As the annual 40-day observation of Lent began, the Bishop of Huși has advised the faithful to undertake a digital fast during this season by refraining from using mobile devices and avoiding the internet.
After officiating the Order of Vespers on the Sunday of Forgiveness at the diocesan cathedral in Husi on the final day of pre-Lent, His Grace Bishop Ignatie cautioned against digital addiction. He advised that the telephone be used just for communication.
“We are dependent on technology. Someone said, so suggestively, that all these devices are tools that use us as other tools (we become the tools of our own tools). We become their tools through excessive dependence on technology,” the Bishop of Huși said.
“The harmful effects of technology on the human mind, through overuse, are pointed out, over and over, by those with this expertise. And one of these effects is the dissipation of the mind. Man no longer lives unitedly in his mind and heart, but is disintegrated, because he no longer can concentrate on a certain thing. Through the excessive use of technology, our attention is fragmented, and we become mentally tired.”
“The third type of fasting (besides abstaining from food or for spiritual reasons) is the media fast (from technology). In the first phase, during the first week of Lent, let us try using the phone only to communicate, in the most radical way possible, not using any social networks.”
“It would be extraordinary if we managed to combine all three types of fasting – alimentary, spiritual – renouncing addiction to passions, and the media fast (renouncing technology). I tell you these things as one who does not theorize but uses technology and is addicted to it.”
“I realized this during the periods when I propose not to use social networks, and I am quite strict. So you can’t imagine how something sits on the tip of my fingers and urges me to keep opening the phone, even if I take precautions – I turn off all notifications,” Bishop Ignatie said on February 26.
Photography courtesy of the Diocese of Huşi
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