The coming of the Lord amongst us

Hello friends.

It's good to be here with you again in this little weekly message that we've been doing through the pandemic time.

I'm just a tinge sad today, not too much, but just a tinge, because this is the second last time I'll be doing these weekly messages.

Next week, the week of Christmas, will be the final time. And then we enter into a new year and new ways of doing things. But it's been lovely that we've been able to make this journey together over this time of pandemic.

As you can see, I'm just standing outside the Cathedral today. And I'm here in front of this beautiful crib, very modern and contemporary, bright, and colourful. But a beautiful crib for the city. And that's why it's here on the outside. We have our traditional crib on the inside of the Cathedral. But we have got this lovely crib on the outside.

And our gates to the Cathedral open now. So if you're in town, maybe you're shopping, maybe you’re working in town and you're back into the office, or you're just coming in for a visit, come to the Cathedral.

Bring your children and your grandchildren and come along to this crib and you can talk a little bit about it with your children, pointing out Jesus and Mary and Joseph and the shepherds and wise people and cows and birds and even ducks in the corner I can see, which is lovely.

But tell the story of the coming of our Lord into amongst us as a little baby and share that beautiful news with your children and grandchildren.

The Cathedral has a couple of other ways in which we are preparing in a particular way for this celebration of coming up to Christmas.

Firstly, on this Thursday, the 17th of December, at 7pm, the singing of the Messiah, or parts of the Messiah, certainly with the Hallelujah course will take place here in the Cathedral live. And if you would like to come you can get onto the Cathedral website and book, you’ll need to book for this because it is live and you can be physically present.

And you can do that on the Trybooking system on the Cathedral website.

The other thing that's on is we are having Christmas carols. The city may have cancelled the live Christmas carols but we're going to put on Christmas carols here in the Archdiocese, and we're doing it via a TV telecast.

So you'd all be familiar with C31, which is channel number 44 on your TV, and on Sunday night, the 20th of December, there'll be TV Christmas carols, and those carols are for everyone who can watch if you wish.

So C31 on the TV, or you can watch it on the YouTube channel of the Archdiocese.

So there's two ways in which you can participate and form your own family into this time of Advent leading into the nativity of the Lord. May the light of Jesus shine with you at this time. And may he who is Christmas, Jesus, who is Christmas, be with you and your family over these last couple of weeks of Advent.

Until next week, every blessing to you.