Speaking Out

Ah, it’s nearly that time of year! As well as experiencing the showers of April and May, college and high school students will navigate a deluge of final essays, exams and capstone projects. Thankfully, there’s a saint we can turn to for intercession to navigate the formidable final six to eight weeks of term.

The advent of social media has been positively embraced as a means of connecting people across long distances. It has also revolutionized marketing and public relations in unprecedented ways.

During the COVID-19 lockdown, my siblings and I started viewing movies and TV shows that we grew up with and developed a game: we would try and see which jokes, ideologies, portrayals and topics will eventually get cancelled according to today’s standards and practices.

The landmark one-year anniversary dates for COVID-19 in Canada are Jan. 25 and March 8 — the former  being the day we recorded our first official pandemic case, and the latter being the first death.

Being steadfast in times of suffering can be a struggle. COVID-19 continues to create a murky picture for Canada’s near future. All around us, people suffer from loneliness, anxiety, illness and despair.

I hear this often: there isn’t much Christian or religious material out there. I also hear the media is now very secular. And this is where I stop people and say: No! You are wrong, it’s everywhere — we’ve just lost the art of finding Christianity and religion in everything. 

In a world where we have so much technology and connection right at our fingertips, why do we sometimes feel so disconnected?

The typical image of poverty is often presented to us when we walk down a busy street. We see a man or woman holding a coffee cup, baseball cap or some other vessel to receive the pocket change of passers-by. 

Man’s search for God lies at the very core of the soul. So it comes as no surprise that God can be found in art that springs forth from that powerful place of divine recollection: music.

I couldn’t help but cry and scream as I saw a baby decapitated, dismembered and disemboweled 10 minutes into watching the movie Unplanned.