Ours is the Good News

Ours is the Good News

​By Father Richard Sorfleet, Saint John Fisher Mission, Renfrew ON

One of the main focuses on the terrorist attack on the Islamic Center in Quebec City has very quickly become, and rightly so, the role of social media in propagating intolerance and disinformation purposely created to further hate and inflame prejudice against minorities.

We need to ask ourselves as a church what influence and example we can play in confronting what can only be described as a growing swamp of evil, for we too are in the business of news. Ours, however, is the Good News, not false news, alternative fact news or spin. Ours is the news of witness for the Gospel.

In the words of Matthew 10: 7- 8 As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.  Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.
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Demons can take many forms and inhabit many ways. They scurry through places such as Facebook, troll on Twitter, and lurk inside media comment boards.

Again Matthew 13: 41- 43

The Son of Man will send his angels, and they will collect out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all evildoers, and they will throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.   Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.
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The Good News is to cast light in dark places, bring hope to the the lost, to the marginalized, the poor and the oppressed and the stranger within our gates, to comfort those who morn, and to witness to the evils of the age.

Ours is the Good News and it doesn't hide.