Anglican message addresses fear, anxiety, stress, loss of hope

An­gli­can Bish­op of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the Right Rev­erend Claude Berkley, has called on cit­i­zens to em­brace hope, com­pas­sion and ac­tion as the na­tion cel­e­brates Christ­mas, a sea­son he de­scribed as es­pe­cial­ly sig­nif­i­cant amid grow­ing anx­i­ety and un­cer­tain­ty.

In his Christ­mas mes­sage, Bish­op Berkley said the pe­ri­od marked the Feast of the In­car­na­tion, when Chris­tians cel­e­brate Je­sus com­ing to seek out hu­man­i­ty and to lead peo­ple “to new­ness of life and to a bet­ter re­al­i­ty”.

He said the mes­sage of Christ­mas car­ried par­tic­u­lar weight at a time when many peo­ple were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing anx­i­ety, fear, stress and a range of con­cerns, with some feel­ing com­plete­ly with­out hope.

Bish­op Berkley said the Church con­tin­ued to pray for those af­fect­ed and en­cour­aged be­liev­ers to act in ways that could make life dif­fer­ent and bet­ter for oth­ers, adding that God had en­abled peo­ple to play that role in the lives of those in need.

He said God sent his son to live among hu­man­i­ty so that peo­ple could share in His glo­ry, and de­scribed it as heart­en­ing to see the re­sponse of An­gli­can parish­es across the coun­try.

Ac­cord­ing to Bish­op Berkley, many parish­es were ac­tive­ly reach­ing out to those on the mar­gins of so­ci­ety, in­clud­ing peo­ple who strug­gled and those who suf­fered, as they sought to share love, good­will and prac­ti­cal sup­port.

He said love could not be con­tained and had to be shared, de­scrib­ing this spir­it of gen­eros­i­ty as cen­tral to the Chris­t­ian re­sponse at Christ­mas.