This weekend, in place of a homily, I preached a sermon on the document Guidelines for the Celebration of the Sacraments with Persons and Families Considering or Opting for Death by Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia published by the Bishops of Alberta and the North-West Territories. Given the many requests for copies of my sermon, I have decided to post it here.
There’s a famous story about St Jean Vianney when he was sent to the
city of Ars to be its parish priest. On
the way, he got lost: He came upon a
small boy who was playing, so he asked the boy for help getting to Ars. The boy
said, “Yes, Father, I’ll take you to
Ars.” St JeanVianney replied with his
famous words, “You lead me to Ars, and I’ll lead you to heaven.”
Salus animarum suprema lex. “The
salvation of souls is the supreme law [of the Church.]” The Church’s entire mission is oriented
towards your salvation and mine; whenever the Church says “Yes” to something,
it is in order to procure our salvation, and whenever the Church says “No” to
other things, it is in order to avoid jeopardising our salvation.
If you followed the
news on Friday, you will remember that the Church, by way of the
Bishops of Alberta and the North-West Territories, said “No” to offering the
Sacraments and even a funeral Mass to those who have decided to commit
self-murder, which the government sugar-coats by calling it “medical aid in
dying.”
Let’s put this into
perspective, because perspective is
just what you aren’t going to get from CBC or Global TV or the Edmonton Journal.
Remember the story of
Jesus being challenged about paying taxes to Caesar [cf Mt 22:15-22; Mk 12:13-17; Lk 20:20-26]? What did He say? “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s,
and to God that which is God’s.” Now, if
payment of taxes were due to Caesar because Roman coins bore his image, our
next question becomes: What bears God’s image such that it is due to
God? The answer: Our souls, because we were created in God’s
image and likeness, and just as payment was due to Caesar because coins had his
stamp on it, so too do our souls belong to God because they bear God’s stamp
upon them. St Paul wrote, “None of us
lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we
die, we die we die to the Lord; so when, whether we live or whether we die, we
are the Lord’s” [Rom 14:7]. The Apostle further emphasizes this by
writing that, “You are not your own: you were bought with a price” [1 Cor 6:19].
But, in order to attain
salvation, we must remain in the state of
sanctifying grace. What does that
mean? To be “in grace” is to be “in
friendship with God.” When we sin, our
friendship with God is impaired; when we sin gravely, we have unfriended God; if we die while still unfriended with God, he respects our
choice of excluding ourselves from everlasting happiness in the next life. To die without grace in our souls is the most
terrible thing we can do, because we have opted to forfeit heaven for something
earthly. The sacraments are always given
efficaciously, but they are not always received fruitfully; it is for this
reason that the Last Rites cannot be administered to someone who has decided to
break the Fifth Commandment by committing self-murder. To do otherwise would be to commit sacrilege.
Let’s pause for a
moment. No doubt some of you are shocked
by what I’m saying. Perhaps, even,
you’re saying, “That’s hurtful!” or “That does not respect the feelings of the
patient who wants assisted suicide.” But
look what you’re really saying: You’re
saying that feelings are more important
than the soul. Look more
closely: Many people have forgotten that they have souls worth
saving, so they go for the next-best thing:
Feelings worth assuaging. Many
people have exchanged the salvation of souls for the assuaging of feelings.
But who, I ask you, in
his right mind, would rather save his feelings in this life, only to lose his
soul in the next? Wouldn’t you rather
prioritise the salvation of your soul, despite all pains and sufferings? It is
the height of insanity to escape temporal sufferings in this life, only to have
everlasting sufferings in the next. Again,
St Paul has something to say: “I
consider that the sufferings of this
present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to
us” [Rom 8:18].
Life is difficult, I
know. I had spinal meningitis, which I
would not trade the world for because it left me with the blessing of being
Deaf so that I can proclaim the Gospel in sign language. I once had depression, and wanted life to be
over with because my sadness seemed unbearable, but looking back, I would not
trade that for all the world either, because it’s made me sensitive to those of
you who may be suffering. And I know
that the minutes of pain seem like hours, and I know that years of pain seem
like an eternity. But I ask you to consider
Jesus, whose life on earth had one simple purpose: To go to the Cross. God the Son became the Son of Mary precisely so that he would have a Body in
order to bear our death [Heb
10:5], and to tell us on Easter: I know what it’s like, but Life is become
victorious.
But consider another
option open to Jesus. When Satan tempted
Him the wilderness [Mt 4:1-11; Lk 4:1-13], he offered Jesus a following if he survived jumping off the
Temple, the whole world if Jesus would worship him, relief from hunger if Jesus
would use His Divinity for his own pleasure.
What Satan was doing, in fact, was trying to get Jesus to bypass the
Cross. But, no. Jesus went to the Cross anyway—and for
what? To show God’s solidarity with
suffering humanity, and in the Person of Jesus Crucified, to merit for us
eternal life in heaven.
God made us for one
simple reason: Happiness. But so many people have substituted happiness for pleasure, and in so doing, have given priority to feelings over their souls
and to seek relief from pain in this life only to find it again, everlastingly,
in the next. Thomas Merton said, “We were
not made for pleasure; we were made for joy,” and that joy is found only in the
company of Jesus, and only after we’ve endured the brunt of the world [cf Acts 14:22].
Did you know that the
sufferings of Jesus on the Cross left something to be desired? Yes—he left an opening for us. During his imprisonment in Rome and awaiting
his execution because of his faithfulness to Jesus, St Paul wrote: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your
sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” [Col 1:24]. I have yet to come across a suffering saint
who died unhappily. I have yet to come
across a tortured martyr who died grief-stricken. Why? Because suffering is only transitory, and
Jesus gives us the strength to bear it, while anticipating an eternity of
beatitude, provided we remain faithful to God, despite everything: “He will wipe away every tear from their
eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying
nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away” [Apoc 21:4].
The Church desires
nothing less than the salvation of all her children, indeed, the salvation of
all peoples. That’s why she always has,
to use the epitaph of Robert Frost, “a lover’s quarrel with the world.”
The supreme law of the
Church is the salvation of souls. Lead
us to your pain and your suffering, and we will lead you to heaven.
