Mission Sunday and Digital Missionaries: The Day After (By Bishop Emmanuel Adetoyese Badejo)

By Bishop Emmanuel Adetoyese Badejo: Oyo Catholic Diocese (www.CatholicDioceseOyo.org).

The period right after Mission Sunday is time to appreciate the good effort of Catholic parishes and communities in responding so positively and contributing to the universal celebration. Thanks to priests, consecrated persons, catechists and others pastoral agents who catechized and mobilized the faithful about their indispensable role as missionaries by virtue of their baptism. I applaud the generosity of the faithful who keep giving their resources to support the missions despite tough times and competing demands all around. I acknowledge the creativity of the youths who did drama songs, skits and decorations and even took to the streets, from house-to-house, inviting people to listen to Jesus’ message of peace and love. I do not doubt that the fervent prayers of the faithful on Mission Sunday that more people come to know Jesus Christ and the Good News will receive God’s favour. May all these efforts bear abundant fruits.

What may not have been too obvious in the Church on Mission Sunday is the all-important effort of the digital missionaries among us who vigorously promote the spirit and the message of the gospel in the digital space. Many of us engaged in physical activities to promote the mission but surely, many more of our faithful would have done even more on the social media and other digital platforms. Such efforts which must be considered indispensable for the future of mission, deserve commendation and encouragement. To this end, I now call on our youths and other digital inhabitants to do more, be more deliberate and more committed in promoting the Gospel and Christian values online.

For that same purpose, in the Vatican, on the afternoon of Sunday October 20 2024, thousands of digital missionaries who had been proclaiming the Gospel online met virtually and in person with Vatican officials who encouraged them in their service to the Church. At the meeting Msgr. Ruiz, Secretary of the Dicastery for Communication announced the upcoming Jubilee for Missionaries and Catholic Digital Influencers, which will be held on July 28-29, 2025, just ahead of the Jubilee for Youth. The digital missionaries and influencers were also encouraged to “Go and invite everyone to the banquet,” according to the theme of Mission Sunday. They were urged to abandon their own comfort zones, to bear witness to Christian joy. They were invited to ensure that they never seek to create cliques but rather to engage with “the dust of the road and the mud of history.” The Prefect of the Dicastery for Communications, Dr Paolo Ruffini also urged them to take responsibility for the wounds afflicting our modern society and to do their part in healing them.

Such beautiful dreams and words cannot fail to influence and drive the activity of our African, digital-savvy faithful as well in these demanding times. In fact, everyone who owns a cell phone can become a digital missionary, offering the beauty of Christianity to the whole nation continent and the world. Time is now overdue for every Christian to deliberately overwhelm the vices and evil in this world with messages of God’s goodness and Christian values. The clear positive message of the ongoing synodality period is that we must overwhelm war with peace and always seek communion over division and discrimination. This, in fact is the agenda which our digital missionaries must pursue. With the almost limitless reach of the digital tools available to our youth for example, they can become the salt and leaven of our world to counter the satanic, fake and misleading messages that rupture the peace, solidarity and communion all around us and rather spread good news in this world that is so starved of it.

Thus, now that specific Mission Sunday activities are done with, let the digital missionaries take over in our parishes, communities, families and circle of friends. Everybody using a cell phone must know that in the cell phones they carry, they have all the tools they need to be effective, apart from their witness of life. This is especially important for us Africans in our continent where there are an estimated 650 million mobile phone users. Smart phone are also growing in number, although with much less penetration. Most of these phones are in the hands of teenagers and young adults who are already driving change in many ways, especially in the political, economic, educational and entertainment realms. You can imagine what power exists here for evangelization and transmission if Christians among them take the responsibility for changing the world and their country for the better.

For so long now we have heard that information is power. That saying is still true and much more. Those who already use mobile phones for communicating, listening to the radio, watching movies, transferring money, shopping, mobilising for action, mingling on social media and more, should now also use it for spiritual, positive values, counselling, evangelization and catechising others. If the internet and social media are today polluted with fake news, bad news, violence, pornography negativity and other vices, it is only because somebody put those vices there.

Changing that requires only the willingness and action of others who believe in a better, positive world to feed the internet and social media with the good news of truth, reconciliation, compassion, justice solidarity, selfless service, generosity, respect for human life and dignity and other virtues. Thus, in showing the vales and beauty of faith we show that the world is still beautiful. Everyone who then engages the internet and social media in that capacity, will thus become a “missionary of Jesus Christ” who said: “Go out to the whole world; proclaim the gospel to all creation” (Mark 16;15). Methinks the greatest obstacle to making that happen now is the awareness and acceptance of that mandate by digital missionaries who wield so much power to transform the world and humanity with the message of the Gospel spread online.

Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Catholic Diocese of Oyo, Nigeria.