The past eighteen months have reminded us that we live in the darkness of a suffering world, aware of our failures, conscious of our helplessness, often disillusioned, angry or bewildered, waiting for a gift that we cannot buy or acquire by ourselves. Few lives have been spared their share of suffering. Death visited over one hundred families in our community this year and left vacant places at our tables and in our homes which can never be filled. Illness has robbed many of the freedom of carefree living. Recession has taken its toll on jobs in our area and has gripped many with the fear of redundancy and the burden of repayments. The saturation of news reporting of the Dublin Report has reawakened in victims the pain of abuse and in many believers anger, incomprehension and deep sadness. In particular, the nameless victims of abuse in its many forms, at all levels in society, those whose story has never been told and, for very many reasons, can never be told, have had their particular share of this deep darkness.
Despite the merriment of the Christmas season, we know that no great, sudden, blinding light will break through our darkness, scattering all our troubles to the furthest ends of the earth. What has appeared, once more this Christmas night, in the birth of a child at Bethlehem, is the message of the Gospel, ever ancient and ever new. This same message, repeated year after year and century after century, is the truth that we believe; namely that the suffering and death which Christ experienced was the road by which he entered the glory of new life where there is no more mourning, weeping or fear. That was not evident, however, to the apostles at the Last Supper or to Mary on Good Friday or to the disciples on Holy Saturday. They had to wait in the darkness and desolation of their shattered lives and broken dreams until Sunday morning for hope to appear.
The light of Christmas is not artificial or passing. If it will not bring with it quick or easy solutions neither will it ever go away. The child in the manger teaches us that we have to learn that we are often helpless and will remain helpless until such time as this darkness takes its course and passes. But pass it will and the promise of growth in a child, this Christ child, is the guarantee that we too will see a time when we will feel free and hard times will come again no more.
We are an Easter People, living in the hope of the Resurrection. But in these bleak times we would probably do better to see ourselves just now as a Holy Saturday People. We cannot just rush to Resurrection. The life of the new, renewed creation is God’s gift, the real Christmas gift. Of themselves, hope and healing cannot come from our own efforts or our desires alone, however intense. As a Church and as a nation we must do everything we can to restore trust and rebuild confidence in those whose lives have been marked by betrayal at every level in our country and in every part of our society. The lights that will guide us along this path are the age-old values given to us by Christ, the child born in Bethlehem; truthfulness, honesty, integrity, the refusal of greed and above all, Christian forgiveness.
As we walk in the valley of darkness at this time, we remember the Chinese proverb ‘It is better to light a candle than to curse the dark’. This candle, taken from the light of Christ this Christmas, can light up the way to a better future and a renewed world. Christmas reminds us, therefore, that we are a people of hope who wait in hope for the new life that is promised by the birth of the Christ child; knowing that it is only God who can bring to fulfillment all our longings, surprise us with joy and give us peace. |
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