Pope: Visit grandparents, elderly, bring joy to their hearts

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — God wants young people to bring joy to the hearts of the elderly and to learn from their experiences, Pope Francis said. “Yet, above all, the Lord wants us not to abandon the elderly or to push them to the margins of life, as tragically happens all too often in our time,” the 86-year-old Pope wrote in his message for the Catholic Church’s celebration of the World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly. The message was released at the Vatican June 15 in anticipation of the celebration July 23. The theme for 2023 is “His mercy is from age to age” from the Gospel of St. Luke. The Holy Spirit “blesses and accompanies every fruitful encounter between different generations: between grandparents and grandchildren, between young and old,” the Pope wrote in his message.

“To better appreciate God’s way of acting, let us remember that our life is meant to be lived to the full, and that our greatest hopes and dreams are not achieved instantly but through a process of growth and maturation, in dialogue and in relationship with others,” he wrote. “Those who focus only on the here and now, on money and possessions, on ‘having it all now,’ are blind to the way God works,” the Pope said in his message. “His loving plan spans past, present and future; it embraces and connects the generations.” God calls on everyone each day to look to the future and “keep pressing forward,” he wrote.

Pope Francis holds the hand of an elderly woman during an audience with staff and managers of Italy’s national welfare system (INPS) at the Vatican April 3, 2023. The pope said a nation’s welfare and social service systems are a reminder that everything is connected and everyone is interdependent on each other, especially younger and older generations. CNS photo/Vatican Media

Pope Francis’s Monthly Prayer Intentions

Papal Intentions:

July

For a Eucharistic life. Let us pray that Catholics place at the center of their lives the Eucharistic Celebration, which transforms human relationships profoundly and opens up an encounter with God and their brothers and sisters.

August

For World Youth Day.

Let us pray that the World Youth Day in Lisbon will help young people to set out on the journey, witnessing to the Gospel with their own lives.

More than

Years Of Praying In Unity For The World

Many of the faithful are familiar with Pope Francis’ monthly prayer intentions, but many may not know that the history of monthly papal intentions had its beginnings in the south of France in 1844 with the founding of the Apostleship of Prayer by Jesuit seminarians.

In the late 1900s, Pope Leo XIII desired to participate in this initiative of Catholics dedicating all they do in their lives to spiritually supporting the mission of the Church through prayer.

Pope Leo incorporated the Apostleship as a special mission of the Pope under the care of the Society of Jesus and began to commend monthly prayer intentions to the Apostleship, expressing his concerns for the Church and the world and asking all Catholics to pray for those intentions.

In 2016, Pope Francis renamed the Apostleship to the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network and made it a Vatican foundation.

Their mission is to mobilize Catholics through prayer and action in response to the challenges facing humanity and the mission of the Church. These challenges are presented in the form of papal prayer intentions.

Today, the Pope’s prayer intentions reach millions of Catholic worldwide, in great part though digital communication and social media initiatives, including The Pope Video, a global initiative created in 2016 which has garnered 200 million views across all the Vatican’s social networks, and is now broadcast in more than 23 languages.

Father Frédéric Fornos S.J., International director of the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network, explains the importance of the Pope’s intentions being conveyed in all languages and cultures: “The Heart of the Church’s mission is prayer, Francis tells us. Praying is entering into loving communication with the Father.

“This is a profound, intimate relationship, and there is no better way to speak to Him than in our own language, just as Jesus himself said, in his own Aramaic tongue: ‘Abba,’ ‘Father.’

“In order to pray for the challenges facing humanity and the Church’s mission, there is nothing better than to follow the prayer intentions of the Pope in our own language. Each of us prays in our own language while we are all united through prayer.”

To learn more about the Pope’s Worldwide Prayer Network visit www. popesprayer.va.

To watch the Pope’s prayer intentions, with archives back through 2016, visit https://thepopevideo.org.

Our Lady of the Visitation, you who left in haste towards the mountain to meet Elizabeth, lead us also to meet all those who await us to deliver them the living Gospel: Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord! We will go in a hurry, with no distraction or delay, but with readiness and joy. We will go peacefully, because those who take Christ take peace, and welldoing is the best wellbeing.

Our Lady of the Visitation, with your inspiration, this World Youth Day will be the mutual celebration of the Christ we take, as You once did.

Make it a time of testimony and sharing, fraternization, and giving thanks, each of us looking for the others who always wait. With you, we will continue on this path of gathering, so that our world will gather as well, in fraternity, justice and peace.

Help us, Our Lady of the Visitation, to bring Christ to everyone, obeying the Father, in the love of the Spirit!

July 9, 2023

Brothers and sisters, if we think about it, our lives are filled with miracles – they are filled with deeds of love, signs of God’s goodness. Before these, however, even our hearts can remain indifferent and become habitual, curious but not capable of being amazed, of allowing themselves to be “impressed”. A closed heart, an armed heart, that does not have the capacity of being amazed. To impress is a beautiful verb that brings to mind photographic film. This is the correct behavior before God’s works: to take a photo of his works in our minds so it is impressed on our hearts, to then be developed in our lives through many good deeds, so that this “photograph” of God who is love becomes ever brighter in us and through us.