Bishop Ignatie spoke on Sunday evening, at the Diocesan Cathedral in Huși, about the need to practice giving up addictive habits, such as addiction to digital media: “The purpose of fasting is not exclusively to give up, but to change some habits that turn us into slaves.”
“Digital media fasting will help us realize how addicted we are, how ‘drugged’ we are using technology. Technology is a blessing, but it matters a lot how we use it,” he explained.
The Bishop of Huși proposed giving up digital applications and online information consumption in the first week of Great Lent.
“Let’s not use digital media at all, turn off social networks, block them and use only the phone for communication. That way, we will discover the intensity with which we are attached to them,” His Grace said March 14.
The hierarch quoted Marshall McLuhan: “He says that he who is passionately attached to technology, is “drugged” by it and has his eyes glued to the screen, he resembles Narcissus – the one who looked into the water and, seeing his own face, he froze.”
“So are we, when we have phones or any kind of gadget in our hands. We are like Narcissus,” the bishop continued.
“Technology changes our thinking,” Bishop Ignatie cautioned. “If, for example, we used to take a book in our hand and sit with it for a few hours, now we think ‘WhatsApp-like’. We can no longer concentrate and let ourselves be absorbed.”
On Sunday, the Bishop of Husi officiated the Vespers of Forgiveness, at the end of which the Canon of the Resurrection is sung, and the embrace and forgiveness of the faithful in the church take place. The tradition is recorded by Saint Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, who also wrote the life of Saint Mary of Egypt.
“Unfortunately, we cannot forgive – as Saint Maximus the Confessor says – without passion. We fail to forgive without any kind of evil in our souls, without any reproach to the one who comes to ask our forgiveness,” His Grace Bishop Ignatie noted.
“Giving forgiveness to those around us means we have no reason to do so,” he added. “Love is a gift; we give it to those around us; it is not conditioned by anything.”
Photography courtesy of Huși Diocese
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