Fragility, humility, dignity: Human connection in the age of efficiency
January 13, 2026 at 2:47 p.m.
We live in an age that prizes efficiency above almost everything else. Tap your phone and a car arrives. Click a button and groceries appear. Swipe right and ... well, that’s supposed to be connection, isn’t it? Except it’s not. What we’ve gained in convenience we’re losing in something harder to quantify: actual human closeness.
Josef Pieper saw this coming. Writing decades before smartphones existed, the German Catholic philosopher understood that love – real love – can’t be engineered for maximum efficiency.
“What is really sought, human closeness, overcoming of loneliness, union with another personal being,” he wrote, “all that can be had only in real love.”
This is uncomfortable news in a culture that tends to treat everything as a problem to be solved. But love doesn’t work that way. Neither does friendship. Neither does the slow, messy work of actually knowing another person. Real connection requires what we’re increasingly unwilling to give: time. The awkwardness of sitting with someone who’s struggling instead of sending a text. The risk of being misunderstood or rejected.
It’s easier than ever to pull away from people with minimal consequence: ghost someone, block, unfollow. We’ve built technologies that make disconnection frictionless.
Which means forgiveness and reconciliation have become more radical, more essential to our humanity than ever.
This is where St. Claude La Colombière speaks to our moment with unexpected power. He wrote: “Really humble people are never scandalized: They know their own weakness too well; they know that they themselves are so close to the edge of the precipice and they are so afraid of falling over that they are not at all astonished to see others do so. ... It is a sign of little virtue to notice the imperfections of others.”
This should perhaps be written across the top of every screen and scroll across every social media site. What have our digital platforms become if not engines of scandalization? We’ve created spaces where noticing and broadcasting the imperfections of others has become not just entertainment but social currency. The algorithm rewards outrage. The architecture encourages judgment.
Real humility makes that impossible. When you know your own fragility, when you’ve faced your own capacity for failure, you can’t maintain the posture of the perpetually scandalized. You extend to others the grace you desperately need for yourself.
Albrecht Dürer’s engraving “The Prodigal Son Among the Swine” (c. 1496) shows the wayward son at his lowest point – kneeling in prayer amid the pigs, surrounded by ruins. But here’s what strikes me: The one who prays in the midst of his sin already sees beyond his sins. Dignity, which is reborn in the redeemed sinner, is here in its embryonic stage.
That’s the moment Dürer chose to depict. Not the celebration of the son’s return. Not the father’s embrace. But the instant when someone broken by his own choices turns toward home. Prayer amid the wreckage. The first stirring of hope in the heart of the lost.
This is what human connection requires in our age: the willingness to kneel in the pigpen with each other. The father in the parable was watching for his son. Watching requires time, patience, generosity. None of these fit into our utilitarian plans. But they’re the only way home.
Leonard J. DeLorenzo is a professor of the practice in the McGrath Institute for Church Life and concurrent professor in the department of theology at the University of Notre Dame. You can find his writing at leonardjdelorenzo.com.
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We live in an age that prizes efficiency above almost everything else. Tap your phone and a car arrives. Click a button and groceries appear. Swipe right and ... well, that’s supposed to be connection, isn’t it? Except it’s not. What we’ve gained in convenience we’re losing in something harder to quantify: actual human closeness.
Josef Pieper saw this coming. Writing decades before smartphones existed, the German Catholic philosopher understood that love – real love – can’t be engineered for maximum efficiency.
“What is really sought, human closeness, overcoming of loneliness, union with another personal being,” he wrote, “all that can be had only in real love.”
This is uncomfortable news in a culture that tends to treat everything as a problem to be solved. But love doesn’t work that way. Neither does friendship. Neither does the slow, messy work of actually knowing another person. Real connection requires what we’re increasingly unwilling to give: time. The awkwardness of sitting with someone who’s struggling instead of sending a text. The risk of being misunderstood or rejected.
It’s easier than ever to pull away from people with minimal consequence: ghost someone, block, unfollow. We’ve built technologies that make disconnection frictionless.
Which means forgiveness and reconciliation have become more radical, more essential to our humanity than ever.
This is where St. Claude La Colombière speaks to our moment with unexpected power. He wrote: “Really humble people are never scandalized: They know their own weakness too well; they know that they themselves are so close to the edge of the precipice and they are so afraid of falling over that they are not at all astonished to see others do so. ... It is a sign of little virtue to notice the imperfections of others.”
This should perhaps be written across the top of every screen and scroll across every social media site. What have our digital platforms become if not engines of scandalization? We’ve created spaces where noticing and broadcasting the imperfections of others has become not just entertainment but social currency. The algorithm rewards outrage. The architecture encourages judgment.
Real humility makes that impossible. When you know your own fragility, when you’ve faced your own capacity for failure, you can’t maintain the posture of the perpetually scandalized. You extend to others the grace you desperately need for yourself.
Albrecht Dürer’s engraving “The Prodigal Son Among the Swine” (c. 1496) shows the wayward son at his lowest point – kneeling in prayer amid the pigs, surrounded by ruins. But here’s what strikes me: The one who prays in the midst of his sin already sees beyond his sins. Dignity, which is reborn in the redeemed sinner, is here in its embryonic stage.
That’s the moment Dürer chose to depict. Not the celebration of the son’s return. Not the father’s embrace. But the instant when someone broken by his own choices turns toward home. Prayer amid the wreckage. The first stirring of hope in the heart of the lost.
This is what human connection requires in our age: the willingness to kneel in the pigpen with each other. The father in the parable was watching for his son. Watching requires time, patience, generosity. None of these fit into our utilitarian plans. But they’re the only way home.
Leonard J. DeLorenzo is a professor of the practice in the McGrath Institute for Church Life and concurrent professor in the department of theology at the University of Notre Dame. You can find his writing at leonardjdelorenzo.com.