Fr Denis Hooper OSB
I have known my oldest friend since we were seven years old. There are two days separating our birthdays, he is the older – by two days!
Next month, please God both of us will be celebrating another significant birthday.
When we got to our 40th birthdays we scratched our heads and asked “how is it that we have come to the age of 40?” The same for our 50 th and 60 th birthdays – and now once again we ask the same question.
Simon and Garfunkle wrote a beautiful song “Old Friends”. The image in the song is of two elderly men sitting on a park bench on a bleak Autumn day in New York City.
And Simon and Garfunkle imagined what it might be like when they reach the age of the two old men. The words of the song are pretty stark:
“Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy”.
I suppose approaching old age it isn’t all that bleak – but old age creeps up on most of us – and when it does – we don’t feel that we are old.
I have a T-Shirt which says “I can’t believe I am the same age as old people”. I also have the usual “Grumpy Old Man” T-Shirt.
But getting old does have its lighter side. I went to an antique shop recently and they asked me to stay.
My sister said that at my age I should do something that I have never done before in my life. So I thought about it and decided to get a tatoo.
I went to the tatoo artist and asked if he had any suggestions. He said that he would tatoo my name and address on my forehead so that when I get lost they will know where to send me home.
I had an MRI done on my hip a year ago. When I saw the doctor, I told him “I suppose the MRI shows I have arthritis’.
He said “no, you have the early onset of rigor mortis”.
We get very much set in our ways the older we get and I think that there is a lot in today’s gospel that speaks to that reality. Even young people, even secondary school students can get set in their ways and very often, they don’t like change.
“This is the way we’ve always done it”.
“If it’s not broken, why fix it?”
Over the past week at mass we have been listening to various accounts of Jesus confronting Pharisees about their insistence on keeping to the ways things had always been done. There is nothing wrong with upholding traditions. There are so many things in our lives that
we owe to tradition. But for me the message of Jesus today is that the most important thing is not about blind adherence to the way we always did things. Times change. People change. The world
changes.
People can react to change by looking to the past and striving to go back there. All we have to do is to look at some people’s reaction to immigrants in this country. They blame them for disrupting our culture and traditions. And what of MAGA – as if there was some great
mythical time in the past that was better than the way it is now. There wasn’t. There isn’t.
Today’s gospel tells us that there never was a Golden Age and sometimes by sticking to the old ways we can justify putting obstacles in the ways of people’s lives. Jesus tells us that anything that gets in the way of our relationship with him and the Father – whether it be a tradition or not – must be avoided.
When I first came to Glenstal, Vespers on Sunday was at 4.00pm. Every other day Vespers was at 6.10pm. The reason for 4.00pm was that this was the time of Sunday Vespers in Maredsous Abbey in
Belgium. Glenstal was founded by Belgian monks from Maredsous almost a hundred years ago. And on Sundays, people used to take the train from Brussels to Maredsous for Vespers. The train arrived in the nearby station at 3.40pm and it took people about 20 minutes to
walk to Maredsous.
This tradition was carried on through to the Glenstal timetable.
Then people began to question the time of Sunday Vespers in Glenstal. Why 4.00pm? A carryover from the way things were done in Maredsous. Some traditions are accepted as the norm – even if they have no basis on present needs or realities. We all need to take stock every now and then – and in the context of today’s gospel especially, to examine things in our lives that get in the way of our relationship with God.
I will leave the last word to English writer Thomas Hardy,
“Time changes everything
Except for something inside us
Which is always surprised by change”