KJZT brothers and sisters – I pray, once again, that this finds you all doing well here, towards the end of these summer months. I hope that it has been a restful and fruitful summer for you all and that you are all staying happy, healthy, and holy! It has been a particularly busy few months for me, but a supremely blessed one. I have had the great pleasure of spending quality time with so many of you at both the Splashway Family Fun Day Mass and of course, at the always highly anticipated KJZT Convention! What a joy it was to not only meet so many of you (finally!), but to also share such enjoyable time with you, visiting and learning more about all of y’all. It served as a great reminder of just how blessed we truly are by such great people here within the KJZT Family. With that said, although I have been the Chaplain for a few years now, I want to thank you for being so welcoming and embracing of me, especially this summer with all of our interactions.

I am also compelled to share with you an unexpected and incredible experience that I just returned from. A few months ago, I received a message from Vatican Officials, inviting me to come to Rome and participate at an event inside the Vatican – the Jubilee of Digital Missionaries and Catholic Influencers! I humbly accepted and was one of 900 Catholic Influencers from around the world who met up in the Vatican and spent three full days with one another to, for the first time ever, join forces as a Catholic Influencer collective. This time was absolutely inspiring and rejuvenating. We were able to of course network, hear noteworthy and convicting talks from Cardinals, Bishops, Catholic Speakers and everyone in-between, we were able to pray together and actually spend time in front of the blessed sacrament (after-hours) at St. Peter’s Basilica and we also were also blessed to have a private audience with Pope Leo XIV! This surprise visit from the Holy Father was definitely one of the major highlights and he spoke some of the most powerful and most convicting words to us about what it actually means to be an “influencer for the Lord,” reminding us that the first and most powerful “influencer for Jesus” remains our Blessed Mother. It truly brought us back to our “why” and our purpose for being Digital Missionaries in the online world. I was reminded that the more Catholic voices we have out there on social media, the louder the message will be. Now this is not to say that everyone should go out and get TikTok or Instagram or X (Twitter) or get overly obsessed with pumping out more Catholic content, but what we are called to do is to use the platforms that we do have to courageously speak TRUTH and boldly proclaim the Gospel. Now that is not just me, that’s ALL of us! We are all called to share the good news in whatever circles we find ourselves in, whether that’s with five people around the kitchen table or with a million people on social media. That said, in a very real way, for better or for worse, social media has become the indisputable town square. So, we should be boldly Catholic and unapologetically faithful, especially there in said town squares and around the “water coolers” of 2025!

Social Media continues to be a powerful medium and with great power, of course comes great responsibility and THIS is a responsibility that we all have. This experience was a profound reminder to me (and should be for all of us) that people truly do see us, even if our “likes” don’t necessarily correlate all the time. That said, we must never underestimate how the Lord will use our digital presence and how He is constantly inviting us to actually be present, as salt and light to the world. I pray that this will serve as a reminder to stay measured and balanced with social media (in all the ways we use it), yet also to stay bold and courageous.

Finally, we must also remember that we absolutely cannot give what we do not have. So, before we post on social media, much less go and begin the “scroll” on
social media, we should always spend time with the Lord first and foremost. Keep Him first and use social media as a tool to encourage others to do the same.

Until we meet again, please be assured of my continued prayers for you all and please pray for me. I will see you online, but more importantly — I will see you
in the Eucharist!

In Christ,
Fr. Jared Cooke