Writing recently in The Guardian (January 3rd), British politician and columnist, Neal Lawson, suggests that religious people may be the only members of civil society who can speak out credibly on social justice issues.

He believes that politicians have largely surrendered their moral authority in their readiness to compromise principles and values in their fascination with media and focus groups. We live, Lawson, argues, in a society permeated and corrupted by a smug consumerist complacency. Only religious figures appear to be willing in these times to puncture this complacency. He cites the recent Christmas messages of both Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, in support of this claim. In their messages both church leaders challenged believers to reject consumerist values and to align themselves with the struggle for social justice and the assertion of humanity in a world where human life has been trivialised by markets, media and the cult of celebrity.

He goes on to say: "As the lifeblood of morality drips from our body politic, it leaves a small pumping heart of socially and morally aware religious leaders and institutions. I don't care if they are Muslim, Catholic or Church of England - if they preach the cause of the poor and the needy in our bloated materialistic world, then they are my people".

As we move to the establishment of Edmund Rice International as a new expression of the Edmund Rice voice in the struggle for justice, human rights and the assertion of the dignity of marginalised, it is consoling to receive, albeit in proxy fashion, this affirmation from Britain's more radical Left. Lawson acknowledges that, as an atheist and a passionate combatant for a secular society, it is difficult for him to recognise that an aggressive secularism has done more harm than good. He now believes that the moral vacuum at the heart of contemporary society must seek a remedy among religious believers who understand both the power of their moral traditions and the need to gather with others in the struggle for justice.

Neal Lawson chairs the left-of-centre pressure group Compass. He is currently writing a book about turbo-consumerism.

Christmas Eve has already begun as I write this. It began for me this morning while listening to BBC Radio 4's Something Understood broadcast at 6.00am. This is a weekly religious broadcast presented by Mark Tully (who lives interestingly in Delhi, India, and is known to the Brothers there) in which he explores a theme using literature, music and recorded interviews.

This morning's theme, appropriately, was: "Who is Jesus?". Tully ranged over a number of answers to this question, beginning with Diarmuid O Murchu's call for the liberation of the person and message of Jesus from dogmas and canonical scriptures and moved on to Marcus Borg. For balance he included an interview with James Alison, a Catholic theologian who resolutely defends the traditional view of the Incarnation and the relevance of dogma in defending the "criterion from elsewhere" that judges human affairs. All very interesting and stimulating stuff at that hour of the morning.

My suspicion is that Mark Tully himself tends toward the more spiritual and mystical interpretation of the Christ-event. I have always been struck by his choice of music, his love of Bach for instance, his featuring of Arvo Paart's hauntingly minimalist protest against soul-destructive atheism, and the beauty of John Tavener's musical exploration of mystical themes in Greek Orthodox spirituality.

It was with Tavener that he ended this morning's programme. Perhaps that is where any confrontation with the experience of Christmas finally arrives, at the mystery of Spirit's on-going presence in the daily incarnational events of our own lives.

One of the poem's cited by Tully this morning was from the English poet, U. A. Fanthorpe, the first female Professor of Poetry at Oxford in 1929. The poem is called "This Was the Moment". It is a poem that goes to the heart of ordinariness of what happened in Bethlehem two thousand and six years ago (give or take a few years!).

This Was the Moment
From BC: AD

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future's
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazardly by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven

by U. A. Fanthorpe

Yesterday, I had occasion to go to the Education Office in Clonkeen near Dublin. I took the LUAS tram and for my reading I had purchased the London Independent (a habit of mine, as keen readers of this blog will know!). Not for the first time the front-page graphic said it all. It is feature on this website on the Darfur Christmas page. That silhouetted armed figure against the flames of a burning village captures well the tragedy that is Darfur. It is a tragedy, as everyone keeps reminding us, is about to unfold into a human disaster of Tsunami proportions. Except this time, no Western tourists will be among the victims. Instead, it will be the usual roster of Africa's poor.

Earlier this week I was in a meeting with some Edmund Rice Centre colleagues at the offices of TROCAIRE, the Irish Church development aid NGO. During the meeting we touched on the theme of powerlessness. When faced with human rights abuses, with situations like Darfur, with the plight of children and young people in Lusaka, Wadeye, or Kokata, we feel absolutely powerless. Not even the most powerful and well-resourced NGOs can effect the kind of change that is needed. Change is slow and often invisible. But the experience of powerlessness, as we agreed at the meeting with TROCAIRE, is the first painful step towards compassion and genuine solidarity.

On reflection, it was not without significance that this insight arose in the offices of TROCAIRE, the name of the NGO is the Gaelic word for "compassion".

Compassion, solidarity and commitment: this is the journey we undertake each day in the work of advocacy and justice.

Happy Christmas!

When Brent Scrowcroft in 2002 advised President Bush that an invasion of Iraq would lead to an Armageddon, he could scarcely have realised how prescient his words were. Describing the descent into chaos in Iraq in terms of Armageddon or Apocalypse is a common-place among journalists today. The biblical references are implicit and compelling.

Today's Gospel (Lk 21:25-28,34-36) is about the Second Coming of Jesus the Messiah. Past, present, and future converge in this evocation of an ultimate, final disposition of creation, the universe and human history. Some see this being played out even as we speak. "When we go to war in Iraq we will do so to summon the Messiah", this is what some of the Christian Right proponents of the Iraq war believed in 2002. They still do today.

We humans are only too well capable of creating the Armageddons and Apocalypses of our direst imaginings. For many, especially the poor and the persecuted, this awful envisioning of hell is not merely the stuff of religious psychosis, it is an all too real, this-worldly present reality. Think of the recent histories of the DRD, Iraq and the Balkans. Think of the teacher disembowelled this very week in Afghanistan for daring to teach women in his school. Armageddon is our business, not God's.

So, what does today's Gospel have to bring us by way of "Good News".

It alerts us to the truth that what we most long for in life, love, happiness, justice, is not ultimately within our own power to achieve. We have immense power to destroy and to bring about minor Armageddons in our own lives or in the lives of those around us. Redemption, as fulfilled love, definitive happiness, absolute justice, is another matter. For that we can only live in expectation and hope.

In the meantime, we do our best to filter out the negativity within us, to live just and decent lives, as Paul would have it, and to somehow align ourselves with the abundant life within us that this year, as always, struggles to be born. Perhaps it is this life that is our Second Coming.