“I feel rewarded by those to whom I do ministry.” That’s what a retired woman active in a church in Lady Lake, Florida told me two weeks ago. The occasion was my visit to speak at her parish about aging and spirituality.
This woman, Marie by name, is one of an astonishing six hundred registered lay people who have signed up for ministry in the parish. And the number of distinct minis-tries in that place also amazed me, fifty in all. They range all the way from reaching our to people with AIDS to making rosary beads for people to use at prayer.
Marie appreciates the way people respond to her volunteer work. “There’s always someone to pat you on the back and say you did a good job,” she said with enthusiasm.
People like Marie make me feel justified in my constant message to retirees. I like to tell them that the best thing about retirement is that it gives you a chance to tend to your soul. Stepping out of the world of full-time paid employment presents a golden op-portunity for spiritual development.
It perhaps sounds like a cliché by now, but another woman says of her work as a lay minister, “How much more I gain from this experience than I ever give!” It lends meaning to her life in retirement to feel that what she does freely is so valued.
The volunteer lay ministers whom I met during my visit do not just reach out to others. They also are serious about prayer and other spiritual exercises. Hundreds of them come to church every morning to begin the day by turning toward God and offering praise and expressing their needs. This inner disposition of heart goes hand in hand with their active ministry.
The pastor of their church strongly encourages this ministry by lay people. In fact, he takes pride in having so many collaborators working with him. He has enough wisdom to see that he could not do it all by himself. He also presumably recognizes a special value in the exercise of the lay priesthood.
A young man who is employed as a religious educator for the parish assured me that most strangers who come to that church feel comfortable being responded to by lay people. That makes out of step a man who approached the parish one day and asked to see a priest. It just happened that no priest was available at that time. “What has our church come to,” the man said as he walked away shaking his head.
I would bet, however, that if this man were to allow himself to talk with lay staff members and volunteers he would go away happy with their readiness to respond to his needs.
Another woman with whom I discussed ministry told of stereotypes held even by old people themselves about their age peers. When she announced to a friend ten years older than she that she was going to a retirement community, that friend said: “I can’t believe that you’re moving there with all those old people.” Clearly the older woman did not realize the opportunities that her friend would find for ministry to others.
The residents of the retirement community that I visited spoke approvingly of a new means of staying open to the larger world. That new communication device is email. A man named Milton told me, “It’s shrinking the world.” He talks to people in Japan and other distant places. When he and his contact do not speak the same language, they simply wave to one another (don’t ask me how). It seems as if email has a spiritual potential that some pioneers have already used to the advantage of their souls.
Speaking of the ministerial ferment in her church, a woman named Chris said, “I really think that the Holy Spirit is at work in this. Seventy years old is young today. Some younger people have no idea of the productivity that is possible in old age.” By “productivity,” she clearly meant the work involved in ministry rather than simply being busy or working for pay.
To judge by contact with this particular church, I wonder if some older people are not pointing the way toward new possibilities for both their own fulfillment and the building up of the spiritual community.
Richard Griffin