Grandmotherhood: A Mission of Mercy
Luciano Tosco, grandfather, former educator and manager Social and Educational Services, committed to promoting grandparenting culture and intergenerational ties
The Church’s World Days for All Grandparents and the Elderly (of course both genders), of which the fourth, also celebrated, I believe, “Universal Grandparenting,” as a vocation/mission to mercy, in charity, toward grandchildren and their parents.
Grandparents and the elderly largely identify with each other and share existential conditions: “…longevity has become mass and, in large regions of the world, childhood is distributed in small doses” (Pope Francis Audience February 23, 2022).
The vast majority of grandparents are part of the elderly; most of the elderly are grandparents by “descent” (parents of parents) and many by “acquisition.” That is, they are “Social Grandparents”: elders, uncles and relatives or volunteers from religious associations and communities involved with children and youth and/or in supporting their parents.
Net of differences in personal, social, cultural, territorial conditions and contexts, mercy, based on Pope Francis’ splendid Catecheses on old age is “embodied,” in a special and valuable form, in grandparents and the elderly. This is both as a witness of resource for active charity and of severe frailty to the point of non-self-sufficiency that always can offer, but mainly requires, mercy.
The vocation/mission of grandmotherhood in its intergenerational dimension is addressed in the theme of the first day (2021): “Your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your young men shall have visions, and your elders shall dream” (Joel 3:1). It expresses the memory of fulfilled and unfulfilled dreams, hopes and mistakes, to be handed over to the youth.
The theme of the third day (2023): “From generation to generation his mercy (Lk 1:50)” takes up a fundamental aspect of the vocation/mission of grandmotherhood: the link with the other two younger generations. albeit in the differences of roles and tasks (prophecy, vision, dreaming). A fruitful interaction in the transmission of culture, life and, for believers, faith.
Mercy, then, is treated in the second day (2022) whose theme, “in old age they will still bear fruit” (Psalm 92:15) points to works in that old age still offers gifts for others.
The theme of the fourth day (2024), “In old age do not forsake me” (Psalm 71:9), was particularly appropriate as it is placed in the common dimension of “Fruitful Fragility” of the condition of Nonnity.
Mercy
Mercy therefore indicates a feeling, a style of relationship that, eschewing calculation and personal profit, opens itself to availability toward material and spiritual help, with listening, generosity, giving, in essence love, to the point of “agape.”
Mercy acts with actions and behaviors of charity, care and help in the needs and wants of others, from the material (7 corporal works of mercy see: Gospel Matthew 25:35-36; Tradition; Catechism of Christian Doctrine St. Pius X No. 21) to the spiritual (see Gospel Luke 6:36-38 ; Tradition; Catechism of Christian Doctrine St. Pius X No. 22).
Declined in “grandparenting,” the “corporal” Works of Charity could be summarized, for grandchildren, as: caregiving with meals, home hospitality, homework support, accompanying them to school and outside activities. For their parents in help with: house cleaning, errands, shopping and meal preparation, sometimes financial support.
The grandparents’ works respond to a vocation and a mission that is connoted as a “relationship of the elderly grandparent” with the grandchildren.
A relationship of love, of attention to the essentials, in everyday life. Ability, suggested by experience and imposed by age, to “walk slowly” to savor greater meaning from fewer events.
Thus the time of the “Elderly Grandparent” is not Kronos, that “of the clock,” to use a happy expression of Pope Francis, but Kairos of the present and opportune moment, a slow time that allows one to grasp the essential even through the small things, made of listening, understanding, sometimes even intimate “complicity” with the grandchildren.
This relationship nurtures not only the works of practical hazing, but also those of “spiritual-educational hazing.” In summary, with grandchildren: Playing, reading stories, making memories of the past, trying to answer the famous and often difficult “whys,” pointing out rules, but also sometimes dispensing “vices,” learning from them about new digital technologies.
Mercy as a vocation/mission to share, listening in relationship, but also helping with practical aspects unites “Lay Humanists” and “Believers of Faith.”
For the former, it is embedded and resolved in the moral instance of categorical imperative and ethics of responsibility.
For believing Christians, mercy and charity are grounded in personal and communal relationship with Christ, to be reversed in life according to the Spirit. Christian ethics does not arise from a system of commandments, but is a consequence of our friendship with Christ.
This friendship influences life: if it is true, it is embodied and realized in love of God and neighbor (Pope Francis, Audience of 26 11 2008: The Doctrine of Justification: from Faith to Works. See also: Paul First Letter to the Corinthians 13: “…faith, hope and charity. But the greatest of all is charity!”; James, Letter ch. 2: ‘…faith: if it have not works, it is dead in itself…man is justified on the basis of works and not on the basis of faith alone.’)
Therefore, for believing grandparents, the Elderly Grandparent Report is enriched by the witness of faith.
The words of Pope Francis
Pope Francis identifies its value through the memory of life stories that “elders” pass on to the generation that follows: “Passing on the faith is not saying the ‘blah-blah-blah’ things. It is telling the experience of faith…and only those who have lived it can tell it well. That is why it is very important to listen to the old, to listen to the grandparents, it is important for children to interject with them” (Pope Francis, Audience of March 23, 2022: The Dismissal and the Legacy: Memory and Witness).
Words that remind me of pills of Grandma Cecilia’s “practical faith” summarized in: “Help thyself that heaven help thee” and of ‘folk religiosity’ by Grandma Anna: ”As God wills.”
Expressions witnessed in their “Elderly Grandparent Report” of faith “anchored” in the “Theophany of Relationship” in the Life, Death and Resurrection of Jesus.
On this year’s Day of Grandparents and Elders splendid and appropriate is the Prayer that calls for Charity in Faith, of the Works of Mercy starting with those closest to us (grandchildren and their parents):
“Lord, …you who never leave us alone, and accompany us in every season of life, do not abandon us, take care of us…. Your spirit of love conform us to your tenderness and teach us too to say, – I will not abandon you – to those we meet on our path.”
Seniors and Grandparents. Istat data and estimates years 2020-2023 in Italy
14 million elderly people over 65 in Italy of whom an estimated |
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| 10 million self-sufficient | 4 million non-self-sufficient | 2 million (15 percent of the over-65s) engaged in formal volunteer work in nonprofit organizations (1,200,000) or informal (800,000) for the benefit of others outside their families. Of these 600,000 care for children/youth (Social Grandparents) and 300,000 care for adults |
12 million grandparents/ mostly over 65 years old of whom |
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| 10 million care for grandchildren aged 0-14 several times a week | ||
38 billion annually the estimated contribution of grandparents to household budgets of which |
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| 14 billion to buy clothes, games, books, to pay for their grandchildren’s schooling or various activities, but also to pay bills, mortgage or house rent or grocery shopping | 24 billion as the “economic” value of hours freely devoted to caring for grandchildren | |
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