Dear Sisters and Brothers in Christ,

The immortal Christmas hymn of Franz Gruber, “Silent Night,” will certainly take on a different meaning in the homes of twenty children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut this Christmas.  With little over a week before the celebration of Christ’s birth and all its attendant excitement, anticipation and joy, silence descended upon the homes and families of those who lost their lives in the senseless, cruel shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School there. 

Who could have imagined such wanton destruction of life at a time when the whole Christian world celebrates the life of a Child born to save us and set us free from the kind of evil to which those twenty-six people fell victim, twenty of them children themselves.  It will be a “Silent Night” in Newtown this Christmas but not for the reasons offered in the Christmas carol.

Death is an unfathomable mystery, even more so the death of children or of those lost in the prime of their lives.  In Newtown, young voices now silent and homes silent with grief, replace the family festivities that mark this time of year.  It shouldn’t be.  It’s Christmas.

Because so much of our attention at Christmas is on the gift of God to us, the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ our Savior, it is inevitable that unspeakable acts of horror occurring in these days give rise to the inevitable questions, “Why did this happen? Why now?  How could a loving God permit such destruction of the innocent?”

While I, too, struggle for answers, my thoughts go back to Jesus Christ himself.

Born totally innocent and pure on Christmas day, his whole life was lived for others — not a long life but one of absolute, unconditional love for us.  Yet he suffered; yet he was beaten and tortured; yet he was put to death.  Why? 

Christmas has connected God so totally with us, his human creation, that he allowed himself to feel pain and death from within our very flesh in order to redeem us “from inside” our humanity.  But God did not take away our freedom, even though we abuse it at times.  God did not take away our ability to make choices, even though we make bad ones at times.  God did not take away the power we have to do good as well as evil, the power to love and build up, as well as to destroy, even though we may wish that he would, at times – times like last week in Newtown, Connecticut.

These were not the thoughts I had originally written to share with you as my “Christmas Message” this year.  Sadly, last week’s shootings made my words seem trite and I felt compelled, as your Bishop, to alter my message to address this great national tragedy, however inadequately I have done so.  On Christmas day, let’s all pray for the families of the victims of Sandy Hook Elementary School, that their “Silent Night” may, at least, be made a “holy night” through the memories of those they loved.

It is Christmas.  God is with us, even in our pain ... because of our pain.  We have to lift up our hearts this Christmas because Jesus our Savior — foretold by the prophets, born in Bethlehem, adored by the angels and shepherds and kings alike, warmed in Mary’s loving arms, watched over by Joseph, surrounded by all the elements of the Nativity story that we have come to cherish — Jesus our Savior continues to bring hope and joy to a fallen world, even on a “Silent Night.”

Most Reverend David M. O'Connell, C.M., Bishop of Trenton