Maybe I’m a little young to be worrying about this, but visiting relatives over Christmas always gets me thinking about how people spend their post-retirement years. Most people seem to have quite a lot of them these days. If you’re in good health, those years can be quite pleasant for people who have enough money and a slate of hobbies or activities that they enjoy. People who live to a very advanced age, however, are less and less likely to be able to live an active sort of life. Western cultures are having a very difficult time figuring out what to do with their elderly citizens.

In some cultures, the old are given great respect and much care. Uzbek culture is like this, and older people are more or less permitted to become household tyrants, ordering everyone around and taking the best of everything for themselves. I can’t say that this model was entirely pleasing to me. Obviously, it can be quite burdensome on young people to be forced to answer to their elders’ every whim, and young brides especially are often treated more like slaves than like family members. We Americans tended to feel quite resentful on behalf of the young wives who, even when heavily pregnant, would be running to and fro doing chores and waiting on everyone while the rest of the family sat around drinking tea. Quite honestly, I was never sure that the arrangement was entirely healthy for the older people either. People of any age can become quite repulsive when societal taboos against rudeness and selfishness are lifted. Some resist that temptation, of course, but some don’t, and bossing people around for several years didn’t seem to me like an ideal way to prepare to meet one’s Maker.

Still, for all its flaws, the Uzbek system did at least have this advantage: it provided care for the elderly. In the West, people are often neglected and forgotten in their old age, which is partly the result of a more youth-centered culture, but also of medical advances that keep people alive much longer. When people lived for only five or ten years after retirement, it wasn’t so difficult to make arrangements for their care, and their children and grandchildren (generally more numerous in those days) had the feeling that they should cherish what time they had left with their elders. In a world in which people quite often live more than ninety years, retirees may well still be around for twenty or thirty more years, so the “enjoy each other while we can” feeling is less pressing, and taking personal responsibility for an older person’s care can be a very long-term commitment. Depending on how much care is needed, it can be quite difficult for young families to make a place for grandparents in their homes, and in an ever-more-fluid society, it’s not at all easy for extended families even to live in the same city.

This leaves a lot of older people in a bad position. The Western obsession with euthanasia and living wills speaks to a widespread fear that advanced age can mean, not only feebleness and infirmity, but also the indignity either of being burdensome to others or else of being neglected by them… and this unhappy state can continue for decades. No one likes feeling patronized, or knowing that they are useless to others, and yet this seems to be the lot of almost everyone who lives beyond a certain age, where physical and mental decay turn once-capable adults into a kind of future-less children.

Before I start everyone weeping into their keyboards, I should turn to the more positive thoughts that I’ve been having. I’ve always been inspired by the large numbers of elderly Catholic women who come to Immaculate Conception Church (up the street from my apartment) on Friday mornings when they offer Mass and exposition of the Blessed Sacrament. These devout souls will often stay for hours to pray or just to enjoy being close to Jesus. Sometimes I would stop and talk to them when entering or leaving the Church, and of course, they were touchingly delighted to see young people like the members of the Cornell Society for a Good Time, stopping in before work or class to pray their Stations. (”You’re the future of the Church,” one rather charming older lady would always tell me, beaming. “God bless you all!”) Many of these people, I think, were driven over to Mass together from one of the local retirement homes.

With such tiny numbers of young people entering contemplative religious orders, might this not be a particularly appropriate task for the elderly: to pray for the Church? Catholics should know better than anybody that this is a task of enormous importance, but one needs neither health, nor wealth, nor great mental acuity to do it. Pastors might take it upon themselves to tell their elderly parishioners: your service to the Church is not finished. We need you, quite desperately, for your prayers. Please spend as many hours as possible in prayer and contemplation.

I was also wondering whether there are many Catholic retirement homes that are structured to facilitate this kind of life, so I did a little informal research online. I found many Catholic retirement homes, most of which were diocesan. Some made no mention at all of anything Catholic in their operations, beyond the fact that they got some funding from the diocese. Others mentioned having Mass on the premises, and one or two had not only daily Mass, but also daily rosary prayers. None excluded non-Catholics from residency, so far as I could tell, and I’m sure none required residents to participate in any sort of religious activity.

So, this is my thought: how would it be if the Church established retirement homes that were more deeply Catholic, with a life resembling to some degree the lives of religious? They would not need anything precisely equivalent to vows per se, but they could adopt the rhythm of life found in a religious community, and residents could be expected to participate in this life so far as their health permitted. Imagine how much good could be done, both for residents themselves and for the Church as a whole, if thousands more devout Catholics could spend several hours of every day adoring the Blessed Sacrament and praying for the Church! Bishops, priests, or individuals could submit prayer requests to these homes, just as they do to houses of religious, and residents could be expected to take shifts in perpetual adoration, to pray the Office, or anything else that seemed appropriate. Of course exemptions would need to be granted to those who were unable to keep pace for reasons of health. But, in the ideal situation, a priest could take charge of the whole house, and (in addition to saying daily Mass and administering sacraments to his flock) could act as a sort of informal “superior.” Residents might ask his permission to be excused from certain duties, or to have certain foods, entertainment, etc. that were not ordinarily permitted in the house; since he would be their pastor, they would in any case be expected to acknowledge his authority, but submission to more stringent requirements could be seen as a expectation of residence in the house. The thing might work best if separate houses were established for widows and for widowers, though that might be less important in advanced age, when lust becomes less of a temptation for most.

Could such a thing ever be made to work? Of course giving the last ten or twenty years of one’s life to the Church is not at all the same as giving one’s entire life, from youth, to the Church. But even ten or twenty years’ worth or prayers might be of enormous benefit to the Church as a whole, and for the residents of the house it could be a tremendous blessing. Instead of feeling worthless and drifting, they could be part of a holy community, and could know that they were needed and valued. The pains and infirmity of age could actually add something to the holiness of their sparse and ascetical lives. And, perhaps most importantly, it would be an ideal way to prepare the soul for death.

I don’t know for certain whether anyone would actually want to come and live in such a place. But, based on the large numbers of devout women praying at Immaculate Conception Church on Friday mornings, I’m guessing that some would come. It would be a wonderful way to further reinforce the idea the Catholic Church cherishes life all the way through, from conception until natural death.