When many parts of the universal Church have opted to transfer the Ascension to the weekend, for us, this Sunday before Pentecost has a useless “feel” to it. But, it is not. As we wait for the descent of the Holy Spirit, we are transported back to the day after Christmas. There, we run head-on into an irony who is none other than St Stephen. He entered the spotlight on 26th Dec and today he emerges again.
The irony of St Stephen is that in the midst of joyful celebration and anticipation, he stands as a beacon as well as an indication to us of what it actually costs to follow the Lord radically—to the core of his being and paying for it with his life. He is someone we should emulate. But, he may also be a stark reminder of our failure. In our discipleship, we somehow follow Jesus “prudently” which could be another word for accommodation, meaning, that we have given in to current conventions. For example, I heard on priest somewhat cynically remarked about the question we ask at wedding—“Do you take so and so to be your lawful wedded spouse”? According to him, the answer is not, “I do”. The answer more “suitable” and in keeping with our times and tastes should be, “I did”. That may be one of the many compromises we have made with the “spirit of the world”.
So, St Stephen is right in the forefront of upholding doctrines and uprightly defending morality, that is, preaching the Gospel to those who are set in their ways. Ordinarily, we will never have to stand in front of the firing squad but the cynicism of the priest is enough to point out that in the personal interiorisation or embodiment of the Church’s basic teaching, we struggle even to live that out, how do we expect to welcome martyrdom? Indeed, in the worship of a good life, we have mostly lost our taste for simple sacrifice, let alone martyrdom.
But then, Catholicism is not suicidal because martyrdom is not our goal. The goal is the communication of the Gospel, out of which, a deadly consequence may be martyrdom. Today is appropriately titled World Communication Sunday and both St Stephen’s life and death are testimony of bringing the Gospel to the world which resulted in paying the price of communication with his life.
If we can accept that there will be moments when laying down one’s life for Jesus is inevitable, we can set aside this fear of martyrdom and focus on how we can better communicate the Good News to a world waiting and hungering for it.
The Gospel today gives us a clue. The objective of communication is to unite. Unity is important because Jesus prayed for His disciples wishing for the unity that exists between the Father and Him be found amongst His disciples. Not only that, unity is beautifully appealing because broken humanity in searching for wholeness and integrity. Therefore, it is especially attractive to those who do not believe—“See, how they love one another”.
The sad truth is that one might think given today’s technological advancement, unity is readily attainable for us. What is closer to reality are the divisions or the ghettoes we have created. Why is that so? Rather than cementing our union, we have instead honed in on weaponising or commodifying the means of communication. On a global scale, the conflict between Huawei and the US has shown how easy it is for a medium of communication to be weaponised—a means to unity reduced to a tool for espionage. Even our local scene exhibited similar weaponisation which we saw during GE14. Furthermore, nothing can escape the grasp of monetisation. Facebook, Twitter or Instagram which are means of social cohesion and networking have been commodified, reducing these media of relationships into channels of commerce.
So, how do we protect the media of communication from being instrumentalised?
One way is to keep ever before us that every medium of communication must have for its objective a widening of the space for dialogue and conversation so that unity or social cohesion can flourish. Bear in mind that the union we seek is not a unity as all cost but must be premised on what truth is. St Stephen was not preaching just anything but Whom he had come to appreciate as the Truth.
Give you an example. How often do you receive messages and without thinking forward them to your circle of family and friends? A basic question people fail to establish is the veracity of the content forwarded. “Is it true”? We sincerely believe we are protecting our loved ones and friends, but frequently we end up recycling outdated and out of context news and as a consequence create unnecessary fears.
Our delusion is that we often believe that our version of truth is the only one. It is not easy to hold back our “treasured” truth so as to allow what is before us to unfold before judging. It requires that we stand under the light of truth no matter how uncomfortable that may be.
Sadly, we inhabit a deeply divided world where truth is sacrificed on the altar of ideologies. In an ideologically buffeted world, he or she who shouts the loudest has the truth. It can be harrowing to speak the truth because we labour under the oppressive structure of political correctness. Racism, sexism and homophobia are usually the political bludgeons used to silence any dissenting thoughts. All you need to accuse someone as such-racist, sexist or homophobic.
In an image-conscious universe, nobody wants to be unpopular. Recently in one of our national papers, there was a poll on which politician has the most “likes”. Apparently a former PM seems to top the current one in the number of “likes”. An unspoken assumption in this number game is that he who is more well-liked is more “truthful”. Popularity is never a good benchmark for truth but when popularity reigns supreme, truth very easily falls off the bandwagon resulting in the space for genuine dialogue becoming constrained and constricted.
Finally, if knowledge is of the truth, then every medium of communication must serve this enterprise of advancing the truth through strengthening our solidarity as well as deepening our fraternal charity. This endeavour can only succeed when there is humility. To dialogue is to be humble for nothing communicates louder than humility. Communication must be built on a shared platform of searching for the truth of who we are and who God is. Generally, we shut people out who do not share our perspective, opting to preach to the choir, that is, people who think like we do. But, do you realise that even the devil can tell the truth—meaning that we must be humble enough to listen to our opponents, even if we want to gorge out the eyes.
When we communicate the truth we begin to recognise that we are not the owners of truth but rather its humble servant. Truth does not bend down to us but we conform ourselves to it. Hence, how we carry ourselves is equally important to what we want to proclaim. As Marshall McLuhan coined this phrase, “The medium is the message”, then our life is the best communicator of the Gospel because in such a diversified world, most of the time, we are the only Good News people might read.
