Conscious Communicators

How good and effective communicators are we?

In this time of modern technology, where all possible gadgets of communication are invented to facilitate and fast track our communication with one another in any part of the globe we are confronted with this question: how effective communicators have we become with all these modern gadgets at our disposal? The presence of modern technology may generate effective communication on the technical level but not always on the personal aspect of communicative relationship. As a matter of fact, it can become a hindrance to cultivate a more meaningful relationship with others. This is true with television, computers, Internet and minds you, even cell phones.

Listen to this conversation between a father and his son. (This is a true story, by the way). The boy asks his father to buy him a cell phone. The father asked: “What for?” The boy answered: “My classmates have a cell phone, while I don’t. Besides, I want to call you just what my classmates do their father.” The boy’s father looked at his son with a smile and said: “Son, you don’t need a cell phone to call me. We live together, and we see and talk to each other all the time, don’t we?”

It is amazing how text messaging through cell phones has become the new craze in town. Talk about fashion. As someone observing through the sidelines, I sometimes experience annoyance and amusement all at the same time. I am amuse to see young boys and girls, students and adults (and in some occasion even priests and nuns!) so taken up by text messaging. They keep on tinkering with their cell phones even while they are walking. I am just amazed they don’t bump onto something! They do so even in a meeting, inside the theater and horror of horrors, even inside the Church! It is indeed annoying to hear the sound of cell phone going off while in the Church attending mass. There are also some people who talk very loud on the phone. Some times I wonder whether radiation causes cell phone users to forget they are not the only living being in this planet.

Since it is no longer expensive, cell phones, like computer and television have become accessible even to average income families and to most people a necessity that one can do without.

Modern gadgets are supposed to help us facilitate our way of communicating with others. But sometimes we take them as an excuse to distance ourselves from people. It can happen that we prefer to use the phone because we do not want to face the person. Or we use the e-mail because we do not want to hear the voice of the other. Or we remain in the comfort zone of our own rooms lost in the world of cyberspace because we do not want to interact with others. As conscious and responsible communicators, we are challenged to use technology to enhance our way of communicating and thus grow in our communicative relationships with one another.

God Cares

Be strong!
It matters not how deep entrenched the wrong,
How hard the battle goes, the day how long,
Faint not, fight on!
Tomorrow comes the song.
Malthie D. Babcock

There comes a time in our life when we tend to question many things that happen around us. Some of us express doubts on the providence of God, when trials and difficulties come our way. It seems that God is a loving and caring God only when things are happening according to our plan but otherwise, He is distant and does not participate in our daily affairs. In my years in the religious life I have met a number of people who have got this kind of attitudinal belief. But I have been also blessed to meet people whose deep faith was instrumental in nurturing my own.

When I was young in religious life, I met a woman who was a mother of three grown-up children. I was privileged to hear her story. It was a journey through innumerable trials that led her through darkness and light. Her husband died of accident. Shortly thereafter, her eldest daughter, rebelling on the loss of the father ran away with her boyfriend. The son, next to the eldest got hooked on drugs, while the youngest was becoming a problem student at school. The problems at home as well as her personal problem brought about by the loss of her husband were like a millstone that was crushing her to the ground. However, her deep faith in the Lord sustained her through it all. She told me how many times she had cried out in pain, but deep in her heart she believed the Lord had a reason why He allowed these things to happen. I was so taken up by the lady’s story I did not know I was already shedding tears. She stopped talking and smiled at me ruefully. She apologized for having made me cry.

This lady and many others like her whom I have met in various instances through the years have helped me in many ways to live my faith meaningfully. We always say that experience is the best teacher. True, and when we talk of experience, we don’t only talk of our own and learn from it but from others as well. So many occasions will always come in our lives when we will be called to renew our faith in the love of God for us. May the example of this lady and other people like her give us consolation to face our own difficulties with courage and determination.

‘Proclaiming Christ in the Media’

“Proclaiming Christ in the media at the dawn of the new millennium” is the theme of the Holy Father’s message in this year’s celebration of World Communications Day. In his message, the Pope invites communicators “to look ahead to the challenges we face” while at the same time look back for guidance and learn from what had been done since the beginning of Christianity. Indeed, the method and ways of proclamation may have changed through the years but the essence of the message remains the same. God loves us. God has shown this love for us by sending his Son Jesus to die on the cross. He has risen from the dead, and he is very much present in our daily lives.

The Church always celebrates World Communications Day on Ascension Sunday, which is indeed fitting because the Gospel reading on Ascension Sunday speaks of proclamation. Jesus sends forth his apostles to “go into the whole world and proclaim the Good News to all creation.” In this year of the jubilee, the celebration is double because it is not only World Communications Day but also a day of jubilee for Journalists and People in Communication. Those who work in Communications media (whether religious or secular media) are enjoined to celebrate this day with solemnity and greater awareness of the grave responsibility they have before the Church and society.

In his message, the Holy Father underscores the responsibility of the secular media in the production of programs that uplift the dignity of the person and “call attention to basic human needs, to justice and the plight of the poor.” By doing so, the Pope acknowledges the participation of the secular media in the work of proclamation albeit in an implicit way.

Communication media have never been so vital in the life of people as it is now. The society we lived in and the people we minister with are deeply immersed in a culture that is highly mass mediated. Communication has indeed become a revolution, bringing so much changes and developments that have become a part of our life and of the world we lived in. With so many electronic gadgets at our disposal, communication has never become so easy and quick.

Nowadays, no one can profess ignorance on what is going on around the world. Satellite communications, cable television and Internet, among other things, provide for us the facility to communicate quickly and to become aware of what is happening in every nook of the earth.

The modern means of communication has remained a constant challenge to the Church. Although these modern means are being used in the proclamation of the Good News, still we (who work in the Church) have a lot of catching up to do regarding the use of media in evangelization. Catholic Communicators also need to learn to become more creative in the use of media in their proclamation. The possibilities are enormous but many of us have yet to discover how to integrate the modern means with the traditional way of preaching.