Online Eucharistic Celebration and the Spiritual Well-being of the Students of St. Paul University Surigao during COVID-19 Pandemic

Abstract

Spirituality plays a big role in the life of many people. Physical attendance to the Eucharist celebration has been hampered during the COVID-19 epidemic, with all the restrictions in social gatherings for health security reasons. Due to this, the people's spiritual nutrition was neglected. Despite the world's crises, the Catholic Church has responded by using various social media platforms to provide spiritual nourishment to the faithful by live-streaming the Eucharistic liturgy. The research patterned its study from John Fisher’s Spiritual Health and Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM) which aims to learn more about the spiritual well-being of the Junior High school students at St. Paul University in Surigao City, and how online Eucharistic celebrations can help them cope with the COVID-19 pandemic. Results have shown that with help attained in online Eucharistic Celebration students still exhibit the four domains of spiritual well-being in terms of ideals for spiritual health and lived experiences. Nonetheless, there are still struggles in finding common ground with their ideals and lived experiences for spiritual growth in terms of personal, communal, and environmental relationships. Despite the conflict, the result still shows the significant help of Online Eucharistic Celebration to the spiritual health of the Junior High School students of St. Paul University Surigao.