To the rhythm of trends and viral audios, sor selfie and the nuns of Jesus-Mary try to keep up with their students, in their already famous account TikTokwhich was born in the midst of the pandemic, as a strategy to get closer to young people and teach them that teachers and nuns also have a life.
The idea, it has been well said, came from Marta Monero, a sister who 20 years ago leaned towards religious life in a community of French origin, dedicated to Christian education, especially in aenvironments of extreme poverty.
Sor selfie —as her followers know her— is a normal student, has a degree in biology and recently did a specialization: evangelization in virtual environmentswhich has helped her connect with her students from the Jesús María school (Medellín), on and off the screen.
He was born in the Castilla neighborhoodfrom commune five (northwest of the capital of Antioquia), and grew up amid violence and crime, of bands that disputed the control of the territory. However, he foundtwo oases”: the parish, where I was a catechist and participated in the youth group, and the school. Places that were his salvation from that difficult social situation.
“My vocation comes from a very young age. My mother always took us to mass on Sundays and, when we were 6 or 7 years old, she put us in a group called ‘Missionary Childhood’. There I met some sisters who were not from my school, but from the neighborhood parish —the Dominican Sisters of the Christian Doctrine— and I loved being with those nuns. I told my mom on October 31 «mommy, dress me up as a nun» Then my mother sent me to make the habit of those nuns and I would go out with them to ask for sweets (…) I wanted to be like them”, he recalled in an interview granted to Infobae Colombia.
However, adolescence arrived and with it she was plunged into a deep crisis in which she began to wonder: “Which nun? What religion? and she ended up walking away from the Church. But, when she was in ninth grade, something happened that she calls her “judicial record” – which, according to her, almost all priests and nuns have – she grabbed her hair at school with a classmate who had been bullying her. the whole year, and that led her to have her “founding experience of God”, because she came to know herself, so she felt the need to get closer to him again.
A call that she kept hearing once she left the school —in which, years later, she would be the coordinator. She found out and began a vocational experience with the sisters, and there she stayed. She liked that about being able to help others through educationbecause, as she says: “Really, education is a very powerful tool for change many situations of injustice and inequality social”.
All religious communities have something known as ‘the charisma‘, a grace that the founders receive and reach the religious men and women of their congregation. And Marta leaned towards Christian education; the power to bring the love, forgiveness and mercy of God. Just what they offered from Jesús-María. its founder, Claudine Thevenetlived in the French revolution and his founding experience was forgiveness: he saw how two of his brothers were murdered, he found out who the murderers were, and his forgiveness made him to pick up the daughters of those men and educate them to change their environment through education.
Something similar to what Sor Selfie seeks to do with her work. Besides, of course, claim against rumors who say that those who enter religious life are “the brutes”, those who never learned anything, those who never had a boyfriendthose who did not fall in love spinsters, those who had love disappointments, or those who only know how to cook, take care of children or care for the elderly.
Upon entering religious formation, like the rest of her companions, she had five years of discernment, in which she studied philosophy and theology to find out if what she really wanted was give your life to God. But, once he made the decision, his professional studies came. He earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and later specialized in virtual evangelism. Since she, being an educator, she understood that she must be at the forefront to respond to the challenges and needs of her students.
“there are always doubts and that happens to us both in religious life, as in marriage and even singleness. But these doubts, really, are about whether I will be able with the vows, or if this will be for me. Is it something that God asks of me or is it something that I made up? Will this be for me? How nice it would be to have children or get married; They are things that come to be thought. Obviously, there are all those doubts because the possibilities will always be therebut I do not see the vows as a sacrifice, but as a commitment. when one loves one commits. Just like when you get married, ”she explained.
She vowed to love God and may your love be universal; that is, that it go to all the people it serves. Thus, “the vows do not become a sacrifice or a chain, but a commitment of love.”
Understand, however, that throughout this commitment doubts may arise, but the vocation is a process in which one chooses, and is chosen every day. This is not to say that there are no moments of crisis. What has cost her the most about being a religious is working since before she gets up and she admits that community lifeSometimes it is usually difficult, although, it also comes to feel like a blessing. Above all, when she learns, she shares and deals with certain moments in which she can feel alone. “For each other,” she commented.
On a normal day, she gets up between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m., takes time for personal prayer, and then goes down to school to accompany the girls in the Eucharist and in community prayers. He is at school until 4:00 in the afternoon and between 5:30 and 6:30 he has an exposition of the Blessed Sacrament, prayers for vespers and the rosary. Only after this and after eating the three meals together with the rest of the community does he have a moment of relaxation called recreation, before being free. But on weekends and holidays lives them like any other mortalHe visits his family, goes out to ‘window shop’, has a drink with his friends, travels and rests from everything he did during the week.
For this he receives an amount of money each month, but for vow of poverty she reports to a bursar, with the aim of not spending her money on luxuries, only on necessities. Something that helped her realize how much she was spending unnecessarily, in a world where many people can’t even afford to save.
Came to TikTok looking for a educational resource, after their students could not return to school due to the pandemic. Then, she remembered her niece who, a few months before, had been glued to the application; so, once the confinement was decreed, he thought that all of her students should be doing the same.
So he opened his channel with two objectives: 1. Bring the students of Jesús-María closer to what their teachers do outside the classroom and 2. Let the young people see that religious life remains an option, far from all the myths that surround it. In short, she wanted to open a window to reconnect with them, showing them that the teachers and the nuns also have a life.
Thus, the community of sisters from the Castilla neighborhood discovered that the networks could be an apostolate, because without leaving the school, students and parents sent them messages, thanking them for brightening their days with the content they uploaded. And so more religious were added.
A key moment, without a doubt, in which Sister Selfie also came across evangelization in virtual environments, a specialization in which, without thinking twice, she signed up to give more depth and weight to your mission on the web: share the message of God’s love. “Many get information through networks, so why not also be formed in the faith through these channels?” He asked himself.
Between laughs, in the middle of his talk with Infobae, he confessed that the ideas for his videos come out of “the holy spirit”. Unlike the younger ones, she is not a virtual native, but the more she sees trends, songs and challenges, the more ideas she comes up with to turn them around. What reminds you of a passage (Mark 7:15): “There is nothing outside of man that, when entering him, can contaminate him; but what comes out of the man is what defiles the man.”
Sister selfie wants God to be known and loved and that is her function in the networks, that people meet a loving and close God, in the everyday and simplelike scrolling, so why not use networks in a positive way?
“There are people who has sent me to hell and others have been more compassionate and they sent me to purgatory”, he commented between laughs, and it is that there are those who do not think that a nun can be on social networks evangelizing, and they think it’s something from the devil. But there are also those who have managed to get closer to God with their work.
“Suddenly they are surprised to see a nun doing this, but we nuns are human beings and happy beings. And what I want is to break stereotypes. That we think that religious life is joyful and close and we enter it because we are in love with Jesus and the life we lead”, they understand. its more than 370 thousand followers.
Among them, hundreds of young people, who, according to the nuns, thirst for the infinite and therefore seek spirituality and the experience of feeling Jesus in their lives. An experience that they attest to, because it has led them to feel deeply loved and to transcend.
Hence, in his call, try to help others to get closer to God and to the church: “He is involved in a religion. Yes. But if we don’t make this different, no one else will. You who are baptized, you who are the church, work for the church to be different, if you don’t like the current church (…) work to make that church the church we dreamed of and that Jesus Christ dreamed of in the beginning, the church that we welcomes everyone, who loves us and who leads us to the presence of the father”, at a time when, from Catholicism, they know that They need the presence of the youngestwhom Pope Francis has already called to make a mess, even from the holy institution.
