14.12.2023
A Christmas Letter from the Archbishop of Dublin
Dear friends
I write to wish you Happy Christmas and a Happy New Year in 2024.
It is quite some time since the full force of Covid–19. In those long and dark days, I wrote letters to people and to groups of people, to organizations and to institutions. I did this to keep in touch at a time when keeping in touch became a real difficulty for so many of us and an insurmountable hurdle for so many more of us. Mercifully, our interactions are restored to normal even though many still carry the scars and the anxieties of those distant days. Teenagers at very least are much freer to enjoy social life, to assert their independence and to carve out a pathway in their life ahead. Children are likewise able to socialize, to play and to test their imagination in a world of awesome complexity but also of awesome potential. Older people are able to see their loved ones and to hold them in their hands in ways that were impossible for so long. For the time of Christmas 2023 there is significant normality.
A new life has begun, slowly for some, faster for others. ‘Keeping in touch’ is a phrase that trips off our tongue with such ease that we ‘take it for granted’ and, of course, that is another stock phrase. However, once ‘keeping in touch’ is threatened or endangered, blocked up or broken down, we very quickly realize how treasured and precious it is. Being ‘out of touch’ is a frightening place to be and a bad place to live or to try to survive. This is clear to a smartphone generation, so dependent have we become on that precious commodity: connectivity.
We are seeing more and more people ‘out of touch’ in recent days and months and in different ways. Some of it is people being so wedded to their smartphone that they simply walk out into traffic without thinking. Some of it is other people not able to keep up with the bombardment of what is happening and information flying around that they forget the things that are important to them. But we have also seen terrifying images of other people ‘out of touch’ in ways that are inhuman and inhumane. People caught in rubble, fire and tangled metal have been frantically hoping that their signalling by phone or in any other way they could manage would be heard and responded to. In many cases it was not nor could it be. Bare hands avail little in the face of pre–stressed concrete. In all cases, the response and the release from such war–torn confinement have brought the same people into an unending cycle of wandering exhaustion without food or water, without prospects of dignity or security, nomads and exiles in their own lives and in what was once their home. In every circumstance, this set of circumstances is unspeakable. It defies description. Yet it is contemporary reality; it is happening now. It is Israel, Gaza and The West Bank. It is Ukraine. It is Nagorno Karabakh. It is The Democratic Republic of Congo. It is Yemen. It is all the places we cannot remember. And it is Christmas.
War frames the world in which we live. We are beyond fortunate if it has not come knocking on our door or on the door of those we know and those who matter to us. International conflict is a local conflict with international impacts and repercussions; local conflict sets off waves of response that draw in international actors who have been living out an uneasy truce for decades and often since the last war. It takes generations to sort through and one foot placed wrongly is three or more paces backwards. Something, however, has changed. We are not hearing the same tales of marvel and miracle in the stories of escape in recent times that we used to do because people are not able to escape this time. We get an increasing sense that people are being hemmed in, people are being worn down by being confined, people are being degraded and dehumanized by being pinned down.
Intimidation has created its own vice–like grip of claustrophobia of the mind and strangulation of the soul. This type of development does nothing whatsoever for the flourishing of the human spirt. It simply polarized into the future people who are already at odds with one another in what was once an uneasy truce and now is beyond the grasp of national and international communities to unravel and to weave afresh. Social media has brought us face to phone with something we cannot bear to endure. And it is Christmas.
Presence has become one of the new virtues. ‘Being there’ is now what it is all about if it is possible. In the hospitals in Gaza City, a pressing and unforgettable, iconic contemporary example, the absolutely last to leave have been the medical and nursing personnel. They have stuck by those who are so sick and so needy that the presence of another with them is everything there now is in terms of intervention. This is a point where a sense of duty overrides a recognition of personal danger. This is a point where being there for others has shown itself to be the only prospect of love in action because there are no supplies, there is no infrastructure, there is no family. This is a point of inspiration to young and old worldwide telling us that service is the new leadership. The staff of Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, now a household name worldwide for courage, service and dignity were the last to be able to offer any semblance of full medical care before they had to go. They were described as ‘bearing the cross of pain and the hope of life.’ This is a chilling reminder of one instance among many of where ‘being there’ was the final frontier. Language and meaning have changed irretrievably, memory and happiness no longer fit together nor do belief and trust. No new world has dawned. In all of its manifestations, this is what war does.
And it is Christmas … and we are correct to look forward to it. Whether you take a religious view of Christmas or not, it is very obviously a time of light in a time of darkness. The time of year tells us this. The effort to make something different of our homes at this time of year tells us this. The lights and decorations in our city streets and across our countryside tell us this. For any of us who do not live in a war–torn part of the world it is important for us, in whatever modest ways we can, to let the light of ‘keeping in touch’ shine through the darkness that others experience for them and for us. It could be a positive message on social media; it could be a donation to any number of the charities working day and night both here in Ireland and abroad. All of this will help those who are caught in places of darkness and show that we who live in places of light care. It could also be helping others to realize that they need to understand more about the conflicts that are going on in order to offer informed opinions and that understanding from one another is by far the best way forward. ‘Keeping in touch’ with others helps us to keep ahead of what we ourselves cannot do. Christmas is a time of openness and of generosity. My hope is that you will find Christmas happy and will do everything you can to make it as happy as possible for those to whom it is not a time of light.
I wish you Happy Christmas and continuing happiness in 2024,
+Michael