For the first time in the last 20 years or so, here in the UK we are moving into a time of uncertainty. Many of our sisters and brothers throughout the Diocese and the UK are facing the possibility of redundancy, unemployment, and in some cases, the poverty that accompanies it. For many others, their finances are tightening and they don’t have the amount of spare money they may have had this time last year. Many people are being made to pay the price for the failure and excesses of our economic and banking systems and many more of them feel that they had nothing to do with it. Amid the growing unemployment and the tightening of belts, there are many others who continue to profit hugely from this uncertainty. It is often the case that we think we can do nothing and just have to make the most of the situation. Here at home, it’s getting tough but for millions of people throughout the developing world, their lives have never been anything other than tough. For many of them, their lives are a daily struggle for survival. On the other hand, there are those who seem to be able to earn so much that if they had nine lives, they wouldn’t be able to spend it all.

Our world is a place of paradoxes: wealth and poverty, good and evil, love and hate, joy and sorrow, generosity and selfishness, war and peace…. We could go on indefinitely. It is within this context that we as Christians live, work, love and move around. Archbishop Oscar Romero gives us a useful tip as to how we may remain faithful to our Lord Jesus Christ during such times; ‘We shouldn’t see professions only as a way to earn money and establish ourselves politically and socially. We have to seek… service to humankind, the best use of my life, not to earn but rather to serve’. If we can spend sometime reflecting on what this means for each one of us then it would become clear that whether I am well-off or not, in work or unemployed, skilled or unskilled, there is a role and space for us all in God’s world.

The uncertainty of our time also brings new opportunities. The wrongs of our economic and political systems provide us with the chance to make something new, something better than we have experienced before. Through our work overseas, CAFOD witnesses people trying to make old things new. Every time we see a well sunk, a school room opened in a remote village somewhere in Africa or a new medical centre or housing being built, we see new opportunities arising for the people living in those communities. Safe drinking water means better health. An education means the chance to escape from poverty. A medical centre means access to medicines and health professionals who can save lives. A house means shelter and security. Here at home we take many of these things for granted and yet when we stop to think about them here, they are also life changing for ourselves.

With your financial help and prayers, CAFOD is able to work on behalf of Catholic Communities here in England and Wales to make a real difference to the lives of some of the poorest people in the world. Thank you for your generosity. However, our work overseas faces many challenges and one the biggest at the moment is how we maintain the value of a CAFOD grant to our overseas partners. The strong £ has had a huge impact on the value of our grants. In 2007/08, a CAFOD grant of £50,000 was worth $100,250, at today’s exchange rate it is now worth only $71,500. This poses a huge challenge to both CAFOD and those we seek to help. Amid the difficulties faced by many of us here at home, CAFOD asks you to please continue to give as much as you can no matter how small. There are other ways in which you can give by: your prayers, by volunteering, we need people throughout the Diocese who would be prepared to visit schools to speak about CAFOD’s work, campaigns volunteers to raise awareness about important issues relating to CAFOD’s work, people experienced in media work, people to hold fundraising events in their parishes or to promote CAFOD’s Lent and Harvest Fast Days, people to participate in sponsored events like the Humber Bridge Walk, Tees Pride 10K, Great North Run…. We are always on the lookout for office volunteers to work alongside our team in York. The possibilities are endless.

St Paul tells us (2 Corinthians 8:13-15) ‘I am not trying to relieve others by putting a burden on you; but since you have plenty at this time, it is only fair that you should help those who are in need. Then, when you are in need and they have plenty, they will help you. In this way both are treated equally.’ As Scripture says, ‘The one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one that gathered little did not have too little’.