Voices May 01, 2024
Where tech abounds, grace abounds all the more
By Jenna McDonald — Grace Is Waiting
Never before have we known so much about that which doesn’t concern us. Never before have we been able to think of someone and then almost instantly establish communication with them. As a species, we have never needed to practice this much self-control in order to accomplish our goals.
There is a strong current at work, and if we haven’t yet learned to swim proficiently, we will be “carried to places we do not wish to go” (Jn 21:18).
More than ever, the Christian needs to become a sign of opposition to the current of mindless consumption and obsessive doomsday forecasting. We must believe St. Paul’s words to the Romans when he writes that “where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more.” Or, where tech abounds, grace abounds all the more!
There is more grace for the taking in these days of so much confusion and loneliness. Blessed Carlo Acutis, a young Italian boy who died in 2006 at the age of 15, has joyfully blazed the trail in showing all of us what it is to embrace modern technology as a tool to serve God.
Born to agnostic parents and mysteriously pious from a young age, Carlo recognized the addictive nature of video games and restricted himself to one hour per week as a penance. He used his free time to build various websites online that showcased Eucharistic miracles and the lives of the saints.
In an age where many struggle to give way to silence and contemplation, Carlo drew his strength and spiritual vigour from regular Eucharistic adoration. “The Eucharist is my highway to heaven ... if we go out in the sun, we get a suntan … but when we get in front of Jesus in the Eucharist, we become saints.”
When asked about the cultural problems that arise from excessive noise, Carthusian superior general Dysmas de Lassus says modern man is experiencing something he calls the suffocation syndrome. Man has created the noisiest atmosphere possible in order that his inner chaos and pain may be buried deep enough to never be confronted.
“The proliferation of information on demand, of sounds and images in the last century or so is stupefying. Man’s sonic and visual landscape no longer has anything in common with that of our grandparents. I imagine that it must take a certain spiritual fortitude to protect oneself from this invasion, not by a wholesale rejection, but by a proper asceticism,” de Lassus says. “Solzhenitsyn rightly remarked that although there is a right to information, there is also a right not to be informed.”
As a remedy to this cultural malaise, de Lassus prescribes God’s love and specifically Divine Mercy as the remedy. When we stand within Divine Mercy, we find a love that “heals the fear of the evil that we find in ourselves. In a word, hope.”
We must not be afraid to confront the silence that comes from standing still. If we set apart time to immerse ourselves and to be filled by the great silence that is God, we will be able to offer the world something other than emptiness.
One thing that has not changed throughout the ages is humanity’s hunger for God. As Christians, we know that only God can satisfy the restlessness we all feel when confronted with our mortality and our weakness.
In these days when unrest and distraction are at an all-time high, are we prepared to give people a reason for our hope? Do we use technology to add to the din or to contribute to building God’s kingdom in a thoughtful and disciplined way?
We all need to pray for the fortitude to leave the noise – like Jesus – to seek out solitude before we attempt to interact with the listless world. The still small voice speaks even today and it is a great honour for the friends of God to strain after it.