'Jesus Christ heralds true liberation'
The birth of Jesus Christ shows us how much his life became important
in the attempt that was made by man to get out of his sinfulness and the
divisive nature in him which may be, him go against himself by going
against his own brother, said His Holiness Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith at
the Christmas festival at Temple Trees on Thursday.
"For that reason the Lord came upon earth to show us how to overcome
selfishness and he showed us how this can be done through self
abnegation on the Cross. Therefore, the birth of Jesus Christ heralds to
us the true liberation from selfishness, from hate, from violence," he
said.
Full text of the speech: "Jesus Christ showed us how we should
activate this kind of love among ourselves by the practice of the
virtues of humility, of loving our brothers and sisters, showing the
other cheek to those who assault us, to be heroic in our patience, in
our charity, in the way we serve each other, in the way we pardon and
reconcile ourselves with others. It is in this light that the present
situation of our country requires action on our part inspired by the
birth of Jesus Christ in order to achieve peace, permanent peace.
"Now the war is over. That gave so much of suffering to this country.
It is my conviction that in spite of that there are still causes that
have to be addressed in order to achieve total peace. It is a challenge
also to us Christians. That challenge is how to unite our people
removing all the causes of that conflict and ensuring that there is
peace, harmony, equality and dignity for all peoples in this country.
"It is also part of that challenge to ensure that doesn't happen
again, that due to differences of race, language or religion such
conflict arise. We have to overcome selfishness. Whether it is
manifested in the form of our love, for our language, our race or our
religion. If we don't do that there will never be peace in our country.
We also face the challenge of the international community not
understanding us in this effort to achieve total peace in our country.
"In that light it is necessary to create an atmosphere of trust and
confidence of among different people, especially among those who seem to
have lost their causes. It is not good for this country to have a group
of people who feel that they have lost their cause and a group of those
who feel that they have won their cause. It is necessary to erase that
difference and make all of us feel that we have all won the battle of
peace. It is necessary that the government also without delay gets down
to the task of achieving peace in this country. Whatever has been
achieved so far has to be rendered more people oriented and accepted.
"The attempt to always run to the international community to solve
our problems is also not acceptable. We can solve our own problems
because we have religious, spiritual and the moral rectitude necessary
in our own cultures to solve our problems by ourselves. We also have the
necessary courage to do that because we are a people of courage. What we
need to give to our people is what Jesus Christ came on earth to
fulfill.
"That is to achieve selflessness in whether it is at the individual
level or at the national level creating an atmosphere of selflessness
among all our peoples, so that they can reach out one another.
"That is the heroism that even the other religious founders have
shown us those whom we accept in our country. We have a great historical
heritage in this country. We have been nourished by the religious rarity
and difference but we have been nourished by that.
"We have a golden opportunity to usher in a period of co-existence,
harmony and peace among the different national and religious groups in
this country. We cannot postpone it. These days we have had the release
of the report of the LLRC which is our own organization where our people
were members, participated, where many people gave evidence from our own
country.
"We can say the voice of our own people those who have suffered the
difficulties of the war have been the accord in this document. We have
to say that this report is our own effort, the result of our own effort.
We have to be happy about it. We don't have to feel that it has to be
the answer to all our questions. Still we can present it as a report
that will help us to achieve or start work walking towards achieving
peace in our country.
"This is a document that has had the criticism, the evidence, the
participation of a large majority of own people, not like the other
document that was prepared overseas. When we take a good look at this
document we can see that there are many courageous, proposals in it in
order to achieve peace and harmony among our people. These suggestions
also help us to understand the truth of certain dark corners of the
conflict that have not been brought out so far. It will help us to
overcome our difficulties and our differences and it will make that
process launched firmly for the future.
"This way our people those who have the Tamil population feels that
they have lost their cause can be gained constructively on to our side
and our people can extent our hand to them so that we become brothers in
the same country. Let us take steps necessary in order not to create the
mentality of we versus you but we all together.
"We would like to request His Excellency the President and the
different political leaders of this country to work towards this. I
would say that this will not be such a difficult problem if we all get
together and work towards this. If we take the action necessary by
ourselves this need not occupy the international community because the
destiny of this country belongs to us, Sri Lankans. That is our right to
decide. We wish all of you the blessings of the Lord Jesus Christ on
this effort that you would be taking in order to reconcile our country
definitely". |