Message from Bishop Kurt for Christmas 2025

O what is this great mystery? A cave becomes home to the One who cannot be contained by the Cosmos. A Virgin gives birth to a Child. The shepherds worship the One whom the angels glorified. The ones who worshipped a star, learn from a star to worship the True Light who created the heavens.

I attended a live performance of Messiah by George Frederick Handel here in New Jersey. At the great Hallelujah chorus, everyone stood up and began to sing with the choir. The Hallelujah chorus comes at the end of a section based on the Messianic Psalm 2. "Why do the nations rage and the kings and rulers conspire against the Lord and against His Christ?" In this psalm, the greedy and power hungry plot together, and God laughs at them from heaven and establishes His own Son as the King. Everyone sang together, "The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of the Lord and of His Christ." When the whole audience sings with fervor and enthusiasm, "And He shall reign forever and ever, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, forever and ever," they are singing about the conquest by Jesus Christ of the evil in this world. They are singing about the triumph of the King of Peace.

On this beautiful birthday of Jesus, the Child in His mother's arms offers to each of us the gift of peace, not the peace of this world, but Divine Peace, the Peace of God that surpasses all understanding, peace in your own heart, peace in your own soul, the peace of knowing that through Jesus Christ, you are right with God!

I pray for every one of you with all my soul that this year the good God blesses you and your families and your loved ones with peace of mind, peace in your soul, peace in your family, peace in your workplace, and that He blesses you with all the joy that His Mother Mary received in the cave of in Bethlehem when she held Jesus in her arms!

Christ is Born! Glorify Him! Christos rozhdajetsja! Slavite Jeho!

Your servant,

Most Rev. Kurt Burnette

Apostolic Administrator of Toronto