We can focus on seven of his major insights.<\/p>\n
The first is that \u201cold age is a gift for all stages of life.\u201d It\u2019s a living endowment of maturity, wisdom, authority, holiness and loving service for children, grandchildren and the whole community. In Sacred Scripture, long life is seen as divine blessing, seen in the lifespan of Noah, Abraham and Moses. There is a temptation today, cautions the Pope, to treat old age as a disease, a time of decay and disability. In a throw-away culture, many try to \u201cdelete\u201d and shun the elderly as useless, unproductive burdens, pretending that youth alone embodies the human ideal. That\u2019s a denial of the past and a \u201cbetrayal of our humanity,\u201d he says. Instead, we need to \u201chonor our father and mother,\u201d which he says means honoring the dignity of our grandparents, welcoming them, helping them, loving them and making use of their gifts.<\/p>\n
Second, he says that the elderly are civilization\u2019s great teachers, living encyclopedias who cultivate memory, show how we fit into a much larger history, and help us learn how to be human. They unite a wisdom of head and heart. They reveal that what matters is ultimately not physical strength and vigor, but the wisdom that comes from God and from time. When Pope Francis used to refer to Pope Benedict as a \u201cgrandfather\u201d for God\u2019s family, he was paying him a supreme compliment, whose counsel was a treasure for him and the Church.<\/p>\n
Third, we need to get ready for old age. Old age is easily misunderstood. Pope Francis says that few prepare adequately for it beyond health care plans and retirement accounts. \u201cBeing old,\u201d however, \u201cis just as important and as beautiful as being young,\u201d and one needs a \u201cplan\u201d to live this stage to the full. That plan should include the sharpening of the senses and the sensitization of the soul, especially the virtues of compassion, pity, fidelity, devotion, and responsibility for oneself and others. He urges seniors to take care of themselves physically and spiritually and to cultivate their interior life through daily prayer, the word of God and Mass. He summons them to become \u201cartisans of a revolution of tenderness,\u201d and infuse life with greater love. \u201cOld age,\u201d he encourages, \u201cis no time to give up and lower the sails, but a season of enduring fruitfulness: a new mission awaits us and bids us look to the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fourth, grandparents are called to be guardians of \u201ctradition\u201d and the transmission of the faith. The vocation of the elderly, he says, is to \u201cbear witness of humanity and faith.\u201d Far more than leaving future generations \u201cgoods\u201d in a will, he encourages them rather to leave a legacy of \u201cgoodness.\u201d He laments that catechesis is often dry and urges grandparents rather to communicate the faith as a \u201clived tradition\u201d that communicates the art of living. \u201cChristian faith,\u201d he notes, \u201cis not just saying the Creed: it is thinking\u00a0the Creed, it is understanding the Creed, it is doing the Creed.\u201d He praises the nonagenarian Eleazar (2 Macc 6:18-31) as someone who transmits a coherent legacy of the relationship between faith and life and urges every senior to similar witness.<\/p>\n
Fifth, to protect this transmission of wisdom, grandparents must become prophets against the corruption that afflicts each age. With prudence rather than screeds, they need to \u201csound the alarm\u201d against relativism and help people see that dangers flowing from ideology of utilitarianism, the obsession of pleasure, and the pursuit of a life not based on truth, beauty, justice and sacrifice. Like Noah, the elderly must build an ark and \u201csave the world.\u201d To do this, however, Pope Francis says they need to make sure that they themselves do not become corrupt with age, like the old men who lusted and sought to condemn unjustly Susanna (Dan 13:1-64).<\/p>\n
Sixth, he urges grandparents to form a \u201ccovenant\u201d with the young. \u00a0\u201cThe future of the world depends on this covenant between young and old,\u201d he underlines. If this dialogue of words and existence does not take place, he says, society will become sterile and lonely. \u201cThe elderly are like the roots of a tree\u201d from which all generations, especially the young, must draw sap in order to flourish. That\u2019s because \u201cthe covenant between the two poles of the generations of life (children and the elderly) also helps the other two generations (young people and adults) to bond with each other so as to make everyone\u2019s existence richer in humanity.\u201d Grandparents illumine the \u201cwhole span of human life\u201d by showing the unity of all stages of life.<\/p>\n
Finally, he says that grandparents and the elderly demonstrate the fullness and meaning of life paradoxically by teaching us how to prepare for death. They show that life on earth is not a nostalgia for the past but a \u201ctime of initiation,\u201d a \u201cnovitiate,\u201d a period of \u201cpromise\u201d and \u201ceager expectation\u201d that the \u201cbest is yet to come.\u201d They teach us the meaning of time by means of the horizon of eternity, that death is as a birth into a new life, \u201csuperior to the time of mortal life,\u201d in that place where Jesus has gone to prepare.<\/p>\n
Pope Francis often reminds his fellow seniors that after he had submitted his retirement as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, he was elected to take on the responsibilities of the papacy! Since that election, he has tried not only to preach this \u201cpapal pappoulogy\u201d but to exemplify it. World Youth Days are an opportunity for him to show the importance of this covenantal \u201cdialogue between old and young, between grandparents and grandchildren\u201d and to help both young and not-so-young enter into a conversation essential for their happiness, the future of the Church and the flourishing of all humanity.<\/p>\n
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