Live Chat With Jesus

With blogging bishops and the Pope on Twitter , it only makes sense that Jesus himself take part in social media.

That’s right. Savior.org has an online Eucharistic Adoration chapel—a live webcam of the Blessed Sacrament that updates every minute, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

Brother John Raymond had the idea to “bring Jesus closer to people through their computers.”

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, what do you suppose a video image is worth? What about a video image of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament?” he asked. The feedback he received from the homebound, insomniacs, families, and psychiatrists “confirmed to me that the web cam was the next best thing to being there.” Kind of like Skype, right?

There was one outcome, however, that Brother John did not foresee. “A non-Catholic named Richard” wrote to tell him that he had turned this live web cam into a game: Spot the Monk!  Every once in a while, a monk would pass in front of the camera, Richard writes:

. . . in my quest to see a monk on your monk-cam, I have set up a web ring of a few friends of mind to watch the monk-cam at most hours of the day. This is the exciting part: Sarah saw a monk! I was not fortunate enough to lay eyes on him, but I know you guys are out there!  Thank you for putting your web cam up. We love it!

The result?

Because of this game, Richard started reading articles on our web site. In his next email to me, he wanted information about becoming Catholic.  I directed him to a Catholic parish and sent him the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Richard eventually was received into the Catholic Church. Now, he tries to attend adoration daily at his local parish.

Apparently video games aren’t so soul-sucking after all.