OK … Remember Not To Forget This

It’s no wonder there was such an outcry when Twitter floated the idea of enabling posts longer than 140 characters. Based on the statistics that prompted this column, very few of us feel like we have enough time to get into more detail!

More precisely … very few of us, without actually admitting it, know that we can’t pay attention long enough to write a post longer than 140 characters that would make sense to most people. And besides, they’re not going to be able to focus on anything much longer. Seriously.

Less than a year ago, media outlets all over the place were reporting the fruits of a study from Microsoft that seems to prove the average human attention span is now less than that of a … goldfish; ok, maybe not the cheesy-cracker goldfish, but definitely lower than a real, living goldfish. Pick a goldfish; its attention span is about nine seconds.

Yours and mine? Thanks to smart phones, tablets and the ever-evolving “mobile Internet,” our human attention span is believed to be about 8.25 seconds. How does that make you feel? Or can you even remember what I just wrote about attention span? I bet it’s been more than 8.25 seconds since you read it.

Now … try to focus on this question: How can we, collectively, answer Pope Francis’ call to evangelization effectively when it seems statistically factual that if we start praying the Hail Mary with someone we just met, they won’t be “still with us” by the end of the prayer? Talk about a challenge to promoting eternal salvation.

From here, it seems we all might do well to think about some prayers we could offer up any time … all the time; you know, 8.25 seconds isn’t very long. And a few second after that, based on the research, we’ll be thinking about something else and not remember what we just prayed. That’s sad.

Simply saying our Savior’s name … Jesus … is a form of prayer. Put that at the top of your short list. Bring the Holy Family into the mix with, “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, pray for us.”

In this Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy, consider one that could push the limits of your 8.25-second attention span: “Oh blood and water, which gushed forth from the Heart of Jesus as a fount of Mercy for us, I trust in you.”

Here’s one straight from the Bible: “My Lord and my God.” Here’s another: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.”

I’ll end with one our priests say early in the Rite of Communion at Mass that we might want to focus on ourselves as we prepare to receive the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ in the Eucharist:

“May the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ keep me safe for eternal life.”