In his 2025 Christmas message Bishop Peter Collins urges us, amid a troubled world, to embrace the true hope revealed in Christ’s birth and to live as faithful pilgrims of hope as we celebrate both the Jubilee Year and the forthcoming diocesan anniversary.
In 2025 we have been joyfully celebrating a Holy Year of Jubilee.
We have hearkened to the call of Pope Francis to become pilgrims of hope in the midst of the world.
The world cannot be positively fashioned nor sustained by a merely self-generated human optimism.
The current chaotic dysfunction in the world order provides ample evidence to disprove the false presumption that the world holds an inherent claim to an inevitable future of progress, prosperity, and peace.
The minds and hearts of many can too easily be seduced by false optimism.
When we speak of hope, it is in terms of anchoring ourselves — anchoring the whole of human history, anchoring the entirety of human expectation — in the only true and enduring foundation of existence: God himself, revealed as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
At Christmas our hope is brought into sharp relief; indeed, it becomes incarnate.
We celebrate the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, God the Son entering into our very midst.
Whilst betrothed to Joseph, Mary gives birth to a son at Bethlehem, wrapping him in swaddling cloths and laying him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.
At Christmas every dimension of the human condition is addressed, from conception and birth through to the last days of our personal earthly pilgrimage.
It is no exaggeration to state that we face a variety of existential threats at this time in our history.
At this very moment our brothers and sisters in many parts of the world are suffering the gross afflictions of war, subject to violent oppression and exploitation.
For so many despairing souls, hope appears to be on the verge of extinction.
It is for us to become heralds of hope for our time, delivering the perennial proclamation of the angel: “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.”
The motto I chose for my personal coat of arms when I was ordained as your bishop three years ago is Credite in Lumen — Believe in the Light — words taken from St John’s Gospel.
The light of Christ provides no false optimism but rather truthfully and courageously confronts all forms of darkness: personal, communal, and structural.
In his first apostolic exhortation, our Holy Father Pope Leo reminds us all that, though we have but little earthly influence and few resources, and even though we may be subject to violence and contempt, as were the earliest Christians, we are loved by Christ and it is this abiding love which provides the only true and enduring foundation for human existence, the only true and enduring foundation for every human life.
As pilgrims of hope this Christmas, let us defend the sanctity and dignity of human life as we cherish our glimpse of the Saviour’s birth once again.
As this Holy Year of Jubilee draws to its conclusion, we are preparing for another jubilee, for in 2026 we will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the erection of our Diocese of East Anglia.
In the coming year, let us commemorate our rich inheritance from history so that we might better prepare ourselves for the challenges that await us in the future.
Hope is no distraction from reality but is rather a vibrant stimulus that beckons us to live life to the full in accordance with all that the Christ-child promises for he is the one who redeems the world, from its beginning to its ending.
I wish you all a holy Christmas and a blessed New Year.