Christmas – and the rest of the year – is about the ‘little nobodies’

Bishop of Derry Dónal McKeown brings Irish Mail On Sunday readers a Christmas message of hope

IREMEMBER talking to a proud father many years ago. He had gone with his wife and two sons to somewhere in the Persian Gulf to relax over the New Year. On the first morning, they visited a large shopping mall and one of his young sons tugged urgently at his arm and said: ‘Look, Daddy, shepherds!’

My guess is that the men wearing colourful headgear did not have much experience of minding sheep on a cold hillside. But the Christmas play had clearly left an impression and an assumption in the child’s head.

We have all seen innumerable Christmas plays.

It is generally presented as a sweet story, as most of the actors are children. But there are a few aspects of the Christmas story which strike me as being awkward rather than sweet.

Firstly, it is a story about little nobodies. For Mary and Joseph, the town of Bethlehem was far from home. They had no connections or significance. Giving birth without family must be a very lonely experience. They had no fixed accommodation.

That is the experience of worrying numbers of our contemporaries. The strong will speak about an Ireland that is ‘open, progressive, liberal, outward-looking and dynamic’, as described by the Aer Lingus publicity.

But we lose too many nobodies: to addiction, suicide and hopelessness. And few seem to notice, except those who knew and loved them.

Since the first Christmas, people of faith have been motivated to make a difference for those without a home.

For example, the Christian churches on this island recently came together to support an initiative called In Six Months A Lot Can Change.

The project offers resources to critically engage with the scriptures to help explore what home means for family life and how fear of losing a home, or actually losing it, is both devastating to the individual and for society’s wellbeing. Our analysis is being informed by current realities in housing ‘markets’ in both jurisdictions in Ireland. The objective is to stimulate discussion around an alternative ordering of society where all have the right to secure a home life.

A second aspect of the awkwardness of the Christmas story is that it comes at the end of the Advent – a season in which we talk about flowers blooming in the desert.

The message that Christians celebrate is not just that we should be nice to the nobodies once a year. The Bethlehem story is one of hope coming from the most unlikely places. The nobodies are not just the object of our pity.

They are the source of our salvation as a society. That is something for all of us to think about.

While we all possess God-given gifts, I know I have no talent when it comes to quizzes.

My ignorance of much of the cultural bling makes me look like an ignorant heretic when it comes

to the rich and famous. But we all know humble people who have done great things.

Many people in Derry are developing a fascination with Sr Clare Crockett. Clare was a local socialite with dreams of being an actress but became a religious sister and sadly died in an earthquake in Ecuador in 2016. Her story fascinates many.

And, last month, we lost one of our street characters in

Derry, ‘Scots Jimmy’, who was well-known around the city, ragged but unfailingly cheerful and engaging.

When he died, money was raised to pay the undertaker, one of our least-advantaged parishes looked after the large funeral service and the local authorities provided the grave.

Happily, many of our communities quietly know that every nobody is a somebody.

Christmas says: ‘Keep an eye out for the nobodies.’ They have more to offer than we might want to think.

Thirdly, the importance of the Christmas nobodies speaks loudly to me in the Church. There is a tendency in many quarters for organisations and countries to want walls. Snarling has become the tone of too much public discourse. And in some religious circles, too, there is a growing minority that adopts that approach.

The message is: ‘We want to be small in number but high in orthodox purity.’ But the visitors to Bethlehem would have little time for that attitude. The name ‘the Pharisees’ means ‘the set apart ones’.

We know how little patience the child who grew up in Nazareth would have with that attitude.

He knew what it was like to be an outsider. He was concerned about being vulnerable for the sake of the other – not strong for the sake of Himself.

The Christ child would have no room for angry, arrogant preachers in his name. Christian leaders are there to serve their Lord – not to use him to stoke their own fears.

My hope is that all of us can have a Christmas celebration that brings joy, that rejoices in the best that human beings can be, and one that fills the deepest hungers that we have. The God of surprises bears gifts, not burdens. Happy Christmas!

RACIALLY-CHARGED language has been making its way into political discourse over the last year in ways we have not experienced before. Nakedly populist rhetoric has seen strongly nationalist leaders elected in the United States, Brazil, India and Hungary, among many countries, but we always prided ourselves here on not falling into that trap.

Until recently. Failed presidential candidate Peter Casey attacked the Travelling community and rode the backlash to almost a quarter of first preference votes. Noel Grealish’s reported comments about asylum seekers during the controversy over a direct provision centre in Co. Galway, was followed by the use of stats of dubious merit to back up his non-arguments.

It was, however, the bizarre comments of Verona Murphy, the Fine Gael candidate in the Wexford byelection, that brought the race card into the mainstream. She suggested terror cult ISIS was ‘a big part of the migrant population’, despite there being no evidence to support the claim.

She doubled down on those comments this week after being dumped from the Fine Gael ticket for next year’s general election, raising the fanciful spectre that terrorism might be visited on the bridge in Wexford as it was on London Bridge. Her latest comments cast doubt on the sincerity of her apology for her original remarks.

Her de-selection came a bit late for comfort. Ms Murphy was a high-profile candidate for the main party of government, handselected by the Taoiseach to run in the constituency, and this meant her comments were given more credence than was afforded to those on the periphery. No matter what the political cost, she should have been cast adrift mid-campaign.

There is no doubt that issues around race and immigration can be exploited by political actors as they seek to introduce an unedifying undercurrent into the political conversation.

As we report today, Leo Varadkar has bravely spoken about the racial abuse he has suffered as an Irishman of Indian heritage, a story familiar to many immigrants to this country and to their children, yet he himself singled out two countries last month, saying they were sending the significant majority of asylum seekers. That was troubling.

The Taoiseach now says he was ‘happy’ Verona Murphy did not get elected. However, in not properly vetting Ms Murphy before putting her forward as a Fine Gael candidate, the Taoiseach must accept a share of responsibility for letting the genie out of the bottle – and for any societal damage that flows from that.

Rewards gained from such tactics will prove all too short-lived.

Time to remember all our ‘nobodies’

AS Bishop of Derry Dónal McKeown writes in today’s Irish Mail On Sunday, this is the time of year when we should think of the least of us, the people he describes as the ‘nobodies’ in our society.

The economy might be a great deal healthier than it was a decade ago, but society is leaving far too many behind.

Our thoughts, therefore, are with those who are affected by homelessness and who find themselves in emergency accommodation.

As Bishop McKeown writes: ‘My hope is that all of us can have a Christmas celebration that brings joy, that rejoices in the best that human beings can be, and one that fills the deepest hungers that we have.’

Amen to that – and a very happy, holy and peaceful Christmas to our readers.