I still remember sitting at our family computer, the blue glow lighting up my face as I hit “send” on my masterpiece of an email to a friend who had just moved away. I was 14, freshly allowed my very own email address, and thrilled to stay connected across hundreds of miles. Around that time, my parish had been talking about the New Evangelization, and as I sat there typing, I suddenly had what I thought was a brilliant idea.
“Hey, Mom?” I yelled into the next room. “Do you think the Pope knows about email? If he just emailed everyone, they’d all know about Jesus, and we could skip the whole New Evangelization thing!”
I recalled this little moment as I later entered the Daughters of St. Paul and giggled at the memory of my teenage certainty that the Gospel could go viral if only the Pope had Wi-Fi. But in that innocent thought was the seed of my vocation: a desire to help people encounter Jesus through the very tools that connect us.
As a Daughter of St. Paul, I’ve come to see that evangelization through communication isn’t really about becoming a social media guru or a media expert, but about letting Christ communicate himself through our presence. Living the Pauline charism changes the way I communicate in every way. It teaches me that each encounter, whether online or in person, can become a space where Christ’s Word takes flesh again and draws hearts closer to him.
