Get Ready for Different

Sherry Hayes-Peirce considers the growing range of tech tools that help us build and share our faith.

I think we are all perceiving new things are happening in our world and in the Church that are creating anxiety. My faith helps to keep me grounded. Many of the tools I use to connect with traditional Catholic prayer practices live on my phone. As a lector, I use an app to listen to the readings before Mass so that I proclaim and pronounce the Scriptures confidently and correctly. (The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops offers audio for each day's Mass readings in podcast form.)

Hallow is my favorite Catholic app! It provides me with a number of prayerful practices such as the Rosary, chaplets, Fr. Mike Schmitz's Bible in a Year podcast, devotions, saints of the day, and Examen; there are even meditations for stress and anxiety and much more that help me focus on faith throughout the day.

A number of tech tools help Catholics grow the faith of the next generation or serve seniors who are homebound. Live streaming allows the homebound to connect virtually with their own parish community and engages younger members of their families to help them become tech-savvy. Streaming has also allowed families who are not geographically close to grieve together as well as to celebrate the union of couples being married, First Holy Communion, Confirmation, and graduation in real time.

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One of my favorite examples of tech serving as a conduit for evangelization is “The Chosen” app. It is essentially a link to a marvelous drama series that has drawn 410,473,132 views to date and allows people to see the stories of the Bible dramatized in a beautifully engaging way. The app crowdsources funding to pay for the production costs of the series. I was recently watching Season 1, Episode 7, about Jesus inviting Matthew the tax collector to join Him as an apostle. The other disciples were not happy with His choice, and in the series Jesus’ response was, “Get ready for different.”

See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? (Isaiah 43:19)

At dusk, dawn, and noon I will grieve and complain, and my prayer will be heard. (Psalm 55:18)

The busyness of our lives forces us to parcel our days into pockets of time. During the seasons of Lent and Advent as well as in Ordinary Time, I set notifications to remind me to head to Adoration or do a meditation from Hallow. I also like to listen to spiritual books using Audible, which even tells me how many hours it will take to read my selection.

Let us pray for the intercession of St. Isidore of Seville, the patron saint for technology, and also of Blessed Carlo Acutis, who built a website to catalog Eucharistic miracles and is the inspiration for young programmers. May our prayers help us to evangelize our faith online, seek tech tools to grow our faith, and inspire the next generation to create more Catholic tools designed to help others.

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We are called to use technology in a way that glorifies the gift it can be. #catholicmom

This prayer calls us to use technology in a way that glorifies the gift it can be versus the dark hole of emptiness that it can be for some:

Prayer for Discernment in Use of Technology

Heavenly Father, You have given us the skills and ability to create technology. We have used it often to spread the Good News of salvation and God’s plan for those who believe. Please help us continue to evangelize in this way, using the gifts you have given us for good, not for evil. Some have fallen prey to the temptations that are available on technology and have squandered the precious gift of time on mindless entertainment and valueless escapism. We can easily become slaves to technology, forgetting the incredible gift of being present to you and to one another. Through technology, we have an easily accessible way to communicate with one another. Let us continue to witness, not only with our words, but the work we do in your name. May we always embrace our responsibility in this life - to serve you and those we come into contact with each day - as we seek a balance in our use of technology. May we use technology and our time wisely as a means to communicate your message of love to the world. Amen.

(Prayer courtesy of the National Council of Catholic Women)

Technology is here to stay, so it is time for us to embrace different.

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