18 Dec 2024
Please note that the MSC Missions Office will be closed over the Christmas period,
from 3.00pm on Monday, December 23rd to 9.00am on Thursday, January 2nd.
With warmest wishes to our mission friends everywhere for a happy, healthy, and safe Christmas season.
Dear Friends,
Beannachtaí na Nollag oraibh go léir – Christmas greetings to you and yours! We have come to the end of another year, and what a great blessing it is to be here writing to you as we look ahead with hopeful hearts to 2025.
This year marked 170 years since the foundation of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, and 60 years since we set up our MSC Missions Office for the Irish Province here in Cork City. Time goes on, generations come and go, challenges arise and are met, and new ones take their place. Throughout it all, there is always a need, there is always a call. Be it 170 years ago, 60 years ago, or today – people remain in real and great need of our ministry. From pastoral support and care, to the provision of the most basic necessities such as clean water to drink or a safe place to sleep, our MSCs continue on our shared mission to help those in need, and you, our mission friends, are a powerful and invaluable force in allowing us to do so.
Recent months allowed me and a team of MSCs to meet with many of our mission friends and benefactors across the Irish Province, and what a great pleasure and privilege it was. The sense of community and the sheer generosity of spirit are a tremendously powerful and wonderful force, particularly in the face of all the fear, sorrow, and violence that plague our world in current times. Your compassion extends to people at the other side of the world, to friends you will never meet, but whose lives have been and will be changed immeasurably because of the kindness of strangers.
Of course, Christmas can be a difficult time for many; to all who find themselves struggling for any reason this Christmas, be it with loss or illness or personal challenges, please know that you are in my prayers this Christmas, and in the prayers of our MSCs everywhere.
Pope Francis has described Christmas as “an inner joy of light and peace”, and that inner joy, that peace of mind and spirit, is my prayer for you this Christmas time. Our mission friends have been and continue to be instrumental in bringing the joy of progress and the light of hope to so many needy people and vulnerable families in so many different places, and it is with a truly grateful heart that I thank you for your kindness, on behalf of our MSCs all over the world. May the spirit of peace, goodwill, and the Lord’s love fill your heart and your home this Christmas, and may God bless and protect you and your loved ones throughout 2025.
Wishing you a happy, holy, and peaceful Christmas,
Fr John Fitzgerald MSC