Séamus Cunningham

"Christmas tells us of God’s passion for us, God is reaching out to us with our tattered lives, our tattered hurts, our tattered relationships and our tattered sins – he is reaching out to us with open arms breaking into our lives. He makes no distinctions, He embraces the least likely – Christmas is not sentimentality, it is not soft, it is God’s fulfilled desire to be with us and that is why we celebrate. If God is not with us and if God has not embraced our tattered lives we are missing the whole point of Christmas – there is no hope and there is no light only darkness and despair; our lives will be empty. If we celebrate Christmas because of love then we have caught the message of Christmas and the meaning of Christmas; Emmanuel, the passionate God has had His way and has hugged us fiercely."