AT THIS time of year “when darkness can fall so deeply in different ways, it’s important to recall the brighter moments in life and human experience,” the Catholic primate Cardinal Seán Brady has said.
“Hardship, bereavements, natural disasters and failures, can either overwhelm and paralyse us or they can awaken our hope and rally our strength to help one another,” he said in his Christmas message.
He said that “the challenge we now face is to bring encouragement to one another. Just as an individual may spiral down into a state of depression, so too, a community can allow itself to be overwhelmed by negativity.
“Nobody wants to minimise the pain that many are suffering, but having a positive attitude and coming together to support each other, really can help us to get through these difficult times . . .” he said. He made no reference to the clerical child sex abuse issue in his message.
The Church of Ireland primate Archbishop Alan Harper said “there is more good news: we are down but we are not out! We need to re-establish the values and principles that are surer and more admirable foundations for society than those which seduced us.”
In his Christmas message, he said we “need a new vision of society as one extended family, a single community of persons committed to one another by obligations of love and respect. To love means to give and receive that which can neither be bought nor sold, neither earned nor stolen.”
He said that “there is a message that every person in Ireland needs to hear and take to heart this Christmas whether we live in Northern Ireland or the Republic. It is good news in what has been a terrible year for so many: To you is born in the City of David a Saviour, Christ, the Lord,” he said. “God has not and will not write us off,” he said.
The Presbyterian Moderator, Rev Dr Norman Hamilton recalled, in his Christmas message, that “there was a man at the time of Jesus’ birth who is almost always overlooked. The inn keeper. This good man did what he could for the stranded couple for whom there was no room in the inn. He provided safety and shelter, and probably a good deal of privacy from curious neighbours.” He recalled that “last week the much respected Dame Joan Bakewell [the UK’s official voice for older people] said: ‘Scrooge might well be approved of today, caring only for himself and his own interests. He might even have awarded himself a bonus’.”
Dr Hamilton continued, “as a hard Christmas (in several senses) comes and goes, my plea to each and every citizen of this island is simply this – be a good Samaritan, this Christmas, early 2011, every day next year to someone. There is more to living than simply caring for ourselves and our own interests, however important or challenging they may be.”
Financial institutions and the public bodies that “squandered so much are under obligation to display patience and generosity to those who simply cannot cope”, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Rev Dr John Neill, has said. “To ask for this must involve each and every one of us in a spirit of sharing of burdens. We have been a grasping society even if most people have not seen that much of the apparent wealth of the last decade,” he said in his Christmas message.
“The expectations of past years have had a profound effect on the mindset of so many of us. It is this that is challenged by the message of Christmas. For those hurting most, such must go beyond any exchange of gifts. It must be developed in terms of burdens shared, and a deep generosity of heart.”