Can Social Media transform? Does it need to be transformed? Can it be a site of Encounter? The cover story for our January issue tries to understand how social media can enhance our mission as a Church.
Let me start with the word encounter. In the spiritual sense of the term, it simply means to run into; and running into God is the best thing that can happen to us! To go deeper, God Encounter in the biblical understanding are encounters with the persons of the Holy Trinity – the Father, Son and Spirit. It is not about a one-time dramatic experience but an ongoing leading of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Can social media take us to God? Let us look at the following example.
Carlo Acutis, the Italian teenage computer whiz has been touted as the patron saint of the internet. What did he do to gain this accolade? He not only created a website cataloguing and promoting Eucharistic miracles but he also shared through the media site his encounter with the Trinity every day as he celebrated the Eucharist. For us, the Eucharist is the tangible presence of God, the Father, Son and Spirit, whose very nature is relational, with us. For God, to be God, is to be connected. This relationship is a living relationship, a feeling relationship and a pulsating life-giving relationship. It is not a limiting network, but an expanding one. Jesus in becoming one among us made every relationship sacred, transforming all networks into His living body. Media becomes social because humans invest in it. And wherever life is present God is there too. That is why Carlo Acutis was able through social media to communicate the throbbing energy of this relationship between the Father, Son and the Spirit through the miracles that he encountered and witnessed. And incredibly he himself became a miracle that healed Mattheus from Brazil who was born of a pancreatic defect. During his beatification ceremony the Cardinal who delivered the homily said, “Carlo used the internet in service of the Gospel, to reach as many people as possible.” This teenager saw the web as a place to use with responsibility without becoming enslaved and as a site that led to encounters of the Divine in all people, in all life.
Pushpa Joseph
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