In September 1980, Pope John Paul II opened an International Forum on Active Aging with an address to the participants. It was brief address but contained some wonderful insights. Keep in mind, at the time the Holy Father spoke these words, he was only 60 years old, hardly what we would consider very elderly. (Indeed, right now I'm just a couple of years from 80, but back in 1980 I was just a kid in my mid-thirties. As we used to say, time flies when you're having fun, and most of my life has been truly enjoyable.)
Anyway, forgetting all of that, I was struck by one particular comment in Pope John Paul's address:
"To turn our attention to the elderly is to realize how much they are a part of God's plan for the world, with their mission to fulfill, their unique contribution to make, their problems to solve, their burdens to bear" [Active Aging, 2]
Reading these words today, I find them wonderfully supportive. If I had read this address back in 1980, I doubt I would have paid much attention to that sentence. After all, at the time I was still rather young, and wouldn't have considered these words personally applicable. In other words, most young people are more self-focused than other-focused. Okay, that's a generalization, but a reasonable accurate and understandable one. Young people are making their way through what to them is a new and expanding world in which they are growing, testing, discovering, and learning. One would expect them to be more wrapped up in themselves because they're still in the process of becoming fully human, physically, mentally, and spiritually.
When I was younger, I didn't ignore the past, but most of my attention focused on the present and the future. Today it's just the opposite. I often turn, or return, to the past, especially my personal past, where I encounter an accessible storehouse of knowledge, wisdom, lessons, strategies, tactics, cautions, signs, sound counsel, and, yes, many mistakes. These I can apply to the present as I look forward to an unknown and largely unplanned future. I was fortunate to have worked for and with many intelligent, and occasionally wise, people who willingly shared their thoughts and wisdom with me. I might have rejected some of their ideas and principles, but I didn't forget them, and tucked them away in that same storehouse. I was especially blessed to have worked with my father for many years. When I joined him in his consulting business, he was nearing 70 and over time he taught me more than I could possibly have learned anywhere else. I've also been an avid reader, another habit that has provided me with hundreds of wise and not so wise counselors. These habits, manifested as a kind of healthy prejudice, have helped me separate error from truth and accept the reality of God's wondrous creation.
As I experience the world my generation has both inherited and molded, I realize we have allowed the unchecked growth of some very evil ideologies. Today, for example, the elderly (a group increasingly hard to define) are considered by many to be similar to the unborn. If, because of physical or mental decline, they have become inconvenient, we’ll then, society should be able to “take care” of them. After all, we old folks consume a lot of taxpayer funds through Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs. Back when these programs were conceived nobody dreamed that average lifespans or associated costs would increase so much.
Attitudes here in The Villages, a retirement community with well over 100,000 residents, are perhaps a little different. The extensive healthcare community here tends to be far more elderly focused since we make up the vast majority of its patients. The irony, as you might expect, is that many "Villagers" don't seem to realize or accept that they are elderly...until they are confronted with life-threatening injury or illness. At that point our supposed Disney World for seniors suddenly becomes God's vestibule. I've encountered the same awareness in our parish. So often new parishioners tell me they haven't attended Mass in decades, but now believe God is calling them to return. I jokingly call it the "nearer my God to Thee" syndrome, but it's really quite true. As life nears its end, those long-neglected seeds of faith take root and blossom anew.
In his address, Pope John Paul also remarked how the presence of the elderly "enriches the home." And yet how many of us are physically separated from our grown families, often the result of societal changes or personal decisions that have pulled families apart geographically? Those of us residing in retirement communities throughout the country no longer live in multi-generational homes of the sort so common decades ago. My guess is that little enrichment can be experienced via Zoom or FaceTime.
Just consider my own experience. Although I was born in Connecticut, where most of our close relatives lived, my family moved to the suburbs of New York City when I was only five, a move driven by my father's work. For similar reasons we also lived for a time in northwest Florida and Germany. After I graduated from high school, my parents moved to Cape Cod. I spent the next five years trying to get educated in Washington, DC and Annapolis, MD. Then, as a newly commissioned naval officer, I headed south to Pensacola for flight training and marriage to Diane. As our family grew, we bounced between the coasts until we, too, made our way to Cape Cod, a wonderful place to raise the children but a place far from both of our childhood roots.
Even at my current age I like to think I have something to offer to those who share the little slice of creation in which God has placed me. I believe, as our saintly Pope John Paul stated, that I still have a mission to fulfill, a unique contribution to make, perhaps a few problems to solve, and many burdens to bear. This is what keeps me going. Too many of my contemporaries, who seem to define themselves and their lives solely by their secular work, consider their retirement a reward that frees them not only from that work, but also from the Church's call to evangelization.
I'll conclude with another quote from Pope John Paul's address in which he emphasized this call:
"Old age is able to enrich the world through prayer and counsel; its presence enriches the home; its immense capacity for evangelization by word and example, and by activities eminently adapted to the talents of the elderly is a force for the Church of God yet to be thoroughly understood or adequately utilized." [Active Aging, 5]
Now that we have time on our hands, perhaps we should get to work, God's work.
