Early this week saw a special kind of crazy energy in Rome: the Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers.
THOUSANDS of Catholics who work in online outreach flocked together for formation, community, communion, and prayer. As a missionary Sister working in digital outreach myself, although I was not with the crowd in Rome, it was so moving and inspiring to be able to see so many missionaries I knew from various continents meeting one another for the first time, and to be able to pray for them from afar!
Sr. Bethany, Sr. Neville, and Sr. Margaret Michael, along with other Daughters of St. Paul and members of the Pauline Family from around the world, were also there for these exciting days.
This Jubilee was also a time for everyone attending, and those following from home, to re-root themselves in the heart of what we, as Christians, mean when we say “Digital Missionaries” or “Catholic Influencers.”
I was especially grateful to see this because, from my personal experience as a social media missionary, these are things that are often misunderstood from both outside and inside the Christian community.
“Influencer” has become a bit of a hit-and-miss term, on one hand referencing the big responsibility that comes with the very real fact of our messages impacting people in real ways online, and on the other hand, having accumulated some baggage from unhealthy trends in what is often called “influencer culture” online.
I’ll be honest—I am not a big fan of the term “influencer” specifically because of a lot of the dangerous cultural phenomena that has popped up around this term online. However, I was very edified by how the Church clarified how it approaches and understands this term. Cardinal Tagle spoke about our daily life as being “a tapestry of crisscrossing influences,” along with the serious invitation to “scrutinize the intention that fuels the influence our contemporary world wants to effect” and to re-examine how we allow God to influence our own minds and hearts in what we share and live online.
He invited digital missionaries and Catholic influencers to open wide their hearts to receive Jesus’ love themselves so that through them Jesus himself can influence the world:
“Dear digital missionaries and Catholic influencers: Jesus loves you. Do not doubt him. Accept him as the greatest influence on your life. And through you, may the person of Jesus influence many people, human and digital spaces, so that God’s truth, justice, love, and peace may flow to the ends of the earth.”
Something to pray about:
In my presence online, am I allowing God to be my primary influence? The voice and heart I follow and act from?
What would it be like to open my heart even wider to Jesus’ love and to let him use me to love the world?
Feature Image credit: Photo by Gianna B on Unsplash; Image of cell phone: by Carolina BR – Cathopic