Our children and young people\u2019s reading comprehension has reached its worst score ever in the PISA report. I won\u2019t give in to the temptation to say that they\u2019re worse off than we were because, let\u2019s face it, this is no longer just a problem for young people\u2014it affects us all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Digital culture has brought about a new way of engaging with text. It\u2019s not that we no longer read\u2014perhaps we even spend many more hours reading amid chats, news alerts on our phones, social media comments, and so on\u2014but rather that we do so superficially, preventing the information from sinking in. For reading to be meaningful, it needs time, space, and a relevant context. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, as we ride the subway trying to read a self-help book on our cell phones\u2014one that offers techniques for reducing stress\u2014 we\u2019re interrupted by a notification with the latest news from our favorite daily newspaper about an attack on a ship in the Strait of Hormuz\u2014among whose paragraphs ads are inserted touting the benefits of that new sandwich bread\u2014while, in the school\u2019s parent chat group, someone asks if a classmate has accidentally taken their child\u2019s history book. So, at night, as we try in vain to fall asleep using the Strait of Hormuz technique, we remember that we haven\u2019t checked our son\u2019s backpack to see if he accidentally took his classmate\u2019s sandwich\u2014and at the same time, that beautiful illustration of naval battles from our high school history book pops into our minds. A total mental mess, really.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hasty, compulsive reading\u2014driven solely by curiosity and the desire for impact, and aimed at not missing a single thing that\u2019s happening, whether in our immediate circle or in the wider world\u2014leaves us unable to grasp anything. Hours of reading that go in one ear and out the other (if you\u2019ll pardon the expression), without benefiting us in the least. Our brain, our spirit, are like parched, withered soil, devoid of water. A digital torrent of data comes along, washes over it, but it dries up again almost immediately. To become fertile ground and bear fruit, those ideas need to fall like dew, like a light rain on the grass, like a gentle mist on the lawn. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And now that I\u2019m quoting the Psalms, how will this pandemic of poor reading comprehension affect the way God\u2019s Word touches the hearts of men and women today? We must remember that many saints encountered the Lord and experienced conversion thanks to spiritual readings that they, of course, understood and allowed to truly touch their lives. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among the most famous was St. Ignatius of Loyola, who, during a long convalescence from a war wound, asked that they bring him chivalric novels\u2014which he was fond of\u2014to pass the time. It turned out that there was only \u00abone The Life of Christ<\/em> \u00bband a book on the lives of the saints written in Romance,\u00ab as he himself recounts. He developed a passion for these readings, and \u00ablittle by little, God began to take root in my soul, and from being a valiant knight of an earthly lord, I became \u201da heroic knight of the Eternal King, Jesus Christ.\u00bb\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And what about St. Augustine, who, after hearing a mysterious childlike voice telling him, \u00abTake and read,\u201d opened the Scriptures at random and found\u2014specifically in a letter from St. Paul\u2014what he had been searching for his entire life without realizing it, which was none other than Christ? This is how he recounted it in his book, *The* Confessions<\/em>, a work that centuries later would fall into the hands of Saint Teresa of \u00c1vila and whose reading was key to her conversion and her new way of life; a life that, in turn, was recorded in an autobiography which, after being read by the Jewish philosophy professor Edith Stein, led her to exclaim: \u201cThis is the truth!\u201d She thus converted to Christianity and was later canonized as Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. The chain of conversions that the (properly understood) reading of the Word of God and the lives of the saints has brought about\u2014and continues to bring about\u2014is endless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m not one to demonize apps for praying the Psalms or reading the Gospel on a cell phone\u2014since I use them every day and they can be a very useful tool\u2014but it would be good for us to consider whether this is the best way to engage with these texts and in what context we do so. We need to make time and create space so that the Word of God\u2014which \u00abis living and active, sharper than any double-edged sword,\u00bb and our spiritual readings don\u2019t just slip by us as if they were yet another birthday greeting in a WhatsApp group, but rather truly take root in our hearts because our very lives depend on it. Do you understand?<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" La comprensi\u00f3n lectora de nuestros ni\u00f1os y j\u00f3venes ha alcanzado el peor resultado de la historia en el informe PISA. No caer\u00e9 en la tentaci\u00f3n de decir que son peores que nosotros porque, reconozc\u00e1moslo, esto ya no es solo un problema de los j\u00f3venes, nos alcanza a todos. La cultura digital ha impuesto una nueva […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":64473,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64472","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-firmas"],"yoast_head":"\n