I would like to thank Michael Tan for his very enlightening column titled “Advice for retirees” (Opinion, 5/8/15).
May I add a sixth advice? And that is, to deepen the spiritual life of retirees.
We relegated to the back of our minds the importance of spiritual life during our “active” days, when we were busy with our life in office, home and social affairs.
Now retired, we can regularly attend recollections, seminars and retreats, and start browsing the “Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church” that, in the beautiful words of Pope Benedict XVI, “allows believers and nonbelievers alike to behold the entire panorama of the Catholic faith.”
We might have been “intellectual and professional giants” during our heydays but “spiritual pygmies” for consigning our spiritual life to the hazy background of our busy life.
Now we have this opportunity to rediscover man’s capacity for God Who comes to meet man and his response to God; and to appreciate more of each of the 12 lines of the Creed that we profess each Sunday after the homily. Then shall we understand more about the seven Sacraments, the 10 Commandments and the importance of prayer.
We can progress by reading more details of the Catholic faith in the “Catechism” that systematically presents the contents of the New Testament and the Old Testament.
After imbibing the contents of the Sacred Scriptures, hopefully, we retirees, who were once gainfully and efficiently employed, can now effectively teach catechism and the doctrine of the Church to the young and old. We learn much more as we prepare our materials for teaching. This is of great help to keep the mind alert, and thus keep ourselves happily inspired with what matters in life, while revisiting life’s basic questions: Who made us? Who is God? And why did God make us?
—CHING D. AUNARIO, chingauna@yahoo.com