What makes some people experience the same circumstances one way and others differently? Some studies point to the meaning of life. Our ways of living our faith make us maintain peace and balance or not. The question is whether our religiosity is only tradition and compliance or whether it is experience and conviction. In the former, faith is usually placed in external practices without a commitment to the Gospel since there has been no personal experience of God. On the other hand, in the second mode, the person lives decentered from himself, has understood and interiorized well the mystery of God's Love. This leads to a much deeper faith that engages with others and affects the way of living in society. This faith gives reasons for hope and the experience of positive emotions in the midst of any situation.

In this sense, we should not forget that the best gift we can give our children is the experience of a committed faith. The future post-pandemic world will not be easy. Our planet is deteriorating, the economy we have known until now is beginning to change, globalization is accentuating positive but also negative realities. And our present children and young people will not have it easy.

Strength, resilience, emotional and communication skills will be part of the best inheritance we can leave.

La entrada Tiempo para tomar la fe en serio se publicó primero en Omnes.

Some, moreover, at the same time reveal details about the future. Isaiah, for example, touched both the present and the future; he boldly denounced against corruption in his day (Is 1:4) and delivered great visions of Israel's future (Is 25:8).

The Bible names more than 133, among them 16 women. The first to appear is Abraham (Gen 20:7). Then, in the New Testament, John the Baptist (Mt 3:1) who announced the coming of Jesus as prophet, priest, king and messiah. The early church also had its prophets (Acts 21:9). And at the end of time, Revelation 11 says that there will be two “witnesses” who will prophesy from Jerusalem.

The Mission of the Church is, therefore, prophetic. It comprises evangelization (proclamation) and social responsibility (denunciation). The prophet denounces: Claiming above all exclusivity in the love of God; denouncing social injustice, defending the rights of the poor and underprivileged; and, in politics, intervening when political leaders neglect what God wants for his people. The prophet announces: He generates hope; he opens history and the horizons of the people towards a future of salvation and fulfillment.

We cannot be authentic Christians if we are not prophets. But the prophet is persecuted, rejected and humiliated. If his proclamation and denunciation are not of God, he does not resist. Therefore, he must be filled with the Holy Spirit. The powerful of this world will want to eliminate him in many ways because the truth that comes from God is too uncomfortable for them. 

La entrada La misión del cristiano se publicó primero en Omnes.

Xiskya Valladares -Religious of the Purity of Mary Congregation
@xiskya

It's true that we're almost halfway through 2018, but out of curiosity I went to Google Trends to consult the major trends of 2017. My concern was, above all, along the lines of knowing how significant we Catholics, the Church and the Gospel, are being in Spain and the world. I have to say that we are not leaving any evangelical mark in the digital world.

This reality could discourage us. But also the opposite, to be a revulsive that awakens us and challenges us to change what is necessary. Jesus' invitation was clear: Be salt in the world, yeast in the dough. Neither salt nor yeast stand out, but without them the end result is catastrophic. It happened to me recently with a cake that did not rise enough because it lacked more yeast and we ended up throwing it away.

I am convinced that trends would change if we were more often aware of this. Why Eurovision, HBO, the Oscars, Survivors and La Sexta Directa are trending topic of 2017 and there is nothing related to the Church? The truth is that I may be wrong, but it doesn't occur to me to associate any of those themes with our values. However, what makes them so interesting to so many people, perhaps it does have a lot to do with what we are missing.

Arousing curiosity, connecting with the audience's interests, being attractive, using narratives that dazzle, arousing expectations, questioning realities, changing points of view about something, moving, inspiring a way of life, posing challenges, are, among others, some of the actions that provoke those five trending topic of 2017. And aren't these actions one hundred percent evangelical? Perhaps we have left the Holy Spirit aside. We have stopped believing that with his strength we can turn the world around. Perhaps we lack conversion, prayer, trust. But we have the responsibility before God to leave an evangelical mark in this digital world.

La entrada Dejar marca evangélica digital se publicó primero en Omnes.

-Religious of the Purity of Mary Congregation

@xiskya

It seems that the "fakes" are all the rage. Fake news, fake images, fake videos. All in order to manipulate reality or, in the words of David Redoli: "More than adapting to reality, We adapt reality to our beliefs. To do this we may go so far as to reject facts and data. We call it cognitive dissonance". We swallow everything that comes to us and not everything that comes to us is verified or contrasted. We are seeing it in the Catalonia issue, but it is in everything, also in the hoaxes that have been spread about the critical state of Benedict XVI, in many words misattributed to Pope Francis, in news about celebrities, and even in false heresies supposedly from Amoris Laetitia. We spend a lot of time dismantling lies when we don't have to.

Manipulation to adapt reality to our convenience is a big problem. But it is not the only one. A few try to manipulate us; the main problem is the speed with which we circulate these manipulations. "fakes" without verifying or contrasting. As if everything that appears on the screens, by the mere fact of appearing, already means that it is true. I don't know if this is due to the hidden desire to be the first to publish, or the ones who most want to be the first, or the ones who most want to be the first to publish. "like" o "retweets" we get, or those of us who have the most impactful image or news.

Maybe we should look inside ourselves, especially to find out what motivates us deep down when we share information or an image. It's not easy, I know. But it helps me to ask myself the question: "Is this going to do any good to those who receive it?" And, of course, check the content well before clicking. Christians cannot settle for post-truth.

Let's not be fooled: everything is a story. The story is almost always very different. Let's look for the truth.

La entrada Crítica a la posverdad se publicó primero en Omnes.

The advance of Islam in Europe and Spain has to do, of course, with pure demography, but it is also a consequence of relativism, superficiality and lack of Christian witness.

to remain indifferent to the Islamization of Europe is a declared objective of many Islamist leaders. The first was Houari Boumedienne, in 1974, at the United Nations, who explained the method: "The wombs of our women will give us victory". The most recent was Muammar Gaddafi, in 2006, and he said the same thing: "Islam will conquer Europe without firing a shot". And he gave the reason: "Some people believe that Muhammad is the prophet of the Arabs or Muslims. This is a mistake. Muhammad is the prophet of all people".

Statistics on the growth of Muslims in Europe confirm their endeavor. In Spain, which is not among the most Islamized European countries, the number of Muslims in 2016 was almost 2 million, a 4% of the total population, and of them 42 % were legally Spanish. But this upward trend is global. The latest Pew Research Center report says that Christianity today represents 31.2 % of the world's population and Islam, 24.1 %. And it estimates that in 2060 Christianity will be 31.8 % compared to 31.1% for Islam. There is more data: increase in the number of mosques, of neighborhoods governed by Sharia, appearance of Islamic universities, jihadists in politics and the armed forces, etc. And I am talking about Muslims, not terrorists.

It seems to me that these are the results of relativism, of religious superficiality, of the lack of witness and commitment of faithand the work of atheistic and populist ideologies that infect the "people of the Cross". Apart from the obvious Muslim proselytism. And I do not invite to the Catholic proselytism, but to present the Gospel to our contemporaries without shame and without fear in an attractive way and knowing how to give reason of our faith. They have the right to know it. These are times of mission. Not only because the European Christian roots of many centuries are at stake, but also because we are responsible for the gift of the faith we have received. We cannot remain indifferent.

La entrada No podemos continuar indiferentes se publicó primero en Omnes.

- Xiskya Valladares

Religious of the Congregation Purity of Mary.

@xiskya

Lately, Pope Francis seems to be spilling his gourmand messages, surprisingly unbecoming of a pontiff. "We know God doesn't use Facebook.", "Christmas is you, when you decide to be born again every day and let God into your soul.", "We need saints without veils, without cassocks."... and a lot of "cheesiness" that can surprise anyone with two fingers in front.

It is about hoaxes (hoaxes) that circulate on the web, for example, by whatsapp or by email. Chain messages that contain some phrase that the Pope has said and to which someone has added the rest of his own harvest. The issue has become so serious that the Holy See has spoken out: "These types of texts that circulate on the Internet attributed to the Pope Francis’ generally do not say on what date and on what occasion he said those words. Because in such a case it would be easy for anyone to go to the official website of the Holy See and check if these are really the Pope's words." (News.va, 3 December 2015).

Many people would like the Pope to really say those words, almost always because he can apply them to someone else. And so they have arisen: from someone who wants to impose his thought and attributes it to the Pope in order to give him more authority. But this is deception. As is the great number of calls for prayers that reach us as if they were from the Pope.

There are people who say that they do not do wrong by sharing prayers, vigil calls, and all kinds of hoaxes of the pope. False. Neither prayer is magic, nor can it contribute to deceiving people. This is sin.

This type of chain messages arose in ancient times associated with religious themes. No wonder atheists laugh at us and consider us primitive, we put it on a platter every time we are fearful, scrupulous or superstitious before these chains. It is difficult to understand that a serious and mature Catholic would fall for such emotional manipulations.

La entrada Stop a los “hoaxes” del Papa se publicó primero en Omnes.

Text - Jesús Ortiz López

Out of 7 billion people on the planet, 3 billion are active internet users. Most of them use social networks and twitter is the fifth most used. But the question is: how can one give Christian witness on twitter?

We believers are people who interact with our peers also in the digital streets, as was the wish of John Paul II: "If we have to go where the people are, we have to go to the Internet. And the Church knows it.

The author of this book, collaborator of Palabra and co-founder of iMision, invites us to use the Internet more, just as we should suggest to a priest to use the microphone so that he can be heard. She also explains how to make the Internet a place of communion, not just an impersonal cloud. In the second part of the book he adds thirty good practices for evangelizing on twitter and transmitting information, promoting initiatives and generating community.

The book is practical and the result of the author's long experience. It is well documented, well illustrated and easy to read. Above all, it opens up new horizons. At the end of reading it, it is easy to conclude: "I have to use networks more".

La entrada Evangelizar en Twitter, Xiskya Valladares se publicó primero en Omnes.