DIGITAL SAINTS
How can we become Saints in this contemporary society, where materialism, relativism, selfism, consumerism and all the ‘ism’s, have become the skeletal mode where we glued our societal model. God is no longer the algorithm, many schools of thought had re-formed our natural spirituality, and People no longer want things at Gods time everyone wants to be digital.
Do you know that presently in Europe, even in other parts of the world many students no longer use paper and pen, everything is computerized? “The digital age” they call it. Students go to school with their lap-tops, high pads and flash drives. whenever the lecturer finished lecture the students goes to the digital board to copy the lecture even those who could not attend the lecture can have both video and audio of the lecture from the digital board, to read from books is longer a priority because you can Google anything. Father Paul was telling us the other day that some liberalists in United States are clamoring for digital communion; some are asking that confession be done through cell phones, and social Medias, yes! They want to get everything easy.
Soon therefore, perhaps the next generation will no longer read from books, how then, will they know about St Lawrence, Augustine, Aquinas and others. Most of them will even not understand what we meant by martyrdom, so, we that cut across analog to digital will need to put them through, the implication is; we must become digital saint for them, since the only language they may understand is Microsoft, PowerPoint, IPod, etc.
We must reshape our way of life despite the lousy world to do ordinary things in an extra ordinary way. Like the market monk my brothers and sisters, we must learn to shun the noise of the market and stay alone with the alone.
Let us remember the story of a hunter who set out with his colleagues to hunt for Elephant, an hour later, they ran into a rabbit hole and began to dig, they dug all day that they forgot their main task, unfortunately for them the rabbit also escaped. If we allow the distractions of this world we will surely lose divine union which is our ultimate goal.
We must be aware that there are challenges waiting to limit our efforts to being a saint. The modern society needs a new approach. Let us learn from the soldier-ants. Whenever there is a grain of food; they march out to get it. They are always ready to fight in order to protect the queen. The mother Church has giving us an apostolate, let us work together to achieve it. I am therefore calling for a retreat like soldiers, for a tactical, strategic military planning so as to go back to the field of battle to combat the ancient serpent in modern clothing. Let us learn to read the modern signs. Our challenges are no longer Emperors or ancient persecutions. Rather we are currently fighting with modernity where all the “isms” are against us. Let us not be like my father who went on hunting alongside with Monsignor Somide with a double barrel only to be confronted by a big buffalo, we need the modern weapon to combat modern war.
Let me re-echo the words of Pope Francis “We need saints that drink Coca-Cola, that eat hot dogs, that surf the internet and that listen to their iPods… we need saints that are not afraid or embarrassed to eat a pizza or drink a beer with their friends. We need saints who love the movies, dance, sports, and theatre. We need saints that are open sociable normal happy companions. We need saints who are in this world and who know how to enjoy the best in this world without being callous or mundane. We need saints.” We need Digital Saints
An extract from the book Be A Saint
Fr Lawrence Sdv.
fr ogundipe 