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Charity registration No. SC002876

Sunday January 8th. 2012

Bishop Toal’s New Year Letter My Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, In wishing you a very Happy Hew Year, I pray that the Lord

may be with us all and guide in our lives of faith through the

year ahead, both as individuals and as a believing community.

This Sunday we celebrate the Epiphany of Our Lord, recalling the

arrival of the Wise Men at the stable in Bethlehem and their acts of

homage before the child in the manger. The wise men from the east

are portrayed as representative of all the peoples coming to

recognise Jesus as the promised Messiah and the Lord and Saviour

of us all. We are encouraged to imitate them by our own acts of

homage before the Lord, and our willingness to present to him our

own gifts, especially that of our worship and service of him as

members of his Body, the Church. We do so in the spirit of

thanksgiving proper to all who have been entrusted with the

knowledge of the mysteries of our faith and who trust in the

promises made to us, in Christ Jesus, through the Gospel (cf. Eph.

3:5-6). I found an echo of the Epiphany in a recent message of Pope

Benedict, in which he described the wonderful experience of World

Youth Day in Madrid, and the more youthful form of Christianity

growing from such events. He identified the young people of the

Church pointing the way ahead for the new evangelization under

five headings -

a new experience of catholicity, of the Church's universality; a new

way of living our humanity, our Christianity, shown by the

volunteers who give of their time and themselves to serve others;

the natural and central place of adoration; the sacrament of

Confession as an integral part of our faith; the joy of having faith, of knowing we are accepted and loved by

God. Pope Benedict's reflection on each of these points come from the

young people themselves. I would like to highlight his words on

adoration, which is what the wise men came to offer the Child

Jesus on bended knee and with special gifts of gold, frankincense

and myrrh. Pope Benedict participated in similar acts of adoration

offered by young people before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament at

the Prayer Vigil in Madrid, as at Hyde Park the previous year, and

was moved by the silence of those present as they recognised the

physical presence of the Risen Christ in their midst and said with St.

Thomas: my Lord and my God! The Holy Father then goes on to

explain what adoration is and why it touches many young >>>>>>