Being called to the bedside of a sick, dying person, or celebrating a funeral rite in the home of a deceased person, surrounded by numerous family members, is part of the mission of a priest. In Latin America, where I was for about 20 years, it happened to me often.
This past year, however, working as an associate pastor in a parish in the Le Marche region, I was able to visit many elderly people, entering their homes more frequently and systematically. I visited about seventy people between eighty and one hundred years old once a month for a year, with a rather varied range of psycho-physical conditions. I listened to them, brought them the sacraments and from these encounters, I drew many lessons.
When I enter an elderly person’s home, I do not take my phone with me or look at my watch. I immediately send a clear message, “I’m only here for you.” Thus I leave the convulsive time of the world and its hectic pace outside the door. Not only that. I enter another dimension of time, that of the home of the elderly. It is the time of short, formulaic prayers repeated thousands of times a day, slow rhythms of prayer, hours marked by rosaries, chaplets, and religious celebrations broadcast on various television channels.
The time of the elderly and of their homes is also, naturally, the time of memory. Their rooms have an unmistakable characteristic. They are full of photographs. Normally, I look at them and speak about them together with these people and their relatives.
Alberto was more than one hundred years of age. I say “was” because he has passed. I went to see him a few times before he died. He was a very serious man. He had worked a lot, he had been in the war. Once, after his confession, given my passion for history, I committed the error – only in a manner of speaking – to ask him to tell me some stories from his life during the Second World War. And he expounded, almost minute by minute, with an extraordinary abundance of details, the things that he had been through. This meant that my visit to his room was lengthened by another two hours!
Listening to him speak, I understood that the episodes he narrated were tied by a single thread, that of Providence. And I learned yet again that my life too has its own profound unity. The phases of existence, the unexpected changes of direction, are not the scattering splinters from a meaningless explosion but the pieces of a unitary design of God, who directs everything towards its end. My life is not an enigma to fear but a mystery to discover.
I understood that the episodes he narrated were tied by a single thread, that of Providence
Many of the houses I visited are multi-generational, designed to accommodate fathers, sons and grandchildren. Visiting them, one gets a sense of an interesting cross-section of the generations. Sometimes one notices the presence of inevitable tensions. One very often grasps the immense gap between the solidity of the fathers’ faith and the lukewarmness of that of the children and grandchildren.
However, these multi-story houses, housing various generations, have also been for me the setting where I have admired heroic, uplifting sacrifices: sons, daughters, but also daughters-in-law, who have been caring for their elderly parents or husbands’ relatives for years.
The homes I visited are also this: the stage for a daily, silent, mysterious offering that sustains the world
Gelsomina is more than 90 years old. She no longer speaks, although she still recognizes her loved ones. She cannot ingest solid food. Not even the body of Christ. Three times a day, her daughter, with great charity, prepares a vegetable smoothie for her and injects it into the IV tube so that the old woman can continue to live. She has been doing this for about 20 years, and every day for 20 years she has been taking care of her, washing her, cleaning her, caring for her.
The homes I visited are also this: the stage for a daily, silent, mysterious offering that sustains the world but counts for nothing according to the mentality of that same world. No one talks about it and no one praises it. Only God sees it and recognizes it. Through such weakness, something of God’s power is manifested, of the One who offered Himself for our salvation. Thus, the meaning of my priesthood is also clarified and deepened. I am just the one who brings Christ’s power into homes, the power of the One who saves all and forgives all.
