This is the first of a series of reflections on communication and spirituality to which Fr. Peio Sánchez will be contributing monthly.
“Hope, surprises and opens horizons, it makes us dream the unimaginable, and it becomes reality,” said Pope Francis in his reflections on hope in 2016.
During the last virtual meeting of the SIGNIS Board of Directors on February 2, Father Peio Sánchez, ecclesiastical assistant for the Association, emphasized the concept of hope and its importance. “God invites us to be communicators of stories and testimonies of hope, we need to know how to come out of the darkness and encourage the world with uplifting stories, stories that give hope.”
We invite you to read his reflection titled “Inspiring Hope” where he elaborates on the theme. This is the first of a series of reflections on communication and spirituality to which Fr. Peio will be contributing monthly.
There is no lack of reasons to despair. The point of bankruptcy of planetary sustainability, the growth of the abyss of inequality, the migratory flight from poverty, the proliferation of wars that decantate the social violence of confrontation and obstruct the possibilities of a future as an encounter. Probably almost all of us go through periods of dark realism at some point in the midst of fragility and risk. The weight of reason tips the balance. In social communication, the news ends up creating a state of mind that is nothing more than a state of the soul. Although not all.
From the Good News of Jesus, we know the dynamics of the germ. The mustard seed, the small precious pearl, the tiny group of companions, the grain of wheat that dies. The apparent, the sensible and the reasonable can have another color. We believe that God does his work in the hidden, in the minimum, in the disproportion. A spiritual current that recycles the shadows and rebuilds from the last.
The time of Lent is a good opportunity not to settle for injustice and sin. Not to get used to breathing evil and to overcome the reasonable tendencies to the darkness. A path in the desert to reach the garden of promises, equipped not only with repentance but also with the desire for light.
It is from the young and from the seemingly lost that this germination sprouts most naturally. The territories of hope are the hidden places where God works. They are there, hidden but energized by an invisible, encouraging force. Their inhabitants not only survive, but revive as if generating promises.
As communicators we have the mission to make them visible, to put the word in the small, to focus the camera on growth, to install the wifi to replicate the minuscule. To look at the points where hearts appear, turning on the light.
The SIGNIS campaign “Inspiring Hope” aims to share stories of hope that inspire and generate social transformation from new communication resources. We encourage you to start the journey through Burundi, Liberia, Belize, Mexico and Tanzania and spread it wherever we camp. We invite you to put the focus on the green shoots, on the burning embers, on the newborns born to life.
P. Peio took inspiration for his speech to the Board in the most recent SIGNIS project “Inspiring Hope: a campaign to empower new voices”, where through videos and articles, stories of hope that inspire and generate social transformation from new communication resources are made known. This series, launched on January 31, 2024, takes us on a journey around the world to meet the protagonists of the projects developed with the support of SIGNIS in recent years: communication centers, radio stations and more, which seek to empower young people, women and professionals, promoting peace, reconciliation and justice.