18.12.2025
Christmas Message from the Archbishop of Dublin
Every Christmas is different. And still, every Christmas contains within it parts of the previous Christmas and of Christmases yet to come. For individual households and for international countries, today there is tension and there is hope of resolution. Some of this can be as simple as the arrival on time of something that we are intending to give to a friend as a present. Some of this is darker and more sinister, such as domestic violence and the relentless fear and degradation this causes. Internationally, this is the now impenetrable and intractable reality of war and persecution, climate change and impoverishment whether in Europe, Africa or the Middle East.
Alongside tension and resolution, there are two other factors, action and embrace. Some of this we see and hear. Of much more of it we have no idea, nor can we. The practical difficulty for us is that we cannot easily care for what we do not know. But we have to try. This is why we all admire, especially at Christmas, those whose job it is to respond to need and equally those zealous volunteers who respond instinctively and courageously and do what we might have done – had we known what was needed.
Tension and resolution, action and embrace are four of the tent pegs of our contemporary world. We need realism and idealism as never before as AI lands. We need the kindness of truth and the life that flows from truth. Christmas takes us head first into this particular tent where the most unlikely of people meet and greet one another, where the small wonderful thing suddenly far outweighs the big terrible thing. This is Good News and Gospel all in one. Christmas gives us the instinct for life of a tiny child whose love changed the world and still changes the hearts and minds of its inhabitants.
Let us together seek to hold together tension and resolution, action and embrace. In such a way as this, let us make a difference to the lives of others whose lives are bloodied by violence and abuse, by racism and attack, by homelessness and hunger, by ecological deprivation and over–consumption, by incessant war and fragile peace. Let us allow the love of God, through the birth of the Christ–child, transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of his grace to build shared love and lasting peace.
I wish you all Happy Christmas in 2025.
The Most Reverend Dr Michael Jackson
December 2025