By Father John Bayer
Special to The Texas Catholic
Technology is everywhere. There seems to be a gadget or app for everything. Computers for calculating; engines for ease; chemicals for control — is there any aspect of our lives untouched by instruments and processes? Even our judgment seems to many people (wrongly) to be a merely step-by-step or algorithmic process that one day, if not already, will be replaced by the calculations of artificial intelligence.
Is having so much technology good? Our desire for it seems good when it reflects a desire to increase our ability to fulfill the truth in love. But our desire for it seems evil when it reflects a faithless anxiety about our limitations as human beings, a refusal to trust in the goodness of our Creator, or a desire to ignore Him and recreate the world in our own image.
The question becomes more acute when we realize technology has even entered our spiritual lives. Consider Hallow, for example, the remarkable app that has been downloaded over 10 million times and used for prayer. I’ve used it myself, mostly for its music and structured meditations. Is it a good thing to bring technology into prayer?
To evaluate technology, it is important to recognize its inevitability and ambiguity. We could no sooner escape it than our clothing and cooked meals (both are forms of technology), and therefore we must learn to use it selectively and well. After all, even a rosary is a form of technology, and therefore something that is, in itself, ambiguous. That is, a physical rosary could be used merely mechanically, and thus in a spiritually numbing way; or it could be used to lead us into the physical and psychological conditions within which we can truly pray. Similarly, our breathing, posture, exercise, fasting, reading, meditation — all these offer techniques that could either make us more thoughtless and compulsive, or set the stage for real prayer.
The key is to recognize real prayer. What is it? Jesus tells us in His dialogue with the Samaritan woman. After she recognizes He can reveal the will of God, she asks Him how God wants to be worshipped. She is confused by the conflict between the Samaritans, who say He is to be worshiped on Mount Gerizim, and the Jews, who say He is to be worshiped on Mount Zion (Jn 4:19-20). This concern for physical process gives Jesus an opportunity to shift her paradigm for prayer:
“Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. … [T]he hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for such the Father seeks to worship Him.” (John 4:21-24 [RSV])
The Father wants to be worshiped in spirit and truth. For starters, I think this means God does not want ritualism or mindlessness. He wants a living intention, a real awareness, a personal act. Our prayer must be a true self-expression. It must therefore be our own act, for only then, when it comes from us, can it ever truly express us.
As an analogy, imagine someone who always gives money and never gives himself to his family and friends. Or someone who converses only with safe, unrevealing opinions and clichés, someone who does not cultivate, or at least does not try to communicate, his own heart. These are ways to escape the work of personal engagement, ways to just ‘go through the motions’ out of fear or laziness. If we use impersonal objects or words to replace our personal engagement, then we have effectively replaced ourselves and therefore failed to relate ourselves to others. If we have done this in our relationship to God, then we have failed to pray.
If technology can serve prayer, it must foster the conditions in which our spirit can engage — it must enhance, and certainly not replace, our power to know and love. For example, we know what it is like to be distracted. A moment of reflection, while it is not yet prayer, could help us gather our attention such that we might be freer to focus upon God, to know in the present moment the intense personal reality at the heart of all being. Similarly, intentional fasting, though not in itself an act of prayer, could nonetheless set the conditions for prayer by making us more mindful of our compulsive tendencies. With our awareness and freedom strengthened, we are in a greater position to know the truth and grow in love.
Whatever technologies we consider employing, let us always measure them by their ability to strengthen our spirits — by their ability to help us act more intentionally and freely, to help us embrace the truth and act with love.
Father John Bayer, O. Cist., is a monk at the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Dallas in Irving.
