We are always on, but do we pay attention?

We are always on, but do we pay attention?

Luke 24:13-35. The disciples did not recognize Jesus right away

In this hyperconnected world, terabytes of information appear before us. We are supposedly “always on” — reachable via various channels. But are we really able to pay attention to things that really matter?

The disciples did not recognize that Jesus is with them, and in this sense, there are plenty of times we do not recognize that God and the Holy Spirit are with us. I like the phrase “pay attention”, because it highlights the limits of our awareness; we have to pay a price, to give up something, to manifest attention onto something.

The tragedy of our times is we can somewhat, hmm, badly put, “approximate” a bastardized version omnipresence — maybe we can call this “multi-attendance”. Imagine that we can be into multiple Zoom meetings at once. But are we really present? Are we really paying attention?

Or have we allowed technology to take our attention for free?

[DAILY GOSPEL INSIGHTS AND REFLECTION FOR MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION 110: APRIL 20, 2022]