Estimated and estimated. For a long time I wanted to talk to you about the movement of older people called creixent life. She was born in France in 1952, sheltered from the meetings of a group of retirees who met to pray and reflect, in the light of the Gospel, on the situation of marginalization with which they were treated socially. That initial concern is still valid throughout the world and the movement has become a shelter for this sector of society that is clearly marginalized. It arrived in Catalonia in 1984 and in our diocese in 1986. The Jesuit Lluís Antoni Sobrerroca, appointed first conciliar by Cardinal Jubany, wrote: «The spirituality of any Christian must always be to imitate Christ, his whole life. […] The spirituality of older people must lead them to know how to accept their reality with all its joys. The joy of being much closer than others to the experience of the Paschal mystery of Christ». That’s how it is. In a secularized world, the Christian depth of life must manifest itself from experience, an experience accumulated and dragged through the shadows and lights of a lifetime. This is the ground of sensitivity necessary to grasp the language of God, to see his constant presence, day after day, in the most irrelevant things.
In creixent life They use the expression “mysticism of Vida Creixent”, with which they express the will to live, as Christians, the age of old age from the fundamental pillars of the movement: “Friendship”, which is to welcome the other and love him. «Spirituality», which is living intensely the knowledge of God close to you and knowing how to discover him in the little things. “Apostolate”, which is to bear witness to the God encountered intimately and to whom older people feel ever closer. This mysticism is none other than having enough strength to listen to life, shut up when God wants to speak and capture his presence.
Western society has seen how in the last years of the last century and in the twenty-first century, the transformations have especially affected the elderly. Migrations, changes in the generational role, the redistribution of the population, the emergence of individualism and the cultural level have especially punished this group. And, furthermore, to drive the point home, the pandemic and its management have hit him especially hard. And the older Christians, who are the majority, need to assume the situation from the union, from the community, prayer and mutual support to overcome the problem: the concept of productivity and usefulness. Older people must assimilate a sudden change. And the older ones, with a Christian formation and life, feel far from the world.
In our country the movement has existed over the years, with greater or lesser strength, until today. Now, the time has come when a new impulse is necessary and, in fact, this path of resumption has already begun. I encourage you to get to know it and, why not, to be interested and participate. It is not in vain that our parishes and communities are the ones that can fill this movement committed to diocesan pastoral care with real content.
+ Joan Planellas Barnosell
Archbishop of Tarragona
Letter from the Archbishop of Tarragona: «We are not retiring from living, nor from believing»