Ireland’s Cardinal Sean Brady: Christmas call to end world hunger
(Vatican Radio) Cardinal Sean Brady, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All
Ireland is calling on all people of good will to work together to end world hunger.
In his message for Christmas 2013, the President of the Irish Bishops’ Conference
invites “all of you, but especially public representatives and all who believe in
a more just and compassionate world, to support the call of Pope Francis for an all-out
concerted action to end world hunger by the year 2025.”
The Cardinal’s full
message, published on the website of the Irish Catholic Bishops Conference, reads: “The
celebration of Christmas recalling, as it does, the coming into the world of the Son
of God, His birth at Bethlehem and His first appearances to people, always brings
fresh and joyful hope. These are my hopes this year.
My first hope is that
all who come home for Christmas may really feel welcome and appreciate the love of
relatives, families and friends, and find the Lord in their loved ones. As those who
have come for Christmas from afar know well, the love we experience in our families
is precious. For it is a reflection of the love which God has for each one of us –
the same love which inspired the Father to send his beloved Son to be our Saviour
on that first Christmas night. I also hope that the great activities of preparing
for, and celebrating, Christmas will not overshadow Christ and the many gifts that
He wants to bring, especially the gifts of love, peace and pardon. A seventeenth century
hymn puts it more poetically thus:
Daughter of Sion, rise to greet thine
infant king Nor let thy stubborn heart despise the pardon he doth bring.
My
next hope is for those without company, without food and warmth at this season. May
they be sustained by the concern of fellow human beings. Of course, I am thinking
of people in need here at home but also of people in the Philippines, Syria and the
Democratic Republic of the Congo. I am thinking also especially of the many people
throughout the world who have no peace. Through the work of wise and compassionate
negotiators, may they too experience the salvation brought by Christ. My final hope
is that all of us come to see that the Birth of Christ means little or nothing if
He has not been born in our hearts. This means that the work of Christmas really begins
when we console the broken-hearted, feed the hungry, welcome the strangers, release
the prisoners and bring peace among people.
For that reason I invite all of
you, but especially public representatives and all who believe in a more just and
compassionate world, to support the call of Pope Francis for an all-out concerted
action to end world hunger by the year 2025. The initiative is called: ‘One Human
Family. Food for All’. For far too long we have allowed global hunger and local poverty
to be seen as tolerable. The fact is this; we can solve the problem of hunger and
poverty, if we decide to do so. Let us recall once more: the work of Christmas begins
when we feed the hungry and may God speed that work in 2014. The people, who made
Christmas for me and mine, when I was a child, are long since dead but they are not
dead in my heart or in my memory. However, the fact that they live on in my memory
will not make them last forever. What will make them last forever is that they are
alive in the heart of God. A Saviour has been born for us; he has saved us from everlasting
death. Because of Christmas Day, we can all live forever. Christmas is indeed a special
day. May it be very special day for everyone of you this year and may the peace of
Jesus triumph in your hearts every day in 2014.