Pope Francis asks followers to give up trolling for Lent

“People insult each other as if they were saying ‘Good Day.’”

By Adi Robertson@thedextriarchy Feb 26, 2020, 11:26am EST                  

Pope Francis has urged Catholics to disconnect from their phones and TVs during Lent, lamenting a modern society “inundated with empty words” where people “insult each other as if they were saying ‘Good Day.’”

The speech, partially quoted by Reuters and Catholic News Agency, echoes secular calls to be less extremely online. “We live in an environment polluted by too much verbal violence, by many offensive and harmful words, which the internet amplifies,” said Pope Francis. “We are inundated with empty words, with advertisements, with subtle messages. We have become used to hearing everything about everyone and we risk slipping into a worldliness that atrophies our hearts.”

“Hearing everything about everyone” is a remarkably good description of how the current internet can feel — though the Pope’s prescription, granted, is more specific than most digital detox programs. “Lent is the right time to make room for the Word of God. It is the time to turn off the television and open the Bible. It is the time to disconnect from your cell phone and connect to the Gospel,” he said.

Many Lent speeches are perfectly applicable online, of course. Last year, Pope Francis asked followers to give up gossip and hypocritical condemnations of others. The year before, he made a more general call to “pause a little” in a fast-paced world. It’s a bittersweet turn from 2014, though, when he declared that the internet is “something truly good, a gift from God.” But as Reuters notes, that was before the internet seriously inflamed a heated conflict between Pope Francis and conservative American Catholics. Eventually, the web turns on us all.

Share this story

•          Share this on Facebook (opens in new window)
•          Share this on Twitter (opens in new window)
•          Share All sharing options

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/26/21154340/pope-francis-ash-wednesday-lent-speech-internet-insults-phones

Holy Woman

Thanks for your coverage of the recently beatified Brother James Miller and other exemplary Catholic Americans (“Sanctity in the USA: Holy Americans,” Jan. 5-18 issue).
Also worthy of their distinguished company is a lady who died heroically in St. Louis just over a year ago. She could eventually be canonized as the first American woman martyr.
On Nov. 19, 2018, a middle-aged man walked into a Catholic religious goods store and noted that only three people were there — all women. He herded them at gunpoint back into a secluded corner of the store and insisted that they submit to acts of sexual abuse. Two of the distraught women complied with this brute’s demands. Then he came to his third intended victim, who, according to friends, had probably come to purchase some materials for her rosary-making apostolate.
This was Jamie Schmidt, 53, a quiet housewife and mother.
There was nothing obviously extraordinary about this lady, but now she did something very extraordinary.
She, too, was ordered to submit to sexual abuse. But Mrs. Schmidt, with the barrel of a loaded gun pointed at her head, quietly refused to allow her purity, her personal dignity and her marriage covenant to be outraged.
She looked the man straight in the eye and said, “In the name of God, I will not!” Enraged by this unexpected point-blank refusal, her assailant responded with a point-blank shot that felled her on the spot.

She died in the hospital that night whispering the words of the Our Father. (The man accused of this shocking murder is now behind bars awaiting trial.)

I had the privilege of concelebrating Jamie’s funeral Mass and spoke afterward to friends who testified to the quiet holiness of her life.
Survived by her husband, Greg (a Knight of Columbus), and three children, she was loved by all as modest, calm, cheerful, devoted to Our Lady, active in organizing retreats in her parish (St. Anthony of Padua in High Ridge, Missouri), and blessed with musical and artistic talents that she used to beautify her church and its worship.
The similarities between Jamie Schmidt’s death and that of St. Maria Goretti, who was canonized for sacrificing her life rather than commit a sin of impurity, are clear.






         Father Brian W. Harrison, OS
         St. Louis, Missouri


https://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/letters-02.02.20

By calling followers ‘salt of the earth’ and ‘light of the world,’ Jesus turned reality upside down



Father Jeffrey F. Kirby

Feb 9, 2020

SENIOR CRUX CONTRIBUTOR


....
Last Sunday, due to our observance of the Presentation of the Lord, we missed the Beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. It’s a great miss, especially since Pope Francis has just started a catechesis on the Beatitudes in the Wednesday audiences. No worries, though, we can collect the pope’s teachings and use them in another three years when Matthew comes back around again.
Without the Beatitudes this year, therefore, our first hearing of the Sermon on the Mount is this Sunday. It involves the Lord Jesus’ declaration that his disciples are the salt of the earth and the light of the world.
Such an assertion would have seemed ridiculous at the time. Many of the Lord’s initial listeners would have been the lowest of the earth and people of no great influence or power.

How could the least of all people be the salt of the earth and the light of the world?

The question is blistering since salt and light, which are taken for granted in many dev
eloped countries today, were hard pressed to retain in the ancient world. Although salt and light were essential to people’s livelihood, they were not easy to get and they were even harder to keep.


Salt was a precious commodity in the ancient world. It’s said that Roman soldiers were even paid in salt. Salt was valued, not only because it made food taste better (and more easily digestible), but because salt preserved food. Salt allowed for food to be stored and provided a certain safety in securing it for a duration of time. The initial hearers of Jesus would have understood the high importance of salt.


After the natural light of the sun faded, man-made light was pivotal in completing other tasks and necessities of life. If a family didn’t have light, nothing else could be done. If they didn’t have a fire, they would have no heat. If this continued, the lack of light would lead to their demise and death. As with salt, the initial listeners of the Lord Jesus would have intimately understood the significance of light.


In employing salt and light as signs of the role and vocation of his followers in the midst of the world, the Lord Jesus was purposely using charged imagery. He was saying a lot about the power and expectations of his disciples.

Were the Lord’s expectations realistic?


Those who originally heard the teachings of the Lord Jesus, and especially those who sought to follow him, were originally from the lower classes. They were insignificant in the eyes of the world.
Facing such a reality, how could the Lord’s claims hold up to scrutiny?


By the measure of this world, the Lord was not being practical. There was no way that the last, lowest, and the least could shine as light or enrich as salt. But the Lord wasn’t using the standards of this world. Placed after the Beatitudes, with their focus on eternal life, the Lord was employing a divine measure. The light and salt of the earth would not be found among wealth and power. He has turned that fallen reality upside down.

The light and salt of the earth would now be found in the eternal measurements of vulnerability, empathy, meekness, aspirations for righteousness, mercy, purity of heart, the making of peace, and the willingness to suffer for what is true, right and good.


To the surprise of the mighty of the earth, the followers of the Lord Jesus surpass them in greatness. The upside-down state of affairs declared by Jesus Christ turns out to be the right-side-up of reality and the true means of human flourishing and human prosperity within society.


For those who are willing to follow this way of life, they will become a light to those who suffer and salt to those who are forgotten. In these ways, the Lord’s promise and commission to his disciples are fulfilled. They are truly the light of the world and the salt of the earth.




https://cruxnow.com/commentary/2020/02/by-calling-followers-salt-of-the-earth-and-light-of-the-world-jesus-turned-reality-upside-down/