Bible Sharing via Messenger

Bible Sharing via Messenger – by Joana Turaganiwai

The St. Paul Community of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart parish meet every Wednesday for our weekly SCC. This community is made up of families that live along the Reservoir and Waimanu Rd and we are blessed more with the presence of our SOLN and Cluny Sisters who make up the community.  

The Covid 19 pandemic caused an end to this weekly face-to-face meets because we were reminded to “Stay Home, Stay Safe” from the 30^th of March. On the 4^th of April, we set up a chat group on Messenger for St Paul, SHCP and roped in all community members on Messenger to allow us the opportunity to encourage each other, journey with each other and especially for our weekly SCCs. Every Wednesday at 8pm, we would have our video chat on messenger and share on the Sunday gospel.

It was indeed a blessing to be able to share on the Sunday gospel and we organized visitations, loloma – giving and sharing to neighbours and those that were going through difficult times – bearing in mind the social –distancing, hand sanitizing and other precautionary measures. 

There was also a moment of enlightenment when we reflected on how Covid 19 had affected us. It was an emotional time as we listened to members sharing their challenges, sense of loss and feeling down. A big lesson we learnt was how most of the community members saw this time as an opportunity to uplift their spiritual lives with the livestream mass, reflections by priests and lay people. For some of us it was an opportunity too to do other things like gardening and planting vegetables, to repair torn and broken things at home and catching up with family members who were away. This reflective session took almost 2 hours whereas our SCCs usually takes one hour.

Our Word of Life would be our source of sustenance spiritually because we would try and live out the word in our actions at home and whichever area we interacted in. This allowed for spiritual growth in our lives as we took small steps in building our relationships with our families, communities and in reaching out to those that needed our prayers, donations and time. 

When we did get to finally meet up again on the 10^th of June, it was a joyous time as there were more members that had joined our community and there was a sense of liberation and sigh of relief. It’s not over yet but the seed of hope that had been planted is still being watered with prayers and confession and offering of sacrifice at the altar which is a longing that is being met at Jesus feet. 

I thank the members of St Paul community for continuing to trust in God’s providence and love and for keeping the faith despite the challenges of connectivity and network issues and we continue to trust in Jesus on our faith journey.