Remember before the Internet (BI) when you heard a song on the radio and thought, I’d like to get that? Then you had to run down to your local record store, shell out a couple of dollars and bring it home. Only after that would you be able to listen to it whenever you liked, as long as you were at home.
Remember BI when you wanted to know what was happening at Vatican II or the United Nations? You’d have to wait for the evening news on TV or grab the evening newspaper (yes, we had evening editions) to hear or read the latest.
Remember BI when a phone was just an instrument to receive and make calls?
The Internet has changed all that. Music and news are instantly available online. Your phone—why that does everything from get you out of bed in the morning to finding your way around town and yes, it still can be used for receiving and making calls.
Building community is changing as well. Kina Grannis’s story above is just one example. Now if we want to build a community we form a group on Facebook or Linkedin and invite all our friends to join. Then if we want to meet face-to-face we announce a meeting on Meetup and invite just our friends or the whole world to join us.
I believe it’s time for us Passionist Partners to revolutionize the way we think about building our community, especially if we want to develop it with the Millennials (those born during the Pontificate of John Paul II) and other communities. One way to do this is by blogging, i.e. not only writing, posting and publishing our own blog, but by following the blogs of others we want to develop community with. For instance, we can find out what Millennial Catholics are thinking by subscribing to their Blog Millennial. Yes, it takes time and commitment, but isn’t that just what community is all about?
We are a community of laymen and laywomen who, with vowed Passionists, seek to share in the charism of St. Paul of the Cross through prayer, ongoing spiritual formation, and proclamation of the message of Christ Crucified.
