How a team from Strasbourg celebrated the First World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly. 

The responsible of the team of the Christian Movement of Pensioners (MCR) contacted the responsible of Catholic Action for Children's (ACE) to define the content of a meeting between young people of the ACE and elders of the MCR. As the summer period did not provide the necessary conditions to celebrate the event, the decision was made to postpone it to September 11: it will be an opportunity for each of the Catholic action movements to restart activities and enter the year Amoris Laetitia. "Attention to the elderly is thus inserted into the usual fabric of our pastoral care," wrote Cardinal Farrell, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Laity, Family and Life.

To organize the afternoon meeting we were inspired by the national proposals of the RCM which suggested organizing a time of exchanges between elders and young people around an afternoon snack; the nearby start of the school year provided the theme. The  elderly people present were invited to talk about the school of their childhood; old  school materials were the subject of an explanatory presentation, the children even discovered  an  old oak school desk with its grooves for feathers and the location of the inkwell; Marie-Jo told the story of her first morning of school,very different from those of today; others, older, evoked "their school"  during the Second World War: no right to speak French, Germanization of their first name (thus Geneviève refused to answer "present" to the call of her first name transformed into Genova), school reports entirely written in German with subjects very different from those  of today.

With this meeting we wanted to respond modestly to the mission that the Holy Father entrusts to all the elderly: to transmit the roots to the young, to remember.

This time of encounter ended with the Mass of thanksgiving animated by the participants, old and young. The prayer intentions have given thanks for this time of renewed fruitfulness that old age must be,  for this link between generations. TheHoly Father strongly calls for an alliance between the young and the old; already in 2020, during the audience that concluded the Congress, he said: "The  elderly are the present and the future of theChurch... they are the future of a  Church that with young people prophesies and dreams! That is why it is important that the elderly and the young talk to each other"; the tone of which can be found in his message of 25 July: “Who better than young people can take the dreams of the elderly and turn them into reality? In our dreams of justice, peace and solidarity lies the possibility that our young people will have new visions and that together we will be able to build the future. “

Monique Bodhuin