“How do you like being retired,” is a question often asked of me, and one I find difficult to answer. For better or for worse, being retired has been hard—harder, in a way, then any work assignment I ever had before.
I always embraced whatever was asked of me as a priest and whatever assignment I received. Our spiritual formation stressed this, to accept whatever was asked of us by religious superiors as the will of God.
But, humanly speaking (how else does one speak!) the change from one day to the next, from exercising a significant role in many people’s lives and bearing multiple responsibilities to an almost total absence of responsibilities is a challenging kind of “freedom”.
It’s also wasteful. Curiously, the notion of retirement was introduced in a time in which there was a relative abundance of priests and where the priest usually served until death. By the time it began to be implemented there was a newer situation of increasing scarcity of priests in ministry.
In some ways, the legislation of our contemporary U.S. civil society is more nuanced than our canonical practice. No one can be retired involuntarily merely and solely because of chronological age; termination of employment requires adequate cause—e.g., poor performance, substantial diminished or in-capacity, violation of rules, etc. . .
Of course, the retired priest is retired in the sense that he is not given any assigned responsibility (job) by his religious superiors; however he freely may seek and negotiate his services on a voluntary basis with a local parish or religious institution.
If one’s work is only a job, retirement may be welcomed. If one’s work has become one’s life, retirement may be a kind of death.
There is a dual aspect to the vocation and life of a priest: to be a man of the Church and a man of God.
The man of the Church, the employee entrusted with and exercising important responsibilities in the ecclesiastical institution, can retire or be retired.
The man of God, the servant of the Lord bearing witness of love in the midst of the world and the community of his disciples, cannot retire or be retired.
God may use our work to achieve his purposes, but all our plans, projects, and strivings are not necessary to the great plan of his providential love and mercy.
John Milton wrote a very beautiful sonnet on his blindness. For me, it’s also a moving spiritual reflection on being retired:
When I consider how my light is spent,
E’re half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodg’d with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide:
“Doth God exact day-labour, light deny’d?”
I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best
Bear his milde yoak, they serve him best. His State
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’re Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and waite.”
19 May 2019