2001 - D. Pilarczyck

In August of this year I celebrated my 67th. birthday. Sixty-seven is not one of the birthdays that generally calls forth special celebration, and I observed my 67th. birthday in a suitably restrained fashion. But it was and is very clear to me that people who are sixty-seven can no longer be called young by any reasonable criteria. Having enjoyed the bounty of the monthly Social Security check for two years now, I have to acknowledge that I belong to that cohort of the population that we delicately refer to as senior citizens.

And so, being the kind of person that I am, I have started to do some reading about being old, about what’s involved and what to expect as the process unfolds. What one gets from books like these is of uneven quality, but in one of them I found an insight that struck a resonant chord in my psyche.

The authors were listing the blessings of old age (a rather short list, to be sure), but one of the blessings they listed was an increased capacity for gratitude.

I realized immediately that they were correct. As we grow older it’s easier to be grateful. Maybe that’s because, thanks to the number of our years, we have more to be grateful for. It may also be that the twilight sun gives us a different perspective on our earthly existence. In any case, I have found that, as I have grown in years, the need to achieve is being diluted by the capacity to appreciate.

I find myself much more attentive than I was before to a cloudless sky or a cool morning, much more likely than before to give thanks for new insight into a passage of Scripture or a homily that comes out better than I had expected.

Because my life has been a life of singular blessing, I never seem to run out of past things for which to offer thanks to the Lord, some seemingly strange, some obvious.

For example, I am grateful for all those years I studied Latin and Greek, years not wasted but years that provided a particular ballast and steadiness to the other aspects of my life, that gave me a patience for and a joy in our common humanity.

I am grateful that my priestly ministry fell during the developments connected with Vatican II. It was hard for me, who had been schooled in the pre-conciliar Church, to digest and assimilate what I knew the Church was asking of us, but it was a spiritual adventure that I wouldn’t trade for anything.

I am grateful that most of my ordained ministry came after the council because that meant that I have been able to minister for most of my professional life in the context of the Vatican II liturgy. I wonder what it would have been like to spend forty or fifty years presiding over a hieratic liturgy that practically nobody but experts understood. I thank the Lord every time I celebrate with a congregation that knows and appreciates and participates in what’s going on. I am grateful that our present liturgical laws encourage us to preach every day, and I am grateful to the people who listen every day.

I am grateful for the opportunity that I had to share in the work of our bishops’ committee on the liturgy. I was privileged to be its chair when we were doing the RCIA.

I am immensely grateful for my association with ICEL. Few bishops in the whole world were able to be as close to its work as I was. And few of those who were deeply involved enjoyed it more than I did.

We seem to be in a sort of liturgical winter just now. I’m not exactly ecstatic about some aspects of what we are experiencing. But maybe that’s an occasion for gratitude also, a chance to strive to practice Abrahamic hope and to renew our trust in the Lord’s providence for the Church.

I am grateful for those who effected the transfer of the liturgy from the conciliar and post-conciliar documents of the Church to the parishioners that sit (and stand and kneel) in our parishes today. I saw somewhere, in an army recruiting commercial, I think, that the generals plan the battles but the sergeants win the wars.

The parish priests and the parish liturgy commissions are among the sergeants, but, in a special way, so are the dedicated persons who have staffed our diocesan offices over these years and been members of diocesan liturgy commissions.

You and your predecessors have not always been given the appreciation you deserve, but the Church would not be what it is today without you. I’m grateful for the contribution you have made to the faith life of our people, and I know that my brother bishops share that gratitude.

I am told that, in addition to an increased capacity for gratitude, being a senior citizen also increases one’s capacity for talking on at great length. There are lots more things that I am grateful for, but I will limit myself to mentioning just one.

	Representing Roman Catholic Diocesan Offices of Worship and Liturgical Commissions throughout the United States.
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The Frederick R. McManus Award
	Most Reverend Daniel E. Pilarcyzk On Friday, October 5, 2001 the McManus award was presented to Most Rev. Daniel E. Pilarczyk, Archbishop of Cincinnati, at the Philadelphia National Meeting.