“Do not rebuke an older man harshly, but exhort him as if he were your father. Treat
younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity” (I Timothy 5:1).
It’s never easy to reprimand somebody and to do so graciously. Everyone wants to be praised, and if not praised, then understood. Old people, specifically older men, expect to be justified. We know all too well the type: They criticize everything but themselves. They go about making lists of all the things that are wrong with the world, the country, the city, the church, and their families. Ask them to make a start at rectifying at least one of the simpler annoyances and you realize that’s not the role the complainer accepts. He is not a fixer—he’s a reporter. His days of improving the world are past, if they ever existed. They resent criticism, especially when it comes from the priest. How much simpler it is to ignore them, let them spout off, venting all their complaints and smile at them when they run out of breath. So why put oneself in the position of being resented by them? Their spouses are doomed to live with them twenty four seven. You are inflicted with their personalities several hours a week. Live and let live—and if they’ve lived so long with their gripes and grumbles, why not ignore them?
The obvious answer is that they have but a brief time to realize what they are like and change before it’s too late. It’s a matter of salvation. The pastor is by definition a shepherd of the human lambs of the Lord. It’s his duty to check the emotional and spiritual health of those entrusted to his care. If he is true to his ordination vows, then he is responsible for dispatching the children of God to the Kingdom of Heaven when the Lord invites them to be with Him there beyond the gates of death. This is the rationale behind St. Paul’s directive to his young disciple, Timothy. He dare not advise him not to rebuke the older men. That would not be helpful. It simply encourages them to go on with their mean, miserable, critical attitudes to others. Indeed, it’s sinful to ignore them. What help to them is it if one knows they are blinded by their prejudice, judgmental attitudes and self-justification, but does not try to illuminate them and set them free from the darkness that engulfs them? Are they to take that same personality and live with it for all eternity?
The demand of St. Paul to treat the elderly as parents and the younger as siblings holds the answer to so many pastoral decisions. We are family; therefore, a good and wise pastor will temper all his criticisms by applying the same love he has for the members of his personal family. When a young person finds herself in trouble, is it appropriate or adequate to point to the canons and doctrines of the Church and insist on their requirements? Or should those same rules be surrounded with fatherly love? What would I do in the case of a situation involving my son? That same rule ought to be applied in the affair of my spiritual child as well. Would I struggle to come up with a gentle, loving, yet insightful way to admonish my parent, sensitive to her feelings? So too the same should apply to the elders in the parish.
One grace-filled method of offering criticism is by applying the sandwich style approach. First, compliment the person targeted for the reprimand. Tell him how you’ve always appreciated his candor. You know how he feels at all times. That’s the first slice of bread. Then you apply the meat of your discourse. You too, building on his appreciation for frankness make him aware of your true feelings. Then the second slice covering the meat—you pray that your relationship is made stronger by this honest confrontation. I feel sure St. Paul would agree.