In the fourth of our reflections, Thomas McCarthy OP considers the saving pathway that began in a stable on that first Christmas morning in Bethlehem

While Christmas presents are eagerly, even hurriedly, torn open, gifts to recall the Child gifted to humanity in Bethlehem, it is easy to forget a story so macabre and cruel as to be scarcely credible: Herod’s order that all children aged two and younger in and around Bethlehem be slaughtered – a barbaric reaction to the birth of this Christ-child. Childhood is a place of violence as well as tenderness. Many children suffer cruelty and violence; most childhoods have both laughter and tears.

A striking feature of children’s lives today is that their playground itself is very different. From tumbling down a mossy slope or running around a schoolyard, children now look elsewhere for their playgrounds, particularly to social media. While they may find a sort of connection there, it is a space that is often frightening and threatening, where genuine character-forming relationships rarely flourish. It can get lonely when the only human “contacts” are made in a virtual world that is nearly but not quite real. Loneliness in a young heart is particularly cruel. Online bullying has even led, in some cases, to the suicide of teenagers whose feelings of isolation and helplessness led them to despair.