IT’S
GOOD TO BE ELDERLY – IT’S OKAY TO RESIGN FROM YOUR JOB
(Published
under the title ‘Giving our time and attention’ in NZ Catholic: Feb 10 – Feb 23)
It’s good to be elderly. So says
Benedict XVI, and he should know. Not only is it good for the elderly
themselves - because the longer they live the more they can grow in their love
for God, and the degree of love they attain on earth determines their degree of
happiness for all eternity - but the elderly
who are good also do good.
In referring to this
misproportioned demographic as ‘elderly’, Benedict is being tactful.
Paradoxically, although now in the Western world they wield ‘grey power’, the term
‘old’ is considered pejorative, as if being old were a burden on the young and
an inducement to euthanasia.
Most of the ’elderly’, then, are in
rest homes which afford a daunting amount of spare time which well-meaning
staff try to fill with games, exercises and outings, and where the lounge is
dominated by a huge television and the bedrooms by little ones. The residents, especially those who all their
lives have been givers, may suffer from an impression of now being takers - and
knowing that suffering gladly borne for love of Christ redounds to their own
good does nothing to lighten this
particular cross.
Children in Catholic schools (who aren’t
necessarily Catholic or even Christian, because many are unbaptised) are often taught
that God has no favorites. This line goes down well with parents and
grandparents, because it’s a cop-out. If God ‘loves us all the same’ no matter
what we do, why go to Mass? This mindset shows up in the popular view that if Purgatory
exists, it’s obviously not a worry for anyone who has a Catholic burial, because
instead of praying for them we ‘celebrate their life’ with eulogies which make the
mourners feel so inadequate by comparison they almost wish they were dead too.
However, when they’re really up
against it, Catholics don’t turn to deceased rellies for intercession. They
invoke Our Lady or a saint, because they know instinctively that saints have
greater leverage with the Almighty. The closer anyone comes to God, the more
they share his divine power and authority.
God has intimate friends just as
we do. His ‘beloved’, like John the Evangelist and Solomon, are people who seek
his company, especially in the Eucharist, and those we know about we canonise.
If our prayer is only a
mechanical repetition of devotions learned at school, pre-Vatican II, God’s not
going to get a word in edgeways. That’s not friendship, it’s both cause and symptom
of arrested spiritual development. Unfortunately, it’s possible and also common
to be aged in years but still a child in grace.
Baptism has grafted us into Christ,
but we abide in Christ and grow in Christ only by giving him our time and our
close attention, which is infinitely more rewarding when spent in this way than
any other, by opening our minds to him in meditation and our hearts in contemplation.
When we listen to God he listens to us and we bear abundant fruit.