Maybe it's the gloom of these days, maybe it's just the sheer overwhelming powerlessness one feels in the face of so much misery and suffering. Anyway this morning sitting here at the computer I feel disheartened. There is always the straw that breaks the camel's back. For me it was the comment by someone who genuinely thinks the hours in front of the computer are taking a toll. With which I agree. However, the straw was the thoughtless rider to the comment to the effect, "no one reads that stuff anyway and who cares about what is happening out there!" Actually, I've sanitised the comments; they were somewhat more vernacular in tone.

Most of the time no one really cares about "that stuff". The important thing, though, is that some people do care. Some one has to care. It is a moral imperative. Reading again the excellent Statement from the New Zealand Bishops on climate change and also the Living Simply pages from the CAFOD website, I believe strongly that more and more people do care.

I think of the young people up there in Belfast, on the other side of the world in Oamaru and Auckland, in Sydney, in Brisbane, in Cardinal Newman College in Buenos Aires, in Vancouver. Young people do care. And, increasingly, the Edmund Rice community around the world gathered in different contexts care deeply about what is happening to people, especially to young people in different parts of our world.

So, if anyone out there is listening, remember it matters that you care!

Happy Christmas to you all and, as Tiny Tim would say, God bless us everyone!