Facebook Free, A 40 Day Lenten Discipline

Here it is again. Lent's first day, Ash Wednesday. As always, there is lots to do, spiritually speaking. Not that there isn't a lot to do, spiritually speaking, any other time of the year. But this span of 40 days is an opportunity to make a particular effort to purge the distractions of the daily world, and to consider with a laser focus the idea of our God who broke into time and space in order to re-establish a long broken relationship with His wayward creation by becoming one of us and experiencing the consequences of our chosen disobedience.

One distraction, of which I have been a slavish part since 2008, is Facebook. I cannot tell you how much of otherwise more profitably used time it has consumed, but I know when I reach for my phone, I inevitably check it, and consume both its edifying, and less edifying, memes, articles and opinions. In the last several years, it has been far less enjoyable, for this medium as so much other media, has become a place of verbal and emotional combat because of the unbridgeable political, societal, theological, philosophical disputes permeating the American milieu. You might say, "Anxiety, thy name is Facebook" these days. Or any of the various places where opinion, informed or uninformed is posited.

Facebook has become, I realize, something of a compulsion.

In order to give myself over to the soul cleansing work of Lent, it occurred to me that one (by no means the only) key ingredient in the work would be to make the effort not to check my Facebook page for the duration of the season, and see where that takes me.

There is a certain bemusement at this effort. It's certainly not a problem that the disciples of 2000 years ago could possibly have imagined. The saints are probably laughing at me from heaven. But if it relieves some of the sadness about and the anxiety over the anger on its pages, and makes me more patient, and kind, and helps to prepare me for Easter, and the season of Resurrection, that is a good thing I am thinking. Giving up Facebook isn't much of a cross to bear.

As I write, the first day of Lent 2020 has nearly ended. I have not looked at Facebook all day.

I have attended Mass as I do daily. I have received my ashes that remind me of my mortality and sinfulness. I have read some meditative passages. I have said the Rosary. It is a good beginning.

While from my blog page I shall post this entry to Facebook, I promise, I won't be looking to see if my FB friends have read it. At least, not until after Easter! Peace be with you all.