The Sanctification of Later Years

By Fr. Conor Donnelly

(Proofread)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

My Lord and my God, I firmly believe that you are here, that you see me, that you hear me. I adore you with profound reverence. I ask your pardon for my sins, and grace to make this time of prayer fruitful. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

We’re told in the Psalms, “You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of life”( Ps 16:11). It’s natural that as the years pass, we would increasingly consider our twilight, the line separating life and death moves closer to each one of us.

If life is a pilgrimage towards our heavenly home, then the older years are the time that it’s most natural to look towards that threshold of eternity. And sometimes that can be a challenge. Our human condition is touched by sin, and so death presents a certain dark side, which may bring sadness or fear.

Man has been made for life. And we’re told in the first chapters of Genesis that death was not part of God’s original plan, but it came as a consequence of sin. As a result, we’re told in the Book of Wisdom, of the devil’s envy.

And so it’s understandable why, when faced with this dark reality, man may instinctively rebel. It’s significant that our Lord, who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin, also experienced fear in the face of death. In St. Matthew we’re told Jesus said, “Father, if it is possible, let this chalice pass from me” (Matt 26:39).

We can also be mindful of the tears of Jesus at the tomb of his friend Lazarus, in spite of the fact that he was about to raise him from the dead. However rationally comprehensible death may be from a biological standpoint, it’s not possible to consider it or experience it as something natural. That would be to contradict man’s deepest instincts.

And so the Second Vatican Council has said, “It is in the face of death that the riddle of human existence becomes more acute.” Not only is man tormented by pain and by the advancing deterioration of his body, but even more so by a dread of perpetual extinction. This anguish would be inconsolable were death complete destruction, the end of everything.

We see with our Christian faith and we know that death is not just the end of everything. Life does not end with a hole in the ground. For any of our friends and acquaintances who may be looking at death in that way, we have an awful lot to say to them.

We have a great apostolic opportunity to lift up their sights. The reality of death forces men and women to ask themselves fundamental questions about the meaning of life itself. What is on the other side of that shadowy wall of death? Does death represent the definitive end of life, or does something lie beyond it?

So, we find that there shines forth the hope-filled outlook present in Revelation as a whole and particularly in a very specific way in the Gospel. Our whole concept of death fills our life and our days and our hours with enormous hope.

We’re told in St. Luke, “God is not God of the dead, but of the living” (Luke 20:38). St. Paul affirms that God who gives life to the dead will also give life to our mortal bodies. And our Lord has said those very powerful words, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die”(John 11:25-26).

Christ, having crossed the threshold of death, has revealed the life which lies beyond this frontier, in that uncharted territory which is eternity. We have been made for eternity. Pope John Paul II liked to frequently say that God wants to marry us. We are all called to the eternal wedding feast. He said marriage in this world is just a preparation for marriage in the next. People who lead celibate lives in this world give witness to the fact that the real marriage comes later. The bridegroom is going to come to call us. If something doesn't work out too well in our marriage here in this world, never mind. It's a pathway of holiness, of sanctification, to prepare us for the eternal wedding feast. We have an awful lot to look forward to.

And so Christ is the first witness of eternal life. In him, human hope is shown to be filled with immortality. It's interesting how that word immortality finds presence in the liturgy. We are reminded about the immortality of the soul, one of the most important truths of our faith and hence, great importance that we take very good care of our soul in this world. We prepare our soul for eternity. So the liturgy of Masses of the Dead, of the Preface, say, "The sadness of death gives way to the bright promise of immortality." We have a bright promise of immortality.

One time there was a convent of Good Shepherd nuns up the road from where we lived in Singapore. Many of them were Irish, elderly. If there was an extra priest in town, I would go to say Mass for them. They had to go out each day for Mass, it wasn't so easy. There was a 92-year-old, an 89-year-old, an 82-year-old, and a few more. Everybody expected the 92-year-old to go first, but in fact, the 89-year-old went first. I went to the wake, and I happened to meet the 92-year-old and I asked her, "how are you now?" She replied, "Well, I'm next. I missed the train this time, but I won't miss it next time." And she said, "I'm waiting in joyful hope."

It was a very beautiful line. It's a line that comes after the Our Father in the Mass, “You're waiting in joyful hope”. And so all our days are meant to be days in which we are waiting in joyful hope. When people ask us how we are, we can tell them, "I'm waiting in joyful hope. I have an awful lot to look forward to, and I'm really, really looking forward to it." These words, which the Church's liturgy offers as a consolation to believers as they bid farewell to their loved ones, are followed by a proclamation of hope; "Lord, for your faithful people, life is changed, not ended."

St. Josemaria used to say that death for us is just a change of house. It's a jumping over, a bridge, you might say. "When the body of our earthly dwelling lies in death, we gain an everlasting dwelling place in heaven." And so in Christ, death, no matter how tragic or disconcerting it may be, is redeemed and transformed. It's even revealed as a sister who leads us to the arms of our Father.

And so our faith illuminates the mystery of death and can bring a great serenity to our older years. Now we no longer consider them or live passively as the expectation of a calamity, but rather as a promised-filled approach to the goal of full maturity. These are years to be lived with a sense of trusting abandonment into the hands of our provident and merciful Father. They are times to be used creatively for deepening our spiritual life. "Lord, help me to grow in a spirit of true prayer. Help me to love the Mass and appreciate it even more. Help me to be filled with a greater apostolic zeal."

I recently met an 84-year-old nun who came back to Kenya after spending a few months in her homeland. She'd been here for 50, 60 years and at 84, she said, "You know, I've come back with more missionary zeal than ever." Would as we all had that same sort of spirit. It's a reality.

And that can lead us to a more fervent prayer and commitment to the service of our brothers and sisters in charity. We can look to the social programs that are more readily available nowadays, attending to our physical well-being, to our intellectual development, our personal relationships; those courses or things that can make us more useful so that we put our time, our talents, our experience at the service of others.

God has placed us here to serve, and he wants us to use our final years and hours and weeks and months seeing how we can serve more and serve better and more effectively. And so our capacity to enjoy life as a great gift of God is preserved and increased. And that capacity to enjoy life in no way conflicts with that desire for eternity, which grows within people who have a deep spiritual experience. The lives of the saints bear witness to this. They lived their life in full to the very end.

The Gospel reminds us of the words of Simeon, who says he is ready to die now that he has held in his arms the long-awaited Messiah. "Lord, now you can let your servant depart in peace according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation" (Luke 2:29-30). St. Paul to the Philippians says, yes, this great desire to continue living in order to preach the Gospel, and that he feels torn with his desire at the same time to depart and be with Christ (Phil 1: 23-24). St. Ignatius of Antioch, joyfully going to his martyrdom, said that he could hear within himself the voice of the Spirit, like living water welling up inside him, whispering the invitation, "Come to the Father."

All these examples could be multiplied. They don't cast any doubt on the value of earthly life, which is beautiful despite its limitations and sufferings, and which ought to be lived to its very end. I knew a man who had led a very holy life. He used to go to confession every week. Thursday was his confession day. Eventually, he was dying of leukemia after a very fruitful life and on the Tuesday of the week before he died, he asked that he might go to confession so that he would go to see God with his confession made, with that particular norm lived out that week. A great way to live and a great way to die.

People who live in this way remind us that earthly life is not the ultimate value. The twilight of life can be seen from a Christian perspective as a passage, a bridge between one life and another, between the fragile and uncertain joy of this earth to the fullness of joy which the Lord holds in store for his faithful servants. We're told, "Enter into the joy of your master" (Matt 25:23).

Our faith gives us an encouragement to live life to the full. Pope John Paul II said that despite the limitations brought on by age, I continue to enjoy life. For this, I thank the Lord. It's wonderful to be able to give oneself to the very end for the sake of the Kingdom of God. I find great peace in thinking of the time when the Lord will call me from life to life. And so I often find myself saying, with no trace of melancholy, a prayer recited by priests after the celebration of the Eucharist: "At the hour of my death call me and bid me come to you." This is the prayer of Christian hope, which in no way detracts from the joy of the present while entrusting the future to God's gracious and loving care. This is the deepest yearning of the human heart, even in those who are not conscious of it.

The prayer continues: "Grant, O Lord of life, that we may be ever vividly aware of this and that we may savor every season of our lives as a gift filled with promise for the future. Grant that we may lovingly accept your will and place ourselves each day in your merciful hands. And when the moment of our definitive passage comes, grant that we may face it with serenity, without regret for what we shall leave behind. For in meeting you, after having sought you for so long, we shall find once more every authentic good which we have known here on earth, in the company of all who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith and hope."

We're told in the Book of Sirach, "Blessed are those who have not lost hope." And that hope has also been tempered by fire over the course of a long life. That hope can prove to be a source of deep happiness. Sacred Scripture offers us many examples of men and women whom our Lord called late in life to play a part in his saving plan. We can think of Abraham and Sarah, who advanced in years found it hard to believe when God promised them a child. Their childlessness seemed to prevent them from any hope in the future. Zechariah's reaction to the news of John the Baptist's birth was no different. "How can this be," he asked, "I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years?" (Luke 1:18). Old age, barrenness, and physical decline apparently blocked any hope for life and fertility in these men and women.

The question that Nicodemus asked Jesus when the Master spoke to him of being born again also seems purely rhetorical. "How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born?" (John 3:4). Yet, whenever we think that things cannot change, our Lord surprises us with an act of saving power. Our God is a God of surprises. And so in the Bible, God repeatedly demonstrates his providential care by turning to people in their later years. The best wine comes at the end. This was the case not only with Abraham and Sarah and Zechariah and Elizabeth, but also with Moses, who was called to set people free when he was already 80 years of age.

And so God teaches us that in his eyes, old age is a time of blessing and grace and that the elderly are for him the first witnesses of hope. St. Augustine asks, "What do we mean by old age?" And he tells us that God himself answers the question in the Psalms: "Let your strength fail, so that my strength may abide in you." And you can say with the apostle St. Paul, "When I am weak, then I am strong" (2 Cor 12:10).

The times that we live in are times when the number of elderly people are increasing. We have to try and interpret properly this moment of history. The life of the Church and the world can only be understood in the light of the passage of generations. Embracing the elderly helps us to understand that life is more than just the present moment and shouldn't be wasted in superficial encounters and fleeting relationships. Life is constantly pointing towards the future.

In the Book of Genesis, we find the moving episode of the blessing given by the aged Jacob to his grandchildren, the sons of Joseph. His words are an appeal to look to the future with hope as the time when God's promises will be fulfilled. If it's true that the weakness of the elderly needs the strength of the young, it's equally true that the inexperience of the young needs the witness of the elderly in order to build the future with wisdom. Very often our grandparents have been for us examples of faith and devotion, civic virtue, social commitment, memory, and perseverance amid trials. The precious legacy that they have handed down to us with hope and love can always be a source of gratitude and a summons to perseverance, great encouragement.

God's fidelity to his promises teaches us that there is a blessedness in old age. An authentic evangelical joy, inspiring us to break through the barriers of indifference in which the elderly may often find themselves enclosed. Our societies everywhere in the world, we often see, are growing all too accustomed to letting this significant and enriching part of their life be marginalized and forgotten. And so a change of pace is needed that would readily be seen in an assumption of responsibility on the part of the Church.

Pope Francis has said every parish, every association, ecclesial group is called to become a protagonist in a revolution of gratitude and care to be brought about by regular visits to the elderly, the creation of networks of support and prayer for them and with them, and the forging of relationships that can restore hope and dignity to those who feel forgotten.

Christian hope always urges us to be more daring, to think big, to be dissatisfied with things the way they are. In this case, it urges us to work for a change that can restore the esteem and affection to which the elderly are entitled.

During his last hospitalization, Pope Francis wrote that our bodies are weak, but even so, nothing can prevent us from loving, praying, giving ourselves, being there for one another, in faith, as shining signs of hope. We possess a freedom that no difficulty can rob us of. It's the freedom to love and pray. Everyone always can love and pray. And so these signs of living love, which have their roots in God himself, give us courage and remind us that as St. Paul said to the Corinthians, "Even if our outer self is wasting away, our inner self can be renewed day by day" (2 Cor4:16).

Human experience, although subject to time, is set by Christ against the horizon of immortality. He became a man among men in order to join the beginning to the end, man to God. The Book of Ecclesiastes said, "Youth and dawn of life are vanity." The Bible doesn't hesitate to point out at times with very blunt realism the fleeting nature of life and the passage of time, "vanity of vanity, all is vanity" (Ecc 1:2).

We can all become familiar with these words and understand them in a special way. They present very realistic realities to us and in spite of this realism that’s placed before us, scripture maintains a very positive vision of the value of life. We're told in Genesis that man remains forever made in the image of God and each stage of his life has its own beauty and its own tasks. In the Word of God, old age is so highly esteemed that long life is seen as a sign of divine favor. In the case of Abraham, in whom the privilege of old age is stressed, this favor takes on the form of a promise: "I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you I will curse; in you all the families of the earth will be blessed" (Gen 12:2-3).

At Abraham's side is Sarah, a woman who sees her body grow old, yet experiences within the limitations of her aging flesh the power of God who makes good every human shortcoming. Moses was also an old man when God entrusted him with the mission of leading the chosen people out of Egypt. It was not in his youth but in his old age, at the Lord's command, that he did mighty deeds on behalf of Israel.

The New Testament, filled with the light of Christ, also contains eloquent examples of elderly people. The Gospel of Luke begins by introducing a married couple advanced in years; Elizabeth and Zechariah, the parents of John the Baptist. The Lord's mercy reaches out to them. Zechariah says, "I am an old man and my wife is well on in years." During Our Lady's visitation, her elderly cousin Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, exclaims, "Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb" (Luke 1:42).

When John the Baptist is born, Zechariah pours forth in the Benedictus (Luke 1: 68-79). We see a remarkable older couple filled with a deep spirit of prayer. In the temple in Jerusalem, when Our Lady and St. Joseph bring Jesus to offer him to the Lord in accordance with the law, they meet the aged Simeon, who had long awaited the Messiah, he takes the child in his arms, blesses God, and proclaims, "Now, Lord, let your servant depart in peace." And at Simeon's side we find Anna, a widow of 84, a frequent visitor to the temple, who now has the joy of seeing Jesus. St. Luke tells us that she began to praise God and spoke of this child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem (Luke 2).

Nicodemus too, a highly regarded member of the Sanhedrin, was an elderly man. He visited Jesus by night in order not to be seen. To him the Divine Teacher reveals that he is the Son of God who has come to save the world. Nicodemus appears again at the burial of Jesus, when bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, he overcomes his fear and shows himself to be a disciple of the crucified Lord (John 3, 19).

All of these examples can be very reassuring for us. They remind us that at every stage of life, our Lord asks each of us to contribute what talents we have. We all have something to contribute. We all have a mission to fulfill, a vocation to be lived in every era. And so the service of the Gospel has nothing to do with age.

Likewise, St. Peter is called to bear witness to his faith by his martyrdom. Jesus had said to him, "When you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you wanted. But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands and another will guide you and carry you where you do not wish to go" (John 21:18).

As if to emphasize the splendid images of elderly people that we find in Scripture, the Psalms proclaims, "The just will flourish like the palm tree, will grow like a Lebanon cedar. Still bearing fruit when they are old, still full of sap, still green, to proclaim that the Lord is just" (Ps 92:12-15).

And in a letter to Titus, St. Paul says, "Bid the older men be temperate, serious, sensible, sound in faith, in love and in patience. Bid the older women likewise to live in a way appropriate to believers. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children" (Titus 2:2-4).

St. Josemaria says many things about our use of time. One of the things he says to young people is: don't wait to be old to be holy. Put in different words, he's saying old age doesn't make you holy. Sometimes when you're young, you think that all old people are holy just because they're old. But maybe we learn from experience that old age doesn't make us holy.

So the teaching and the language of the Bible present old age as a favorable time for bringing life to its fulfillment and in God's plan for each person, as a time when everything comes together and enables us to better grasp life's meaning and to attain wisdom of heart. The Book of Wisdom says, "An honorable old age comes not with the passing of time, nor can it be measured in terms of years, rather, understanding is the hoary crown for men and an unsullied life the attainment of old age" (Wis 4:8-9).

Old age is the final stage of human maturity and a sign of God's blessing. We look around us today at the current situation. We see that among some peoples, old age is esteemed and valued, but among others that's much less the case due to a mentality that gives priority to immediate human usefulness and productivity. Such an attitude frequently leads to contempt for the later years of life while older people are led to wonder whether their lives are still worthwhile.

Euthanasia is increasingly put forward as a solution for difficult situations. For many people, the idea of euthanasia has lost its sense of horror, which it naturally awakens in those who have a sense of respect for life. When grave illness may involve unbearable suffering, the sick are tempted to despair, and their loved ones or those responsible for their care can feel compelled by a misguided compassion to consider that the solution of an easy death is something reasonable.

Here it should be kept in mind that the moral law allows the rejection of aggressive medical treatment and makes obligatory only those forms of treatment which fall within the normal requirements of medical care, what are called proportionate means. We don't always have to use disproportionate means. And those proportionate means, in the case of terminal illness, seek primarily to the alleviation of pain. But euthanasia, understood as directly causing death, is another thing entirely. Regardless of intentions and circumstances, euthanasia is always intrinsically evil, a violation of God's law and an offense against the dignity of the human person.

There's an urgent need to recover a correct perspective on life as a whole. That corrective perspective is that of eternity, for which life at every phase is a meaningful preparation for that eternal wedding feast. Old age too has a proper role to play in this process of gradual maturing along the path to eternity and that process of maturity and of maturing cannot but benefit the larger society of which the elderly person is a part.

Elderly people help us to see human affairs with greater wisdom because life's vicissitudes have brought them knowledge and maturity. They are the guardians of our collective memory and thus the privileged interpreters of that body of ideals and common values which support and guide life in society.

And so we can ask our Lord that we might be renewed each day by our encounter with him in prayer and in the Holy Mass, that we lovingly pass on the faith we have lived for so many years to our families and in our daily encounter with others. May we always praise God for his goodness, cultivate unity with our loved ones, open our hearts to those who are far away, and in particular to all those in need. In this way we will be signs of hope whatever our age.

We can always turn to Our Lady, Mother of pilgrim humanity. Pray for us, Mary, now and at the hour of our death. Keep us ever close to Jesus, your beloved Son, the Lord of life and glory.

I thank you my God for the good resolutions, affections, and inspirations that you have communicated to me during this meditation. I ask your help to put them into practice. My Immaculate Mother, St. Joseph my father and lord, my guardian angel, intercede for me.

DWM