What Truly Matters in Apologetics, Beyond Positivity, and The Value of Prayer
When defending the Faith online, regardless of your chosen platform (whether it's Facebook, YouTube, Blogger, or what have you), just do your absolute best, giving your heart and soul to it, out of sheer love for the Truth and genuine concern for the salvation of your neighbor. Be thorough. Be factual. Be reasonable. Be fair. But most importantly, remain true to the teachings of the Church. Private opinion has its place, but magisterial teaching always takes precedence. Obviously this will take a lot of effort, but I think this is the only way of properly doing apologetics within the so-called "digital continent."
Now, there will be scoffers and ignorant comments, and sadly, these scoffers and ignoramuses will sometimes be among our very own — that is, among our fellow Catholics. I don't think it's wise to even try to communicate with such difficult individuals. Unless they are willing to reciprocate the same level of devotion and fairness and rationality, they ought to be ignored. Maybe we should pray for them; I don't know. But it's best to just ignore their very existence, for their mere presence is just pure poison to the soul.
Some problems, notwithstanding how complicated and emotionally taxing they are, when you mull about them long enough, your brain will eventually come up with a favorable "solution." It may not always be the best solution; it may not even be the solution that will definitively put an end to the problem at all, but it can be an escape or a coping strategy and even a way of graciously accepting the inevitability of failure. But it is nevertheless something that will bring you peace of mind. And that's a good thing not just for you, but for everyone and everything else affected by whatever issue is at hand.
There's nothing wrong if you can't stop thinking about a problem, because it simply means that you care, that you are not indifferent to the anomalies and inconsistencies and injustices in this society that we live in. People blinded by a false sense of positivity are quick to dismiss this as a sort of self-inflicted depression, without realizing that many of the things that make their lives comfortable were all the good fruits of so-called "miserable people" who racked their brains for God knows how long, in order to deal with seemingly impossible difficulties that pathetic, happy-go-lucky people are incapable of handling.
Prayer is important, and it should permeate every aspect of our lives. Under no circumstances should we think that it is useless. Since everything depends on God, our intrinsic sense of justice demands absolute humility on our part when it comes to our relationship with the divine. Every good thing must be attributed to God (thus, we owe Him our everlasting gratitude), and every evil thing to the imperfections and sins of the world (thus, we ought to entrust all of our problems to Him). That's just common sense. The apparent absurdity and futility of prayer only stem from man's inability to grasp the reality of God being the First Cause of all things. As long as we cling to a superficial notion of divinity, equating it to mere superhuman attributes, we will never understand the immeasurable value of prayer. We are not just praying to some super entity within the universe; we are praying to The One who created the universe and sustains its very existence.
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