A fine old man! How pleasant is the image that so common a phrase conjures up! The vigorous and healthy mind, its gentleness, its serene wisdom, its broad and easy tolerance, its discerning encouragement of others work, its power of delicate and appreciative sympathy, its sure experience which leaves it with knowledge yet without any tendency to dictate, its understanding of the difficulties of life, and its readiness to condone the faults of impetuous inexperience! How attractive to youth are all these features of the old! How inspiriting as the reward of years well and nobly spent! What fascination surrounds this figure of old age when it is dowered with all these prerogatives which imagination at once attaches to it. A fine old man! Beside this even the worship of childhood seems a sentimental dream. After all, children are attractive in spite of themselves. They do not try to worm themselves into our hearts: we call them affected when we find them making any such attempts. They are innocent from sheer impossibility of doing evil, they are trustful from inexperience, they are loving because their little hearts open as naturally and as unreasoningly as do the flowers. They have no wish in the matter. They are children; as such they charm, as such they appeal. But the old man who charms us has himself slowly gathered the treasures of his age. He has seen all things, and heard all things, and done all things, yet, through the whole course of his life, he has kept his faith from doubting man or God, his hope from losing courage, his love from all stain and all hardening.
A fine old man has passed by the ambush of young days. It was so easy to meet life with high hopes and high ambitions and wonderful trustfulness of human nature, so natural to bear all things and believe all things and hope all things; and then, when experience has made a man taste of the bitterness of life, when he has found disillusionments in others, disappointments in himself, it is as easy to become cynical in thought and speech. It was so hard when all our kindnesses were turned to evil account by others who did not realize the sacrifices we had made, and grumbled only that we had done so little, to remain through it all so glad to help, so eager to expose ourselves to be misunderstood, still ready to risk our own peace of soul to save another s. It is the hard discipline of the Christian life which entails love of the brotherhood, even when, or rather because, the brotherhood has shown itself to be unworthy of love. Of course, it never can so show itself, for if I realize that God loves each of us, then each of us must always be worth loving. But the difficulty is to keep this steadfastly in mind all the while that one is actually experiencing continual disappointments. Yet, indeed, in all these striving of faith, hope, and love is blessed reward even on this side of the grave. After we have avoided for so long the hardening, chilling, coarsening effect of sheer existence, we begin to enter into that last lap of life, serene and gentle and full of hope. It is the golden age of Christ, of those who have passed from death to life because they have loved the brotherhood.
But old age is not to be considered merely as a climax or a crown, nor does it seem to those who have reached it a time of peace. The temptations and follies that youth experienced haunt the steps even when old age has been reached. On earth is no peace, no triumph, only an unending struggle; so that in old age we know that care is required lest we fall. After all, the age that is pictured by the classic writers as the fine end of life can easily be replaced by a crabbed and selfish spleen, full of crotchets, full of fancies, requiring to be waited on hand and foot, living and battening on the lives of children, making grown-up sons and daughters who should earlier have made homes for themselves waste their full days of life on us. The Christian type of age which is full of faith and hope and love is not acquired without a long struggle; it means a determined effort to secure this genial frame of mind by forbidding the cynical view from influencing us. Yet even when old age has been reached the same difficulties are to be experienced. Even then the trouble is not over, nor are the dangers passed. Indeed, are not the passions of youth less full of peril than the lukewarmness of age, the indifference that comes from physical decrepitude? Old age is a thing apart, so much finer than childhood in that it has fought hard and weathered storms and can offer God work well done. Even should it follow upon a wasted and empty life, there is something still to be offered; it may not be worth much, but it is all we have with which to front eternity. After all, the most praised offering was the widow's mite, which can at least be the last tribute of our days.
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.