Forever will I seek the Lord even when I am alone

Forever will I seek the Lord even when I am alone 

It may appear that loneliness is a destitute existence especially with so many seniors living without family connections.  In the early 1900’s it wasn’t odd to see many people dying at young ages due to disease and lack of  medical advances we now take for granted.  However, now, 2024, the luxury of having science as a premise for medicine has no end to its influx in adding many years to seniors' lives. That scenario, as great as it is for many people, can also find a downside as many live far beyond the previous expectations of an aging population. 

One day after Mass I walked with an elderly woman who was in her 90’s and telling me how she moved to our neighborhood to be with some of her earlier friends who now have passed away.  At that age, she said, “living at her age where all of her family and older friends have all passed away, she finds that luxury of living past the expectations of the golden years has become a very lonely life.”  If it wasn’t for a large contingent of children and grandchildren living near us my wife and I in our middle and late 80’s would also create a sense of loneliness.  We thank God for our good health and the blessings of a large family.  

There was a time we considered looking into a residence for seniors.  When touring the facility what we viewed was the same at all of these institutions; many elderly sitting around in wheelchairs and sleeping without anyone to speak with.  This is not to refer to a horrible situation, but a reality that without family nearby the daily trek of just sitting can become a lonely existence.  

The presence of God is always found when anyone would take some time in their busy lives to make a quick stop and just say hello to these citizens who may have taught us, built our homes, or in some way helped to move our lives in a positive manner;  one day in the past.  We speak for God and bring a happy moment from God’s presence when we spend even one passing moment to God’s love, through us.

However, we don’t need to go to a residence for seniors to share the loneliness from a single and empty life for many.  Taking someone to Church on Sunday, asking them if they need groceries, or their lawns mowed.  As many lonely lives are all around us, there are more ways you or I can find a way to enter into their emptiness and fill that void with God’s love through our still viable lives.  

Statistics are innumerable as to the loneliness that surrounds our very neighborhoods.  Sometimes, these opportunities present all of us a way to exercise our baptismal promises by sharing the gifts the Holy Spirit gave us to share with those much older than us. 

Perhaps the one way to evangelize is not explaining God or the Church to seniors, who could tell us in more ways than we are able.  But to just take their empty lives and surround that shell that has lost its comfort and slip our own viability into the crevices of forgetfulness and short-term memory for a word of comfort and a feeling of joy one more time in their life.  

Ralph B. Hathaway