Good morning from NASA where we are all wearing gloves, washing our hands incessantly and observing both social and spacial distancing. Here is a picture I took earlier!!!😂😂😂
So as mayhem continues it’s best to go with the flow as much as possible and think of solutions and resolutions to the current crisis!!
As usual our leader and Pope is giving us a fantastic example. On one hand he’s encouraging his priests and missionaries to get out there and to help the sick rather than hide in fear.
Yet on the other he’s encouraging people to stay inside and to be sensible and has invited people to join him in the celebration of mass online.
What a great example of being brave, sensible and pastoral all at the same time.
And so as we stay inside the virtual world of cyberspace opens up!
We can pray, talk, Skype, WhatsApp, video conference and more!
Some churches even offer online eucharistic adoration. Tyburn convent is just one of these places.
Here is a link for any of you interested.
https://adoration.tyburnconvent.org.uk/
All this makes us think of the world of cyberspace. It’s a new area of possibilities, battles, evangelisation and spiritual warfare!
Cyberspace and virtual reality fuel all sort of industries from the best such as entertainment to the worst such as pornography!
It could be said that cyberspace is the greatest mission territory of modern times and that we as Christians must adapt ourselves to dealing with it.
Questions to be asked are ones like should we be able to have online spiritual direction, online counselling and of course the big question, online confession?
Of course some of these things exist already but considering the importance of having a regular confessor rather than playing ‘confessor roulette’ and the amount people that travel these days as part of life and work, it certainly is an area where we must explore even more!
We have the challenge of bringing Jesus and spirituality to the people in new ways while not compromising our faith and the sense of the sacred!
No matter what we do there will always be abuses but our challenge is to move in the spirit regardless. Jesus became man knowing that He’d be killed but He did it anyway.
Any new initiatives of course will be subject to abuses and yet very often God cries “focus on the benefits and do it anyway”!
And so this week as travel is restricted and as church services are less, let us think, pray and act ‘outside the box’!
Let us take up the challenge to reach out to one another in different ways, to pray in different ways and to thank God for the gift of cyberspace that offers us new opportunities, new possibilities and new pastoral challenges!
So stay positive, don’t cyber-isolate yourself and allow this experience to be a rebirth in prayer, community, christianity and love of neighbours even if much of it happens through the mystical magical medium of cyberspace!
Gotta go, my rocket is about to launch 😂😂
Have a beautiful day and let’s keep positive! God is good!
Bless
Michael