh and dwelt among us (cf. Jn. 1:14).

It is always a thing of joy to celebrate Christmas, especially for the children and the families too. In our present times, we should desist from celebrating Christmas in affluence. We must remember that many go to bed hungry every night, some with no roof on their heads, still others with no clothes to wear, not even enough water to drink for some. The suffering and plight of the human people is indeed real. Hence, we must not be caught up with affluence while other wallow in abject poverty and suffer great lack of basic amenities. Christmas is a time to share with others and live moderately. Moderation is key at this period, we must not be wasteful.

This is a time to remember the poor; for to such Christ has come. As a matter of fact, we all are because we are never complete. Yet, some are physically poor and to these we must communicate Christ’s message of love, in our words and actions. When we do God’s will, more blessings come upon us. We are happy that many people are celebrating Christmas in a very moderate way, sharing what they have with the poor.

In our time, Christmas has changed in its vigour as we now have everybody as our neighbour, not just Christians or Catholics, this is a good turn in our time.

We must communicate this love of Christ to everyone during Christmas which is the reason we must celebrate this great feast. It is not because of eating and drinking but because we want to share what we have with others; this exactly is the purpose of our celebration. Let us not forget that Christ came to share His life, care, love and these are the very things we must share with others and Christ’s blessings and peace will be ours.

As we celebrate Christmas, may we remember very specially that it is leading us to the New Year, 2025. When we say New Year, we mean that we want to begin anew, starting again to thinking how to become better; how to love better, be charitable better, how to do our work better without cheating either the government or private because sometimes our faith does not carry us beyond what we can do but we must know that as we struggle, we are not struggling alone, Christ is struggling with us. He is there to support and help us. Let us therefore imitate Him in words and actions, that is, having Christ-like life (1Pet. 2:11-13).

Let us note that what we do today is forever. It is like a wild fire, what we lay down stays in the mind of people forever. Anything good or bad we do spreads like fire. To this effect, we must imitate Christ in spreading love and appreciating Him for His coming and for saving us (cf. Jn. 3:16) Jesus came down to save us through suffering. This brings to bare the necessity of suffering in bringing about anything good. In doing good, we may face challenges but we are never to give up because it eventually brings us joy and brings us closer to each other and for unity purpose.

We thank God for bringing us this far and we pray that the New Year, 2025 will bring us love and cheerfulness of God and we shall not forget our duties not to make things robust but to seek for peace and unity in the name of Christ. May this celebration of His birth and New Year renew our lives for love of God and our neighbour and bless us the more in what we do to His glory and our happiness, through Christ our Lord. Amen

May Almighty God bless you all, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year in advance!