Word to the Wise
Saturday, October 31, 2020 - Saturday in the 30th Week in Ordinary Time
[Phil 1:18b-26 and Luke 14:1, 7-11]Ahd this I know with confidence, that I shall remain and continue in the service of all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that your boasting in Christ Jesus may abound on account of me when I come to you again. [Philippians]
Although I cannot claim to know what it is like to be imprisoned, what I have read about the experience is pretty terrifying. St. Paul experienced this more than once! For him, however, there was no asking, "Now what?" He fully expects to see the Philippians again (and he did). He simply sees his situation as just one moment in his ministry, but he also has a longer hope in terms of a reunion with Christ after death, and that reunion is very attractive to him. But as long as he is living, he has a duty toward those whom he has evangelized and he continued to exercise his role as a preacher and evangelizer right up to the time of his death in Rome. [Acts 28:30-31].
In my years as a preacher of retreats for priests, I would meet priests who have "retired from active ministry." Like all retirees, they differed in their understanding and adjustment. If they had been parish pastors, the constant challenges of parish life were what kept them going and now those challenges were no longer there. If they were professors in a seminary or other academic setting, the stimulus of helping others understand and learn would no longer be their daily challenge. (I rarely heard anyone claim to miss the administrative side of their ministries.)
I once gave a retreat for some priests of a missionary congregation who were mostly retired and living at a facility their congregation provided. Most of them had ministered in Asia and South America. Their lives now centered on the usual medical issues of aging, prayer, golf, reading, etc. Most of them missed missionary life. I noted that many of them spoke languages and dialects that might be of help to local Catholic hospitals or diocesan charity. Much of what I have read about "retirement" challenges the reader to be "generative" as a senior citizen and not to see retirement as an emprisonment, even if a pleasant one, for "has beens."
As St. Paul puts it, "Life is Christ, and death is gain," But, as long as one is still in this world, there are all those to pray for and to be "there for" in whom one has invested time and effort and love. The retirement cell cannot imprison hope and love. AMEN
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