Dear Friends,

At times I flee into poetry because I am convinced that poems are able to capture something that is uncapturable otherwise.

So I decided to express my Christmas greetings this year with the help of The First Christmas poem by Marian Swinger:

It never snows at Christmas in that dry and dusty land.

Instead of freezing blizzards, there are palms and drifting sands,

and years ago a stable and a most unusual star

and three wise men who followed it, by camel, not by car,

while, sleepy on the quiet hills, a shepherd gave a cry.

He'd seen a crowd of angels in the silent starlit sky.

In the stable, ox and ass stood very still and calm

and gazed upon the baby, safe and snug in Mary's arms.

And Joseph, lost in shadows, face lit by an oil lamp's glow

stood wondering, that first Christmas Day, two thousand years ago.

In the middle of Hollywoodian decorations with reindeers, penguins, snowmen, Santa, and all the noise of unending shopping, company parties, overwhelming commerce, I invite you, us, myself, to stop for a while at the manger with the Baby who changed the world, and to stop there with awe and wonder of the Divine who became human, and to get motivated to live our humanity beautifully in order to make our world more human and more fraternal, in what depends on you, us, myself …

A Blessed Christmas to all of us!

The Most Rev Wesley Spiewak is the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hamilton