Our throwaway culture that "poisons the world we live in" abandons the elderly, dispossessing them of everything. The consequences are fatal, not just for the elderly -- who begin to doubt if they "deserve" to live -- but for all of us, who are tempted to hide our vulnerability.
This is Pope Francis' warning as he continued on June 1, 2022, his general audience series on the elderly.
"We are all tempted to hide our vulnerability, to hide our illness," he said, because "we fear that they are the precursor to our loss of dignity."
"The whole of society must hasten to take care of its elderly – they are its treasure! – who are increasingly numerous and often also the most abandoned," the Pope urged.
Cowardice: Our speciality
The Pope said that taking advantage of, or abandoning the elderly is "a form of cowardice in which we specialize in this society of ours."
He lamented those who cheat the elderly out of their savings or other rights, but also decried the family's role in this "cruelty":
But God is there
Nevertheless, the Pope's exhortation was also a call to hope because as Psalm 71, read at the audience, attests, God does not abandon the elderly in their weakness. And in fact, the elderly in their frailty have an important lesson to share:
The Pope quoted St. Augustine who urges the elderly, "Fear not."
"Yea at that time in you will be the strength of Him, when your strength shall have failed,” Augustine assures.
The Pope said that this trust and abandonment is somehow a "magisterium of frailty."
