Proclaim the Gospel ‘creatively’ — bishop

How do you connect the Gospel message to today’s basic mindset and culture?

Bishop Mylo Hubert Vergara of Pasig, chairman of the Church’s Commission on Social Communications and Mass Media, said it requires the church to spread the Good News with dynamism and new approaches.

“If you really want to connect, that core message (God’s love) must be communicated creatively. As we all know, we cannot be static, we must be dynamic,” Vergara said.

“If you ask me as a bishop, every day you have to think about new strategies and creative tactics to make sure that one can be able to connect,” he said.

The bishop spoke about communicating the Gospel effectively in his homily during the Mass for this year’s Catholic Social Media Summit.

More than 200 participants attended the gathering held at the Lourdes School of Mandaluyong City on Nov. 16.

The prelate also emphasized that in order to connect, it is important to communicate the core message of God’s mercy and love. “I think that this is the first principle,” he said.

“If you look at the core message of Jesus, it is his saving love, something that we experience then and now, which is nothing else but his pascal mystery,” Vergara said.

“And I think that core message must reverberate as we connect to people in the digital world,” he added.

Echoing Pope Francis’s message for this year’s World Communications Day, he stressed that connecting to people should also lead to “compassionate communion”.

“The message is making us realize that our social network community should lead to a human community and existential community,” he said.

Now on its eighth year, the CSMS was organized by YouthPinoy, an organization of “online missionaries”.

The initiative is also in collaboration with Areopagus Communications Inc. and the CBCP Media Office.