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Pope Francis emphasized in the video message of the first “World Grandparents and Elders Day” that the vocation of the elderly is to “guard the foundation, pass on faith to the youth, and take care of the young.”
(Vatican News Network) May “every grandparent, every elder, and especially the loneliest among us be visited by angels!” Like Jesus’ maternal grandfather, Saint Joachim, he was kept away by the group because he had no children under his knees, but the Lord But sent an angel to visit him. “Even if everything seems dark, like the epidemic of this time, the Lord continues to send angels to comfort us who are lonely, and say to us again and again:’I am with you every day’ (Mal. 28:20).”
July 25 this year will be the first “World Day of Grandparents and Elders” appointed by Pope Francis. The Holy See press room announced and introduced the Pope’s video message on June 22. The above passage is the wish and encouragement expressed by the Pope in the message. This year’s festival’s logo is taken from Giotto’s fresco “Ruo Yajing’s Dreamland”. The angel in the painting came to visit Ruo Yajing who was blocked outside the city gate, as if to say to him, “The Lord has listened to your perseverance. prayer”.
The Pope said to grandparents and elders that angels sometimes appear through “our grandchildren, other relatives, old friends,” or those “faces of people we know in difficult times.” “The whole church is beside you, beside us: she cares about you, loves you, and does not want to let you be alone!” The pope also invited them to see the faithfulness of God in the narrative of the vineyard (cf. 1-16).
The Pope said that the Lord sent us messengers to call workers to his vineyard “at every hour of the day.” He also treated “me” in the same way, “when I felt that I had reached the retirement age and I had imagined that I could no longer do many new things, I was called to become the bishop of Rome.” But “the Lord is the eternal Lord, and there is never a time to retire.” Therefore, the vocation of grandparents and the elderly is to “protect the foundation, pass on faith to the youth, and take care of the young.”
The Pope emphasized that “there is no retirement age for the mission of preaching the gospel and passing on the traditional mission to children and grandchildren”. Some older people may feel lack of energy and think that when “habit becomes the rule”, it is difficult to act in a different way. Others feel that they have already “troubled” for their family, how can they “work for the poorer people” “To dedicate oneself, or to feel lonely as a heavy boulder, the Pope invites them to “open the door to the deeds of the Holy Spirit, and he will blow at will, and everything will come true.”
The Pope said directly to his grandparents and the elderly, “You need to build the world of tomorrow based on brotherhood and social friendship.” In this new construction, “you are more able to help erect the three pillars than others, namely dreams, memories, and prayers.” The Prophet Joel promised that “your old people should see dreams, and your youth should see God” (3:1), and the Pope asked “If it is not for youth, who can bear the old people’s dreams and push them forward? “
Therefore, it is also necessary for the elderly to witness that they can appear in a new face after undergoing trials. From this, the Pope talked about the second pillar “memory”, pointing out that young people can learn the value of peace from the pain of war, and the experience of forced immigrants “helps build a more humane and more hospitable world.” But “you can’t build without memory; you can’t build a house without the foundation of a house. The foundation of life is memory.”
The third pillar of construction is “prayer”. The pope mentioned his predecessor, Benedict XVI, as “an elderly saint who continues to pray and serve the church.” The pope said almost when he ended his pastoral ministry in 2012: “The prayers of the elderly can protect the world and may help the world more than the hard work of many people.”
Pope Francis mentioned the example of the blessings of the rich and the rich. Although he lived in a retreat in Algeria, despite the loneliness of the desert, he made people see, “Pray for the poor of the world and truly become a universal brother. “And sisters” is possible. The Pope finally prayed that “each of us can learn to repeat to everyone, especially to younger people, the comforting words we heard:’I am with you every day.'”
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