Christmas Message from Filipe Neri Ferrao, Archbishop of Goa and Daman

The following is the full text of the Christmas Message of Most Rev. Philip Neri Ferrao, Archbishop of Goa and Daman, released by the Diocesan Centre for Social Communications, Goa:

CHRISTMAS MESSAGE - 2006

Christmas is a feast of joy, a joy that is today celebrated in various and many forms, ranging from the deeply spiritual to the purely secular. Whatever today's commercial concerns and the media may have made of Christmas, this Feast will always stand for an eminently spiritual reality: God intervening in the history of humankind, being born in a human family and blessing every member of the human race with His Love, Peace and Joy. This reality imposes on us, as human beings, the duty to work for the genuine development of the human person and for the wholesome transformation in our society.

Our Goan society is beset with various problems: greed to make quick money, corruption in almost every sphere of life, unemployment of the youth, a continuous political instability, inter-religious mistrust, destruction of ecology, framing of laws that help destroy land, etc. Such conditions degenerate our people and our place, gradually.

May this Christmas strengthen our resolve to help in the realization of God's dream when he took birth in the cave of Bethlehem: a new world order, wherein people of all hues and colours can join hands with one another and carry on working in a collaborative spirit to re-create the earth into a place where justice, peace, understanding and forgiveness will be the hallmark. Then, every day will be Christmas!

I take this occasion to wish everyone a joyful Christmas, full of divine blessings and peace that only God can give.