Feb. 28th, 2008: Third Thursday of Lent
Some days don’t you wish that they had never invented cell phone, email, and internet? Certainly, we enjoy being able to reach someone instantaneously, but the flipside is that someone is able to reach US whenever they want. They say that with all the different gadgets that allow us to communicate, we lose more of our ability to pay attention. Experts have now coined a new term, “Attention Deficit Trait” or ADT. It describes a condition when we are so overloaded with incoming messages and competing tasks that we are unable to prioritize. Rather than giving each things adequate thought, we shoot-from-the-hip because we feel pressured. Has this ever happened to you?
In the midst of our distracted state, our Lord says to us through Jeremiah, “Listen to my voice.” Pay attention to Me, He says. But this call from the Lord went unheeded. We read, “But they obeyed not...They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts and turned their backs, not their faces, to me.” Our Lord’s call to us today can be summed up by our psalm, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” If attention is our most precious treasure in this environment where information gluttony is the norm, shouldn’t we make an effort during this Lent to give the best portion of our attention to the Lord?
We do well to take the advice that Pope Benedict gave few weeks ago to a group of priests. He said, “"It seems to me that the time of Lent should be a time of fasting from words and images, because we need a little silence, a little space, without being constantly bombarded with images.We need to create spaces of silence [...] to open our hearts to the true image, to the true word."
(Given at Notre Dame Seminary)
In the midst of our distracted state, our Lord says to us through Jeremiah, “Listen to my voice.” Pay attention to Me, He says. But this call from the Lord went unheeded. We read, “But they obeyed not...They walked in the hardness of their evil hearts and turned their backs, not their faces, to me.” Our Lord’s call to us today can be summed up by our psalm, “If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” If attention is our most precious treasure in this environment where information gluttony is the norm, shouldn’t we make an effort during this Lent to give the best portion of our attention to the Lord?
We do well to take the advice that Pope Benedict gave few weeks ago to a group of priests. He said, “"It seems to me that the time of Lent should be a time of fasting from words and images, because we need a little silence, a little space, without being constantly bombarded with images.We need to create spaces of silence [...] to open our hearts to the true image, to the true word."
(Given at Notre Dame Seminary)
