The year now drawing to a close has been, with the Brexit vote and the Trump election, the year of political surprises. There are many lessons which can be learnt from these two events, for instance that in politics anything can happen, that the media are sometimes out of touch with popular sentiment, and not to trust polls completely. But there is also a broader lesson which we could take from such unexpected turns of events, and that is that fatalism must be avoided. Fatalism views the course of history as predetermined – a juggernaut careering along, generally from bad to worse. For the fatalist man is inherently evil, set unchangeably on a course toward successively worse choices. But the message of Christianity begins in Bethlehem with an angelic affirmation that there are indeed “men of good will” who seek to do God’s will and who are open to the message of the Messiah. Our hope is not only in God, but also in an inherent, albeit wounded, goodness of man. Edmund Burke observed that all that was necessary for evil to conquer was for good men to do nothing; but equally we could say that evil can only triumph where men think it cannot be otherwise.
The figure of the Infant Jesus lying on the straw in Bethlehem fills us with joy, but that joy is complemented by the holy men and women – of good will – who populate the Nativity narrative. From his very infancy Christ manifests to us the goodness of God, but also reminds not to give up on our fellow man too quickly.
With this thought I would like to wish all our readers a very blessed Christmas and a happy New Year.