PASTORAL LETTER
FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT 2018

“God loved the world so much,
that He gave his one and only Son” (John 3: 16)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

As we begin another liturgical year, with the start of Advent, I send you my prayerful good wishes. The season of Advent is a time in which to prepare ourselves to celebrate the great festival of Christmas in a genuinely Christian way. It is also a time meant to help us prepare to meet the Lord in our daily lives, and to make ourselves ready to stand before him when he comes again in glory.

The word ‘advent’ is a word of expectation. It means that we are waiting for something to happen. The four weeks of Advent are a preparation for what is coming, that is, the birth of Jesus as one of us, as a human being. St Paul writes that Jesus, “though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men”.(Phil. 2, 6-7).
God becoming human, taking on the nature of man, is what we celebrate at Christmas. What the prophets had long announced, that a Saviour would be born, that God would send the One who was to shepherd his people, became reality in the mystery of the Incarnation.

This mystery is central to our Christian beliefs. God the Son became man. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel appeared to Mary to announce to her that she was chosen by God to conceive and bear a son. At Mary’s words, “May it be done to me according to your will”, the second person of the Holy Trinity became incarnate and was conceived in Mary.
Mary carried her divine child in her womb for nine months, as in any other pregnancy. God also intervened to reassure Joseph, in a dream, about what had happened to Mary, his betrothed. He accepted to make Mary his spouse.
The Angel Gabriel told Mary, “Do not be afraid”. The same words were repeated to Joseph. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife” (Mt. 1, 20).

The words ‘do not be afraid’ occur over and over again in Scripture whenever someone has an experience of the Divine. In Luke’s Gospel Gabriel told Zechariah the priest, John the Baptist’s father, not to be afraid. At the birth of Jesus the shepherds were also told by angels not to be afraid.
Why should we not be afraid when God calls us to do something which seems difficult to accept? The reason is that God is love, and his love for us will overcome all the fears that we may have. We need to put our trust in God. God could not prove his love for us more than by what we celebrate at Christmas, that is by the fact that he gave us his one and only Son, so that all who believe in him may be saved.

In creating us in his image, as we are told in Genesis, God has given us not only a thirst to be loved, but also an ability to love.

Fear does not characterise the Christian. At the heart of Christianity is love, or to be more precise, sacrificial love.

Our whole lives must consist in ceaseless efforts to love more and more in the same way that Jesus loved, which is sacrificially. To do this we need a gift from God. That gift is trust. We need to trust God to work things out. We have to trust the Lord to remove the fear that prevents us from loving. We have to trust the Lord to protect us from hurt when we take a step outside of ourselves and a step into love. So many of us are afraid: afraid to trust, afraid to love, afraid to risk. We need to trust God so we can make His Presence real for others.

The birth of Jesus is a celebration of a new life destined to save us. His birth reminds us that life is to be cherished and valued. I welcome this opportunity to invite you to reflect on the value of life.
When we consider the story of the Annunciation, it is apparent that the conception of Jesus occurred at the very instant Mary accepted to do God’s will. When Joseph was told in a dream that the child whom his betrothed was carrying had been conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit, it is clear that he considered this conception as the presence of a real human and divine being.

Human life starts at conception. This life must be cherished, protected and loved till its natural end.

Human life has a value which surpasses all other values. If we deny the right to life we are denying the most basic of rights. If we deny this right to the most vulnerable, the unborn, then we are denying the same right by implication to all. If we embark down this road, where will we stop?

I pray with you this Christmas, whilst we prepare ourselves during these next four weeks, for the promotion amongst us in Gibraltar of a culture of life and not of death, for the promotion of the belief that all human life matters. I pray with you that when sacrificial love is required to accept the conception of new life, we will trust in God’s love and trust that he will provide the courage and help that is at times necessary to carry on with a difficult pregnancy.

May we also remember this Advent those who are less privileged than we are, the sick, the poor, the housebound and lonely, and those who feel abandoned.

I invite those who are going to be alone this Christmas day to share Christmas Lunch with me and some of the priests. Those who wish to do so are invited to give their particulars at the Cathedral bookshop.

May our Mother, the Virgin Mary, accompany us during this journey of Advent. She also had her advent from the time the Angel appeared to her, when she accepted to submit her will to that of God, till she gave birth in Bethlehem.

With my blessing to each of you and your families, whom I continue to keep in my prayers,

Given on the 30th November 2018, feast of St Andrew the Apostle.
+Carmel Zammit
Bishop of Gibraltar