Faith and Family / Sean Gallagher
Simeon and Anna can be reflected in encouraging elders at parishes
Sometimes the stories we read in the Scriptures seem far removed from our daily lives. They happened thousands of years ago in places far from our homes and in societies so different from the one in which we live.
But then other Bible stories seem to leap off the page as if they could be happening all around us here and now.
We’ll hear one such story proclaimed this Sunday as the Church observes the feast of the Presentation of the Lord. This is the feast that recalls how the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Joseph brought the Christ Child to the temple in Jerusalem and were met there by two elderly people, Simeon and Anna.
Both recognized the Christ Child as the long-awaited Messiah. Mary and Joseph, the Gospel of St. Luke tells us, “were amazed at what was said about him” (Lk 2:33).
For me, at least, this story from Luke (Lk 2:22-40) seems familiar because I have often seen reflections of Simeon and Anna in the many older members of parishes, often parents and grandparents themselves, who give encouragement to parents of young children in their faith community.
Parents of young babies know the great gift they’ve been given in their children. But the constant 24/7 care that their infants demand can make it easy for those parents to forget about the wonder they carry in their arms as they live through what my wife Cindy calls “baby bootcamp.”
They may drag themselves to Mass on Sundays, having been up half the night with their babies. Maybe that was how Mary and Joseph felt when they brought the Christ Child to the temple.
But then they sit down next to an older couple who smile at them and engage the baby, and maybe even hold him or her for a while during the liturgy.
Then, after Mass, the elderly couple might ask about the baby, praise him or her and give reassuring words to the infant’s parents. Maybe they show such interest in their young counterparts and their baby because they see in them an image of themselves when they were starting their family years ago.
Cindy and I were blessed by this happening to us many times when our five sons were newborns.
While the babies so often doted upon by older members of parishes are not the Messiah, they nonetheless can appear to these experienced parents as sign of God’s continued love for our world. They’re a grace-filled light of hope for the future for older parishioners who might have experienced some darkness in their lives.
Younger parents can also find hope in the bright faces of elderly parishioners as they take in their babies. That hope might be just for the next day, not for far into the future. The constant care that infants need can understandably shorten the vision of their parents.
The warm smiles and supporting words of older parishioners after a Sunday Mass might also be just what young parents need in those moments.
With our youngest son now being 11, Cindy and I are starting to become part of the cohort of older parents in our parish.
With the help of God’s grace, may Cindy and I, and all experienced parents in parishes, be like Simeon and Anna. May we help young parents be renewed in their amazement for the gift God has given them in their babies. †