IT’S GOOD TO BE ELDERLY – IT’S OKAY TO RESIGN FROM YOUR JOB

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.