Getting Older Is Wonderful

 

The instinct of conservation and the lack of faith, make us have horror of irremediable aging. We have made youth a myth. "Youth, divine treasure, said the poet, and losing youth we consider a drama.

It is sad to see mature and post-mature people, try to defend themselves from baldness, gray hair, wrinkles ... They do not, of course, manage to deceive anyone, least of all stop time.

All the plastic surgery operations they undergo, neither preserve the youthful beauty, nor subtract a single day from their advanced age. All these vein attempts to drink in the fountain of eternal youth only show that we have lost the meaning of life and death.

Age not only makes us put temporal things in their proper measure (something that young people have not yet learned) but they bring us closer and closer to God, our ultimate end. The elders have an advantage over the boys. They are already reaching their full realization; they are reaching the goal.

The great St. Paul writes to us: "That is why we are not discouraged. On the contrary, while our exterior is being destroyed, our inner man is renewed day by day. The light and soon-passing trial prepares us for eternity a wealth of glory so great that it cannot be compared. We, then, do not look at what is seen, but at the invisible, since the visible things last a moment and the invisible things are forever." (2 Cor.4,16-18)

And it is not that we meekly resign ourselves to the inevitable. It is on the contrary the joyful awareness that we are being called by God.Gray hair and wrinkles are the signs of this joyful calling. And diseases and ailments tell us the same thing: the goal is already near. Soon you will see God.

The great Saint Ignatius of Antioch, an old man on his way to martyrdom, joyfully advances to the encounter with God and writes to the Romans: "My love is crucified and the fire of earthly desires is no longer left in me; I only feel within myself the voice of a living water that speaks to me and says to me, 'Come to the Father. I no longer find delight in the material food or pleasures of this world."

How wonderful to come to understand that death is the beginning of true life and that all this has been nothing but an essay, a path, an invitation!