by Br. Alexis Bugnolo

As Saint Augustine of Hippo remarked in his epic essay, On the City of God, there is a battle in this word, between 2 cities: The city which is founded upon the love of God unto the contempt of self; and the city which is founded upon the love of self, unto the contempt of God.

This battle has a demarcation line too. But not as the Gnostics would have, between spirit and matter. Rather, its demarcation line is between the right use and the misuse of all things.  And thus this battle line is drawn through the affairs of daily life and even in our culture or way of living.

But we can describe these two warring camps by the things which characterize their lives.

In the one camp, there is the Divine Network of prayer and grace. You can log on to this network at any time or day, but not in every activity.  The login requires faith and attention, and the mortification to remain connected and interactive.

In the other camp, there is the Network of the Antichrist, which is called Social Media. To log on, you need a computer or cellphone or tablet, an internet connection, a password, and a stable decision TO SEPARATE YOURSELF from all those around you physically and even from the Divine Network.

Those addicted to the Divine Newtork become saints, great saints.

Those addicted to the Network of the Antichrist become mediocre at best, and vain gasbags more often than not.  Vanity and sloth being capital sins, you can imagine where its users are being led.

God gives us a free login (faith), password (charity) and network access (prayer), eternal benefits (salvation) and temporal gains (virtue, counsel, peace, discernment, gifts, repentance etc..). In addition, we can find the most famous interesting group of celebrities and divas, such as Our Lady, Saint Joseph, and all the Angels and Saints, all wiling to hear our comments, interact with us, and even send us free promotional graces or grant us tremendous intercessions to our legal and non legal petitions!

That is a great package. Who can beat it?

Maybe it is about time we change social media network?