Make a Digital Fast for Souls

Communicating via keyboard has eroded our ability to have face-to-face conversations. Social media has increased our tendency toward envy while lessening our capacity for compassion. Free online pornography has made fueling the fan of lust much easier. Having a prayer app on your device can help orient technology use away from vice and toward virtue.

Today, our families are forced to begin having challenging conversations long before we feel emotionally ready for them. I am not yet a grandmother, but I imagine that some day soon, I will be a part of their faith formation. As such, I’ve already begun to think and pray about how I might handle the topics that challenge today's parents, including how to protect them from digital addiction. Whether accidentally or with intent, the day may well come when I am faced with helping my grandchild deal with the aftermath of exposure to pornography.

The best way to prepare for marriage is to constantly love without counting the cost, give to those who cannot give back, surround yourself with friends who do the same, and remember that anyone who could be a future spouse should build you up, protect you and never tear you down.

We are called to see more and to be more! Our very life is a movement in itself towards something (and someone) beautiful. Life remains a gift and now, in this very moment, as you read these words, there is a chance to make a journey, an exodus, a saving step out of the pain and existential angst that COVID-19 and your struggling to cope with it has caused.