WHAT CAN MEDICALLY ASSISTED DEATH MEAN?

 

In March, 2023, the law to seek medically assisted death will be expanded to include mental illness that causes serious suffering without the threat of an immanent death. This expansion of legal reasons to seek medically assisted death has been hotly debated in Canada. 

 

On the one side of the debate is the position that this is a matter of personal autonomy. In this line of reasoning every adult person should have the right to decide if their suffering is intolerable and should be ended. The other side of the argument cautions that persons suffering severe mental illness may have a healing in the future and go on to led productive lives. This position also cautions the degree of personal freedom or lack of fgreedom that may be present in a person undergoing a mental health crisis. 

 

Both sides build up the abuses that could develop following the change of the law next March. 

 

All Christian people must take a sharp and critical eye toward the arguments put forward. We are being forced to go back to our roots (i.e., Divine Revelation) to discover what is the truth. 

 

We focus first of all on the fifth commandment of the Ten Commandments: “You shall not kill.”

This very stark command is blunt. It is always wrong to kill another human being. There can be no place for murder or destruction of a person. The neighbor’s life is of inestimable value. Nothing must be done to ever harm another human being. 

 

We have always understood that this commandment extends to our individual lives. You shall  not kill yourself! 

 

Suicide has always been very difficult for people to handle. For many centuries the interpretation existed in the Christian churches that anyone who killed themselves was guilty of a very serious sin. Fortunately, through the past seventy years, we have come to realize that suicide in a last desperate effort to try to eliminate the pain the person is suffering. As tragic as every suicide is, this is an effort to stop the pain, not primarily to destroy life.

 

Probably many of the medically assisted deaths due to severe mental illness will fall under the category of a suicide. But what of the many deaths that will be a deliberate choice to just end one’s own life. Period!

 

Is this not an instance of killing oneself?

 

The medical personnel are supposed to offer medically assisted death as a solution. Now, comes the deficiency in this practice. Does anyone from the medical community say, “Now, we also want to offer you reasons and help to work you thorough this time of suffering and pain? 

Who is there to assist you to live with determination, purpose and meaning? 

 

Where are all the big media outlets bringing us stories of individuals who have struggled through serious illness, but have managed to find new meaning and purpose in life? Who is telling the story of people who are thriving and have overcome their depression and despair? 

 

The easy way out is not the answer. Give me purpose and direction to fight hard to live every day well and with determination. Give me reasons to want to live and breath this day.

 

 

PUTTING MEANING INTO TIME

 

As we begin the season of Advent and look forward to Christmas there is a longing in our hearts. We, as parents, will try to celebrate Christmas with some sense that we are marking the birth day of our Savior. But out adult children and their children will have a very nice family celebration but it will be so secular. Their celebration will center only around themselves.It will not have spiritual depth.

 

In life, meaningful celebrations do not just happen. Just because you grew up in a family where the story of Christmas was shared, Christmas carols were sung with meaning and a Christmas crib was set up with a definite purpose, does not mean that the next generation will even find any of this worthwhile for their own lives.

 

Humans are meaning makers. We want to recognize a loved one and tell them how much we do care about them. We make a birthday cake, light the candles and sing ‘Happy Birthday.’ We have done this for other members of our family. We know what it means and moving through the rituals expresses our deep meaning for the loved one. It is very simple but very meaningful.

 

If someone comes from another country or culture, they may be bewildered by this birthday ritual. It will only become meaningful for them if they choose to enter into the event. 

 

Even if you are the only one in your family who will center your celebration in the birth of Jesus, in the workings of God among us, take deliberate steps to make this meaningful.

 

Try to enter the spirit of Advent by focusing on the workings of God in the past (our story of salvation in the Old Testament) and the hope that the Hebrew people had for the coming of the messiah. Try to get in touch with the suffering of the Hebrew people in their Babylonian exile and their longing for deliverance by God. We tell the story of our ancestors to deepen our sense of what God has done in the past.

 

Then study the story of the annunciation by the angel to the young woman, Mary, and the difficult birth story in Bethlehem. In your heart and your mind bring all the countless displaced people in the world who are living the Mary/Joseph story right now. 

 

 Try to have some decorations that remind you of the intense workings of God among us. You may make your own Advent wreath. You may have one special candle that you will light when you pray and study the Scriptures. You may have a piece of a spruce branch to center your attention when you pray. 

 

These may not seem like much, but they are a deliberate effort to put meaning and purpose into this season. The old adage, “Keep Christ in Christmas,” has never meant more because it applies directly to our own family.  Even if the grandchildren will have no exposure to the Christmas story, their grandparents will make it meaningful. 

 

This year will not be an empty season. We will make Christ happen in our own home. 

WE MJST BEGIN AT THE BEGINNING

 

I wish that more of our clergy and fellow believers would listen to the poverty of religious knowledge and experience on the part of our born Catholics, born Lutherans or born United Church. There is a strong sense of identity and attachment to the church of their growing-up years but an incredible dearth of knowledge about what we are all about.

 

We are strong at going through the motions. But that is where most things religious stop. We know we are supposed to get out kids done but there is no follow up to live consciously the Christian faith.

 

It is most common to ask the people who have been asked to be godparents when a child is presented for baptism, “What is your role here?”  The most common answer is, “I don’t know.”

How can you fulfill a role in the Christian church if you do not even know what you are supposed to do?

 

We must train all our Catholics who are active in the practice of our faith to pay attention to what the person beside them knows and what they do not know.  They may have a strong Catholic name but do they even know what this is all about?

 

We are in the same position that the first Christians were in the Roman (materialistic) society. They began by calling people (most often the working people at the bottom of society) to a lived faith in Jesus Christ. They took the time necessary to teach them the teachings and story of Jesus. They gave them a sense of living and participating in the great mystery of Jesus Christ alive among them today. The local Church was an evangelizing Church. The people of the local church had expectations of how the newcomers were to live their new found faith. They also expected them to share in the life and ministry of the faith community. 

 

The early Church may have been small but it was dynamic. It expected everyone to be working with both hands in the life, worship and service of the Church.

 

We are surrounded by more and more people who have no connection with a church community. It is not that they were once a part of a faith community and then drifted away. About one third of all Canadians identify themselves  as not connected.

 

And then those who claim some connection, how much does the religious faith of the church community influence their lives?

 

First of all, those who are active and practicing their faith need to be more straight forward and call all parents who want sacraments for their children and families who want Chnristian funerals for their parents to a lived connection with the life of the Church community.

 

Would you like to become a part of a living faith community? Have you ever considered becoming a Catholic?

 

Also, in the life of our faith community we need to work harder to teach our faith, deepen our knowledge of the Bible and bring people to a deeper prayer life. One of the first things that you will observe when the people of the parish work hard to evangelize others is that the number of babies getting done decreases, but the number of people sharing the Sunday Eucharist increases.

 

We are at a turning point in our church life but it is a turning point to more active evangelization and living the Christian faith.

 

 

COME TOGETHER OR PERISH APART

 

We are living at a key moment in the history of humanity (remember we are talking about 200 million years of history). Every human being has one common enemy: it is climate change!  And the enemy is us: human beings have burnt so much fossil fuel that the earth’s atmosphere is heating up. If we do not adapt our ways of production and consumption we could bring an end to human existence. 

 

If we (all humans) do not change we are doomed! And by our own hand!

 

But the future need not be bleak and destructive. Humanity has made many adaptations along the way. Hopefully we can change our means of production and consumption. We are being challenged to change our culture into a culture of sustainability. 

 

Do not go around knocking oil workers for the destructive contribution fossil fuels make to the environment. Ask each oil worker: and what can you offer to make this world sustainable for your great-grandchildren? How can you help all your fellow human beings to move out of fossil fuels and into a green economy that is sustainable for the next thousand years? 

 

Do not underestimate the positive energy that oil workers can bring to caring for the earth.

 

This moment of opportunity exists for everyone. As was said at the opening of the COP27 meeting of world leaders in Egypt last Sunday: we cooperate or we perish. Climate change can mean a highway to climate hell.

 

This is a moment of opportunity for the two largest poulters and the largest economies in the world, USA and China, to each lower their carbon emissions and cooperate to build of world economy that is sustainable into the future.

 

Not only must governments work to lower of emissions but each individual human being, especially in the First World, could cut their consumption of goods and services by one quarter tomorrow morning and probably would not suffer any inconvenience. This call to not only save our earth from destruction but move into a world where everyone and every living being can thrive.

 

This history of Christianity for the past four hundred years has totally neglected the earth. As a people we saw the earth as so many resources to be dug up, manufactured and then discarded when we no longer needed them. Now the earth cries out in pain and suffering. 

 

Fortunately, the church leadership under Pope Francis gave Christianity  tools to rediscover our place and connection with the earth. In 2015 Pope Francis issued the encyclical (official Church teaching), Laudo Si, that connects our Christian faith with the first book of God’s revelation, the earth! Care for the earth and sustainability are no longer to be seen as something outside of our faith life. It has always been an integral part of our faith (although we have completely neglected it for four hundred years) and we must reconnect care of the earth with our service to God.

 

Maybe at this point the majority of born Catholics are not even aware of this encyclical but it will have long therm consequences on how we understand our position in this world. We have been given some spiritual tools to empower us to work to save the planet.

 

We are being moved to work with all human beings of good will to make the world thrive for all future generations.

 

Concerns about climate change are meant to be part of our spirituality and our faith practice.

 

 

 

 

DEALING WITH OUR GRIEF

 

In November our thoughts turn towards the ‘end things.” We know that everyone has and ending date and we need to be prepared for our exit.

 

We navigate the journey of life with rituals that guide us to celebrate successes and moments of gratitude. We also have rituals that guide us through suffering, break-downs and death. 

 

As our society has drifted more and more into a very individualistic way of being, we have lost touch with the power of ritual. This is strongly manifested when a loved one dies.

 

There are more people directing their families that there is to be no funeral. We want to caution everyone from the long experience of our ancestors: don’t ever bind your family with such a directive. 

 

If your declining father indicates that there is to be ‘no funeral,’ you can always respond “He didn’t say we couldn’t have a barbeque in his memory.’

 

Leave-taking or funerals can take many different forms. There was an obituary about three weeks ago that invited all the friends to gather at a particular pub on a weekday evening at 7:30pm.  This is a type of funeral. It is probably something that you never  want to see happen in your case, but it is a leave-taking. 

 

If there is no funeral, we often hear the friends saying ‘something is missing.’

 

Funerals are always for the living. This is something that we (the survivors) must do together. You can never grieve alone. The pain of our loss needs to be shared, cried and laughed over, and made a part of our life. When you lose someone close to you, the pain never goes away. You just learn to live and navigate life without them. When you injure your foot, the pain is very present. You just learn to walk up and down the stairs with a sore foot.

 

The white culture needs to relearn what the First Nations and Metis people have not misplaced. When someone dies, everything come to a halt. The friends and relatives gather to support the grieving family, tell stories, spend hours visiting each other and finally being present in prayer and gratitude for the formal part of the funeral. Then they have a feast (a banquet). 

 

After three days of this intense sharing, they are ready to return the departed loved one to the earth and then they must go back home to feed their kids and resume life. One half to three quarters of their grieving has been done. 

 

The power of ritual works very well here. These people have learnt from their ancestors that you need to share your pain and your loss, together. You need to put the departed where they need to be, and send the living to the place where they need to go!

 

We recognize the power within the ritual when we have people who are unfamiliar with the prayers and actions of the faith community, but they discover that doing the ritual will carry them through this part of their grief. Often, people with no religious background, will come back and say ‘thank you,’ that was so helpful.

 

We need to caution anyone who does not want a funeral what constrictions and difficulties they are burdening their family with by this directive. 

 

Funerals and grief-sharing are for the living. These are the people who count in all of this.