In a social media era, make time for God

Feb 23, 2024

By Elise Ann Allen
Pope Francis opened the Lenten season with a procession and Mass on Ash Wednesday, telling Catholics to carve out a silent space for God amid the buzz of the digital era in which little remains private.

In his homily, the Pope focused on the emphasis the day’s Scripture readings places on praying, fasting and giving alms “in secret,” saying Jesus’s invitation to the disciples to “go to your room” to do these things instead of seeking public recognition for them is at the heart of the Lenten season.

Going to one’s room, in this sense, he said, “means journeying from without to within, so that our whole life, including our relationship with God, is not reduced to mere outward show, a frame without a picture, a draping of the soul, but is born from within and reflects the movements of our heart.”

“Without realising it, we find ourselves no longer having an ‘inner chamber’ in which we can stop and care for ourselves, immersed as we are in a world in which everything, including our emotions and deepest feelings, has to become ‘social’,” he said.

In the social media era, “Even the most tragic and painful experiences risk not having a quiet place where they can be kept. Everything has to be exposed, shown off, fed to the gossip-mill of the moment,” he said.

However, Francis said, God’s invitation for Lent is to “Enter into the secret, return to the centre of yourself.”

“Precisely there, where so many fears, feelings of guilt and sin are lurking, precisely there the Lord has descended in order to heal and cleanse you,” he said.

Speaking to the clergy and faithful present at the Basilica of Santa Sabina, the Pope said Lent is a time of both purification and “self-spoliation” which helps people to remove “all the cosmetics that we use in order to appear presentable, better than how we really are.”

“To return to the heart means to go back to our true selves and to present them just as they are, naked and defenceless, in the sight of God. It means looking within ourselves and acknowledging our real identity, removing the masks we so often wear, slowing the frantic pace of our lives and embracing the truth of who we are,” he said.

The Pope said that the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting and almsgiving are not merely external actions, but are “paths that lead to the heart, to the core of the Christian life,” and which allow God’s love to be spread in various situations of daily life, “so that in them hope, trust and joy may be reborn.”

Quoting St Anselm of Canterbury, an 11th-century Benedictine monk and doctor of the Church, the Holy Father urged Christians to “escape from your everyday business” and to “hide for a moment from your restless thoughts” during Lent, taking a break from their careers and daily tasks and concerns.

“Shut out everything but God and whatever helps you to seek Him; and when you have shut the door, look for Him,” and speak openly, he said. The invitation to “go to your room,” he said, is necessary for a society in which people often live at a superficial level, concerned with being noticed and admired, while losing touch with their inner selves.

“Let us enter into our inner chamber: there the Lord dwells, there our frailty is accepted and we are loved unconditionally,” he said, and urged Catholics to spend time in silent adoration of God.

God in Lent sends a message of forgiveness, tenderness and care, the Pope said, telling believers, “Do not judge yourself. Do not condemn yourself. Do not reject yourself,” but to let God’s love touch “the deepest, most hidden corners of your heart and reveal to you your own beauty.”

Pope Francis closed his homily telling the faithful, “Let us not be afraid to strip ourselves of worldly trappings and return to the heart, to what is essential,” and to “acknowledge what we are: dust loved by God. And thanks to Him, we will be reborn from the ashes of sin to new life in Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit” --Crux Now