Technology, the Information Age and Learning to Love From the Sacred Heart

God has wired into our very beings that place in our hearts made for the other to belong

As human beings we find the despair of loneliness without the presence of others in our lives.  While technology certainly provides us with some fascinating, exciting opportunities to communicate with other people both in our work and in our social lives, it cannot take the place of the personal encounter. 

P>RICHMOND, VA. (Catholic Online) - Never before in history have human beings had the ability to communicate information so efficiently as in our modern Information Age.  Technological developments abound and multiply exponentially at such high speed that people all too often fail to take a step back and reflect on what - or who -- precisely is being communicated.  Sometimes our communication is effective, providing crucial information at breakneck speed across our planet to those individuals who need it for their own valuable contributions to the common good of humanity.

Many of us though, at least on occasion, fail to reflect on what technology personally costs us when we communicate increasingly in the techniques of the Information Age.  The workplace demands immediate results, people feel entitled to immediate news, and even our relationships are at risk of demanding such immediacy . through being constantly available by cell phone, computers, and now even iPads and Nooks!  However, no amount or level of sophistication in technology can substitute for what we cherish and long for the most as human beings:  Relationship. 

In an ever increasingly technological world, we run the risk of becoming humans in isolation, acting as if relationships may be defined solely by e-mail connection or by who has "friended us" (or not) on Facebook or similar other "social networks".  These technologies do not provide us ultimately with true value in helping us grow as lovingly integrated human beings without personal encounter, without the authentic gift of presence one with the other.

As human beings, we hope longingly to belong to God and to others; we find the despair of loneliness without the presence of others in our lives.  While technology certainly provides us with some fascinating, exciting opportunities to communicate with other people both in our work and in our social lives, it cannot take the place of the personal encounter with another human being no matter how hard we try.  God has wired into our very beings that place in our hearts made for the other to belong . for the Other as God to find His home in us. 

As we hear at the very beginning of the Book of Genesis (1.26-27):  Then God said: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground."  God created man in His image; in the divine image He created him; male and female He created them. 

Servant of God Pope John Paul II, whom the world anticipates with great excitement to become Blessed on the Feast of Divine Mercy (May 1), himself called in his great Wednesday Catecheses (best known as his Theology of the Body) for us to reflect on these most important fundamental phrases of Sacred Scripture and to ground our lives fundamentally in them.  In these words from our own beginning as human beings, we discover the crucial foundation for understanding who we are as humans individually as well as in relationship with God and each other. 

We are made by God in His own image and likeness!  If we only took real time to ponder the vast weight of these simple words, our attitudes would beg for increasing corrective action as we progress through the rest of this Lenten season in preparation for Easter, in how we treat God, others, and even ourselves.  Do we truly look at ourselves as having been made in the image and likeness of God? 

Do we look at other people in such a manner, with due reverence that each person is created by God to be a genuine reflection of His own image and likeness?  Image indicates to us that we "look like God", our faces reflecting God's own face to the world around us . both to other humans as well as to the other creatures of the earth, a creation over which we must be proper masters or stewards.  Likeness reveals to us what it means to act like God, which implies that in order to be most like God, we must act most like God, and God is Love ("Deus caritas est", cf. 1 John 4.16). 

We see also in this critically important passage that man is created as male and female.  In other words, man (in the sense of "human being") does not truly exist fully according to God's original intention for mankind as merely an individual . He is called immediately to communion with another in order to discover his own meaning in its fullness. 

Certainly we witness in Genesis 1 that Adam experiences himself as more complete when he discovers Eve by his side, and thus we understand this original human relationship as a communion of persons, which John Paul II called communio personarum.  We are incomplete as human beings when we don't have this encounter with another human being . Something vital for us simply would be missing!

A key part of our being in the image and likeness of God - in order even for it to be possible for us to live in the image and likeness of God - involves growing in our understanding that God is Being in Perfect Relation.  God is not "merely an individual" . He is all the more God because He is the quintessential, Perfect Communion of Persons (i.e., Communio Personarum), being God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit always together as Three in One. 

We even hear our Lord imply such communion in the Gospel passage from Saint John (5.30):  I cannot do anything on my own.  God's every action is an action of perfect love in communion brought forth into our world by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Who always work together in perfect harmony as the Holy Trinity.  We see this dynamic at play from the very beginning of Sacred Scripture, when God says "let us make man in our image, after our likeness" (Gen 1.26).

In order for us to be most authentically reflective of God, we must strive to be the face of His love to a world so thirsting for real love.  As Christians, we are able to discover how to carry out such a monumental calling, our human vocation to love, only by first rooting ourselves in a loving relationship with God, entering into God's perfect Communion of Persons through Jesus Christ Who is the image and likeness of the Godhead in human form.  

Through active, faith-filled belief in Jesus Christ, the Christian allows God to incorporate him or her by the power of the Holy Spirit into an ever deeper understanding of God's way of Love as He Is.  This process that the Church calls divinization, or becoming like God, renders us more authentically conformed to God's original design and intent for us, leading us to experience life in ever greater harmony, peace, and loving joy the more we allow God to transfigure us into His perfect Image and Likeness.

However, we cannot stop only at the vertical dimension of relation, that being between us and God.  We know that God has commanded us to love our neighbor as ourself as well in His Great Commandment (Matthew 22. 38-40): "You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it:   You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments." 

Jesus educates us in what it means truly to love, that we cannot love God authentically or find our ultimate completion in Him unless we also likewise seek perfect communion with our neighbor, and even towards ourselves through loving respect toward our own person as God loves us.  Our relationship in communion with God depends on our relationship in communion with others, even including the integrity demonstrated in the communion of our own person in him or herself.  Fulfilling all of the commandments and precepts of the Lord as expressed in Sacred Scripture indeed depends on this loving communion at all three levels:  God, others, and self.  The Christian can find no other way around this threefold way of loving and still live authentically in God's Love!

So what does it mean to love authentically?  Love is laying oneself down as a perfect, or complete, gift for God and neighbor, as Jesus tells us: "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends.  You are my friends if you do what I command you" (John 15.13-14).  Love is perfect self-gift, the self-oblation that follows Jesus' complete gift of Himself to you, to me, and to all of mankind throughout the ages on the Cross for our salvation.  

We discover in Jesus' words here that we become friends of God as we enter into loving encounter with Him, through a loving encounter with one another that fulfills the commandment of God's love.  Ephesians 5.1-2 expresses this truth mos succinctly:  "Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and handed Himself over for us as a sacrificial offering to God."

It is only through a loving, personal encounter with God and other people that we discover most fully the genuine meaning of our lives.  After all, we cannot marry or bear children authentically as human beings through the virtual world of a computer!  We would experience no real comfort in having a computer at our bedside talking to us or listening to our last words as we pass away from this life.  God calls us to dare to enter into the mystery of relationship with Him and other people, in a love that always brings about the most exciting adventures and provides God the most ample space upon which to weave His Love into the fabric of our lives and into the deepest substance of our very being.

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Fr. Gregory Gresko is the Prior of Mary Mother of the Church Abbey in Richmond, Virginia. He earned his S.T.B. from the Pontificial Athenaeum of Sant'Anselmo in Rome and his S.T.L. magna cum laude in Moral Theology (Marriage and Family Studies) in 2008 from the Pontifical Lateran University, John Paul II Institute (Vatican City).  His S.T.L. dissertation was entitled, "Educating to Love: Foundational Pedagogy in Light of Karol Wojtyla's Love and Responsibility". Fr. Gregory is working on his doctoral dissertation for the same Vatican institute, on "The Consecration of the Family to the Heart of Jesus in Light of the Pastoral Ministry of Pčre Mateo Crawley-Boevey"

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