A glorious beginning

Fr Augustine penned some words for a gathering of elderly clergy, probably in 2001.  They sit well alongside a letter that Benedict XVI has written in these past few days to a correspondent of the Italian daily newspaper, Corriere della Sera:

“Dear Dott. Franco,

I was moved that so many readers of your newspaper would like to know how I am spending this last period of my life. I can only say that with the slow decline of my physical forces, interiorly, I am on a pilgrimage towards Home. It is a great grace for me to be surrounded in this last, sometimes a little tiring, piece of road, by such love and goodness that I could not have imagined. In this sense, I also consider the question of your readers as an accompaniment along a stretch. This is why I cannot but be grateful, assuring all of you of my prayers. Best regards.”

Fr Augustine put it like this:

We are gathered here under the title of ‘sick and retired clergy’… a rather dreary title!

It is to be infected by the spirit of the world to think of our lives as running down to an end. In fact they are running up to a glorious beginning.  Death is not a climax, it is only a changing into a life to which we have been looking forward all our days; looking forward with eager expectation.

O grant us life that shall not end we say in so many collects and hymns.  In the Hail Mary we recall the ‘hour of our death’.

Retirement and sickness is a change of activity from when we were in a parish or engaged in some other demanding work.  It is the most important part of our priestly lives, when we begin to be very active, active in the field of prayer.  The whole world becomes our parish.  In prayer our eyes run to and fro’ through the whole earth.

We have the time to pray and so release streams of grace on the whole world.

Before we retired or became ill we were very active, almost overwhelmed with busyness and claims upon our time.  Our prayer life was often pushed aide. Oh yes, we had the Mass and we tried to struggle through the Office, but there was little time for more and perhaps that was our own fault and our vision of the priestly life had become lop-sided.

Now we have the time, but it can be difficult, almost like learning to pray all over again.

The High Priest of the Temple wore on his breast a tablet on which were inscribed the names of the Twelve Tribes of Israel; a visible reminder that he was above all else an intercessor.  We wear on our breast the tablet of the whole world to bear it in prayer.  Sickness and old age is the great time for intercession; every time we say the Lord’s Prayer we throw our arms around the world.

We must give long hours to intercession.  We must turn news into prayer and we must plan our time; it is a struggle and it can seem boring.  It can feel useless and sickness gives us glimpses of the Passion we would rather avoid, but the whole Church is waiting for its sick and retired priests to keep it safely hitched to heaven and this we do on our knees.

[Fr Augustine’s notes indicate that he went on to share his own personal experiences of how to give time to intercessory prayer.  He warns of the ‘snare of TV’ of falling asleep and encourages using the TV news.  He says, ‘I always pray before the Blessed Sacrament’.

[He reminds his hearers of using the power of sickness and disability to achieve good.  Fr Augustine presents an image of and old and sick Pope John Paul II, ‘broken and trembling, pushing a prayer into the Wailing Wall’ and the impact this scene must have had on viewers across the world.]

The image of Pope John Paul was far more powerful than if it had been as we first knew him, smiling, waving and full of vigour.  God uses the weak things of the world to confound the strong.