Cathedral community celebrates unique role of grandparents, older adults with ice cream social, blessed medals of St. Anne
DETROIT — The Grandparents Day celebration at the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament on Sept. 8 was a chance for the faithful to let their grandparents know how much they mean to them — and enjoy some ice cream while they were at it.
Admittedly, Deacon Mike Van Dyke worried he had already forgotten Grandparents Day earlier this year, when he was in the sacristy at Old St. Mary’s Church in Greektown.
The scare occurred when Fr. Godfrey Mgonja, C.S.Sp., a priest in solidum at Old St. Mary’s, asked him about a blessing for Grandparents Day on July 29, the fourth annual World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, a celebration instituted by Pope Francis out of pastoral care for the elderly.
Deacon Van Dyke grew concerned, thinking Grandparents Day was Sept. 8, and didn’t have anything prepared for Fr. Mgonja. His worries were alleviated when he learned the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops had received permission from the Vatican to observe the celebration in September, both to coincide with the secular celebration of National Grandparents (and the Elderly) Day in the U.S. and to avoid conflicting with the observance of Natural Family Planning Awareness Week, observed in the U.S. in late July.
Deacon Van Dyke gave Fr. Mgonja a blessing he could use in July, but shared his relief with the cathedral congregation as he delivered the homily.
“So in the spirits of Bill Murray and the movie ‘Groundhog Day,’ happy World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, again,” Deacon VanDyke said.
The Grandparents Day celebration at the cathedral included the distribution of medals of St. Anne, patron saint of the Archdiocese of Detroit and Jesus’ maternal grandmother, along with ice cream after Mass, as a way for the family to spend time together in the sun.
“Today is Grandparents Day, when we recognize the older folks who have what we just sang about — the faith of our fathers, our mothers, the faith that they have passed down to us,” said Fr. J.J. Mech, rector of the cathedral, who celebrated Mass. “Let us think of Sts. Joachim and Anne, the grandparents of Jesus, whose relics we have to venerate today.”
During his homily, Deacon Van Dyke reflected on his grandparents and the different relationships he had with his mother’s parents and his father’s parents.
He recalled how he didn’t always cherish his time spent with his paternal grandparents as he did with his maternal grandparents, noting the differences in their houses, material wealth and backgrounds.
As a child, he more enjoyed spending time at his maternal grandparents' home because they had a nicer house and he put them in a higher esteem, over his working-class paternal grandparents.
Deacon Van Dyke noted Pope Francis’ theme for World Day of Grandparents and the Elderly, which draws from Psalm 71:9, “Do not cast me off in my old age.”
“And here is what I was doing to my Grandpa and Grandma Van Dyke, casting them off in that way of a 10-year-old boy, by thinking less of them because they didn’t have as much as my other grandparents,” Deacon Van Dyke said. “Pope Francis laments about the common situation grandparents and the elderly find themselves in. He recalled when he was a bishop in Argentina, he would go to rest homes and see people who would not see family for months or years.
“He remarks in his message, about how the youth see the elderly sometimes as a burden, as a draw from resources that might be used,” Deacon Van Dyke continued. “He uses in his message a reflection on the story of Naomi and her daughter-in-law Ruth, to stress the importance that the elderly matter, that we all matter as God’s creation.”
Deacon Van Dyke said the Gospel shows how people aren’t meant to be isolated from the rest of society, drawing upon the episode in the Gospel of St. Mark, where people bring forward to Jesus a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment.
“It can be easy to think this man lived in a state of isolation, unable to commune with the rest of the community, couldn’t hear what is going on, as if he didn’t matter,” Deacon Van Dyke said. “But what we heard in the Gospel is that people brought him to Jesus. He wasn’t isolated; others knew he mattered, mattered enough to take him to Jesus to be healed.”
In addition to the handing out of medals and ice cream after Mass, attendees had the opportunity to receive a plenary indulgence for praying with and for their grandparents if they made a confession in a reasonable amount of time after Mass and promised to detach themselves from sin.
Deacon Van Dyke explained the theology behind plenary indulgences and praying for one’s deceased loved ones by using an analogy, fittingly, with his grandparents and an episode that occurred when he broke his grandmother’s lamp while playing with his brother.
“We apologize to Grandma for breaking her lamp; confession,” Deacon Van Dyke said. “Grandma loves and forgives us; forgiveness. But I have to pay for the lamp; penance. But in addition to that, my mother grounds me for a week; purgatory. Now sent to my room for my grounding, I look out the window and see my brother and cousins playing and having a good time — my brother probably making faces at me — that is the vision of heaven from purgatory. Now Grandpa comes into the room and says, ‘Your mother has agreed, if you help me clean the garage and cut the lawn, she will end your grounding early;’ indulgence.
“By coming here today with our grandparents or praying for our grandparents that are no longer with us, we are showing them they are not forgotten, they haven’t been cast off in their old age,” Deacon Van Dyke continued. “It is our way of showing them they matter.”
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