Lenten Message Personified

by Fr. Roger J. Landry - March 4, 2005

Each year of his pontificate, the Holy Father has written a Lenten message to guide and inspire Catholics throughout the world better to understand and live the meaning of this season. His 2005 message also provides the prism by which Catholics can better understand the significance of the rest of his pontificate.

This year's message was dedicated above all to the vocation of the elderly — especially of suffering seniors — within society and the Church. "If growing old, with its inevitable conditions, is accepted serenely in the light of faith," the pope writes, "it can become an invaluable opportunity for better comprehending the Mystery of the Cross, which gives full sense to human existence."

The terminally sick, who in some respects have entered an long existential Lent in longing preparation for an eternal Easter, provide all of us with a deeper wisdom of what's most important. "Knowledge of the nearness of the final goal," he continues, "leads the elderly person to focus on that which is essential, giving importance to those things that the passing of years do not destroy." Capable of a much deeper penetration into the mystery of death, the suffering elderly are given a "more profound knowledge of Christ dead and risen, who is the ultimate reason for our existence."

While the statement was written to guide all of us to recognize that "reaching old age" is a "special divine gift," one of its beneficial side effects would be for the Church to recognize that John Paul II's old age and even his infirmity are also special heavenly gifts to the whole Church.

We live in a culture that sees little value in old age and none in suffering. In many places of the world — from the Netherlands to Oregon, legally, and with increasing frequency illegally in other places — those with the Pope's health difficulties are voluntarily or involuntarily put to death. Even when their lives are not immediately threatened, many see the elderly as a burden requiring too many sacrifices to care for. And to a modern mentality in which the logic of business efficiency has become a new morality, and telegenic gifts are increasingly valued, a person who struggles to get around, who drools, who has a tracheotomy and who now has difficulty even talking is someone whose leadership qualities have definitely expired.

For all of these reasons, John Paul II's highly visible witness about bearing suffering and senescence with dignity is so precious. But it has an even greater meaning within the Church.

Too many in the Church today — at every level, including high-ranking members of the hierarchy — view the Church too much as a business or even as a government. While the Church obviously has necessary institutional aspects to it, Christ did not come from heaven to earth to found a new multi-national corporation, but a FAMILY. This is one of the principle reasons why those who know John Paul II well insist that he will not resign his office. In a family, a father may get old, a father may get ill, but he does not resign his paternity. The papacy is not just a job, or a role one plays for a time, like the Church's CEO. Rather it's a paternal IDENTITY and John Paul II is not a dead beat spiritual dad.

Old age is an opportunity, the pope says, for "better comprehending the Mystery of the Cross, which gives full sense to human existence." John Paul II has found great meaning in his entering more deeply into the Mystery of the Cross. One lesson that he has drawn is that just as Christ did not come down from his Cross, neither will he come down from the Cross God has given him. He trusts that the Lord who called him to be St. Peter's successor will call him home when the time is right. With regard to the end of his papacy, he has left it to God, saying "thy will, not mine, be done."

The best way for us to react to the Pope's illness is to follow his example of trust in God and in his loving wisdom. Perhaps God thinks that the greatest service any pope could give the Church and the world today, when so many are pushing to kill the youngest human beings to harvest stem cells to try to cure people with Parkinson's disease and other maladies, is to have the most noticeable sufferer of Parkinson's in the world stand and say "no!" Perhaps Christ recognizes that the greatest witness to the value of old age and the true meaning of "death with dignity" is to have the Pope not just write about it, but show us with his body language.

Lent is the season, the Pope tells us in his message, to intensify prayer and penance, "opening hearts to the docile welcoming of the divine will." That's precisely what the Pope has been doing. May God help all of us do the same!

Father Roger J. Landry is pastor of St. Anthony of Padua in New Bedford, MA and Executive Editor of The Anchor, the weekly newspaper of the Diocese of Fall River.