When I was in high school I had no less than a dozen of my friends’ phone numbers memorized. Today I can hardly remember where I parked.

Yet at 51 my attempt to chalk it up to old age doesn’t quite wash – because I know it’s got nothing to do with my age and everything to do with our age – the age of anxiety.

You and I live in stressful times. A time of devolution perhaps in which anxiety and worry may be causing us to actually reverse our development. Social scientists tell us our brains are being re-calibrated so that our abilities to listen, pay attention, and thus, think are becoming seriously compromised. Can you remember the last time you spent the afternoon undistracted as you read a book? Count the number of smartphone apps that have to do with list-making and time efficiency, it’s about half. Because when we’re under stress we make lists and we make lists because we aren’t listening and we’re not thinking.

This has detrimental effects on nearly every aspect of our lives. Businesses go south, relationships fail, each one of us can come up with at least one example of how our exposure to stress and anxiety has damaged our ability to really listen, pay attention, and think about the things that matter most.

In Sunday’s gospel you and I hear Jesus call us salt and light – a people who enhance and bring illumination to the world by being truly who we are and authentically present in the world. These are graces that God has worked inside of us for which we cannot take credit. We are to be salt and be light – and the only way we can lose our saltiness and illumination is to stop being what we are.  The call of the Gospel is to be who we are.

In an age of anxiety this becomes a big deal. It means taking the time to think, listen and pay attention – to be – time to understand what that ‘be-ingness’ is all about. It means contemplating our self-image and self-understanding in the light of our faith.

This also means putting in safeguards to curb distraction. Engaging in intentional practices that keep us focused on the things that matter – prayer, meditation, and Scripture. It means being slow to accept distraction (which is often fueled by the fear that we might be missing something) and instead rest secure that in God we are held, there is no fear, and what we may be missing is not worth the price.

As we know Jesus, who also lived in anxious times, spent a great deal of his life engaged in the intentional practices I just mentioned. He kept his sanity, deeply loved others, and saved the world.

Yep, that's how he did it, how about us?