Next month, on Sept. 8, we will celebrate the Golden Jubilee of our Sister Rose Marie of the Sacred Heart. During the public Mass in our chapel, Sister Rose Marie will renew the vows she has so faithfully kept for the past 50 years. Such faithfulness is impossible without a deep love to sustain it. Fifty years encompasses two generations. If Sister Rose Marie had married, she would be a grandmother, and indeed Sister fits easily in the role of grandmother to the younger nuns in our community. (Our oldest Sister is 94 and she has been in our community for nearly 75 years, which qualifies her as our great-grandmother!)
Pope Francis has a deep respect for grandparents and in 2021, he began the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, set for the fourth Sunday in July. In his message for this year’s celebration, he wrote, “This year, the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly takes place close to World Youth Day. Both celebrations remind us of the “haste” (cf. v. 39) with which Mary set out to visit Elizabeth. In this way, they invite us to reflect on the bond that unites young and old. The Lord trusts that young people, through their relationships with the elderly, will realize that they are called to cultivate memory and recognize the beauty of being part of a much larger history.”
The theme of this World Day for Grandparents is “His mercy is from age to age.” In Sister Rose Marie, in our own grandparents, we see how God’s mercy has taken shape in the past, how it has touched the lives of those who came into this world before us. The French have a proverb: Si jeunesse savait, si vieillesse pouvait. “If youth knew, if old age could.”
The present is the time of action, the time when we “remember that our life is meant to be lived to the full,” as Pope Francis writes. It is a time open to the future, open to discovery. Yet there are some things that can only be known and understood through experience.
We who are young have not yet had the chance to grow through such experiences, but we can see in our parents and especially in our grandparents the wisdom that they have acquired through their own experiences. Such experiences are often painful, and when they share with us their experiences, we can come to share their wisdom without having experienced their pain.
Having parents, grandparents, great-grandparents shows us that we have roots. We are heirs to their memories. Someone without such roots, without the memories that have come down through the generations, is like a person with amnesia. Who am I? How did I get here? Why am I here? If I have no past, will I have a future? If I have no memories, can I dare to have any hopes? If all I have is the present, what do I have to stand on?
Parents pass on to their children the physical life that they have received from their parents, from our grandparents. Parents also pass on the knowledge and the faith that they themselves have received. People often come to the Carmel and tell us about the heartbreaking struggles that they are going through, the family ruptures, financial needs, job challenges, various problems that they face and with which they must deal. We listen and share their present suffering with them. Then we lead them to look at their own past: look at all the problems God has helped you with in your life. Look at the ways he has helped you through those struggles. He didn’t abandon you then; he won’t abandon you now. Your own past shows you that, in him, you have hope for the future.
Grandparents can share with us their memories of God’s help in their lives. In this way, they give us courage to go forward trusting in his graces.
Sister Gabriela of the Incarnation is a member of the Discalced Carmelites order in Flemington. Learn more at www.flemingtoncarmel.org.