Lent 2003 --
Reflection
Life, Dignity and Hope
Fifth Sunday of Lent
Scripture Readings
Jeremiah 31:31-34
Hebrews
5:7-9
John 12:20-33
By PAULO EVARISTO ARNS
For many decades, the Brazilian Conference of Catholic Bishops has
offered a theme to be studied and acted upon during Lent. All Christians are
invited to participate. It is called the Fraternity Campaign. Some themes have
been about the family or land reform. Others have been ecological. But most
often the themes have been about the groups of people who are more or less
marginalized in Brazilian society.
We have centered on the poor, on the Afro-Brazilians, on the
Indians and on the role of women in the church and in society. This year,
during Lent 2003, we have been reflecting on the role of the aged in our
society.
Brazil has always been a very young country. The large rural
population had need of sons and daughters to till the land. With the passage of
time, our country has become urbanized and the great majority of families live
in large urban centers or moderately large cities where there is more
possibility of finding jobs.
This has changed our
population. For the first time in our history, we have more middle aged and
aged people than we have children. Also, in the rural areas, before television,
the aged were venerated because, in the evenings, they would gather the
youngsters and transmit the history of the region and of the family. Today the
young people prefer to see action movies on TV, especially if there is lots of
violence. If the aged complain, they are even more marginalized.
In preparing for this year’s Lenten campaign, I read a book
of quotes by older people. Some describe with humor the situation of many
senior citizens. For example: “The four stages of man are infancy,
childhood, adolescence and obsolescence” Or: “Old age is when you
know all the answers but nobody asks you the questions!”
Also, in large families there is always room for one more. In our
small nuclear families, every space “belongs” to someone. Many
elderly people are abandoned or put in the care of untrained people who have no
patience with the limitations of age.
In a world that worships speed, instant communication and
production, who can support the slow, unsteady steps of the aged, their hearing
problems and their unproductive (according to our culture) lives?
The book I mentioned above quotes the actress Bette Davis as
saying: “Old age is not for sissies!” The aged have difficulty with
family members and also in commercial establishments, such as banks and post
offices. Our postmodern world is organized by and directed at the young and the
swift.
More than 30 years ago,
Simone de Beauvoir wrote that the situation of the aged was a scandal in
France. French society closed its eyes to all the abuses and dramas it
didn’t want to see: abandoned children, young delinquents, the physically
or mentally deficient and the aged. The last case, she states, is the most
difficult to understand. If we don’t die young, all of us are destined to
become old. Why don’t we understand that the treatment of the aged today
determines our own future?
De Beauvoir calls attention to the fact that the elderly, with
some exceptions, usually don’t “do” what society considers
useful. They have to be defined by their existence, their “being” and
not by their praxis.
For most young people, adolescents or adults, old age inspires a
biological repugnance. It is a psychological form of self-defense. If we are
young and strong, we do not accept a future when we will be old and weak. Our
rejection of our own future fate reflects on our way of treating the aged we
come into contact with.
Most adults treat their aged parents with a form of camouflaged
tyranny. Usually, they don’t give direct orders; instead, they use shady
maneuvers. They surround their aged relative with an accumulation of attentions
that paralyze any personal development on the part of the old. They treat them
with ironic benevolence, exchanging amused glances with other younger adults.
They lie to the elderly because they see them as useless beings who no longer
contribute to the progress of our capitalistic world.
We have read articles in our
newspapers explaining that in the United States, 44 percent of the middle aged
are being tugged in two directions: They need to care for their children under
21 as well as their aged parents. Low-income minority groups suffer the most in
this situation.
At the same time, a federal study in 2002 showed that 90 percent
of the nursing homes in the United States are inadequately staffed. The vast
majority of the 17,000 nursing homes have too few workers, and this puts the
elderly residents at risk for bedsores, infections, dehydration, malnutrition
and pneumonia. If this is true of the richest nation in the world, what can we
say about nursing care for the aged in the Third World?
Also, experts say that millions of older Americans face greater
risks of misdiagnosis, misuse of prescription drugs and other medical problems
because only about 9,000 doctors -- less than 2 percent of the 650,000
physicians in the United States -- specialize in geriatric medicine. Under my
health insurance plan, here in São Paulo, there is not one doctor
specialized in geriatrics. There are 10 million senior citizens in Brazil who
not only do not have enough to eat; they do not have the means to buy the
medicines that would make their old age bearable.
St. John presents Nicodemus as elderly when he went to seek out
Jesus at night. Since in the first-century life expectancy was from 40 to 50
years old, “elderly” would be our middle age. But Nicodemus’s
question is important for us all: “How can a man be born again when he is
old?”
Jesus answered him that we can be born again through the Spirit of
God. No matter how old we are, the Spirit leads us to a new life of goodness,
love, affection and compassion. Children, young people and senior citizens
alike are all part of God’s family. When we are born again in the Spirit,
we respect the life, the dignity and the very existence of those around us. The
Bible insists that only those who love, respect and care for their parents will
know happiness in this world.
The very heart of Jesus’ ministry on earth was the practice
of inclusion. Many of the religious of his day thought that sanctity depended
on excluding all those who thought or acted differently from them.
For Jesus, the only way to ensure the conversion of all was to
include the weak, the sinners, and the outcasts of his time around the same
community table. The Pharisees were the most progressive theologians of their
day. They criticized the conservative Sadducees and the imperialism of Rome.
But their search for sanctity was based on the exclusion of all those who
thought or acted differently.
On this date in 1930, Mahatma
Gandhi began his peaceful revolt against British imperialism. Just last week we
remembered Anti-Child Prostitution Day. The United Nations thinks there are 7
million child prostitutes in the world. Next week we have Holocaust Remembrance
Day, the tragedy that caused the death of at least 6 million Jews.
What does all this mean? It means that the 20th and 21st centuries
have not only excluded the aged as useless. Imperialism has impoverished and
excluded a large part of the world’s population. Much of the despair in
the world today has imperialism as its cause.
Our children are as marginalized as our aged. If not, there could
not possibly exist 7 million child prostitutes. Every year in Brazil,
well-dressed tourists from Europe and North America are arrested for having
sexual relations with children in the most beautiful resort towns on our coast.
Six million Jews were killed in the 1930s and ’40s in Europe.
Along with them, millions of homosexuals, gypsies and religious and political
opponents of fascism were also killed.
Today’s liturgical readings give us hope for the future. God
will make a new covenant with us if we radically change our way of thinking and
of acting. His compassion is so great that he will change our hearts of stone
into living organs that can love without frontiers of age, of race, of religion
or of gender.
But the grain of wheat of our cultural conditioning has to die.
Our generation will leave much fruit for those who come after us if we remember
that we cannot continue to treat those who are “different” from us as
if they were less human than we are.
I would like to end this article with two quotes. The first is
from good Pope John XXIII: “Human beings are like wine. Some turn to
vinegar, but the best improve with age!”
My last quote is from the Fraternity Campaign of this year:
The Beatitudes of the Aged
Blessed be those who understand my slow steps and my shaking
hands.
Blessed are those who notice that my ears have to strain to hear what
they are saying.
Blessed be those who perceive that my eyes are clouded and
my reactions are slow.
Blessed are those who look the other way when I
dribble at the table.
Blessed be those who please me with a smile, giving me
time to talk about things of no importance.
Blessed are those who never say:
“You’ve told me that a thousand times!”
Blessed be those who
know how to talk about what happened in the past.
Blessed are those who make
me feel that I’m loved and not abandoned.
Blessed be those who
understand how hard it is for me to carry my cross.
Blessed are those who
help me make that last journey to the Promised Land, treating me with love and
tender care.
Cardinal Paulo Evaristo Arns is the retired archbishop of
São Paulo, Brazil.
National Catholic Reporter, March 28,
2003
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