Dear friends,
Hope your days are going well and you enjoy the warm weather.
I would like to appreciate you all to have taken part in the Mass of the Assumption of Our Blessed Mother Mary this past Tuesday and Wednesday. This just shows that faith here is still alive. Praise the Lord!
The Pope on the fourteenth of May this year had an encounter with the Cardinals, Bishops, religious and the laity of the Diocese of Rome. This encounter was a session of questions and answers. This took place in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. To one of the questions about the youth, the Pope said that he was worried that the young people are enmeshed in the Virtual World. This he said after having an experience with a youth group which he went to visit. The group with all eagerness welcomed him and tried to reach out to him. And the pope tried to stretch his hands to reach out to them. But to his surprise and shock all the young people were holding mobile phones in their hands trying to take pictures and selfies. Pope Francis says that he understood that their world is virtual and they have to land on reality. Their priority is not human contact, but a virtual reality.
I happened to see a small video clip on Facebook. There were three generations of people and they were asked what was their fun time or what did they do to have fun. The older generation people said all about their interesting time with their loved ones and being out in the natural world where they had contact with people and nature. The younger generation people, who were kids of 5-13 years old said that their fun time activity was to spend time with video games and social media. One boy said that he spent at least five hours a day on such stuff. He never seemed to care about relating with people and the reality to him was only the electronic gadgets.
These incidents show that what the Pope said is true. The world is becoming a world of gadgets keeping people away from each other. The Pope says that the people, especially young ones, should be taught to land on the real world without neglecting the technology which we need. According to him the best means to land is the works of mercy. These works of mercy would help a lot to make the young people land on reality and would also help them to understand the world and develop contact with the people.
It is really alarming to see young people and kids always having mobile phones and other such electronic gadgets with them and always meddling with them. They become so addicted to them that a separation from them hurts them a lot. That is a very dangerous sign for the future of society where they may not even know how to communicate with each other. Without this basic communication, the society would not be a society of people but a bunch of non-communicable people governed by electronic gadgets. In such a situation the society would be virtually dead.
We should try to govern the electronic things and not let ourselves be governed by them. We should not introduce that stuff to the kids at a young age and should teach them that those things are there to help us and not to get ourselves enslaved to them. This may be hard but if we want our kids to enjoy a live society, we need to do this. I am not an enemy of these scientific inventions of these kinds. But these innovative elements should smoothen our life, without make our lives lifeless and passive. That is my point.
Have a blessed time and God bless.
Yours sincerely in Christ Jesus,
Fr. A. Antony
Hope your days are going well and you enjoy the warm weather.
I would like to appreciate you all to have taken part in the Mass of the Assumption of Our Blessed Mother Mary this past Tuesday and Wednesday. This just shows that faith here is still alive. Praise the Lord!
The Pope on the fourteenth of May this year had an encounter with the Cardinals, Bishops, religious and the laity of the Diocese of Rome. This encounter was a session of questions and answers. This took place in the Archbasilica of St. John Lateran in Rome. To one of the questions about the youth, the Pope said that he was worried that the young people are enmeshed in the Virtual World. This he said after having an experience with a youth group which he went to visit. The group with all eagerness welcomed him and tried to reach out to him. And the pope tried to stretch his hands to reach out to them. But to his surprise and shock all the young people were holding mobile phones in their hands trying to take pictures and selfies. Pope Francis says that he understood that their world is virtual and they have to land on reality. Their priority is not human contact, but a virtual reality.
I happened to see a small video clip on Facebook. There were three generations of people and they were asked what was their fun time or what did they do to have fun. The older generation people said all about their interesting time with their loved ones and being out in the natural world where they had contact with people and nature. The younger generation people, who were kids of 5-13 years old said that their fun time activity was to spend time with video games and social media. One boy said that he spent at least five hours a day on such stuff. He never seemed to care about relating with people and the reality to him was only the electronic gadgets.
These incidents show that what the Pope said is true. The world is becoming a world of gadgets keeping people away from each other. The Pope says that the people, especially young ones, should be taught to land on the real world without neglecting the technology which we need. According to him the best means to land is the works of mercy. These works of mercy would help a lot to make the young people land on reality and would also help them to understand the world and develop contact with the people.
It is really alarming to see young people and kids always having mobile phones and other such electronic gadgets with them and always meddling with them. They become so addicted to them that a separation from them hurts them a lot. That is a very dangerous sign for the future of society where they may not even know how to communicate with each other. Without this basic communication, the society would not be a society of people but a bunch of non-communicable people governed by electronic gadgets. In such a situation the society would be virtually dead.
We should try to govern the electronic things and not let ourselves be governed by them. We should not introduce that stuff to the kids at a young age and should teach them that those things are there to help us and not to get ourselves enslaved to them. This may be hard but if we want our kids to enjoy a live society, we need to do this. I am not an enemy of these scientific inventions of these kinds. But these innovative elements should smoothen our life, without make our lives lifeless and passive. That is my point.
Have a blessed time and God bless.
Yours sincerely in Christ Jesus,
Fr. A. Antony
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