Print

LIV World Day of Social Communications

on 23 May, 2020
Hits: 2357

Medellín (Colombia), 05/24/2020, Sr. Gloria Eugenia Piedrahita Tamayo.- On the feast of ASCENSION OF THE LORD is the LIV WORLD DAY OF SOCIAL COMMUNICATIONS, and the message of Pope Francis will be read, reflected and prayed "That you may tell your children and grandchildren” (cf. Ex 10:2), Life becomes history".

"A letter of Christ administered by us, written not in ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are hearts of flesh” (2Cor 3:3).

Talking about this, I cannot miss this historical moment in which this message will make an impact and have an echo: a time of change beyond our calculations, not prepared to face the hidden threat to life ... a time of isolation, confinement that will surely make us look back, to discover the personal history and that which is hidden behind each person, behind these events, to understand, remember and tell it to others.

In his message, Pope Francis points out that it is “as narrator, God calls things into life, culminating in the creation of man and woman as his free dialogue partners, who make history alongside him.

The Bible is thus the great love story between God and humanity. At its center stands Jesus, whose own story brings to fulfilment both God’s love for us and our love for God." [1]

Thus, says the Bible, “When your children ask you, ‘What does this rite of yours mean (speaking of the Passover), you will reply, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice for the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt…”[2]

"My father was a refugee Aramean who went down to Egypt with a small household and lived there as a resident alien. But there he became a nation great, strong and numerous.  When the Egyptians maltreated and oppressed us, imposing harsh servitude upon us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors, and the LORD heard our cry and saw our affliction, our toil and our oppression. Then the LORD brought us out of Egypt …”[3] This a story narrated and recounted. Israel not only learned to understand history in the context of powerful and liberating intervention of God, but it learned to narrate that history, to recount the unfolding of God's plan in its favor and in this way, it does not simply make historiography, but it makes history sacred, the consecration of history, it makes history come out of its life.

"It also tells us that no human stories are insignificant or paltry.  Since God became story, every human story is, in a certain sense, a divine story. In the history of every person, the Father sees again the story of his Son who came down to earth. Every human story has an irrepressible dignity. Consequently, humanity deserves stories that are worthy of it, worthy of that dizzying and fascinating height to which Jesus elevated it.”[4]

Because in Jesus, God becomes flesh, he becomes a people, history... The itinerant Master knows history perfectly and knows how his God has accompanied the people, has made a journey with them. As a Jew, Jesus takes up again the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and gives him in deeds and words full of mercy... He brings him closer and weaves new relationships between him and his people, he says it, he tells it and lives his Father's Love.

What do we narrate today? What is our experience of God in this time of uncertainty? What can we tell others that will give meaning to their meaninglessness, that will open them up to hope? The narrator knows what he is going to tell, with deep faith that brightens the shadows of reality and weaves more human and fraternal relationships without losing sight that there are many ways of telling a story and many and very diverse listeners to hear, debate and assume it.

Today, more than ever, the media is within the reach of  great majority, we could say that we are surely influenced by the power of the new technologies that without asking our permission, have obliged  us to enter into it and use them, it challenges our responsibility because the time is pressing. 

Pope says: " As we read the Scriptures, the stories of the saints, and also those texts that have shed light on the human heart and its beauty, the Holy Spirit is free to write in our hearts, reviving our memory of what we are in God’s eyes.

Let us not forget that we are children or heirs of a proclamation, we are bearers of a News that we communicate or can communicate... but we are also children of this time... we are children and heirs of a News that saves us in the midst of a society that is tottering, in which, the news does not save anyone, we, have a News that saves us...[5] what are we waiting for in order to communicate it?

The Spirit will do his work in us, in the humanity that cries out, if we allow him to do so.

HAPPY FEAST OF PENTECOST!


[1] Pope Francis, Message for LIV World day of Social Communications, 24 January 2020, the Memorial of Saint Francis de Sales.
[2] Exodus 12: 26-27.
[3] Deut 26: 5-10.
[4]  Pope Francis, Message for LIV World day of Social Communications, 24 January 2020.
[5] Cfr. Fr.  Segundo Anacona Becerra. Teología narrativa. Meeting of SMC Medellín. June 19/2018.