Seventy-Six and Growing

Pope Francis I, it has repeatedly been said, is a pope of firsts: the first Jesuit, the first from the Americas, the first non-European in ages, the first to be ordained after Vatican II, and the first to take the name Francis.He’s also seventy-six years old. Not a first there. The Catholic Church knows something.

It’s not secret that we live in a culture that’s obsessed with youth. Botox, anti-wrinkle creams, hair dye, and trendy clothes can make (or possibly "fake") us look years younger. And that, of course, is a cultural value.

“Never trust anyone over thirty,” it was once said by those who eventually turned thirty-one and changed their minds. I’ve also heard, “Anyone over thirty still working for a living is a chump.” We salute those who either retire young and wealthy or at a young age take over huge responsibilities. A forty or thirty-five year old pope—that would be something!

Not really.

There is a great deal to be said about age, experience, and wisdom, things that only come with the passing of time. Someone may be “wise beyond his/her years,” but there are deficiencies in our wisdom that only years fill up. A forty-year old may be "wise beyond her years," but nonetheless lacks the experience and perspective that go with the territory when you're seventy-six.

As far too many of his peers have settled into mediocre, largely sedentary, and in many cases self-consumed lives of retirement, Francis I has taken on the challenge of his life, one that will require the kind of wisdom, experience, spiritual maturity, and virtue it has taken him all of his seventy-six years to develop.

May God bless him.