You don't die because you have lost your memory or from a sprained ankle, but you die when you feel alone, orphaned of loved ones, without friends, without a purpose for living.
If we must rejoice and thank the good Lord for the phenomenon of aging, which is one of the great achievements of human history, we cannot let the will to live collapse, failing to understand how we can spend the years of elderly life.
A United Nations document states that, globally, life has increased by more than 20 years in half a century. «If life expectancy from birth in 1950 was 46,4 years, in the period 2005-2010 life expectancy from birth is 67,2 years. A subsequent increase is expected in 2050, reaching a life expectancy of 75,4 years for both sexes."
In Italy one person in 5 is over 65; one in 10 is over 75. Women represent almost 54% of the age group between 65 and 75 and almost 63% of those over seventy-five.
Old age is a gift, but also a challenge of our time; with respect to this reality, Christians must seize a resource.
Sacred Scripture does not provide us with many indications on how to live old age, but it tells us that the elderly person «is the symbol of the satiety of life. it is the sign of the fullness of God's knowledge, it is a question to our soul. The task of the elderly is to keep the memory alive for the new generations", without presumption, to help young people not to get lost in the jungle of lies, to nurture the heritage of tradition in the younger generations. Respect for the elderly person has always filled the future with hope.
In a recent conference on this new and renewed alliance of the Christian community with the elderly, Bishop Vincenzo
Paglia denounced the inattention of the Church which, after the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, fixed its attention and concern on the "youth issue", carving out for it a privileged space for the pastoral action of the community and "we did not ask ourselves what a 'pastoral action to help the elderly to live their faith even in the last years of their lives." On that occasion Msgr. Paglia proposed that the Christian community think about a concept of active aging which consists in knowing how to live with the weight of the years without letting ourselves be crushed, offering our own experience to the new generations as an accompanying viaticum and living the experience of intercessors, bridges of connection between the problems of daily living and the light of grace that illuminates even the twilight corners of human life. n