God's Love Exposes. Christ Heals. How to Use Technology Wisely.

In a fallen world, the first action of God’s love is to expose our sin. This exposure lets us find healing which becomes the path that orientates us back to God. This revelation that lays out the path that we go on with God’s love guiding us is fulfilled perfectly on our Lord’s Cross. This means for us today that every time we gaze upon a Crucifix, which should be often, what we first should contemplate is Christ’s torments and pain as He hangs there nailed to His cross. This is for our good. He reveals to us the wretchedness and evilness of our sins. He shows us the darkness, and with His blood, spills out the truth that sin is death to anyone who concedes to it. We look at Him on His cross and we are reminded how our sin suspends the One who loves us so much, but He chose to die in this way for us so that we can be saved from our sins, and to be with Him in paradise (Luke 23:43).

When we truly contemplate how ugly we are in our life of sin, but then accept it, this is when we can begin to heal from sin. Looking past the suffering of Christ on his cross and allowing Him to be our Good Physician, we begin real transformative healing by turning our life into a passover from death to life; from creatures to sons and daughters of God; from sinners to saints; from an earthly paradise to God's eternal kingdom. God the Father did not put Christ on the cross so we can live out a life of shame, but rather, He is revealing to us that we can be reconciled with Him, and we can live a life that is full of vitality, brotherhood, holiness, and sure hope. With Christ, and Christ alone, we can begin to heal as we progress toward Him. By progress, we mean the “diminution of the traces of original sin¹”, that is, true progress as Archbishop Fulton Sheen (soon to be Blessed) taught us in his book Old Errors and New Labels is advancing toward our perfection—the supernatural.

In the 21st Century, love’s first action to unmask sin which divides, separates and alienates us from God, very much applies to our use of technology that surrounds our life. Technology does have both a direct and indirect effect on our relationship with God such as if a person allows a phone application to distract them during Mass; a parent decides to allow their children to chat on their phones during meals or right when we wake up in the morning we go straight to our phone to see social media before praying. These examples, and many more, are why technology requires the same honest examination and exposure.

Some would argue technology is morally neutral—but the Church's teaching shows otherwise. We learn from Pope Leo’s first Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, that technology can be a tool for good or it can foster division, exclusion, and enslavement to disordered desires. Besides our current Pope, the Saints from the past understand our relationship with the material world which includes for us today technology. St. Thomas Aquinas for example, taught that God’s love always inclines us toward the true good. St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila discussed how God’s love purifies us by exposing what is contrary to the divine union. Using these lessons and many more from holy men and women, we can learn how to integrate technology to serve the authentic good in our life (God’s love), and help us in our journey to sainthood by promoting an unification to God.

With love as the most genuine and merciful way of revealing to us that we are sinners, how do we truly begin to heal? Christ gave us Seven remedies–the Sacraments. Living a sacramental life, that is to say, seeking God’s grace in the visible signs that were gifted to us from our God is what is going to heal us. True healing comes from living out our Faith, that is, participating in it, and allowing God into our hearts. This means paying attention and participating in Mass; paying attention to the ones we love and giving them our time; and to begin our day and end our day in prayer.

If we look at technologies like AI, regardless of how advanced it is, it does not offer real healing–a solution to our most profound problem. As much as it may seem that Ai knows so much, technologies like Ai are not able to know the depths of our nature. Love which reveals to us who we truly are does not have its source in an algorithm. It is found only in the One who knows our hearts (Luke 16:15), and wants us to share a true and holy union with Him.

So where do we go from here? What we can take from this article is that God's love does not allow us to hide from the truth; His divine love desires our perfection; and the most authentic love we can experience now is our life living in God’s grace. Applying these principles to technology means we need to discern honestly the ways in which technology may ensnare us into a life of sin or diminish our relationship with God and of course our neighbor–family, friends etc. Technology is always only going to be a tool for us, never our source in finding God–that is why we have the Sacraments. We read from the Letter to the Ephesians 5:11-14:

"Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret; but when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, 'Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.'"

At Acutis, we pray that all of us come to live in the light, face our sins and allow God’s grace to heal us so we can once again look at His Face.

God bless

Joseph Daniels

Acutis AI Writer

IG: @Catholically_Conscious

Footnotes

1. Archbishop Fulton Sheen (2007), Old Errors and New Labels, The Society of St. Paul, pg. 120 ↩