Introducing You to Uncle Eddy – Weekly Message for October 13, 2015

Dear Fellow Digital Pilgrims, pax Christi:

Let me introduce you to Uncle Eddy.  

He emerged a few years ago, when I was a seminarian working in college ministry.  I was tired of the bland and generic “lives of the saints” that one so often runs into.  I was convinced that the saints had all been real people, and so they had to have some truly relevant and inspiring experiences for people trying to follow in their footsteps today.  My work with college kids sparked a way to sketch those out. 

Why not create a daily email from an imaginary uncle who sent spiritual advice to his many imaginary nieces and nephews, all of whom happened to be college students?  And why couldn’t this uncle couch his spiritual advice between a real-life challenge that any college student might face and a real experience from the life of the day’s saint?  (As you know, in our Catholic tradition, we commemorate one or more saints on almost every day of the calendar year – it’s part of our liturgical life.)  With that idea, “Emails from Uncle Eddy” was born.

And they are still going strong.  When the hip social media platform of Tumblr came out (Tumblr is especially popular among youth – college kids, high school kids, twenty-somethings…), it seemed like the perfect platform for Uncle Eddy to keep handing out his advice, even though I was no longer involved in college ministry.  So we created a profile and started posting one email a day.

I was recently reading over these practical and lively “Emails from Uncle Eddy”, and I think they are as relevant as ever.  They are also kind of fun.  So we decided to put a link to them in the “blog” section of RCSpirituality.org.  It is my firm and joyful hope that whenever you feel the need for a spiritual smile or a spiritual vitamin, you will click on that link, and get a boost of motivation from our many and wonderful older brothers and sisters in the faith: the saints. 

It is one more way that we can continue to serve you as you carry your crosses with Christ and do your part in the unfolding of God’s dream for your life, one more tool to help evangelize the digital continent.  

May God bless you and keep you, now and always!  

Yours in Him,

Fr John Bartunek, LC, SThD

P.S. Click here to jump right to “Emails from Uncle Eddy.”