Sacred Space (website)

Sacred Space is a prayer website which has achieved considerable fame since its foundation in 1999. It was created by two members of the Jesuit order, Alan McGuckian and Peter Scally, and was managed by the Jesuit Communication Centre, Dublin, Ireland, until June 2008. The site is updated daily, guiding users through a ten-minute session of prayer centered on a passage of scripture.

History

The notion of a website about prayer came to the two Jesuits when they were working in communications. McGuckian and Scally noticed that increasing numbers of office workers sit at a computer for hours every day, often doing repetitive work. They reasoned that people work better if they break that routine every now and again; and prayer is one way of breaking the routine.[1] People as far away as the Arctic Circle and Australia log onto the site.

Speaking in The Tablet, Jan 18, 2003, Scally stated, "A person at the computer has a sense of privacy and intimacy; comfortable, upright, and attentive, subconsciously screening out all distractions, he concentrates on the screen -gazes in fact on that screen. What better description of the attitude of attentive listening to God?"[2]

The appeal of the Internet for prayer is perhaps understandable, not only because it provides the user with the privacy needed for personal prayer, but also because the multi media approach to prayer, now offered by many websites makes prayer more stimulating than a mental exercise.[2]

Developments

Sacred Space attracts over five million visits annually. Most of this traffic has been engendered by word of mouth. The website has been produced in almost thirty languages over the site's lifetime. This level of interest led an Australian publishing house, Michelle Anderson Publishing, to approach the Jesuit Communication Centre about bringing out a hard-copy version of the daily prayers. Ave Maria Press, Veritas and Jesuit Communications in Manila, also bring out annual volumes of Sacred Space - The Prayer Book of which a Kindle edition is also available from Amazon. Advent and Lent editions have proven popular and have helped thousands of people to bring the simple yet helpful structure to their prayer.

According to Piaras Jackson, an Irish Jesuit priest who has been involved with the site for a number of years, only five percent of users are from Ireland. Of the English language section, most visitors are from the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. Piaras attributes the popularity of Sacred Space to the facts that it is immediately available 24/7, current with daily scripture readings; and allows anonymity, requiring no log-in.[3] Last year alone its pages were viewed almost 30 million times from over 200 countries.[4]

References
  1. "Sacred Space", The Messenger, Irish Jesuits, December 2006
  2. Botelho, Jude. "Church on the Internet", Communication as Mission, National Consultation at Ishvani Kendra, Pune, ed. by L. Stanislaus, Indian Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, Delhi, 2007 ISBN 978-81-8458-006-8
  3. "Jesuit Voices", Jesuit Curia in Rome
  4. "Big sales expected for latest edition of Sacred Space", Clerical Whispers

Further reading
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