On a recent visit to St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral in New York City, I discovered that the Cathedral not only had the traditional candle stands in the sanctuary but also invited visitors to \u201clight a virtual candle.\u201d The digital display with this invitation, at one of the main doors into the Cathedral, offered a QR code for scanning with a smartphone. I had intended to light a candle and pray at St. Patrick\u2019s in any case, so I readied my smartphone to scan the QR code. The invitation to light a virtual candle had promised that each prayer intention would be prayed over once a month for twelve months, which would be more than a non-virtual candle could offer. What happened next was unexpected, yet revealing in its own way. A dreaded 404 error message appeared on my phone, informing me that the webpage I had tried to reach could not be found. So much for the Cathedral keeping its QR codes, servers, and URLs in sync, I thought. However, with the 404 message also came an image that almost made the \u201cpage not found\u201d notification worth it. \u00a0St. Anthony of Padua, the popular patron saint of lost things, appeared on my smartphone, and next to him a prayer:
\nDear St. Anthony,
\nPlease come around.
\nThis page is lost and
\ncannot be found.<\/p>\n
Yet that afternoon, St. Anthony did not help to find the webpage that would have enabled me to light a virtual candle at St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral. I did, however, go online later to light my virtual candle. The Cathedral\u2019s website informed me that there is a large candle lit at St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral itself \u201cto symbolize and commemorate all the virtual candles requested from our community of faith on the Internet.\u201d As much as I am intrigued by digitally-mediated practices of prayer and devotion, I realized that I should have simply lit a non-virtual candle while in the sanctuary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On a recent visit to St. Patrick\u2019s Cathedral in New York City, I discovered that the Cathedral not only had the traditional candle stands in the sanctuary but also invited visitors to \u201clight a virtual candle.\u201d The digital display with this invitation, at one of the main doors into the Cathedral, offered a QR code […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,1191],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inculturation","category-technology-and-worship"],"yoast_head":"\n