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Illustration: Christ talking with Nicodemus at night
by Crijn Hendricksz Volmarijn (circa 1601 –1645)
Pope Francis Catechesis on old Age No. 13
St Peter’s Square – Wednesday, 8 June 2022
Catechesis on Old Age: 13. Nicodemus. “How can a man be born when he is old?” (Jn 3:4)
Dear brothers and sisters,
Among the most relevant elderly characters in the Gospels is Nicodemus – one of the Jewish leaders – who, wanting to know Jesus, went to him at night, although in secret (cf. Jn 3:1-21). In the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, the core of Jesus’s revelation and his redemptive mission emerge when he says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (v. 16).
Jesus says to Nicodemus that to “see the kingdom of God”, one needs “to be born again from above” (cf. v. 3). This does not mean starting over from birth, of repeating our coming into the world, hoping that a new reincarnation will open up the chance of having a better life. Repeating that makes no sense. It would, rather, empty all meaning out of the life we have lived, erasing it as if it were a failed experiment, a value that has expired, a wasted void. No, that’s not what this is, this being born again that Jesus speaks of. It is something else. This life is precious in God’s eyes – it identifies us as beings who are loved tenderly by God. This “birth from above” that allows us to “enter” the kingdom of God is a generation in the Spirit, a passage through the waters toward the promised land of a creation reconciled with the love of God. It is a rebirth from above with the grace of God. It is not being reborn physically another time.
Nicodemus misunderstands this birth and calls it into question using old age as evidence of its impossibility: human beings inevitably get old, the dream of an eternal youth permanently retreats, culmination is the destiny of any birth in time. How can anyone imagine a destination that takes the form of birth? This is how Nicodemus thinks and he cannot find a way to understand Jesus’s words. What exactly is this rebirth?
Nicodemus’s objection is very instructive for us. We can, in fact, turn it upside down, in the light of Jesus’s word, with the discovery of a mission proper to old age. Indeed, being old is not only not an obstacle to the being born from above that Jesus speaks of, but it becomes the opportune time to illuminate it, disassociating it from being equated with lost hope. Our epoch and our culture, which demonstrates a worrisome tendency to consider the birth of a child as the simple matter of the production and biological reproduction of the human being, cultivate the myth of eternal youth as the desperate obsession with an incorruptible body. Why is old age not appreciated in so many ways? Because it bears the undeniable evidence of the end of this myth, that makes us want to return to our mother’s womb always to return with a young body.
Technology is fascinated by this myth in every way. While awaiting the defeat of death, we can keep the body alive with medicine and cosmetics which slow down, hide, erase old age. Naturally, well-being is one thing, the myth that feeds it is another. There is no denying, however, that the confusion between the two is creating a certain mental confusion in us. To confuse well-being with feeding the myth of eternal youth. Everything is done to always have this youth – so much make-up, so many surgical interventions to appear young. The words of a wise Italian actress, [Anna] Magnani, come to mind, when they told her she had to remove her wrinkles and she said, “No, don’t touch them! It took so many years to have them – don’t touch them!” This is what wrinkles are: a sign of experience, a sign of life, a sign of maturity, a sign of having made a journey. Do not touch them to become young, that your face might look young. What matters is the entire personality; it’s the heart that matters, and the heart remains with the youth of good wine – the more it ages the better it is.
Life in our mortal flesh is a beautiful “unfinished” reality, like certain works of art that exert a unique fascination precisely due to their incompleteness. For life down here is an “initiation”, not the fulfillment. We come into the world just like this, like real people, like people who advance in age but who are always real. But life in our mortal flesh is too small a space and time to keep it intact and to bring to fulfillment in the world’s time the most precious part of our existence. Jesus says that faith, that welcomes the evangelical proclamation of the kingdom of God to which we are destined, contains an extraordinary primary effect. It enables us to “see” the kingdom of God. We become capable of truly seeing the many signs of the approximation of our hope of the fulfillment, of that which bears in our life the sign of being destined for eternity in God.
The signs are those of evangelical love illuminated by Jesus in many ways. And if we can “see” them, we can also “enter” into the kingdom through the passage of the Spirit through the waters that regenerate.
Old age is the condition granted to many of us in which the miracle of this birth from above can be intimately assimilated and rendered credible for the human community. It does not communicate a nostalgia for a birth in time, but of a love for our final destination. In this perspective, old age has a unique beauty – we are journeying toward the Eternal. No one can re-enter their mother’s womb, not even using its technological and consumeristic substitute. This is not wisdom; this is not a journey that has been accomplished; this is artificial. This would be sad, even if it were possible. The elderly person moves ahead; the elderly person journeys toward the final destination, towards God’s heaven; the elderly person journeys with the wisdom of lived experience. Old age, therefore, is a special time of disassociating the future from the technocratic illusion of a biological and robotic survival, especially because it opens one to the tenderness of the creative and generative womb of God. I would like to emphasize this word here – the tenderness of the elderly. Watch how a grandfather or a grandmother look at their grandchildren, how they embrace their grandchildren – that tenderness, free of any human distress, that has conquered the trials of life and is able to give love freely, the loving nearness of one person to others. This tenderness opens the door toward understanding God’s tenderness. This is what God is like, he knows how to embrace. And old age helps us understand this aspect of God who is tenderness. Old age is the special time of disassociating the future from the technocratic illusion, it is the time of God’s tenderness that creates, creates a path for all of us.
May the Spirit grant us the re-opening of this spiritual – and cultural – mission of old age that reconciles us with the birth from above. When we think of old age like this, we can say – why has this throw-away culture decided to throw out the elderly, considering them useless? The elderly are the messengers of the future, the elderly are the messengers of tenderness, the elderly are the messengers of the wisdom of lived experience. Let us move forward and watch the elderly.
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 words spoken by Jesus to Nicodemus: “No one can see the kingdom of God without being born anew” (Jn 3:3) by water and the Holy Spirit. This spiritual rebirth does not negate or detract from the value of our earthly existence, but points it towards its ultimate fulfilment in the eternal life and joy of heaven. Our age, with its frantic pursuit of the myth of eternal youth, needs to relearn this truth and to see every age of life as preparation for the eternal happiness for which we were created. Jesus tells Nicodemus: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish, but may have eternal life (v. 16). The elderly, through their faith, wisdom and experience, can bear convincing witness to the presence of God’s kingdom in our midst and the authentic meaning of our earthly existence as a foretaste of that true “eternal youth” which awaits us in the new creation inaugurated by Christ and his Holy Spirit.
Footnote: (John 3:10-31)
There was one of the Pharisees called Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, who came to Jesus by night and said, ‘Rabbi, we know that you have come from God as a teacher; for no one could perform the signs that you do unless God were with him.’ Jesus answered: In all truth I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above. Nicodemus said, ‘How can anyone who is already old be born? Is it possible to go back into the womb again and be born?’ Jesus replied: In all truth I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born through water and the Spirit; what is born of human nature is human; what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be surprised when I say: You must be born from above. The wind blows where it pleases; you can hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. ‘How is that possible?’ asked Nicodemus. Jesus replied, ‘You are the Teacher of Israel, and you do not know these things! ‘In all truth I tell you, we speak only about what we know and witness only to what we have seen and yet you people reject our evidence. If you do not believe me when I speak to you about earthly things, how will you believe me when I speak to you about heavenly things? No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Son of man; as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so must the Son of man be lifted up so that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him. For this is how God loved the world: he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. For God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but so that through him the world might be saved. No one who believes in him will be judged; but whoever does not believe is judged already, because that person does not believe in the Name of God’s only Son. And the judgement is this: though the light has come into the world people have preferred darkness to the light because their deeds were evil. And indeed, everybody who does wrong hates the light and avoids it, to prevent his actions from being shown up; but whoever does the truth comes out into the light, so that what he is doing may plainly appear as done in God.’
