I probably spend way too much time in my day-to-day life thinking about suffering. I’m of the “melancholic” temperament, after all. My better excuse, however, is that I’m Irish and we sometimes cultivate and keep close at hand what has been referred to as “the delicious misery of the Gael.”
But it is Lent, I tell myself, and this is the time of year we pray the Stations of the Cross, give alms and fast, doing without just a little so as to have at least a faint taste of the sufferings that so many others endure. These 40 days we may even meditate on the hard, uncomfortable facts of hatred and injustice, poverty and hunger that exist around us. During Lent, we do consider the faces of suffering.
I’ve noticed that in weekday Masses attendees are probably more than 50 percent seniors. Some are there way before the liturgy begins, as if anxious to take refuge in the sanctuary that the church offers. Others arrive to their usual places, for there is nothing quite like a familiar pew in a familiar church. They are mostly older couples, and often one is in better physical shape than the other. So as one struggles with physical mobility, the other walks slowly astride and practices patience. Then a day comes when one arrives without their spouse, and I begin to wonder if the absent one is ill or if the remaining one is now widowed.
I begin to connect the inevitable suffering of these devout older folks with their station in life: a time of transition and readjustment, of loneliness and sometimes befuddlement. But I notice, too, their strength and enduring faith, their determination to live, and even their joy as they visit with each other or with children and grandchildren. Perhaps they serve at the Friday Lenten fish fries or stay after Mass to recite the rosary or the Stations of the Cross. They smile with old friends in the narthex after Mass, charity written on their life-worn faces – their charity mitigating their pain and their loneliness by reaching out to others, doing for others, taking each moment as it is and as a prelude to a greater life with the Father, ultimately reunified with those they loved for so many years.
One of my favorite singer-songwriters is John Prine. He wrote a particularly poignant song, the chorus of which goes: “You know that old trees just grow stronger/old rivers grow wilder everyday/but old people grow lonesome/waiting for someone to say/hello in there, hello.”
The verses of this song strike at my heart. It’s like we make it through our time on earth holding on to some sort of elusive integrity, only to suffer later indignities as friends and family pass on, as faculties weaken and dim and young people condescend, blind to the experience and wisdom of this, the wincing time of life. I’m now old enough to taste that time, to anticipate its more potent presence in my life. But the chorus of the song isn’t quite accurate. Indeed, few old-timers grow wilder everyday, but, like the trees, many really do grow stronger – in their faith, their perseverance and their willingness to live on despite life’s difficulties.
Perhaps it’s the cumulative effect of receiving Christ in the Eucharist thousands of times over one’s life, the countless confessions, novenas and nightly prayers, all those difficulties over the years offered up for the poor souls. Perhaps because of all this, there is a often a quiet, foundational joy that walks hand in hand with whatever sadness and suffering is borne. Maybe it’s a love that comes from living the faith, from sacrifices that attach to the suffering we see on the crucifix above the altar.
In Lent we embrace more intensely the suffering of Christ, as we see it in His people. So many beautiful elderly ones seem to understand this as a matter of course. They suffer loss greatly and often, but they also take it in stride. If we dare to say hello, to speak to them from our hearts, we will certainly be touched in return and perhaps even hear a minute or two’s tale of lifelong love and abiding faith.
As I contemplate the coming of those years in my own life, I suppose what I would hope for in that time is that whatever wounds of age (emotional, physical, spiritual) I will have incurred, someone around me – maybe someone considering a small Lenten sacrifice, someone whose kindness might show in a sudden laugh or hug or prayer – will reach out to me and soothe the edges of that age-old melancholy.
And so I remember the last verse of John Prine’s song: “So if you’re walking down the street sometime/and spot some hollow ancient eyes/please don’t pass ‘em by and stare/as if you didn’t care, say hello in there, hello.”
Fred Gallagher is an author and editor-in-chief with Gastonia-based Good Will Publishers Inc.