‘Even if God exists I am content to live my life without him,’ is a position expressed by many young people and is often shared by those who are faithful baptised members of mainstream Christian Churches.  ‘God talk’ has no real significance for modern life involving the struggle to ‘make it’ in a highly competitive and consumerist society.   Does this sentiment resonate with your inner feelings?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer who faced the cold, harsh reality of the Nazi’s concentration camps, suggested in his writings that people had outgrown the way that God and Christianity had been resented to them.  He saw Christianity as a worldly religion concerned primarily with the transformation of this present world.  Yet the ‘other worldliness’ of Christianity has taken centre stage.  He advocated a Christianity that was focussed on the present reality of the world order and coined the phrase ‘religionless Christianity’.  This is authentic Christianity that Jesus the Nazarene struggled to live and establish in his small Galilean community. 

As Christians on what do we spend most of our time and energy?  Is it now urgent for the Christian Brothers and members of the Edmund Rice family to review our time commitments? Can we make a preferential option for those who are least among us and not for almost exclusively for those who are relatively comfortable and secure in our world? 

Perhaps our young people like us find no need for a God who makes them feel deeply uncomfortable.  The Gospel of Jesus challenges those who have the largest share to act with compassion and to engage personally in meeting, understanding and befriending in gratitude those who are despised and excluded.

Is it possible that the flesh of God’s tiny face this Christmas be most tangible for us, as followers of Edmund, in the faces and smiles of those we and the media categorise as victims of war, refugees, asylum seekers, ‘drop outs’, the lonely, sick and aged, addicts, criminals, mentally ill or pavement dwellers.  In the words of Jesus, these are the real gifts of Christmas that we need to bring into our homes and hearts and place in deep reverence and gratitude beneath our Christmas Trees.

Br Peter Harney (CRT Team)