Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Last summer I contributed a chapter to a book called, The Church and the New Media. It was all about blogs, Twitter, Facebook, podcasts and a whole range of other new ways of communicating. If these terms are foreign to you, I’ll have to lend you a copy of the book!
Facebook is the popular ‘social media’ website. You can stay in contact with friends through your Facebook page. It’s a computerized place to meet and talk and share and communicate with others. If you didn’t know already, we have a parish Facebook page where we try to post news and updates on what is happening in the parish. We also have a page for the JPII youth group.
Facebook is a computerized community. It doesn’t take the place of real contact with real people, but it is there to complement and add a new dimension to our real time, real life contacts. It is also a reminder to me that the life of prayer must have a communal dimension.
It is not good for man to be alone, so God has placed us in families and communities. This also means that although we must pray alone, we are also meant to pray together in community. When we worship at Mass each week we pray together not only with the community of Our Lady of the Rosary parish, but with all Catholics in our diocese, in our church across the whole globe. More than that, we pray with all Catholics and all Christian believers at all times and in all places around the world and in every age.
This is what it means to be ‘Catholic’ we’re “universal”. When we pray in a community our own prayers are caught up in something far greater. Our own lives are magnified by the greatness of the worldwide Catholic community with whom and in whom we offer our prayers.
This is why we use liturgy in our prayers--because the whole people of God can therefore pray together in unity. Then our prayers, lifted up with the whole people of God prove the fact that the whole is more than the sum of all the parts. Something greater exists when we pray together. That something greater is the whole Body of Christ--alive and active in the world now and forever.
Your parish priest,
Fr. Dwight Longenecker
PS: Why not join Facebook and check out our parish Facebook page. You can go there quickly to check for updates and news of the parish.
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