Church leaders reflect on how our world is shaped

Dr Kirkpatrick says: “For different reasons, many people on this island will have been feeling vulnerable this year, especially due to the cost of living crisis. It was into the place of vulnerability too that Jesus Christ came that first Christmas."

Dr Kirkpatrick recalls how approaching the Ukrainian border from Hungary on his visit was quite stressful, especially when your passport is taken and you are left in a kind of no man’s land. "Vulnerability is what you feel".

"That same feeling happened at various times - when the air raid sirens went off, or you were stopped at a checkpoint – occasions that take you out of our comfort zone.

"At the time there was a personal sense of inner peace, as I knew that my life was in the hands of the kindest and most caring heavenly Father.

"As long as I remember this, all is well and I’m happy to place myself in such situations for the good of others when I consider it to be His will."

The moderator says the most vulnerable people are those who have little power to change anything, like adults and children he met in Transcarpathia, western Ukraine. In such challenging situations, as I experienced, there is a real feeling of helplessness and even anger.

"If we want to discover real love, we have to be vulnerable. If we try to achieve a meaningful peace with one or many, we have to become vulnerable; If we really want to grow in any area of our lives; at Christmas or at any time, we have to become open-handed and open-hearted."

Church Ireland and Roman Catholic archbishops of Armagh, meanwhile, in a joint Christmas message, remind that a highlight of the Christmas season is the solemn reading from the prologue of St John’s Biblical gospel with its memorable opening: “In the beginning was the Word".

The Rev John McDowell and the Rev Eamon Martin say scripture readings at Christmas leave Christians in no doubt that this good news of abundance is God’s ‘Yes’ to the world This made the climax of God’s plan for the world, the keeping of promises made by God down the centuries.

"Riches and abundance will mean different things to different people. In the Ireland of today many of us think of those words in relation to material comfort – for most of us even the spiritual life requires a degree of material security to be sustainable.

"The problem comes when this one aspect of abundance overwhelms all others; a belief that the price of everything becomes the value of everything, which in turn hardens into an ideology of maximising consumer satisfaction which cannot do justice to the richness of personal life," the archbishops add.

Their message concludes: "The light that came into the world at Christmas time enlightens every person who has been born or ever will be. Jesus Christ was the first person in the whole of history to have conceived of humankind as a unity, whose good he came to secure and who are secure in Him".