on death with dignity

This is what death looks like to me.

And this.

I've been emotionally reeling after reading about Brittany Maynard's choice to end her own life. I knew it was coming and I'd been praying for her, alongside my dear friends Venerable Edel Quinn, Blessed Elisabetta Mora, and Our Lady of Sorrows. These are all women who saw suffering and instead of fleeing, embraced their crosses and turned in their crowns of woven thorns into jewels offered for the souls of others.

This story is particularly painful for me. Four months ago, I watched disease eat up a man I held close to my heart. But it never ate up his soul; rather, he allowed the suffering to sanctify it and more importantly to him, those around him.

It is through his suffering that those who loved him were able to care for him and love him and hold his hand, literally, from this world as he entered the next.

I have a poignant memory of, a few days before my grandfather's passing, my father taking the hand of his father who was in a debilitating amount of pain and having the following conversation:

"Dad, can you hear me?"
My grandfather weakly nodded his head.
"Dad, I want you to remember I love you. You know I love you, right?"
Another weak nod.
"Do you remember Father being here and praying with you? He gave you Last Rites. Do you remember?"
A weak nod.
"I know you're uncomfortable and sleeping a lot because of the medicine. I know it's hard to remember to offer up everything like that. Can I offer everything up for you, Dad?"
A prolonged nod.
"You're helping a lot of souls in purgatory. You're helping me, Dad." 
My grandfather's head fell back onto his pillow. He tried to talk and then shook his head. Instead he took my father's hand again and nodded. He then took his Rosary and my hand into his free hand and squeezed.


My father never left his bedside. When I encouraged him to go get dinner during those last twelve hours, he told me he, "Honestly, Mels, I'm afraid to leave." He sat there praying for and offering up all the sufferings of his father.

It's a memory I hope I never forget. Even now it brings a painful lump to my throat. 

This man, who was being eaten alive by cancer all over his body, who was suffering from pneumonia, heart problems, hep c, and diabetes knew the power of prayer and suffering. 

Venerable Fulton Sheen is credited with saying, "Sacrifice is suffering with love. Suffering is sacrificing without love." I can't find the quote, so maybe it's made up. Who cares. The point is true.

And somewhere along the way, our culture has thrown the baby out with the bathwater. In our desire to love others, and not wanting them to suffer, we've thrown out the power and beauty of redemptive suffering. It's an idea so built into Catholic teaching that it's never been an issue for me; I've never questioned it or thought it odd. From my earliest days, complaints of mine were met with, "Offer it up." And though sometimes it was meant in an offhanded, joking way, the grain of truth was still there.

Offer it up.

There are souls in this world who know not what they do. Souls who know what they do and do it anyway. And they will never repent. They will never meditate on the wounds that Our Precious Lord bore on our behalf and see that it was our sins that inflicted them upon Him.

Someone, though, can comfort Our Lord in His suffering. By offering it up. Someone can save those lost souls. By offering it up.

There has always been beauty in sacrifice. That's why those who join the armed forces or civil services are hailed: they're meagerly paid and sacrifice so much. That's why mothers are treasured in the eyes of Holy Mother Church: their bodies are literally sacrifices for the life of a new soul. That's why priests and religious are given respect, regardless of how they are as people: they sacrifices a life in the world to pray for the world.

Far be it for me to say redemptive suffering is easy. Even Our Lord, Redeemer of the World, shirked a little and asked that this chalice pass away from Him. But He followed up with, "But not My Will, but Thine be done." And that's all God asks of us. That we unite our wills with His. I don't suffer well. I complain, I resent, I hate - but I also offer everything up in the morning before even leaving my bed because I so desperately want to be good at suffering and I have the intention of being good at it. I'm just not without working hard to be. Does that even make sense? But God doesn't see how well I'm doing my suffering, just that I am.

Mother Theresa said that, "Not all of us can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love."

I cling to that. My life is little; so very, very little. But the influence I can quietly and anonymously have on souls here on earth and in purgatory reminds me of the great dignity and worth of my personhood.

There are two stories contained in this sermon, both of which are worth listening to, but the first story is what struck my heart to the core. A girl, grown into a young woman who joined a convent, offered up all her prayers and sufferings for a soul unbeknownst to her. She didn't know for whom she was suffering, just that she was, and she was glad to. As it turns out, the soul she suffered for was a lost young man, who had renounced God and His Church and was looking to end his life. Before making that terrible and permanent decision, he had a vision of Our Lady telling him to stop - that he was to become a priest and a bishop and he was to save many, many souls. And that he did. He later met the young woman who had been praying and sacrificing on his behalf for years and she was just a simple, humble nun who lived a quiet life.

Goosebumps, right?

Redemptive suffering isn't just for the greatest of saints. It's not limited to Christ, to the Joan of Arcs, the Thomas Mores, the Lawrences. It's one of the greatest works of mercy and charity and it's available and encouraged to be used by all, even the very young, and especially for the elderly, the sick, and the dying.

I don't blame Brittany Maynard. I really don't. I think she was spoon-fed a lie that nourished her fear, and did the only thing she thought she could do - to "die with dignity." I understand the fear of suffering. I fear it, too. I fear it for myself, for my husband, my little ones. I daily pray that when and if a persecution against Christianity happens, that we remain steadfast in our Faith and that my children suffer little.

But is that what I should be praying? I should pray for them to understand suffering, to understand the souls they can save, the souls they help into Heaven. And this, beyond the suffering that could happen if the culture keeps heading toward a persecution. I strive to teach them the beauty of sacrifice in daily life and the bearing of those little crosses.

St. Maximillian Kolbe once said that, "Love lives by sacrifice."

The inspired, inerrant Word of God in John 15:13 reminds us that "Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends." 

I can quote over and over the greats who have gone before us, about how life-giving and how true a love is that sacrifices for another. 

I don't want to pull the, "I've seen a suffering death, so I know" card. One doesn't need to experience something to understand and empathize. 

But I have seen a death riddled with suffering. I've heard the pained, rattled breathing; the erratic, terrifying beeping of monitors tracking a slowing heart; I've felt the tender squeezing of a frail and cold hand grasping onto life through mine. I've held a man as he passed from this life into the next. But alongside that, I've watched him offer it all up, even when he was physically unable to do so anymore. I've prayed many a Rosary alongside that waning life, sung the Salve Regina quietly to him as his breath grew more rattled and few, reminded him of how much he is loved and cherished. 

His death was filled with ugly, terrifying, and painful redemptive suffering and it was dignified and peaceful. 

I don't think Brittany Maynard was a coward. I think she was scared and misled. I've seen a lot of uncharitable comments made about her and her decision and though my initial reaction was one of frustration and sickness, only the sickness remains. Our culture led her to that decision. Our culture has forgotten  - no, dismissed, chased out, ridiculed - the beauty of suffering. That upon which our entire humanhood is founded has been lost.

Instead I pray for her soul. I cling to the words Our Lord weakly said from His Cross, "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do." I pray Brittany knew not what she did. As much as the fatalist in me dismisses the idea that our culture knows not what it's doing by ridiculing the idea of suffering on behalf of someone else, I cling to the idea that it just might. After all, it was GK Chesterton that reminds us that:

The modern world is not evil; in some ways the modern world is far too good. It is full of wild and wasted virtues. When a religious scheme is shattered...it is not merely the vices that are let loose. The vices are, indeed, let loose, and they wander and do damage. But the virtues are let loose also; and the virtues wander more wildly, and the virtues do more terrible damage. The modern world is full of the old Christian virtues gone mad. The virtues have gone mad because they have been isolated from each other and are wandering alone. Thus some scientists care for truth; and their truth is pitiless. Thus some humanitarians only care for pity; and their pity (I am sorry to say) is often untruthful.”

In our search for comforting the sorrowful and afflicted, we lost redemptive suffering. I think, we, as Catholic faithful, need to embark on a journey to embrace it once again, if we haven't already, and strive to help the culture around us to see the beauty in it.

"Pray for my soul.  More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of.  Wherefore, let thy voice rise like a fountain for me night and day.  For what are men better than sheep or goats that nourish a blind life within the brain, if, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer both for themselves and those who call them friend?  For the whole round earth is every way bound by gold chains about the feet of God."  - Morte D'Arthur, Tennyson