Readings » The Case of Eluana
“Understanding the reasons for hard work is the utmost thing in life, because death is the biggest objection to life, and life’s hard times are the biggest objection to living; the biggest objection to joy is sacrifice… The biggest sacrifice is death (Father Giussani).”
CHARITY OR VIOLENCE?
What kind of society calls life “hell” and death a “liberation”? Where can our reason gone crazy originate from, a reason that can turn upside down good and evil and, so, to give things their real name?
The announced suspension of Eluana’s artificial feeding is homicide. It’s all the more serious because this would prevent someone from doing charitable work. There are people who have been taking care of her and are willing to continue to do so.
In the long history of medicine the most fruitful progress occurred exactly with the beginning of assistance to the “incurable” in the Christian age. They used to be excluded from the community of “healthy” people. They used to be left dying outside the city walls or eliminated. Whoever may have taken care of them would have put their own life to risk. This is why those who began to take care of incurable people did so for a reason that was more powerful than life itself. It was a passion for the destiny of the other man, for its infinite value because it was the image of God creator.
So the case of Eluana puts us in front of the first evidence that emerges in our life: we do not make ourselves. We are made, we are wanted by Another. We are saved from our nothingness by Someone who loves us and has told us: “Even the hair on your head is counted”. Rejecting this evidence means, sooner or later, rejecting reality. Even when this reality has the face of the people we love.
This is why recognizing the One Who is giving us the gift of the presence of Eluana is not something “spiritual” just added on for those who have faith. It is a need for all those who, having been given a reason, seek for a meaning. Failing to recognize this, makes it impossible to embrace Eluana and live the sacrifice to stay on her side; in fact it provides the possibility to kill her, and to mistake this gesture for love.
Christianity originates exactly from a passion for man. God became man to meet the need of all men, believers and non believers, to understand the meaning of life and death. Christ had pity on our nothingness, and gave His own life to affirm the infinite value of each of us, in whatever condition.
We need Him to be ourselves. We also need to be educated to recognize Him, to be able to live.
November 2008
Communion and Liberation