Story by Joe Pisani
As we get older, we seem to pile up loss upon loss in life. We lose our jobs, we lose our health, we lose our friends, and sadly, sometimes we lose our sense of purpose. At the end of the day, it becomes hard to have joy and just as hard to have hope.
Several years ago, a priest friend of mine was reassigned from parish work to become the chaplain at a nursing home, and his pastoral responsibilities seemed to be turned upside down. It wasn’t easy to adapt from working with youth and young families to caring for the frail elderly, who in many cases had been sent there against their will.
He went from counseling young people setting out in life to trying to give the elderly a reason for living with hope when they could see none. Many of them were sick and dying, and his conversations often reflected their loneliness:
“Father, my daughter put me in here and never comes to visit me.”
“Father, why can’t I go home and live with my family?”
“Father, I have no one left. What am I going to do?”
“Father, my wife died, and I have no reason to keep on living.”
There was desperation, there was despair, and he sometimes had a difficult time trying to console them.
He wondered how Mother Teresa did it. St. Teresa of Calcutta, who spent decades caring for the sick and the dying and the abandoned. A woman who saw Christ in all of them and who helped them realize that despite their situation and their suffering, they were loved — they were loved infinitely, more than they could possibly imagine. It was Mother Teresa who said, “Let us touch the dying, the poor, the lonely and the unwanted according to the graces we have received and let us not be ashamed or slow to do the humble work.”
The elderly have so many stories of pain and suffering, physical, emotional and spiritual. They are all carrying a cross of some kind. They want to tell us their stories and they want us to listen, which is a lesson for not just priests and religious, but especially young people.
That was the lesson my friend learned. It wasn’t always easy, but he sat with them whenever they say, “Father, help me, I’m so sad.”
In November 1986, long before the ravages of age and illness began to affect him, St. Pope John Paul II, while on a pastoral visit to Australia, went to a home for the aged cared for by the Little Sisters of the Pope.
“To all of you who care for the elderly I say yours is not a service that is limited to physical and material things,” he said. “You have the precious task of helping the older members of the community to turn their later years into a time of fulfillment and completion. It is a time when they should integrate the joys and sorrows, hopes and anxieties of life – which the elderly feel in a particularly sensitive way – into a vision of life in which they acknowledge God’s providence and rely totally on his mercy and love. For this reason, you must always approach your task with love and respect, which you must renew daily in the certainty that Christ repeats to you those words in the Gospel, ‘you did it to me.’”
Earlier this year, my friend was celebrating his 25th anniversary Mass, and all the residents came out to share his joy. They came in their wheelchairs; they were led one by one into the chapel by the staff and the volunteers. They knew it was a special day for this priest who always took the time to listen to them. This man, who wasn’t prepared for the new work God had for him, when he was reassigned from the parish to the nursing home.
Sometimes, probably more times than we’d like, God sends us not where we want to go but where he needs us to go.
“We learn things sometimes by reading books, by watching movies, by experiences, but these people have taught me a lot about how to be a better person,” Father told me. “Being here I realize how fragile we are and how much we need to trust the Lord, especially when everything can suddenly change in your life because of, say, a stroke or sickness. And I am meant to be here because after 25 years as a priest, I know the Lord doesn’t make mistakes.”