Social-Media Depression

Having participated last week for the first time in a "live" video conference social media platform, zoom, I feel the need to articulate the emotional after-effect.

It was a fine "gathering" of five of my sisters with their husbands and (twenty-five) children, from their homes, and I, the priest, from my rectory. We said the Rosary, each family taking a turn, with the final Litany of Loreto, which I read in Latin and gave the blessing at the end. Then we had some informal conversation for the rest of the hour. It was fun and enjoyed by all. It was good while it lasted. What surprised me is how I felt afterwards.

I have been saying the Rosary and praying with others in the family and at parishes and other Catholic environments for over 35 years, every day, but always in person, never looking at pixels on a screen imaging the people to me. The prayer experience with others, in person, present in the same room together, always lifted me up and brought me to a better interior place. It lifted up my heart and placed it on a more elevated plane. It built me up and I was consistently left a better person and could feel that. This time it was different.

The dark part of my soul, whatever that is, after that encounter, felt darker. I have come out of that "encounter" and feel, as one day passed, and another, lower, not better but worse. I know that the spiritual life is not primarily about enthusiasm and sentimentality, but I also know that there is an ontological difference even between digital reality and analogue. Analogue is continuous whereas digital is always disjointed, it never touches. I come out feeling that I never really saw them and they never really saw me, and that is, indeed, the fact. Virtual is not real. My phone conversations, by comparison, I find much more fruitful and satisfying long-term, than the experience of the video chat. There must be something in the way the mind works that it does not like the deception of false images, idols, if you will. It cannot sink its cognitive teeth into the screen the way is can the living flesh and blood person that is with you in the same room. I'm left to conclude that it may be better to have no image at all rather than such a false image. Static pictures are OK. They are more honest because they do not present the dead image as if it were alive. Pictures do not offer the lie of the video image that over-stimulates the mind and offers it what it cannot deliver. It pretends to be what it is not.

This is helping me to understand the tragic increase in depression and despair in our day, especially among the youth and those who otherwise spend many hours on social media looking at and participating in pseudo-experience.

"All things are hard: man cannot explain them by word. The eye is not filled with seeing, neither is the ear filled with hearing." Ecclesiastes 1:8

That is why Christ's resurrection is essential, because the encounter, in the flesh, is solid ground for the heart and for true humanity. "See my hands and feet, that it is I myself; handle, and see: for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as you see me to have." Luke 24:39 You have to be there, He with you, you with Him, in order to touch Him, in order to be touched by Him. That is why watching television Mass is not really attending Mass. It is at least the difference between watching a dinner on TV and actually eating the dinner yourself, with the others, at the table. They are worlds apart. One fills you, while the other leaves you hungrier than before. It is helpful to pray the Mass even when you are physically deprived of it, but that prayer of the Mass is not enhanced because you watched it virtually, it may also be diminished in its lasting effect. The audio, without video, may be more honest and more helpful.

"...Jesus said to them: Amen, amen I say unto you: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you shall not have life in you. He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath everlasting life: and I will raise him up in the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed: and my blood is drink indeed." John 6:54-56

He has to be there with you, and you have to be there with Him. No substitute will do, according to Christ. And phony substitutes may make matters even worse, pretending to give what they do not have. A screen will never give you a man in the flesh, and even less, God.

Solution, continue to make every reasonable effort to receive the sacraments right now from your priest, and let the bishop know how essential it is for you to enjoy and eat the real presence of Christ. Also, try to pray with someone else, in person, at least once a day, in your own home. Love those in your own household, your neighbors, and those with whom you come in contact today. They are Christ, in the flesh, for you. Feed them, give them to drink, clothe them, shelter them, welcome them, visit them, serve them, and you do it to Christ. You have to do it physically! in the flesh! You have to actually go out and do it. You cannot do it simply virtually. You have to do it really. "Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me... [and] as long as you did it not to one of these least, neither did you do it to me." Matthew 25:40,45