Are you up to the Challenge? :Weekly Message for 09-20-2022

Dear Friends,

In Pope John Paul ll’s 1989 address in honor of World Communication’s Day, he shared that despite advances in techniques and the extraordinary growth of social media use, the secularistic trend “is apparently bent on hastening the disappearance of any sense of religion among the people of our day.” This was true in 1989 and is even more true today. One just needs to scroll through the headlines on Facebook, Twitter or Tic Tok to see the overt hostility to any expression of Christianity that does not openly agree with whomever is looking to rewrite history, eliminate the Ten Commandments or redefine morality to include individual ideologies.

Christianity has always been radical—so radical that the first 33 Popes were martyred, along with countless men and women who recognized that the Gospel message (kerygma) was meant to change the world from the inside.

Archbishop Vigneron of Detroit quoted Pope Benedict XVI in his pastoral letter when he wrote Unleashing the Gospel, “The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings… Even among those who affirm that God exists, many are living a practical atheism—that is, they are living as if God did not exist.”

The kerygma is often described in terms of four essential elements:

• God’s loving plan for human beings
• Sin and its consequences, especially separation from God
• God’s answer to our separation by sending his Son for our salvation
• The response this gift calls for from every person: to repent, be baptized and share the message. Sharing God’s plan of salvation is every baptized Christian’s job.

Pope John Paul ll said, “The question confronting the Church today is no longer whether the man in the street can grasp a religious message, but how to employ the communications media so as to let him have the full impact of the gospel message. The Lord encourages us very directly and very simply to take the broader view in our witness and our communication: Do not be afraid … what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops (Mt. 10:26-27).”

This is the heart of the mission at RCSpirituality. We look to counter the intentional effort of mainstream media to cancel Christianity. We have been entrusted with the greatest gift the world has ever been given, Jesus Christ himself truly present in tabernacles all over the world and his life-giving Word calling out to humanity in the Gospels.

Please consider supporting our efforts financially and through prayer to bring the Gospel to the streets through social media.

Yours in the Heart of Jesus,

Donna