At his weekly public audience on August 10, Pope Francis concluded a series of talks on old age, speaking about “the ministry of awaiting the Lord.”

The Pope based his talk on Christ’s farewell message to his disciples, and said that as those disciples would then looking forward to seeing Jesus again, so the elderly are “waiting, waiting for an encounter.”

This experience of waiting is not exclusive to the elderly, however. Pope Francis observed that “the process of our ‘novitiate’ begins; we are apprentices of life who—amid a thousand difficulties—learn to appreciate God’s gift.”