The Elderly Women Of The Church

It had been a year, and so we gathered to pray and remember a life well lived. The four of us sat at the kitchen table, which was filled with pastries and fruit and white votive candles.

The widow was quiet as we began our prayer service. We started by remembering her husband, his life and his goodness. The memories flowed easily, as we had been neighbors and friends for years. There was humor and sadness, conversation and silence.

We read the words from John 14:1-6 that were said at his funeral.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in Me. In My Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to Myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way.

Thomas said to Him, “Master, we do not know where You are going; how can we know the way? Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

As we sat together on that grey spring morning, I was reminded of the elderly women of the early Church.

I wondered how they honored the sacred memories of their loved ones. Did they gather in their homes, and did they pray together on special anniversaries?

Did they tell their daughters and granddaughters what they were doing? What were their traditions?

In Romans 12, St. Paul explains the concept of the Body of Christ. We are one body in Christ, but there are many parts. And, just like our human bodies, the parts have many different functions.

How many times as Catholics have we sung the lyrics from Marty Haugen’s song? We are many parts, we are all one body. And the gifts we have we are given to share. May the Spirit of love make us one indeed. One, the love that we share; one, our hope in despair, one, the cross that we bear.

As the older women in the Church, we have spent years developing our gifts — both the Mary gifts and the Martha gifts — through our lives as wives and mothers, and now as grandmothers and great-grandmothers.

Many of us no longer have the daily care of children or the responsibilities of careers. Perhaps now is the time for us to focus on developing the same gifts as the elderly women of the early Church. Like many women my age, I’m still learning as I maneuver through this time of my life, but I know that our daughters and our granddaughters are watching us. What they see us do, they may emulate in 25 or 50 years. And their daughters and their granddaughters will be watching them.