The Prayer of the Internet User
A wonderful spiritual help for “Surfers”
Now that the monitor is switched on
and the keyboard is awaiting the touch of my fingers,
I come to you, Lord,
in the sure knowledge that I am going to meet you also
on the anonymous pathways of the Internet that cross the world,
pathways that are created by the human desire to communicate with others,
and to abolish distances.
You who desired to become incarnate in the human mystery,
and, with us, to suffer the tiredness and uncertainty of earthly travel,
be with us today on our journey, because here too
there are difficult and wearisome highways
just like the dusty tracks you trod in Galilee.
Be with us, Lord, because here too
there are mysterious roads like the one to Emmaus,
which lead us noiselessly to discover the other
and even to transform ourselves.
Teach us to benefit from this medium and to use it in moderation
and help us to avoid the dangers of our day’s work:
may all this information not dazzle us,
may empty virtual experiences not deceive us,
may we know how to distance ourselves
from every form of slavery,
from the blindness of a single idea,
from the faceless paths of dehumanisation.
Grant us, Lord, a clear understanding
of the worrying signs of these times
that are written at every crossroads,
and keep our hearts attentive to the prophetic voices
which your Spirit – which blows where it wills –
raises up and inspires –
some familiar like well-known beacons on the coast,
others unexpected like stars of your providence
twinkling in the darkness of the night.
And finally,
when the monitor is switched off again
and we have the false impression of having learned something,
remind us that knowledge and wisdom
are something more that this fragmentary information
which flickers momentarily before our eyes,
and that the world will always be wider
than our understanding of it
because it reaches to the depths of every human being
and then disappears into the immense horizon of your fatherly heart.
Amen.
Prayer originally published in Red Ignaciana of Cádiz (Spain)
Source: ALETEIA