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Image: Colorized version of King Solomon in Old Age by Gustave Doré (1866);
a depiction of the purported author of Ecclesiastes, according to rabbinic tradition.
Pope Francis Catechesis 11 on Old Age – Wednesday, 25 May 2022
”If the elderly, keep intact their passion for justice,
then there is hope for love, and also for faith”
Dear brothers and sisters,
Qoheleth’s last chapter: (12:1-12)
Remember your Creator while you are still young, before the bad days come, before the years come which, you will say, give you no pleasure; before the sun and the light grow dim and the moon and stars, before the clouds return after the rain;
(Remember) the time when your watchmen become shaky, when strong men are bent double, when the women, one by one, quit grinding, and, as they look out of the window, find their sight growing dim.
(Remember) When the street-door is kept shut, when the sound of grinding fades away, when the first cry of a bird wakes you up, when all the singing has stopped; when going uphill is an ordeal and you are frightened at every step you take – yet the almond tree is in flower and the grasshopper is weighed down and the caper-bush loses its tang; while you are on the way to your everlasting home and the mourners are assembling in the street; before the silver thread snaps, or the golden bowl is cracked, or the pitcher shattered at the fountain, or the pulley broken at the well-head: the dust returns to the earth from which it came, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Sheer vanity, Qoheleth says, everything is vanity. Besides being a sage, Qoheleth taught the people what he himself knew, having weighed, studied and emended many proverbs. Qoheleth took pains to write in an attractive style and by it to convey truths. The sayings of a sage are like goads, like pegs positioned by shepherds: the same shepherd finds a use for both. Furthermore, my child, you must realise that writing books involves endless hard work, and that much study wearies the body.
To sum up the whole matter: fear God and keep his commandments, for that is the duty of everyone. For God will call all our deeds to judgement, all that is hidden, be it good or bad.
Pope Francis’ Catechesis
In our reflection on old age today we are dealing with the Book of Qoheleth, or Ecclesiastes, another jewel set in the Bible. On a first reading, this short book is striking and leaves one bewildered by its famous refrain: “Everything is vanity”, everything is vanity: the refrain that goes on and on, everything is vanity, everything is “fog”, everything is “smoke”, everything is “emptiness”. It is astonishing to find these expressions, which question the meaning of existence, within Holy Scripture. In reality, Qoheleth’s continuous oscillation (i.e. swinging) between sense and non-sense is an ironic representation of a knowledge of life that is detached from the passion for justice, of which God’s judgement is the guarantor. And the Book’s conclusion points the way out of the trial: “Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man” (12:13). This is the advice to resolve this problem.
Faced with a reality that at certain times seems to us to accommodate all the naysayers, reserving for them anyway the same fate – which is to end up in nothingness – the path of indifference may also appear to us as the only remedy to a painful disillusionment.
Questions like these arise in us: Have our efforts changed the world? Is anyone capable of validating the difference between the just and the unjust? It seems that all this is useless… Why make so much effort?
There is a kind of negative intuition that can manifest itself in any season of life, but there is no doubt that old age makes this encounter with disenchantment almost inevitable. Disenchantment comes in old age. And so the resistance of old age to the demoralising effects of this disenchantment is decisive: if the elderly, who have seen it all by that time, keep intact their passion for justice, then there is hope for love, and also for faith.
And for the contemporary world, the passage through this crisis has become crucial, a salutary crisis, why? Because a culture that presumes to measure everything and manipulate everything also ends up producing a collective demoralisation of meaning, (producing) a demoralization of love, (producing) a demoralization of goodness.
This demoralisation takes away our will to act. A supposed “truth,” which merely registers the world, also registers its indifference to opposites and delivers them, without redemption, to the flow of time and the fate of nothingness. In this form of it – cloaked in the trappings of science, but also very insensitive and very amoral – the modern quest for truth has been tempted to take leave of its passion for justice altogether. It no longer believes in its destiny, its promise, its redemption.
For our modern culture, which would like, in practice, to hand over practically everything to the exact knowledge of things, the appearance of this new cynical reason – which sums up knowledge and irresponsibility – is a harsh repercussion. Indeed, the knowledge that exempts us from morality seems at first to be a source of freedom, of energy, but soon turns into a paralysis of the soul.
With its irony, Qoheleth has already unmasked this deadly temptation of an omnipotence of knowledge – a “delusion of omniscience” – that generates an impotence of the will. The monks of the earliest Christian tradition had precisely identified this disease of the soul, which suddenly discovers the vanity of knowledge without faith and without morality, the illusion of truth without justice. They called it “acedia” (i.e. a kedos – a lack of care – more than laziness). And this is a temptation for everyone, even the elderly… But it is [a temptation] for everyone. It is not simply laziness; no, it’s more than that. It is not simply depression. No. Rather, acedia it is the surrender to knowledge of the world devoid of any passion for justice and consequent action.
The emptiness of meaning and lack of strength opened up by this knowledge, which rejects any ethical responsibility and any affection for the real good, is not harmless. It not only takes away the strength for the desire for the good: by counterreaction, it opens the door to the aggressiveness of the forces of evil.
These are the forces of reason gone mad, made cynical by an excess of ideology. In fact, with all our progress, with all our prosperity, we have really become a “society of weariness/fatigue”. Think about it: we are the society of weariness/fatigue. We were supposed to produce widespread prosperity but we tolerate a scientifically selective health market. We were supposed to have put an insuperable threshold for peace, but we see more and more ruthless wars against defenceless people. Science advances, of course, and that is good. But the wisdom of life is something else entirely, and it seems to be stalled.
Finally, this all-affective and un-responsible reason also takes away meaning and energy from the knowledge of truth. It is no coincidence that ours is the age of fake news, collective superstitions, and pseudo-scientific truths. It’s curious: in this culture of knowledge, of knowing everything, even of the precision of knowledge, a lot of witchcraft has spread, but cultured witchcraft. It is a witchcraft with a certain culture but that leads you to a life of superstition: on the one hand, to go forward with intelligence in knowing things down to the roots; on the other hand, the soul that needs something else and takes the path of superstitions, and ends up in witchcraft. From the ironic wisdom of Qoheleth, old age can learn the art of bringing to light the deception hidden in the delusion of a truth of the mind devoid of affection for justice.
Elderly people rich in wisdom and humour do so much good for the young! They save them from the temptation of a knowledge of a dreary world, devoid of the wisdom of life. And these elderly people also bring the young back to Jesus’ promise: ““Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied” (Mt 5:6). They will be the ones to sow the hunger and thirst for justice in the young.
Take courage, all of us older people! Take courage and go forward! We have a very great mission in the world. But, please, we must not seek refuge in this somewhat non-concrete, unreal, rootless idealism – let us speak clearly – in the witchcraft of life.
Summary of the Holy Father’s words:
Dear brothers and sisters: In our continuing catechesis on the meaning and value of old age in the light of God’s word, we now consider the Book of Ecclesiastes, with its proverbial refrain, “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (1:2). With great realism, the elderly author speaks of how easy it is to grow disillusioned with life and to give up the struggle to make our world a better place. That temptation, of course, is perennial; even today, great scientific and technical progress is often accompanied by a growing sense of disenchantment and resignation: we fear that justice and peace are unattainable goals. The Christian spiritual tradition speaks of the sin of “sloth”, the listlessness born of a loss of passion for our vocation to resist evil and to strive to grow in holiness and fidelity to God’s word and his promises for our world. Ecclesiastes rejects all such resignation and instead urges obedience to the commandments and trust in God’s saving plan. May his wisdom and experience be reflected in all those elderly persons who continue to put their faith in God’s word and its power to renew our lives and to change our world.
