Excerpts from the Rome Congress:  The intergenerational

The content of the speeches made at the Congress of Rome on the pastoral care of the elderly often evokes the relationship between young and old; Here are some excerpts:

1)To show the crucial importance of this relationship, Cardinal Mendoça, archivist and librarian of the Vatican, recounts an experiment practiced in schools to teach children to make choices: a boat, carrying ten people and equipped with a lifeboat in which can only take place seven people, is sinking. What choices can you make?  The researchers noted that if there are grandparents among the ship's passengers, whether they are very advanced in age or in poor health, they are first on the list. What for? If grandparents are to be saved indisputably, it is because they are masters of a beautiful and rare art: the art of being; this art of being comes from a capital of wisdom and tenderness based on understanding what is essential in life and that young people want to save.

2) Marco Impagliazzo, president of Sant'Egidio, also highlights the grandparents' capacity for reception and tenderness: "young people discover in the elderly a direct, explicit affectivity that moves them, humanizes them and that they do not always find in their parents."

3) Maria Voce, drawing on her experience within the Focolari Movement, highlights the richness of collaboration between young and old that bears particular fruit in difficult times; Young people find strong benchmarks and patterns of loyalty in seniors that can help them look up; dialogue between generations is a treasure to be preserved and maintained.

4) Father Lucundo, a priest in Angola, observes that the traditions, the existential foundations and spiritual values that the elderly carried are no longer passed on to young people. A crisis of transmission that also affects our Western societies; Cardinal Mendoça reminds us that "transmission reveals to us that we are the expression of a precious heritage that transcends us: as elders we must explain to young people where they come from so that they have confidence in themselves, in their abilities."

5) Monique Bodhuin recognizes the need to get her grandchildren to discover "this treasure" that is faith. It is a question of answering the questions of young people, of exploiting the opportunities offered by daily life (beauty of a landscape, death of a loved one ...) to make them the source of an initiation to the presence of God in our life. The elderly have to be transmitters and awakeners in this matter.

At the solemn hearing that the Holy Father gave to the delegates, he stressed the richness of intergenerational sharing. The elderly "can be actors of an evangelizing pastoral, privileged witnesses of God's faithful love."

To conclude two sentences borrowed from the Holy Father: "The elderly are the present and the tomorrow of the Church... of a Church that, together with young people, prophesies and dreams."

"If there are no old people in your house, buy one because you will need him," the Holy Father told the young people of the Synod.

Monique Bodhuin