A day to appreciate and pray for grandparents and the elderly will be celebrated with an archdiocesan Mass and local observances on Sunday July 25. Pope Francis earlier this year created World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, to be celebrated this year on the Sunday closest to the feast of Saints Joachim and Anne, Jesus’s grandparents.
The Archdiocese of Washington’s celebration will center on a 10 a.m. Mass on July 25 celebrated by Cardinal Wilton Gregory at the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, which also will be livestreamed. All Catholics are encouraged to participate in some way, and the Vatican announced that a plenary indulgence for doing so is possible. Pastoral resources prepared by the Vatican are available in English and Spanish.
In a column he wrote soon after the Vatican announced the new observance in February, Cardinal Wilton Gregory reflected on a recent online gathering with old friends, many of whom are grandparents. “Listening to them, I began to understand better my own sheer delight in engaging the children of the Archdiocese of Washington in schools, at liturgy, and during other social encounters,” he wrote. “You’ve perhaps heard the reference attributed to grandparents: ‘If I would have known that grandchildren were going to be so much fun, I would have had them first!’ For anyone fortune enough to have known a grandparent, they probably could wax eloquently on the sheer delight of visiting and spending time with those special folks.”
In a message for the observance released in June, Pope Francis wrote to his age peers, saying that God is close to them and still has plans for their lives. The statement also is available in English and Spanish.
"I was called to become the bishop of Rome when I had reached, so to speak, retirement age, and thought I would not be doing anything new," said the pope, who is 84 now and was elected when he was 76.
"The Lord is always -- always -- close to us. He is close to us with new possibilities, new ideas, new consolations, but always close to us. You know that the Lord is eternal; he never, ever goes into retirement," the pope wrote in his message.
The Vatican also announced in June that people who attend a Mass or other celebration for the day, "devote adequate time to actually or virtually visiting their elderly brothers and sisters in need or in difficulty" or join in prayers for the elderly July 25 can receive a plenary indulgence as long as they fulfill the usual requirements of also going to Confession, receiving the Eucharist and praying for the intentions of the pope.
The indulgence also is available to "the elderly sick and all those who, unable to leave their homes for a serious reason, will unite themselves spiritually to the sacred functions of the world day, offering to the merciful God their prayers, pains or sufferings of their lives," the Vatican said.
Catholic News Service reported in June that Cardinal Kevin J. Farrell, prefect of the Dicastery for Laity, the Family and Life, encouraged people repeatedly to focus on “tenderness” in celebrating World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly. Cardinal Farrell, a former auxiliary bishop for Washington, put the celebration in context of the coronavirus pandemic and the toll that has taken on family life and loneliness.
"Tenderness is not just a private feeling, one that soothes wounds, but a way of relating to others, which should also be experienced in public," Cardinal Farrell said. "We have become accustomed to living alone, to not hugging each other, to considering the other as a threat to our health. Our societies, the pope tells us in 'Fratelli Tutti,' are now fragmented."
"Tenderness has a social value," the cardinal insisted. "It is a remedy we all need, and our elderly are those who can provide it. In a frayed and hardened society emerging from the pandemic, not only is there a need for vaccines and economic recovery -- albeit fundamental -- but also for relearning the art of relationships. In this, grandparents and the elderly can be our teachers. This is also why they are so important."
