living and giving christ in the world of communication

INTRODUCTION

Living and giving Christ to the world is another way of carrying out the apostolate of love, the one virtue that Jesus Christ and St. Paul consider the highest of all. To live Christ and give Christ to the world, we need to be imitators of Christ and to follow the footsteps and examples of our patron saint, Paul. Love is the central teaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and it is equally the dominating theme of Paul’s letters.

            The life of a religious ought to be eminent in all virtues that we may be interiorly as we appear exteriorly. We must not be deaf to the voice of the Lord. We must listen willingly to the Lord than to the world; the world promises temporal things with small value, while the Lord promises excellent and everlasting things. The Lord came from heaven to assume our human nature in order to save us from our miseries, not of necessity but moved by his own charity.

The church exists to evangelize. “The church is not motivated by any earthly ambition but is interested in one thing only – to carry on the work of Christ under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, for he come into the world to bear witness to the truth, to save and not to judge, to serve and not to be served” (Gaudium et spes 3). We should be ready not only to give but to equally receive Christ from the world.

GIVING CHRIST IN THE WORLD OF COMMUNICATION

By the virtue of our baptism, we are made the children of God, and we are equally marked with the sign of the Trinitarian God. By the virtue of our baptism we are commissioned to live and give Christ, we are commissioned to bear witness to the Christ. Our purpose in life is to serve one another; it is our core identity as church communicators. We have to also give out the good news of Jesus Christ which we have received, but just speaking those words is not enough because our human nature may fight it. We want to be recognized for our brilliance and creativity and sometimes we grouse in private and are lost in ourselves.

The church has the greatest story ever told: the message of the gospel. Unfortunately, most churches aren't doing a great job of communicating it. The way the world communicates has changed dramatically in recent years. With the rise of the web and social media, many churches are in the dark about where to go or what to do next. Religion and communication are drastically changing the world we live in. Instead of establishing commonness and solidarity, public communication now tends to reinforce divisions. Yet communication remains God’s great gift to humanity, without which we cannot be truly human, it can be said to reflect ‘God’s image’, we need not abuse it.

Jesus announced the coming of God’s Kingdom and commissioned us to proclaim the Good News to all people until the end of time. Hearing the Good News, living by it and witnessing to it, is the basic call of all Christians. The Good News addresses itself to the whole person and to all people. For Christian communicators, the material and the spiritual are part of each other. Christ’s own communication was an act of self-giving. He ‘emptied himself, taking the form of a servant’ (Phil 2:7).

We are called to acknowledge and make known that only Jesus, the incarnate word, is the perfect teacher, the sure way that leads to the knowledge of the father and to participation in his life. We are called to be the transmitters of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The church is the hope of the world of communication, and as apostles of the media, we have the responsibility of communicating the greatest message known to mankind, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the message of salvation, the message capable of changing a person’s entire life. The weight of this responsibility is both profound and incredible. It moves us to action, and demands that we communicate it well, living and giving Christ to the world.

By accepting the gospel of Christ, the Christian communicators proclaim the good news of God; the eternal Kingdom rather than our divided churches. The church does not exist for its own sake, but for the sake of the Kingdom. Because of this, the Christian communicators should give preference to the good news and ecumenical communication so that Christians of different denominations can speak with one voice, thereby bearing witness to the word, the Christ. The life of a Christian, the work of an apostle of communication, the media need to be set free from individualism and subjectivism which characterizes some cultures and traditions, there is need for objectivity. This is because the church needs to tell the world about oneness, reconciliation, equality, justice, freedom, harmony, peace and love.

There is a great need for the involvement in media communication, precisely the fastest means that can reach greater number of people at a time. These things may not seem significant to us but they are essential. We need the social media to nurture and grow relationship within the church, living and communicating Christ. The gospel of Christ along with the church is unique and as a matter of fact, we need to dedicate our best to making it known to the world.

God has chosen us as his witnesses. He wants us everywhere declaring the good news. He wants us to be his examples in the world. He has chosen us as ambassadors of the word, to communicate the love of God. God has not chosen to engrave his message in the sky; he has chosen us as the ambassadors of his message, to take the message round the world. It is our privilege to be apostles of the media, we have the privilege to communicate and share the glorious message of Jesus Christ, the greatest message a man can ever receive. It is a great compliment that God has enough confidence in us to use us as his witnesses. We on our part need to be committed and dedicated, because the scripture says: “But how could they call upon the Lord without having believed in him? And how could they believe in him without having first heard about him? And how will they hear about him if no one preaches about him? And how will they preach about him if no one sends them? As scripture says, how beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news” (Romans 10:14-15).

We have been chosen by God to deliver this message. We have not just been saved to escape the flames of hell or to enjoy a paradise of golden streets. No, we have been redeemed by God to know Him, and to experience His love and to convey His message of love to people who have lost their direction, who have not come to understand this. To effectively communicate the gospel, it is necessary that we understand the fundamental teachings of the gospel. We need to communicate the gospel to people at their point of need. Jesus did so; he reached his message of the good news to people at their points of need. Meeting people at the point of their felt need is effective for communicating the gospel of Christ. We equally need to understand that communication is a process and not an event.

LIVING CHRIST IN THE WORLD

It is our belief that Christ is the Son of the Living God, come into the world, and become true man, body and soul, to save us sinners. This is equally what we confess. Christ was a true man, in all respects like man, except sin, and at the same time remaining true God. The Divine nature was neither diminished nor changed in the Son of God in his incarnation. The Son of God became incarnate to make people partakers of the divine nature (II Peter- 1:4), to free them from sin and death, and to make them immortals in himself.

We are invited to follow, and living Christ supposes that we have accepted the Lords invitation of followership. It is wonderful that the God’s son who came down to take our nature has invited us to follow him, Happy are we who are called to live this love. From the onset of our spiritual journey we are insufficient. Our self-pride and disorders blinds us, and if these blinds us we are not going to notice how proud and disordered we are.  We may think we are mortified, that we live for God alone, but this is an effect of our blindness. We are called to be free but this freedom should not be an obstacle for us; love should make us to serve one another. Christians as we are, we are in a prime position to evangelize the world. But to effectively communicate the gospel, it is necessary that we understand the fundamental teachings of the gospel, we need to live Christ in our lives, and we need the courage to say as St Paul did say: I no longer live but Christ lives in me. In order to be complete and to unite us to God, through Jesus Christ, every resolution needs to include the mind, the will, and the heart. Living in Christ is an eternal life, tasted beforehand here on earth and blessed in heaven (Pauline prayer book).

To live Christ in the world is in a sense to be present at what he experienced, following him step by step (cf. for the sake of the kingdom p11). We need to keep a close watch at Jesus in order to see and allow him reveal himself. To live Christ presupposes contemplating and becoming with the church, in accordance with his word, an actor in the Gospel message of Christ. We need to be active members and participants in the Gospel message of Christ in union with the church; we need to be fashioned by the word of God.

In uniting ourselves with Christ, we receive divine grace which gives our human nature strength for victory over sin and death, and Jesus Christ has shown us the way to victory over sin by his teaching, and he grants us eternal life in union with himself, thereby making us partakers of his eternal kingdom by his death and resurrection. For us to receive these graces, we need a necessary and possible contact and experience of God. We need to unite ourselves with the church. The church is the union of Christ. The union with Christ is gained by the action of divine grace granted through the church, but our human effort toward our salvation is equally necessary. God saves the fallen human race by his own love for us, but we equally need to express love for God.

            To live Christ in the world, we need to transcend our human and worldly nature; to be absent to the world is to be present to the Lord. When we start living Christ in the world, nothing shall matter to us any more, we will cease being important to ourselves, but we will continue being important to God and to the world. To believe this is to believe in the true God whom Jesus reveals as the Father.

CONCLUSION:

BEING CONSCIOUS OF THE MISSION

We are brought to perfection through the practice of the evangelical counsels joined to the merits of our apostolic life (cf. James Alberione: a marvel of this century p83). We need to be conscious of our mission and must equally strive to preserver in moments of particular difficulties. We need to make this mission a practical programm of our life, and a light for us and others.

This mission is the background of all Alberione’s thought, thus this mission needs to be accomplished, living and giving Christ to the world of communication. We need to realize that this mission is a process and not an event. For this mission, “we need to read the signs of times and interpret them in the light of the Gospel.

In this world of ours, the media helps us to feel closer to one another, creating a sense of unity in the human family. We should take an advantage of this and make known the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the world, this can in turn inspire solidarity and serious efforts in ensuring a more dignified life for all, following the way and Gospel of Jesus Christ. The division walls between us would be broken if we are prepared to listen and learn from one another.  We should be ready not only to give Christ to the world but equally to receive.