“We who are old…oh, so old…” These lines from a poem that we learned in school long ago, by the poet W.B.Yeats, often come to my mind, now that I am beginning to feel the signs of aging. There were older sisters already in Fr Barre’s own time. He gave advice on how they should live and the virtues they could practice, so as “to help them grow in holiness”.
When the time came when they were “no longer able to contribute actively or be of service to the sisters and others”, they were humbly to accept their dependence. They were “to be careful to refrain from blaming or criticising the way the young sisters worked, thinking they did things better in their day” . A common fault of the elderly in all walks of life! They were to be happy, like mothers or servants in the home, to eat last and be content with the left overs. Their mission now was “to devote themselves to contemplation and continual communion with God, so that through their prayers, those actively involved … could receive the graces they need”. (M.I. 4)
Every season of life has its own beauty, grace and task. In old age our beauty comes from recovering the spirit of childhood, of receptivity, of living gratefully in the here and now. “So we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away, inwardly we are being renewed, day by day”. (2Cor 4:16) “We all are being changed from Glory to Glory as we are turned into the image of the One we reflect. This is the work of the Lord who is Spirit”. (2 Cor 3:18). Our task is to grow into wholeness and wisdom, to make a hidden contribution to healing our fragmented world. (BI. 48)
Thomas Merton wrote in his old age: “I think of elderhood as the easing of the tensions of opposites, a time of serenity. That is why we have the expression ‘To understand fully is to forgive all’. Elderhood is a time for fulfilment and forgiveness, it is a time for peace.”
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