World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly Reflection

Last Sunday we celebrated World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly.  Pope Francis established the day in 2021 to be celebrated annually.  Francis reminds us that “old age is a gift and that grandparents are the link between the different generations, to pass on to the young the experience of life.”  The elderly people symbolise the transmission of faith from age to age. 

It saddens me to hear people, many of them are among my peers, repeatedly lamenting that there is a lack of young people in the Church today: “only old people go to church” they said.  I often think: SO?  What’s wrong with a church full of older people?  The Church is the church, there is no distinction between young and old.  The old are the hidden treasures of faith in which the young must look up to.  We are fully church, with the young or the old, two or a hundred. 

I made a visit to the Gables, one of the aged care facilities in our parish, last week and asked one of the residents what’s it like living there and she said: Not so much loneliness, though a bit of that, it’s the thought of whether I have been forgotten.  I didn’t know what to say, so I jokingly said: so goes the saying: out of sight, out of mind, isn’t it?  Driving home I thought: I hope you are not forgotten but you are certainly not forgotten by God.  Maybe I should have said that to her. 

By Fr Tien Tran