"I appeal in particular to you, the lay faithful, in accordance with your baptismal calling and mission, not only to be examples of faith in public, but also to put the case for the promotion of faith's wisdom and vision in the public forum". Pope Benedict XVI @ Bellahouston Park, Glasgow, Scotland, on 16 September 2010.
God, through the Holy Spirit, grant me Your precious gifts of fortitude and good counsel, that I may always do what is pleasing to You, and fulfill the mission of discipleship to which I have been called. I pray that those whose time it is to hear Your message, are hearing it now. And I pray that my heart will never ever shut itself away from Your eternal and merciful love. I fervently ask all the holy angels and saints, to pray for me in my journey of spreading the Gospel message through the gifts and talents You have so graciously bestowed on me. You know I am not worthy, but Lord, with all the zeal and passion that burns in my heart and in the depths of my soul, for You and Your son, my Lord, Jesus Christ, accept my offering to try and live according to Your will, and proclaim your Good News through embracing today's culture of social media. Be with me always, as I bring myself to the public forum which the Holy Father addresses, and forgive me any sins that I commit along the way - moments when I would not have been close to You. I ask this blessing, through the Holy Trinity. Amen
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This blogpost isn't intended to be my reflection of Pope Benedict XVI's messages. This shall come later :) Instead, this is just the beginning of my journey with you (my reader), and my faith. Before I publicize my internal spiritual thoughts and feelings about what the Holy Father has shared with us during his wonderful visit, I wish to share with you my experiences inspired by my fellow pilgrims...He called himself 'a pilgrim'. Just like I call myself a pilgrim. I'd never felt as close to the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, as I did the moment he addressed other religious leaders, and the world, at the Ecumenical Celebration in Westminster Abbey as "a pilgrim from Rome". I shall never forget the way my heart skipped a beat when he used that very, very special and personal title.
I was called to embark on this pilgrimage of the Papal Visit with the Holy Father - to deepen my understanding of the faith I so dearly love, and to become witness to that faith with my presence at the pastoral events where thousands and thousands of other pilgrims (probably you!) shared the immense joy of my belief - except... I was also called to do something a little more than that.
My role in this momentous and historic event was to 'share the joy and generate positive noise' about the visit as a communications officer for the Papal Visit. And boy, did I do this as best I possibly could; by throwing myself into a 'lion's den' and targetting areas where negativity over the papal visit was spreading fastest and loudest: the world of social media. After identifying that so many of my Catholic friends had a strong voice to proclaim their faith with, but felt it wasn't being heard, I learned how best to bridge various social media tools to ensure our joy was spread as effectively, and as far as possible. A 'blog' (what you are reading now) was the answer to my question of connecting different social media tools into one dedicated space - easy for any user to really engage in the pilgrim experience of Pope Benedict XVI's visit interactively. Short for 'web log', a blog, which is like a personalized website, is one of the easiest ways to establish dialogue and conversation in the social media world; which in our ever increasingly secularist society is already the next best way to spread the joy of the Gospel with… if today's growing 'blogosphere' and Christian new media avenues are anything to go by! Hundreds are doing it – and so could you – you don’t need a degree in computing to set up your own blog!
After I’d built the foundations of my blog, I became a ‘social media pilgrim’, and having managed to garner 2000 hits to this blog before the Holy See arrived, I’d already had a small collection of regular visitors. The Catholic Communications Network arranged for a media pass for me to be able to follow his holiness around the country with my little HD Flip camera, Panasonic Lumix stills camera, and my HTC Desire smartphone – to Bellahouston, Hyde and Cofton parks; and so Bellahouston was where it all seriously kicked off. Whilst the Holy Father was being driven around his Popemobile through the streets of Edinburgh, I was at Glasgow Central station meeting other pilgrims, and sharing that encounter with the world directly from the station itself via my blog, then twitter. :) Documented forever, this blogpost can be found on my archive.
Bellahouston
I can’t emphasize enough how uncertain the build-up to the Holy Father’s visit made me feel – fearing for my beloved Pope’s life, and nerve-wrackingly concerned for the safety of my fellow pilgrims at Hyde Park corner on Saturday. But all my anxieties dissolved, the moment I was in the presence of the Holy Father at Bellahouston Park. No words can explain the elation of my soul at this very moment.
It was so fierce and strong that I burst into pure tears of joy – not because the Holy Father was there, but because the people loved him so openly. I was brought to my knees in thanksgiving at the sight and sound of the Scots (and the Irish!) proudly waving their country's flag, alongside the Vatican's, and my heart truly rejoiced - for Pope Benedict couldn't have received a more heartwarming welcome anywhere else in the world at that moment. When he spoke, everybody listened - nobody moved. His messages were so profound and so vital, that I had to tweet his messages as soon as I’d heard them, in small tidbits. I just needed to spread God’s love manifested in the words of the Holy Father as soon as I’d heard them, through Twitter.
After the Mass, I managed to interview some of the pilgrims. How often can a young Catholic describe a particular occasion as "life-changing", "fantastic", and "brilliant"?! Not often! But as you can see, here are some pilgrims that felt that way!
As a young person myself, I rejoiced at their happiness, and thanked God for the opportunity for these youngsters to experience the love of God with the rest of their countrymen.
Twickenham & Lambeth
I returned back to London (with much difficulty!!!) on a complete and utter high, in the meanwhile writing my blog whenever I possibly could. My blog was as live as I could make it – being only one person, and wanting to capture as much of the pilgrim’s journey as possible. Unfortunately, I had lost my phone charging cable in Glasgow somewhere, so I lost all phone-tweeting capabilities for the majority of Friday. :( Considering I wanted to know what was going on whilst I was travelling, I considered this to be a mini-disaster, but when I got to Twickenham on the Friday morning, my spirits were reinvigorated the moment I spoke with Moira and Kay from St. Margaret's in Twickenham and St. Francis de Sales of Hampton Hill, who were such witnesses to our faith, and true admirers of the Holy Father - things that touched me deeply. Standing just outside of gate D of St. Mary's University college, Moira shared with me exactly how she was feeling at that moment.
How glorious that she would say "It's as if Jesus Christ has come to this country. To me, he is Jesus' representative on earth"! Amen to that Moira.
Later at Lambeth bridge, I encountered the beautiful family of a friend, Chris. His nephews, in all their smiles and joy, demonstrated to me how they waved their Vatican flags!
Until that moment, I hadn't encountered anybody I knew. At times, it felt quite physically lonely not to have a colleague, or a friend accompanying me during this wonderful time. But when I bumped into Chris and his family, this loneliness disappeared, and I was reminded of my mission, to share the joy with the world. God works in mysterious ways, and it was a blessing that I would bump into them at that particular moment in time.
Not long after that, I encountered some BXVI fans, who'd come over all the way from Italy :) They were singing, and dancing with such happiness and gusto that I just had to capture some of them.
I suspect that I'm going to be saying the same thing next year at Madrid for World Youth Day - except I'll be exclaiming 'from the UK!!!' For the rest of the evening, I focused on capturing more images with a stills camera, which were later uploaded onto my flickr channel, and then embedded into my blog gallery for the day.
Westminster
This day was a very interesting day in terms of social media! Not only were anti-Pope and Protest the Pope supporters out on the streets in full force, but they were also on twitter in full force! I can't quite find the article that was mentioned to me about a twitter battle between the Catholics and the protesters, but I was told early the next morning, that the Catholics won that battle. Apparantly something was written about it on one of the major newspapers, but I'm not sure which one, and I had never seen it myself. There was a fairly strong community of Catholics tweeting throughout the whole day. One pilgrim, @Bordeaux8 was tweeting from the Piazza, and so I was retweeting certain things she had written so that the online world may receive the pilgrim's view from on the ground itself. Catholic Herald tweeters @LukeCoppen and @AnnaArco were tweeting and live blogging - which was an absolutely fantastic service - as now there is a timestamped record of exactly what happened and when. Working so hard for the glory of God, they, and the other catholic pilgrims tweeting away on the #papalvisit became such inspiration for me, and brought me to a profound sense of togetherness, and unity within the Catholic Church.
My day started off by following the Westminster Diocese young school and parish representatives from their meet-up point to the moment they passed the security area. They were the really lucky ones to be honoured with being in the presence of the Holy Father just outside the Cathedral, at the piazza. The videos of their early momrning are all available on my youTube channel.
I was in the Media Centre the moment Pope Benedict XVI "expressed deep sorrow to the innocent victims of [clerical sexual abuse] unspeakable crimes". As I was already privy to the words that Papa Bene would share with us, the admission of shame he felt, I was able to tweet some of it live. Any of my followers would have received his words as they were said. Funnily enough, I was sitting opposite Fr. Tim Finnigan, the author of the very popular 'The Hermeneutic of Continuity' blog. Funnily enough, I was privileged enough, the night before, to meet tweeter @mulierFortis who also writes her own blog. Very, very profound moments when Papa Bene talked about the crimes - that I had to concentrate so hard not to burst into tears and wail away in front of all those cynical reporters in the media centre, making an utter and complete fool of myself! Alas, I managed to reign in my emotions, and focus on the joyful aspects of the visit - and Hyde Park was about to be the highlight of my pilgrim experience.
Hyde Park
From the media, I rushed over to Hyde Park, in time for the first performance of RISEtheatre. Another mini-disaster, as whilst I was running through the park, I'd lost my media pass! I'd had a fantastic idea to blog and tweet about RISEtheatre. Originally, it was my plan to interview and blog about the choir that would perform... but this wasn't possible as I didn't get any reply back from the contact I'd left my details with. However, Fiona O'Reilly of Catholic Voices had mentioned that Charley Pinfold, co-director of RISEtheatre wanted to get in contact. God obviously had plans - for if a choir sings on stage, it's quite difficult to tweet what the symbolisms of their singing is about, since the lyrics are usually a direct message. However, with lyrical movement and acting, this is not the case. Without speech, a stage performance portrays messages indirectly, and so must usually be interpretted by the viewer. Here is where I came in with the live twitter commentary. As the company were about to hit the stage, I released an overview blogpost, introducing the performances, and inviting people to monitor my tweets as I described what the performers were portraying on stage – which people retweeted, thus spreading the good news of the Gospel instantly around the online world. I hoped I was successful in explaining a little about what was happening on the stage, to help viewers with that interpretation.
Cofton Park
Believe it or not, people were tweeting at silly o'clock in the morning, like I was - all describing their journeys to Cofton park in their coaches! All throughout the journey, I was taking photos during our service station stops, and tweeting that out live.
Before the Mass had begun, I was lucky enough to discover that the groups I was standing by, were from Catholic retreat centre Soli House. I was moved at their joy - their singing, their passion, and their obvious devotion to praising our Lord! Compare this joy, to the 'joy' that one sees out on the streets of any large city on a Friday or Saturday night. You tell me which is the truer joy!
Once again, my phone went into my pocket, and the stills camera came out as the Mass was about to begin. I'd like to thank the Volunteer minister (Stephen), and my parish friends who were kind enough to give up their space so that I make take some of the shots I did.
That evening when I got home, I uploaded all my photos and videos onto a 'gallery-style' post on my blog, so that people who wanted to see them straight away could. Ever since then, I've kept in contact with my newly found twitter friends, and keeping an eye on the media coverage regarding the Papal visit. All over the net, everyone is talking about the 'Benedict Bounce'! Why? Because we truly are, all a-bounce with his eloquently delivered feeding of our mind with the Gospel message and request to open our hearts, by our beloved Pope Benedict XVI. All the videos I recorded of the pilgrims I encountered are up on youTube, and the high quality photos I’d taken are viewable from my Flickr. I hope my work may remind my fellow pilgrims of how Pope Benedict XVI touched their hearts, and that they may remember their mission – just as I will be reminded everytime I watch any of the other people who became witness to our faith in these videos. I'm still shattered, but I'm still happy, and I expect I shall be for a while to come yet! This experience has been imprinted and burned into my memory as an unforgettable few days of peace, joy, and love, that I must now share in the public forum.
A new Evangelisation
Catholics in the UK are once more, confident to profess our faith – and it’s time to break out of our Churches and live our example in the real world. Something is stirring (the Benedict Bounce!!!) whereby the Holy Spirit is guiding us to clearer apostolates. And one of the ways I intend to express my faith from here on, is through social media – which already has a wonderfully large, welcoming, global Catholic community.
2 comments:
Go for it Claz!!
My heart was gladdened by your love for the holy father.
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