– FAUSTO GOMEZ OP
It appears that in our aging and aged societies, members are generally not prepared to grow old well. One thing is sure: we all want to be or become good and gentle old people and grow old gracefully. To achieve this, we have to try hard to be or become good young men or women, good young adults, and good elderly. In truth, as the Spanish saying goes, Se envejece como se vive – one becomes old the way he or she lives.
ACCEPTING AGING POSITIVELY
In his lovely little book Grow Old Gracefully, J. Maurus, narrates this story. A certain man visited an old Greek philosopher, and asked him: “I observe you are old and enjoy a happy life. How did you attain it?” The old man answered him: “You see the pine trees and orchards I have. Well, I have them because I planted them as a young man. So in youth I laid the foundations of my life. I did not wait until I was old to begin to build for this day.” Saint Paul writes: “A man will reap only what he sows” (Gal 6:7-8).
In Christian perspective, aging is the dynamic process of continuing change, renewal – conversion. It is never too late to forgive, to repent from sin, and to sow seeds of love. The compassionate God is always waiting to help us. Opportunities, however, do not come back, and tomorrow is late: tomorrow never comes! Thus, as the psalmist tells us, “If today you hear his [God’s] voice, harden not your heart.”
How old are you? The answer to this question is not given by the calendar years – chronological age – only; but also by the way we are as human beings and as believers. General Douglas MacArthur said: “One does not become old by the passing of the years, but by having deserted the ideal; the passing of the years wrinkles the skin, but the renouncing of the ideal wrinkles the soul.” In his great book on old age, De senectute, Cicero says that men are like wines: old age sours the bad ones while it improves the good ones. A sine qua non condition to be happy: accept the age you have!
GROWING OLD WELL
Many people age responsibly by practicing in particular healthy habits, gratitude, love, hope and prayer.
Growing old healthily. What matters really is not adding years to our life, but adding life to our years. It is said that “science does not prolong life but old age.” Contrary to the utopia of transhumanism, immortality is not possible here on earth; without appealing to faith, it is “incompatible with evolution, the strongest force of life.” What biomedicine and genetics will do is to diminish the number of illnesses, to make them more bearable – to improve health (Juan Carlos Izpisua). We are advised to have a positive attitude towards life, and live it in harmonious moderation. We are frequently told: eat healthy food; do appropriate physical exercise, and do some mental exercises to continue learning, memorizing; socialize with friends, family members, children, and neighbors
Growing old gracefully. It means to accept old age as part of life: “The afternoon is as important as the morning; but, their laws are different” (A. Grun). Like the preceding ones, this last stage of life integrates past, present and future: it does not go back to the past to stay there, but to recharge and move forward in the present towards the future. Growing old gracefully means to consider life as a gift (Eccle 9:4), as a grace to be appreciated, to be lived, to be shared.
Growing old lovingly. This signifies that the core value of old age (of any age) is love, and “love has no age; it is born every day” (Pascal). It means to love with a love that is founded on faith, urged by hope, and is characterized by gratitude, prayer and forgiving. F. Benoit Lacroix: “I always say that the day I stop loving, I will begin to be old. I believe that the reason for longevity is love.” The secret of true happiness is love, which is the best purpose and option of life. True love – God’s love in us – is witnessed in loving God, oneself, others, and creation. Growing old lovingly implies, in particular, forgiving others. Not to be able to forgive others means having a painful wound in the soul. If we wish to be happy, we have to forgive ourselves, too: our past has to be accepted, and forgiving love purifies it today and forgets it. If we do remember our bad past, we remember it as a healed wound, which does not hurt anymore.
Growing old prayerfully. As human beings, we are all weak and wounded. We need to pray to Someone who cares for us, his creatures and children. Growing old prayerfully means to ground life on God, to live in his company, to walk with him and with the members of the family, of the community up to the end of this life. It means to be – as much as possible – active members of the Church, the community of faith, hope and love. The practice of gratitude, forgiving love, and prayer leads us to others: to compassion with the needy others, especially with the poor old people.
Growing old with hope. Growing old happily entails, furthermore, to grow old with the flame of hope. Although in Christian perspective, faith is considered the most basic virtue, and charity, the most perfect one, hope – the virtue of the pilgrim – is the most necessary in our earthly life. It was said: “Dum spiro, spero” – as long as I breathe, I hope. After all, “people can live without faith and apparently many do. Many also live without love. But without hope, something to move us onward, we simply cannot go on. People cannot live without hope” (Michael Downey). Let us underline that to practice hope in our life means to do what we ought to do with love. Like any other virtue, hope needs to be vivified by love: we walk forward only with steps of love – of faithful and hopeful love, of loving hope. And of joyful hope – in spite and/or because of suffering and pains.
COPING WITH SUFFERING AND DEATH
Aging well implies necessarily coping with suffering and pains, which are part of life and more so in its last stage. Cursing or getting angry at our suffering and pains increases our suffering and pains: it make them worse! Of course, we have to fight suffering – and medicine helps us a lot – but there comes a time when medicine can do little besides continuing caring. For Christians, Jesus Christ illumines “the riddle of suffering and death” (Vatican II). Trusting and prayerful faith in a merciful God lightens the burdens: Be merciful to me O God, be merciful to me, for in you my soul takes refuge; in the shadow of your wings I will take refuge, until the destroying storms pass by (Ps 57: 1). The positive meaning of suffering is love, the saving love of the Crucified and Risen Lord. Suffering is our cross, the cross that will save us, if we take it after Christ and thus make it a co-redemptive suffering (cf. Col 1:24)
Growing old well entails accepting our own death as part of life. As other human beings, older persons have the right to a worthy life and to a worthy death (St. John Paul II).
Certainly, being old reminds one of the approaching end. Death becomes then a real presence. My mother used to say that “la muerte es ni pa’ pensá ni pa’ olvidá”: one must neither think much about death nor forget it. We know that, for the Christian, death is not the end of life, but the end of this earthly life and a passage to another life: hopefully, to eternal life with God and God’s family, including our loved ones, Mary and saints. Like suffering, death may become a co-redemptive death, if joined in love to Christ’s death (cf. Rom 6:3-5).
A wonderful prayer: I am continually with you, [O Lord]; you hold my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will receive me with honor. Whom I have in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire other than you (Ps 73:23-25).
In our third column, we shall try to answer the third question related to aging well today: How do we treat the elderly?
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