By Rev. Fr. Dr. Stephen Ntim
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Once every year, the Church sets aside a day in May to emphasise the importance of the modern means of social communication in heralding the Gospel message.
One of the key messages that keeps recurring in the liturgical readings of the fifty days of Easter: from Easter Sunday till the Solemnity of Pentecost is the courageous witnessing of the kerygmatic message of the Apostles in the midst of a very hostile environment.
The more they were persecuted not to mention the name of Jesus, the more they went around heralding the message that the crucified Jesus is alive and therefore death is vanquished, hopelessness is overcome by hope, light is greater than darkness and the stone that was an obstruction at the tomb is rolled away.
In short, fallen Adam who lost paradise through this man called Jesus has regained it: primordial innocence and the divine image that was distorted is regained. Man therefore has reason to live and to hope even in the midst of apparent darkness.
Our God is far greater and bigger. This is the fundamental underlying message of the apostolic kerygma. They witnessed and heralded this message with zeal and passion by word of mouth. In the course of centuries, the apostolic church of Christianity has continued to herald the message for over two thousand years now.
Witness and Mission
In this modern age and time, we are also called not only to confess the faith, but just like our ancestors of the faith, the apostles, to witness and be missionaries of the same message of hope especially to a world that has lost a sense of hope and a realistic sense of direction, a technological world that has become and continues to become an anonymity to its own material progress, a world that is gradually threatened no longer by an atomic bomb, but by the threat of relativism, a world that does not believe any longer in immutable truths.
Man notwithstanding his mortality and contingency, has become the measure of all things. This is the world of today that we have to witness to. The paradox underlying our situation today compared with our ancestors is that, whereas they preached and witnessed to a hostile environment by word of mouth, and by so doing gradually handed on the faith to us by codifying it into the form of Christian Scriptures, (the so-called New Testament), we Christians of today have much more advantage.
Modern science and communication technology has advanced so much so that it will be irresponsible, not to make full advantage of the modern information super highway to advance the Christian cause.
Every year, when we recall the international communication day we need to make serious efforts as Christians to make the modern means of communication irreplaceable in our efforts to herald the Gospel message.
Importance of modern communication
The Holy Father Pope John Paul II of blessed memory in his apostolic exhortation to the Church of Africa has this to say: “From the beginning, it has been characteristic of God to communicate. This he does by various means… he enters into relationship with human beings in a very special way… The Word of God is by nature word, dialogue and communication. He came to restore on the one hand communication and relations between God and humanity, and on the other hand those of people with one another…”.
He calls on the Church of Africa to use all the mean of communication especially modern technological means and traditional African ones in the mission of evangelisation.
Hear the Holy Father: “… the means of communication have become so important as to be for many the chief means of information and education, of guidance and inspiration… Therefore the heralds of the Gospel must… enter this world in order to allow themselves to be permeated by this new civilisation and culture for the purpose of learning how to make good use of them” (Ecclesia in Africa 71).
Thus the modern means of communicating the Gospel message cannot be underestimated. As we celebrate every year this communication day, it is the wish of this writer that individual Catholics and societies who have the means be encouraged to come together to set up FM (Frequency Modulation) radio stations and even TV network.
Above all, we suggest that our people continue to develop a culture for reading, and to patronise the only national Catholic newspaper the Standard, which obviously is one of the means of heralding what we believe and why we believe as Catholics.
We count very much on Parish Priests in this regard. We hope that we will continue to make use of all available means of modern communication to advance our Christian cause, especially in a world that is gradually losing the sense of the mystery of the sacred and of the profound respect of the human body.
Challenge
One gets on the net and its all pornography and nudity in spite of the many good aspects of the web. What will be the future of our young ones? What prevents you and me to make use of the same web and other means to advance our cause?
World Communication Day needs to prompt us to ask ourselves individually and collectively basic questions as to how far we have also used modern means to shape the mind and thought of man in this digital age.
The apostles did theirs by word of mouth and handed on the faith to us. What are we doing in our own time and age characterised by atheism, agnosticism, relativism, excessive immorality, materialism, sensual pleasures etc. to hand on the authentic faith to ensuing generations? This is the fundamental challenge of the yearly celebration of the World Communication Day.
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