Holy Grandparents

 Just recently, Our Holy Father Pope Francis has declared that the fourth Sunday of July each year would be a World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly.  That Sunday has been chosen because of its proximity to the Feast of Sts. Joachim and Anne, the grandparents of Jesus.  Pope Francis also spoke of the elderly Simeon and Anna in the temple who encountered the Blessed Virgin and St. Joseph as they carried the Infant Jesus into the temple to be presented to God His Father.  He noted, “the Holy Spirit even today stirs up thoughts and words of wisdom in the elderly.”  He also said that the voice of the elderly “is precious because it sings the praises of God and preserves the roots of the peoples.”  The elderly, “remind 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.”

Our gratitude to the elderly in our midst should be great.  They have given so much of themselves and they deserve our love and support.  I am sure that we have all had some experience of grandparents and other elderly individuals in our families or our parishes that have inspired us and taught us by their fidelity to God in their lives of prayer and sacrifice. 

It has been said over and over again that during the time of the Communist persecution of the Church in Central and Eastern Europe and throughout the entire Soviet block, it was so very often the grandparents or other elderly relatives who taught the children their prayers and the basics of the faith.  When churches were closed and priests and religious were not permitted to proclaim on the Gospel openly, it was grandparents, parents and others like them who stepped up to the plate.

We have all known elderly men and women in our parishes who were like Simeon and Anna in the temple. Just as those holy two who met Jesus in His Father’s house, so, too, those “holy ones” in our parishes always are at Mass, always praying before and after Mass, always at every novena, Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament and always the first to volunteer to help with any parish activity.  How many of them teach CCD, help at fish fries, take Holy Communion to the sick and shut-ins, and pray rosary after rosary for so many others.  What a gift they are to us!
           
Often they live absolutely heroic lives. Many times on very limited resources and separated from loved ones they live quiet but generous lives thinking of others before themselves and remaining faithful in coming to Mass and confession.  If we want to know what evangelization looks like, we need only look to them.
           
I grew up in an area where devotion to St. Anne was very popular.  Every July we went to all nine days of the Novena in honor of St. Anne that was offered in so many churches.  There was something about the Grandmother of the Lord Jesus that inspired faith in people of all walks of life.  I knew a couple that had a severely disabled daughter who could do practically nothing for herself in her early years.  Through the love of her parents and countless prayers to St. Anne, she became more and more capable of walking, talking, and even got to the point of working in a sheltered workshop as a young adult.  Yes, her parents took her doctors and hospitals for help.  But they also took her to the statue of St. Anne in church and sought the intercession of the Holy Grandmother of Jesus Himself.  This young lady’s mother and father would always say, “We cannot thank good St. Anne enough for what she has done for our Cathy!”
           
That is what the Feast of Sts. Anne and Joachim and the Church’s World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly should remind us of.  The elderly in our midst are powerful signs of the dignity of every human life, even when close to the end of a person’s earthly pilgrimage.  They remind us that every human life, from the moment of conception until natural death, must be loved, cherished, protected, and respected. Yes, every person deserves this love, like the preborn, like young disabled Cathy, like the elderly in our midst, like Sts. Anne and Joachim!  Holy Grandparents of Our Lord, pray for us and inspire us to love and protect all life as a gift from God!

Most Reverend William J. Waltersheid
Auxiliary Bishop of Pittsburgh