Let’s Get Digital: Pastoring in the Time of a Pandemic

The outbreak of Covid-19 empties the pews of the Church; suspension of the celebration of the Masses is thus ordered, but never to the desolation of its pastor. A “man of communion” (St. John Paul II, Pastores Dabo Vobis), the shepherd calls on his sheep to stay more connected than ever; the priest, who is “shepherd with the smell of the sheep” (Pope Francis’ Homily during the Chrism Mass in Rome, March 28, 2013), continues to pastor his flock bringing their thirsts to the True and Living Water.

The “Alter Christus”, or ‘another Christ’, the priest takes up Christ’s work of mediating people and God in bringing their hope-filled anguish to the Heavenly Father. The moment he puts on his chasuble, the priest carries in his shoulders the people entrusted to his care, and in his heart bears their written names. He accompanies the faithful walking in fear, lost and disheartened. To quote the words of Rev. Fr. Scott L. Raef of St. Anne’s Church of Canyon,Texas, “Although we are all facing a necessary time away from Holy Communion in order to love our neighbor by keeping a fast-spreading virus at bay, it is, like all fasting, an opportunity to be emptied so as to recognize our deepest hunger for God. Still joined together as the Living and Mystical Body of Christ beyond distance and dimensions, Christ promised that while He is especially with us in the Eucharist, He is present to us in the grace of our baptism…. Trust in Jesus, present most fully yet not exclusively in Mass and sacrament.”

In serving the best spiritual care to the people of his parish, the priest’s pastoring creativity takes on the challenge to approaching digital media to connect his parishioners into new ways of communication and communion. Internet-mediated communication enables people to move from connection to communion, and this is “truly fundamental for a person who is called to be responsible for a community to be a ‘man of communion’” (Daniella Zsupan-Jerome, Connected Toward Communion: The Church and Social Communication in the Digital Age, p.45). The priest now has been saying Mass over livestreaming where the People of God continue to discover the richness of God’s Word and His promise of fidelity. As the faithful watch and follow the online Mass, they feel as if they have heard the Gospel preached with “unction’ (Pope Francis’ Homily, chrism Mass, March 28, 2013) which soothes and comforts their wounded-ness in their experience of sickness, sorrowing and loss brought about by the unprecedented pandemic scenario.

“In more recent times the Church has considered the instruments of social communication as providential means for the accomplishment of its mission to ‘preach from the housetops’ (Lk 12:3), “to all nations” (Mk 16:15), ‘to the end of the earth’ (Acts 1:8), the word of salvation.” (To the Training of Future Priests Concerning the Instruments of Social Communication, n.3).

“Pastors should hasten, therefore, to fulfill their duty in this respect, one which is intimately linked with their ordinary preaching responsibility” (Inter Mirifica, n.13, par.2). (Cynthia Chu)