Leavening the Internet

I'm very grateful to be given the opportunity to contribute to this blog, as a recent initiate to Catholicism, and to blogging. I want to encourage my brother and sister bloggers to keep up the wonderful work you are doing. This is a unique environment for sharing what God has been doing in our lives, and encouraging each other, however geographically separate we may be.

And speaking from personal experience, we should never underestimate the appetite of our non-Catholic brothers and sisters for learning more about the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. I first attended Mass just over a year ago, and by April this year I was being received into the Church. You can read more about the ways the Great Fisherman has hooked me and drawn me in over the last year on my personal blog (A Tiny Son of Mary), but the point I wanted to make here is how important the internet can be as a place for those who are just curious and starting their search. It was through the internet that I first discovered the prayers of the Most Holy Rosary and the Stations of the Cross, for example.

Of course it is no substitute for a concrete Christian community in which we carry each other's burdens, but the internet can be a great source of encouragement and an opportunity to build more widely the Apostolate of the Laity.

'Our own times require of the laity no less zeal: in fact, modern conditions demand that their apostolate be broadened and intensified. With a constantly increasing population, continual progress in science and technology, and closer interpersonal relationships, the areas for the lay apostolate have been immensely widened [ . . . ] Since the laity, in accordance with their state of life, live in the midst of the world and its concerns, they are called by God to exercise their apostolate in the world like leaven, with the ardour of the spirit of Christ.' (Apostolicam Actuositatem)