“My child, help your father in his old age, and do not grieve him as long as he lives; even if his mind fails, be patient with him; because you have all your faculties do not despise him. For kindness to a father will not be forgotten, and will be credited to you against your sins; in the day of your distress it will be remembered in your favor.”
These words date from around 180 B.C. and appear in a book called Sirach (also called Ecclesiasticus). Protestant tradition groups this work among the apocryphal books of the Bible, whereas the Catholic Church considers it an authentic part of the Hebrew Scriptures. In any event, Sirach belongs to the category of Wisdom literature and is grouped with other such sacred writings.
What has prompted me to focus on these words was their proclamation in the liturgy of the Eucharist in which I took part this past Sunday. They struck me with special force on this occasion, sounding altogether modern to my ears, as if they were written by someone with current gerontological consciousness. They seemed to speak to a situation facing adult children of aging parents all across America.
They also made me reflect on my own situation, standing on the brink of old age as I do, and gradually becoming better acquainted with some of the ills that flesh is heir to. Inevitably, I also thought of my only child as I wondered what role might await her when physical decline changes the conditions of my life. The ancient words of the author Sirach struck me forcibly in their exhortation to compassion on the part of adult children confronted with parental need for support.
The reference to the father’s mind failing sounds especially modern. The writer seems to speak as if he knows about the widespread dementia that has afflicted so many older Americans. To him, as to us, it strengthens the case for reaching out to help the older family member.
Unlike most contemporary books dealing with care of aged parents, this ancient sacred writing invokes divine rewards for such caring. Responding to parents this way, the author promises, will lead to forgiveness of sins. God himself will be minded to discount the wrongs done by those who reach out to their father and mother when it comes to a crisis or before that time.
Sirach also suggests that when those adult children themselves grow old and need help, God will remember the way they helped their parents. This promise, of course, includes both parents; though the passage quoted at the beginning mentions only fathers, other lines extend the same considerations to mothers too.
In our time, taking care of parents has become a normative stage in the life course of many, if not most, adults. The time comes, often in early middle age, when grown-up sons and daughters are confronted with the need to respond to their parents’ changed situation.
Often this happens when a sudden crisis hits, such as father or mother suffering a stroke or losing a partner to death. Then the family must get involved and take some responsibility for the well-being of the older person.
Most adults when they think of this situation associate it with the word stress. They know from the experience of others or some of their own how difficult it can be to take on the caregiving of older family members. Especially when they may already have responsibility for their own children, the burden can seem insupportable.
However, thinking about the situation exclusively in terms of burden and stress obscures invaluable benefits that can come from the experience. I like to quote Mary Pipher on this subject:
“Parents aging can be both a horrible and a wonderful experience. It can be the most growth-promoting time in the history of the family. Many people say, ‘I know this sounds strange, but that last year was the best year of my parents’ lives. I was my best. They were their best. Our relationships were the closest and strongest ever,’ or, ‘The pain and suffering were terrible. However, we all learned from it. I wouldn’t have waned things to be different.’”
After going through this experience herself, Pipher came to understand it as a crucial opportunity for younger adults to grow up. Caregiving of older family members, in this framework, emerges as a precious occasion for maturing and becoming better persons by reason of having assumed the burdens of their elders.
This latter way of looking at the experience clearly differs from that of Sirach but remains in harmony with it. Both authors stress the benefits of helping relationships between the generations. I take inspiration from the two of them and reflect on their words to help me appreciate even more one of the most important silent happenings in contemporary American life.
After the death of great French thinker and inventor, Blaise Pascal, one of his servants discovered hidden within the lining of his master’s coat a scrap of paper on which were written secret words that would live on.
These are the burning words that he had written in 1654, 345 years ago this month:
“Fire: God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of philosophers and thinkers. Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.”
These words, known as “The Testament,” witness to a vision this great Frenchman had of God’s real presence in his life. For him, God was no abstraction nor a being reserved for deep thinkers. Rather, God is available to every human and loves each one of us intimately.
Pascal’s words loom large in Philip Zaleski’s introduction to The Best Spiritual Writing of 1999. Professor Zaleski sees in them a sublime example of spiritual writing and an appropriate lead-in to the selections that follow.
Professor Zaleski came for a presentation at the public library in my community three Saturdays ago, along with two authors who contributed essays to this volume and one whose essay appeared in last year’s collection.
What a bonanza for fellow seekers to find on the panel writers who are known for their insights into the spiritual life!
One of them was Thomas Moore, author of Care of the Soul and other best selling books that have won him recognition across America. To meet and talk with him I took as a privilege because of my respect for his thoughtful probings of modern people’s desire for transcendence.
In his presentation, Thomas Moore told a story from the Zen tradition. One day, a Zen master is walking along a road and sees a temple that has fallen into rack and ruin. He determines to get it fixed so announces that on the next Saturday he will set himself on fire before the whole community.
He tells people who wish to see him burn that they should bring donations for restoration of the temple. As everyone watches, a priest comes forward with a torch to set the master afire.
“Wait,” says the master, “I see bodhisattvas (enlightened persons) in the sky – they’re telling me it’s not my time yet.
“Leave your offerings – I’ll be around next week.”
The moral of this tale, according to Thomas Moore? Vitally important though it is, “don’t take our spirituality too seriously.”
Another presenter, Harvard Divinity School professor Kimberly Patton, read a reflection focused on the birth of her daughter as an event filled with spiritual meaning. She made her own the words of a lawyer in the television drama “Chicago Hope” who had adopted a child with a severe heart problem. The lawyer, in response to a surgeon who asks how he can possibly manage this situation, answers: “I was never alive before.”
In becoming a new mother, Professor Patton learned things “that current social wisdom can never give us.”
Ultimately she realized that “God wants nothing less than our complete rebirth.” With this realization comes a stunning insight: “What better tool than a child who shatters our self-centered, fear-driven egos and causes, through Love’s great compulsion, our complete submission?”
Surprisingly enough, the third presenter, Andre Dubus III, also focused on childbirth. For him, the birth of his daughter was an event filled with emotions that, in a conversation with his father and brother, he expressed through his tears: “Now the walls of my heart seemed to fall away completely and become a green field within me.”
On this day of his daughter’s birth, he felt new certainty about the future, a certainty not available “without the horizonless love and attendant faith and hope that opens up in us when we are given the gift of children.”
In concluding the discussion, Professor Zaleski observed that “the western world is now in reaction against the attempt to suppress spirituality.”
He also thinks it characteristic of our time that activities not previously seen as related to spirituality now bring people closer to the soul. Such activities as walking in the woods are now recognized as capable of producing in people a deeper appreciation of the sacred.
In Professor Zaleski’s view, it is important to see that spirituality is “a response, not a construction.” It is the human recognition that the whole world is filled with holiness.
Richard Griffin