The Very Reverend Michael J. Pitts

Dear Friends,

The snow is falling gently as I write this letter. It always looks so beautiful at this time of year, though later on in the winter we have less affection for it. In Christ Church Cathedral we are beginning our preparations for the Feast of the Advent, Christmas and Epiphany season.

The feast of the Reign of Christ on 24th November forms a hinge between the end of the Pentecost season and the beginning of the new Christian Year in Advent. In the Sundays after Pentecost we celebrate the story, and the experience, of the Holy Spirit at work in the Church and in the world. The feast of the Reign of Christ proclaims that the Risen Jesus is the one from whom creative power and authority flows. Advent invites us to look forward and to see Jesus not only as a person in history, but as the future king, whose way of peace and gentleness and humanity will triumph, however grim the world situation may seem to us. Christmas suggests to us that God lies hidden in the latent possibility of each present moment, waiting for us to find him and allow him to transform our present into his future.

These claims, which our faith makes, are both on our personal lives and on the whole of society and the world. The first is simple, in theory if not in practice. The second is much more difficult, now that we find ourselves in a world of many competing faith claims. Not only that, but we are becoming aware these days, that our history as Christian people has been tainted by inhuman, let alone unchristian ways of treating those of other faiths. We can no longer make these claims simply and easily. But equally, to let them go and concentrate solely on a personal spirituality and relationship with God, would compromise our fidelity to our Biblical and faith tradition.

This is not only a problem for those of the Christian persuasion. The different religions of the world are intertwined in all the theatres of war and strife of our time, not least the spectacularly successful western religion of self-interest and wealth-generation. In each religious tradition there seems to be a struggle between fundamentalism and openness. I believe that we shall only begin to understand real peace when we try to discover together how our various religious beliefs and practices have drawn us away from what they are centrally about. I believe we can only genuinely speak about peace when we have begun to analyze how we are involved in strife, through our beliefs, through our politics, though our attitudes and life-style choices. We can only hope for and speak about change in the world when we are prepared to change. And, though war and the threat of war are uppermost in many minds, I believe we need to keep before us the more long-term threat of the struggle between humanity and the environment of the biosphere.

For Christians, the feast of Christmas, with its message of peace, gentleness and humility, may provoke us to this much-needed reflection and to the beginning of a change process. It may provide us also with our contribution to the dialogue between the religious and secular faiths of our time, which is essential if we are to find peace and a future for the coming generations.

Happy Christmas,

Michael J. Pitts,
Dean and Rector