Elders' obligations

This reflection is really about and for elders….for people like myself. 

Anthropologists pay a lot of attention to elders.  It seems that our society so values youth that we often fail to see where the age and experience of older men and women can serve as valuable resources for younger men and women.  But sometimes I think that the frequent failure of young men and women to honor their elders has as much to do with the fact that elders need to make sure they are worthy of respect.   I am an elder and I accept what Saint Paul says to Titus (and to me, ultimately) about being consistent with sound doctrines in our behavior such as the ones he identifies.  No one disagrees that it is good to be temperate, dignified, self-controlled, faithful, loving, chaste, enduring and reverent; nor should we be slanderers or addicted to drink. 

Paul describes holiness as the sharing of our strengths and giftedness with others. Those with more experience should serve as examples of holiness. It's the ministry of evangelizing by mentoring.

Mentoring involves noticing which people God has placed in our path on the journey to heaven, then choosing to walk beside them. Sometimes they're crippled and need us to push their wheelchairs down the road until they can walk. Sometimes they're limping along and need us for a crutch until their legs get stronger. Sometimes they just need us to hold their hand as they make their way through a scary or confusing forest.

We have much that the Holy Spirit wants to offer them through our help, taken from our own healing, growth and learning processes. God has placed people around us who need what we can give. If we don't mentor them, they suffer from the absence of what we could provide. The consequences of this could be dreadfully long-lasting. We'll have to explain to Jesus why we refused to help when he comes to take us home to heaven.

We need to tell our own stories about trusting in God.  That is the power of faith stories.  Teaching younger people to do good instead of evil isn’t going to work if we take credit for our own goodness by bragging about how we followed the rules.  We’re just not that good and everyone has different challenges.  But if we share that our goodness comes from recognizing that our salvation comes from the Lord, we become more human and more credible.  And that should make us humbler.  None of us has earned the right to shame other people because of our own goodness.  I think Jesus, in Luke’s Gospel, is trying to tell us that we are good because we are obliged to be, not so we can pass judgment on others to secure a higher place for ourselves. 

Jesus warns us that if we do nothing more than our duty -- fulfilling our minimum Christian obligations so that we get to heaven -- we are "useless servants." Wow.  Let's become truly useful to our Lord! Let's not just go to Mass to fulfill our Sunday obligation; let's uplift the person who sits next to us. I pray that each of us can find a way to share our experiences of trusting in the Lord during our own struggles with a younger person who is struggling to do good.