In the midst of the Easter Season, with the Resurrection of the Lord at the center of our prayer and worship, we mourn the increasing tide of the cult of death.
Faith in the risen Lord makes possible the transformation of suffering from a scandal into something redemptive. And yet His word of hope and grace have not yet reached all of mankind. Too many still suffer in the darkness of unbelief.
Human life at all stages is increasingly at risk around the world. War and disease have always ravaged populations.
Now man has invented a new means of killing: turning those who should preserve and defend human life into agents of death.
Abortion laws increasingly gain traction in many countries, threatening the child in the womb. Some add legal protection for those who would kill a child outside the womb should he survive an abortion up to the point of birth.
Add to these laws legalization of “euthanasia” of the elderly. Advanced age and the diseases or physical frailty it brings are inconveniences to those charged with caring for the elderly. Life is easier for the rest of us if they are put out of their misery sooner. We reduce the human who cannot produce or live independently to the status of an unwanted animal.
Except that now animals are defended more than elderly humans. Life is deemed an inconvenience at whim, so low is the bar on what is considered insufferable.
But now it’s not only the preborn or the elderly that might place demands upon others, financial or otherwise, that might be considered an insupportable inconvenience. Now we are also killing human adults who decide they don’t want to suffer.
Suffering in the newly paganized West is now incomprehensible and in the absence faith thought to render life useless, meaningless, a waste.
It happened in Spain, once Catholic enough to defend human life, at the dawn of Holy Week this year. A young woman at 25 years of age was eliminated because the law said she can choose to receive a cocktail of lethal drugs that put her to sleep then stop her heart.
We observed Palm Sunday just days after Noelia was killed. The events in the last week of our Lord’s life were commemorated in the wake of Noelia’s execution, making clear that violently ridding ourselves of those who are inconvenient tragically continues to occur in a world still in need of redemption.
Holy Church presents the scandal of the Cross, a challenge to our faith following closely upon the triumphant entry of the Lord into the holy city of Jerusalem, hailed as the King of glory, with cries of “Hallelujah” and “Hosanna” in worship and praise.
These two realities come together in our faith: the scandal of suffering together with the anticipation of eternal glory made possible by the Lord’s Cross and the forgiveness of our sins.
Noelia was brutally gang-raped then attempted to end her life by jumping from a fifth-floor window. She did not die but sustained paralysis from her injuries. Her mental anguish must have been agonizing.
But those who loved her most, her parents, who could have supported and accompanied her in life, were rendered helpless while evil agents of the monstrous state administered death. The law assumed Noelia’s age of 25 rendered her competent to avail herself of the law granting suicide on request.
Their daughter died at the hands of those charged with preserving and defending life, doctors and nurses; in a Catholic hospital named St. Camillus — a true “scandal.”
This while her parents stood by helplessly as her life was snuffed out like nothing more than a candle flame.
The details of what occurred, to include the most unimaginable and brutal physical attacks on her person, cannot be described here. Suffice it to say that she suffered things no one should ever even contemplate, so evil they were.
But her suffering did not end there: the scandal of her physical and mental anguish was met not with compassion but with a need to get rid of it, and in the new Spain torn from its Catholic roots, the solution now is more evil still: killing.
Even the suffering of inconvenience demanded by another human life is considered so distasteful that we have legalized the killing of human beings from the womb to the tomb. No one is safe anymore from being “unwanted” and therefore to be gotten rid of, at any stage of life, for the reason of the burden which we place upon each other.
Love itself has been deemed an inconvenience.
This is true suffering: a hell on earth brought by man’s rejection of God and His command to love one another. But the Lord must redeem us also from this and every hell of our own making through consent to and cooperation with evil.
For we who believe, all of our suffering of whatever kind, whether a result of our own sins or those of others, is perceived in faith and love as a chance to offer reparation voluntarily both for our own sins and for those of others.
In the suffering and risen Christ, no suffering of our own is ever wasted. And, in His suffering and death joined to our own, it becomes redemptive, of ultimate value, for it increases the hope of eternal life.
“In a statement, members of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference’s Subcommittee for the Family and Defense of Life expressed that they view ‘with deep sorrow the situation of Noelia — this 25-year-old young woman whose story reflects an accumulation of personal suffering and institutional failings that challenge the whole of society.’
“Her situation, the prelates added, ‘cannot be interpreted solely through the lens of individual autonomy; rather, it demands a deeper perspective — one capable of recognizing the weight of psychological suffering, loneliness, and hopelessness.’
“The Spanish bishops underscored that ‘euthanasia and assisted suicide are not medical acts but rather a deliberate rupture of the bond of care; furthermore, they constitute a societal defeat when presented as a response to human suffering.’
“In [Noelia] Castillo’s specific case, ‘we are not dealing with a terminal illness but rather with deep wounds that cry out for attention, treatment, and hope,’ they added” (EWTN News).
Even death, which is the ultimate suffering, is not without hope. We pray for Noelia, and all whose lives were desecrated by murder.
Risen Lord Jesus, who suffered for us unto death, give us the faith which will fill all of our suffering with the hope of eternal glory in you, who live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.
Thank you for reading. Praised be Jesus Christ, our risen King, now and forever.
