Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from You.”

An image from my first years as a priest in a lower Bronx parish remains vivid. I had been called to a tenement; ambulance personnel were preparing an elderly lady, all alone in the apartment, for transport to a hospital. She was distraught, teary and frightened. 

Adding to her distress was the fact that ambulance people were tying her with cloths to a straight-backed wooden chair, a necessity because of limitations in the building. I was probably more shocked than compassionate. My seminary education had been more about orthodoxy and law than compassion and if I’d had any human sensitivity, I would have accompanied her.

Though it may not seem so brutal, the lot of many elderly is similar: often bereft of family and friends of their age, casualties of economics, torn from the familiar, placed among strangers, no matter how caring, in a facility. Eventually the obituary will read: "The family would like to thank the staff of South Memorial Hospice for their compassionate care.” Very likely that would be true.

Take Alicia for example, who had fallen several times in her home. Alicia is one of these. In her upper 80s now, she is faced with trying to make new friends or watching more TV in one week than she’d watched the previous fifty years.

After a failed attempt to invite another resident to the snack room for coffee, Alicia is discouraged. How many such overtures to strangers can you make at 88? The Psalmist was there: “Friend and neighbor you have taken away. My one companion is darkness.” Ps(87)88:19 (Grail)

Is this old man or woman someone’s parent? She or he can feel not only uprooted but abandoned. What a huge difference a handwritten letter to open and re-read, a visit, a surprise, a phone call, the gift of a favorite snack or drink, would make.

Or to have some familiar person come and sit for a while, maybe read to them, reminisce or say a prayer. Or bring some photos of grandkids. A wordless touch, a smile may be all that’s needed. “I was in a nursing home and you visited me.” (Matthew 25)

Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.

Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”

Reply to Fr. Don at: DTalafous@csbsju.edu

Watch Daily Mass online at: SaintJohnsAbbey.org/live

Send your prayer requests to the monks