BE CAREFUL ABOUT WHAT YOU THROW OUT

Today is the commenmoration of Sts. Peter and Paul.  The Holy Scriptures that are read on this day relate the story of Peter being released from prison by the angel of God.  Today, Pope Francis told the assembly in St. Peter's Square that Peter did not become a  hero becuse he escaped, but because he remained bound to the story of Salvation that he lived in the presence of God.  Paul also had experiences of capture and release, sone in the Promised Land and some in other places.  He, like Peter is revered not because he was smart enough to escape, but because he never ceased carrying the Story of Salvation to the People of God.

                                           Pope Francis and I are the same age

Interestingly enough, Pope Francis took this opportunity to make this exhortation to the world:

Pope Francis encouraged people to cherish the time they have with elderly family members, during Monday’s Angelus prayer in Saint Peter’s Square.

 The pope told the crowd not to toss out older family members like “waste material.” Rather, he said to “make a gift of one’s life.”

 “And this applies to everyone, to parents towards their children and children towards their elderly parents.”

 He said many elderly people are “abandoned by their families as if they were waste material.  This is a drama of our times: the solitude of the elderly, when children and grandchildren do not make their lives a gift for the elderly.”

This isn't the first time the pope has pushed for better treatment of the elderly. He did so in a 2015 general audience address.

In his address, he called a society that doesn’t help and reach out to its elderly “perverse.”

 “In a civilization in which there is no place for the elderly or they are discarded because they create problems,” Francis said, “this society carries the virus of death.”

 He said young people should not be taught to ignore the old “as if it were a disease to be avoided.”

 Pope Francis also pointed to what scholars call “the century of aging,” where there are more elderly people than children.

 “This imbalance challenges us,” he said, adding that the old are seen as a “burden, as dead weight.”

 “We are used to discarding people, we want to remove our growing fear of weakness and vulnerability; but in doing so we increase the elderly’s anguish over being barely tolerated and abandoned.”

 “God wants to help us grow in the gift; only in this way do we become great,” he said. “We grow if we give ourselves to others.”

I must admit that I have heard similar sentiments expressed time and again across the many decades of my life.  We grow old but the topic of the relationship between old and young is ever fresh.