{"id":3627,"date":"2016-02-19T15:29:57","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T20:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/?p=3627"},"modified":"2016-02-23T07:56:15","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T12:56:15","slug":"listening-to-jesus-in-an-age-of-distraction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/spiritual-reflections\/listening-to-jesus-in-an-age-of-distraction","title":{"rendered":"Listening to Jesus in an age of distraction"},"content":{"rendered":"

A reflection by Fr. David Warren, SFM, on the Second Sunday of Lent: Genesis 15.5-12, 17-18;\u00a0Philippians 3.17-4: 1;\u00a0Luke 9.28-36<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cRemember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.\u201d With these words in our ears and with ashes on our foreheads, we began the season of Lent. These words are not a threat; they are an invitation to come home to ourselves\u2014to our true selves.<\/p>\n

The gospel last weekend was about our false self. The story of the temptations of Jesus is the story of the self that is deluded by the desire to be self-sufficient, by the desire to impress other people, and by the desire to dominate other people. The gospel this weekend is about our true self.<\/p>\n

\u201cJesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white\u201d (Luke 9:28-29).<\/em><\/p>\n

The disciples saw the true self of Jesus. They saw his inner glory.<\/p>\n

The glory of God dwells in Jesus. But it doesn\u2019t just dwell in Jesus. It dwells in all of us. The glory of God is our true self and it\u2019s trying to come out. \u201cThe glory of God is the human person fully alive,\u201d wrote St. Irenaeus. We are all looking for the experience of being fully alive. Underneath everything we do is the desire to feel fully alive.<\/p>\n

But what does it mean to be fully alive? The world offers a variety of answers to that question. Some of these answers lead us right back to the temptations of Jesus in last Sunday\u2019s gospel. In today\u2019s gospel, God tells us to listen to Jesus who will show us the way to be fully alive.<\/p>\n

\n

“God tells us to listen to Jesus who will show us the way to be fully alive.”<\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\"hand-to-ear-listening\"<\/a>It\u2019s never been easy to listen to Jesus. And it\u2019s harder today than ever before. It\u2019s not that the words of Jesus are more challenging today. It\u2019s that we have less attention to give to Jesus than we had in the past. We have less attention to\u00a0give to Jesus because our attention is somewhere else. We are bombarded with more and more demands for our attention. Every advertisement is a demand for our attention\u2014and that means every billboard and every sign and every pop-up on the Internet. There are advertisements on the bus \u2013 inside the bus, on the outside of the bus, and sometimes even covering the entire bus. There are even advertisements on the risers of the stairs in the subway station. Every radio and television commercial is a demand for our attention. Every email, every call on our cellphone or smartphone or tablet, is a demand for our attention. There was a time when we left the phone and the computer at home but now we carry them with us wherever we go.<\/p>\n

The effect of all of these demands on our attention is that we are living in a state of mind that the American writer Linda Stone has called \u201ccontinuous partial attention.\u201d We give everything our partial attention; we give nothing our full atten
\ntion.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to Him!\u201d (Luke 9:35).<\/em><\/p>\n

How are we to listen to Jesus in an age of mass distraction? The only way to listen to Jesus in an age of mass distraction is to fast. I don\u2019t mean fast from food. I mean fast from the unnecessary demands on our attention. That includes fasting from our electronic devices.<\/p>\n

Fasting, whether from food, from electronics, or from something else, teaches us wisdom. We learn the difference between what we think <\/em>we need and what we actually need.<\/p>\n

Lent is not about giving up the things we want; Lent is about giving up the things we don\u2019t <\/em>want\u2014things like the constant demands for our attention and things like \u201ccontinuous partial attention.\u201d Lent is about giving up the things we don\u2019t want in exchange for the things we want, such as giving more attention to Jesus.<\/p>\n

\u201cRemember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.\u201d These words are not a threat; they are an invitation to come home to ourselves. They are an invitation to come home to Jesus.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A reflection by Fr. David Warren, SFM, on the Second Sunday of Lent: Genesis 15.5-12, 17-18;\u00a0Philippians 3.17-4: 1;\u00a0Luke 9.28-36 \u201cRemember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.\u201d With these words in our ears and with ashes on our foreheads, we began the season of Lent. These words are not a threat; they […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":3667,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3627"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3671,"href":"https:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3627\/revisions\/3671"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scarboromissions.ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}