Communicating…

These days, the most available means of communication is through applications in a single device which is the cell phone or the mobile phone or through computers and screens (TV/cinematography). We find Tiktokers everywhere! There are also a multitude of lecturers, educators, vloggers, sellers and businesses online. Due to our limitedness, nowadays, it is being translated as a “virtual presence” in Social Media platforms. I would like to believe that it is the common world we share in this epoch, may also be considered as one of the ways to be “present” by which it functions at the benefit of the Church.

When read the Gospel however, such as Jn 14:16, 26; 16:13-15, it is observed that the events were unfolded at a particular time.  It is amazingly ushered to a series of generations and those to come. In fact, in our world, the means of communication, the media, is one of those themes given importance in the Second Vatican Council “Inter Mirifica” for the powerful character it has to communicate. It later expanded the human mind into developing channels of communication in print or media. Yet, the challenge of right and good information is still that which speaks of “presence”.

This is what and how our Founder Monsignor Ramon Zubieta y Les started as a missionary in the Philippines and in the Prelature of Urubamba and Madre Dios Region in Peru. He started learning the ways of the heart to communicate, that is, listening, learning it directly from the natives, writing down words before he was set on fire with his missionary spirit. That was the way he conquered hearts for Jesus. He communicated the real presence of the divine by his simple ways, having been present in their limitations, in their poverty and their great need of God’s presence of which, he radiated the compassion of God to the people by his humble and kind deeds. Amidst adversities, his walking with them dignified the humans in the jungle. 

Indeed proven, that there is nothing that can substitute presence, sitting together at home, in class, in a community is essential to social beings like us for it gives us the gift of the Supreme presence and a sense of the other next to us. To be ready to evangelize, share and spread God’s word as well as accompany in the journey of many who needed presence for their condition of aloneness, isolation, etc. Someone to talk to, for guidance, a source of strength and to uplift the human spirit.

Afterall, the channel and fountain is the triune God, communicating Himself among us, in our very lives.

Begang, Basilan Province, Philippines