[Question:]{.underline} Should a Catholic plan his retirement?
[Answer:]{.underline} The only true retirement is that of the eternal happiness of heaven, where the soul has the leisure to enjoy the goodness and holiness of the Most Holy Trinity, without any distraction or interruption at all. This is the retirement that a Catholic has to plan for, by his faithful accomplishment of the commandments of God, the precepts of the Church, the duties of his state, especially towards his family, by his fidelity to the true Mass, by the frequent reception of the sacraments, and his daily prayers, meditations, spiritual reading and rosaries.
However, retirement from the active workforce is also something that has to be planned. If not all of us will experience this privileged time, and many of us will be taken beforehand, it nevertheless has the potential of being the most serious, most profound, most contemplative, most God-centered period of one’s life, as well as the most helpful for others. It is that period of life that most directly prepares for eternity. And yet for so many of the elderly, it is the emptiest and most aimless and meaningless time, without other goal than the temporary joy of the rapidly passing moments.
Plan then for a retirement, not to be spent in continual vacation, but in doing all those things that the necessities of work and family life previously made impossible. Try to live close to a traditional priest, so that you can attend daily Mass and devotions. Donate your time to charity, to teaching and helping out in schools, to work around the church, or being of assistance to poor families or widows. Stay close to your children, so that you can be of assistance in their own difficulties in raising their own children. Be the extended family that they need. Be the stabilizing influence, and the valuable asset that senior members of the community ought to be. Live in the present, and your experience from the past will be of value to the whole community. Use your leisure to teach true moral values and detachment, and you will fight against the feverish hyperactivity of our materialistic world. Use prudence in planning for the retirement years, that you might have the means to support yourself, that you might not be a burden on others. Yet at the same time remember that there is no purpose in heaping up huge mounds of savings for some far off time that might never come, for “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven” (Mt. 6:19, 20).
Answered by Father Peter Scott, SSPX.