In his message for the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, Pope Leo XIV said it is “never too late” to turn towards God. Source: EWTN News.
The Vatican yesterday published the Pope’s message for the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, which this year will be celebrated on July 26 with the theme “I Will Never Forget You”.
Reflecting on this theme, taken from a verse of the book of the prophet Isaiah, Pope emphasised that “these are words that fill us with comfort and hope.” He recalled the “painful feeling of being forgotten,” something shared by many people, especially the elderly.
In the face of this sense of abandonment, Pope Leo recalled that God’s love, which “forgets no one,” is also “an act of justice and a response to the anonymity in which human life all too often ends up lost.”
The pontiff turned his attention to elderly people who have been forgotten and who live in homes “where loneliness reigns” or in care facilities “where each person’s uniqueness risks being reduced to a bed number or an illness”.
He proposed the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly as an opportunity “to rediscover that the Church is called to be a mother to all and that at any age it is always possible to recognise ourselves as sons and daughters of God.”
He also invited this day to be “an inspiration for everyone, especially the young, to revive the beautiful custom of visiting their grandparents, the elderly members of the family, and even those who have no one to visit them.”
Leo said the Church “understands the suffering of her elderly members; she knows full well that they are all too often viewed through the lens of stereotypes and considered a burden”.
He noted in particular the weakening of family ties and the abandonment of many elderly people by children forced to migrate or to fight in wars.
He said the final stage of life “can become the right time to begin or resume a spiritual life” and to encounter God anew.
The Pope invited the elderly “not to feel embarrassed by the fragility that emerges” and to recognise that “we are always in need of one another and in need of attention and care.”
To God, he said, “we can now turn with filial trust in prayer. It is never too late to begin turning to him.”
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Pope Leo XIV comforts elderly suffering from loneliness: God’s love ‘forgets no one’ (EWTN News)
