The aged are to be protected, honored, and respected for they possess wisdom. Discovering the spiritual value of old age and growing older is becoming a priority. It can be a time of grace and salvation.
By teaching that service of the aged is service to Christ and that it can help the younger ones to grow spiritually, if they are not overburdened with the work and are listened to. Serving the aged members of our communities is a problem that must not be shelved for consideration in the future. Communities that abandon their old membes without a motive have no future. However, there is an exception when there are serious mental or psychological troubles.
This time of life means loss of identity, sacrifice, a test of free acceptance. It is a reckoning of the value of the human person above any achievement or performance. This attitude is no different from the way we accept the whole of our monstic life.
With aging, and the burden of age, there is risk of mature minds becoming set and predominating, that is, of leaving less and less room for new insights. .... There is an over-attachment to certain ways of doing things. When the average age of a community is rising, it tends to stagnate spiritually. An aging community needs help to face up to stagnation and to renew itself. The community must keep an open and creative mind. Live joyfully and be able to accept death. The eternal future of the people is much more important than the eternal future of a place! We are traveling toward eternal life before anything else.
Vladimir Gaudrat, Aging and the Renewal of Communities, CSR Volume 36.4, 2001
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