The Christophers: Fasting from Media to Connect with God

Tony Rossi,

Director of Communications,

The Christophers

Never before have we been inundated with as many media choices as today. From TikTok and Instagram to TV, movie, and music streaming services, the amounts of news and entertainment competing for our attention can be overwhelming and disorienting to our hearts, minds, and spirits. Sometimes, the healthiest solution is to step away from it all for a while. As a Daughter of St. Paul and the Director of Pauline Media Studies in Los Angeles, Sister Nancy Usselmann’s work often focuses on media literacy, but she has also explored how people can come to control their media consumption instead of letting it control them. Her book is titled “Media Fasting: Six Weeks to Recharge in Christ.”

Sister Nancy approaches media not as a scold but as a fan, having grown up loving books, films, and TV programs. On social media, she particularly enjoys Instagram Reels, which she finds funny and creative. The fact that the Daughters of St. Paul use media to teach about Jesus and communicate gospel principles is what drew her to the order. ”We need to be able to look at our media culture and integrate our faith with it, not keep it separate,” she noted during a “Christopher Closeup” interview. She also acknowledges the downside to our modern media approach, saying, “Twenty years out from social media’s invention, we’re considering now, especially for children and teens, that it can lead to greater depression or…isolating ourselves. It can lead to sadness, to anxiety. It’s time to pause and question, ‘How am I using these media?’”

Sister Nancy wrote “Media Fasting” to help young people—and people of all ages—answer that question. She doesn’t consider social media a bad thing. What matters is how—and how much—we use it. She and the Daughters of St. Paul create their own posts and reels ”to give inspiration, hope, light, and joy to people, helping people to recognize that Christ is with them and Christ desires a relationship with them…These are technologies that God has allowed human beings to create. They’re fantastic for sharing information and entertainment, but we also have to find when our brains and our souls need a little silence from all the digital noise.”

In the book, Sister Nancy introduces readers to a variety of ways to engage in a digital fast because it can differ according to what each individual needs. For herself, she created time limits to keep from spending too much time watching Reels. Some give up watching the news. Others fast from social media for a weekend—or for several weeks. As the book’s subtitle states, Sister Nancy offers a plan to take readers through a six-week fast if that’s what they think they need.

“Try to eliminate that one element that’s causing you the most trouble,” Sister Nancy recommends. “Then, what’s important is to consider, what will you replace that time with? Can it be a little bit more time for prayer?...Ten minutes of prayer a day can be truly transforming…Also, how do I reflect upon all my media use, so that when I do go back to it after the fast, I do so in a different way…It’s going to challenge us to think about, ‘What am I engaging with and why?’ Consider, ‘Hey, invite Jesus to watch it with me. Would I feel comfortable with that?’…There’s a lot of secular media fasting out there, but this offers a spirituality, a way of living it while integrating it with our relationship with God.”

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For free copies of the Christopher News Note PRAY WITHOUT CEASING, write: The Christophers, 264 West 40th Street, Room 603, New York, NY 10018; or e-mail: mail@christophers.org