A Message for the Digital Age From 1000 Years Ago

Over a thousand years ago — in 1078, to be exact — Saint Anselm wrote a passage in his Proslogion that reads like it was crafted for us living in 2026. His invitation is startlingly simple:

“Rise up, you little one. Step away for a moment from your occupations. Hide yourself for a while from your restless thoughts. Set aside your burdens and your labors. Make space for God, and rest in Him. Enter the inner chamber of your mind; close the door, and seek Him.”

It is astonishing how precisely this speaks to us who live in the age of constant connection. As the psychologist James Finley once observed, “The crisis of our age is the loss of the interior of our lives.” Human beings have always faced distractions, but nothing in history rivals the sheer force of today’s digital world — a world engineered to keep us outwardly stimulated and inwardly scattered.

Last year, when I wrote “Is Sainthood Still Possible in the Digital Age?”, many readers resonated with this tension. One wrote to me: “Young people today are afraid of silence. They are connected to everyone and everything, and the whole world sits in their pockets. It has changed their behavior and their psychology.”

Centuries before smartphones, St. Teresa of Ávila saw the same struggle. She described the soul as a vast interior castle, filled with rooms that lead deeper and deeper toward the presence of God. Yet she lamented that people spent all their energy polishing the outer walls, ignoring the beauty within. If that was true in the sixteenth century, how much more today — when our phones buzz every two minutes, pulling us back to the surface.

Our networks grow wider, our information grows faster, but our inner lives grow thinner. We skim the surface of our own souls, rarely venturing into the deeper rooms where God waits.

Saint Anselm’s voice reaches across a millennium with a message we desperately need: Silence your mind (and your phone). Step away. Enter within. Make room for God.