At the dawn of 2021, concerned about the rebound of the pandemic.

This quite different period served to preserve our enthusiasm although we were not able to participate in the usual meetings and encounters, and also served to give a better meaning to what we do, overcoming the simple repetition of our habits.

Knowing that we are among friends of the Movement comforts us, and while we leave aside visits and meetings, spirituality is always there, we demonstrate it by moving facing all the needs that appear. Everyone does it according to his ability, by phone or by making himself available in difficult times, because these aids have a lot of value. A hand can help you get up and a smile can be as valuable as the vaccine we are promised.

I am asked what sense I find in old age, what it means to me to have become one of these elderly people, with all the richness of the years, as Pope Francis says, also experiencing the vulnerability of our human condition.  I believe that we have not lived in vain, we have used our "outside man" for family and work, but step by step we have seen grow and purify our "inner man", led by the discreet and close God who takes all his time, the time it takes to understand him and let him do .

Everything that has happened to us and continues with this pandemic indicates a change of era. We ask the Lord to deliver the world from this evil, but we also ask him to allow us to discover what we need to change.  May we attain true love stripped of selfishness, ambition to possess, sometimes at the cost of the suffering of other brothers and sisters. May love, in relation to the earth with respect for the environment, also reflect respect for all.  There will be no change of era if we remain the same.

Young people have all the strength, but they ask us to show them what life has taught us, the wealth of years that has accumulated in us as in a library.  The meaning to be given to our old age is how to pass on to young people the experiences of our lives, to prevent them from starting from scratch and repeating our mistakes, so that they take over, the torch lit.

The spirituality we must bear witness to as member of LA will serve us to better understand what we are doing, to renew our enthusiasm by relying on the hope of change for the better. We lived before the pandemic, but we did not know how to read the warning signs of a change...

Our Movement will also have to convert to serve a new reality; what we bear - this wealth of years we will have to adapt it to new times, to a society with other values, and to a church that is definitely poor, like that of the Gospel.  We were pioneers at Life Ascending when humanity became aware of the aging population, of this new stage of life where the elderly lived longer without feeling truly "old" If we are lucid, it may be that today we are returning to be pioneers among those who are beginning to enter this new era of humanity. 

Father Oswaldo Montferrand

Vida Ascendente Argentina