To overcome death or to see it

The events of Holy Week conquered the deepest fear of mankind: death. Human beings have been trying to outrun death for as long as they have been alive, but only through Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, have they found success. “Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death” (Jn 8:51).

The wondrous technical powers of Modernity have duped many into thinking that humans can finally overcome death without recourse to Christ. Transhumanism’s quest to rework the nature of human beings represents the forbidden fruit of man’s disordered desire: to beat death by our own powers rather than by God’s.

The transhumanist movement represents the aspirational side of Modernity: to establish Heaven upon earth without God. Modernity has another side—a nihilistic side—that is equally a consequence of its rejection of God. Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot is the artistic apogee of nihilism’s rejection of hope. Assisted suicide, oxymoronically dubbed “medical assistance in dying,” or MAiD, twists the Irishman’s heart-wrenching play into a real-life tragedy.

Every death by assisted suicide is horrific, and these deaths are becoming routine: Health Canada reports 16,499 citizens “received MAiD” in 2024; in the same year, California lost 1,032 residents under its “End of Life Option Act,” which was passed a decade ago. The organization End of Life Choices California laments that Canada outpaces California 16-1 in these deaths because “Californians don’t know that MAiD is one of their legal rights” at a rate of 25% versus 67% awareness in Canada.

Last Thursday, the same day that Jesus’ promise for believers to never see death was read at Mass, Noelia Castillo Ramos, a 25-year-old Spaniard and sexual assault survivor who spent four years as a paraplegic after a failed suicide attempt, “received assisted death.” Her case made international news after her family sued to prevent her from ending her life; 601 days of legal wrangling after Castillo made her first formal request to die, Spanish courts cleared the way for her twisted wish to be granted.

In an interview, Castillo expressed the nihilism that assisted suicide consummates more starkly than Samuel Beckett ever could: “Before asking for euthanasia, I saw my world as very dark. I saw everything as very dark. I had no goals or objectives. And I still don’t have any.”

Having endured parental separation, placement in foster care, multiple sexual assaults, and then failed suicide attempts, Castillo needed something, someone, to lift her out of darkness. She found nothing and no one.

In Spain, as in much of the post-Christian West, there are few who know to offer the hope of Jesus Christ: “I am the light of the world; he who follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (Jn 8:12). Christ restored sight to the blind and ambulation to the paralytic as signs of a deeper power: His ability to heal souls broken by sin.

Modernity, along with its denial of God, denies the reality of the human soul and its drive for love that no created thing can satisfy. If the material world is the only reality, nihilism, though not inevitable, becomes an ominous temptation in the face of serious suffering.

Why soldier on through the difficulties when there is nothing to live for? Why struggle when death offers a quick way out?

The latter question expresses a degree of irrationality: Death cannot be a “way out” because it means the end of life—there is no exit to be found once the light is extinguished. This thought contradicts the human instinct to preserve life at all costs. The disheveled homeless man whom I saw digging through the trash in search of food on a New York City subway platform last week represents both the lowest point of human existence, along with its fundamental vitality: humans are made to live, no matter the cost or the embarrassment required to do so.

That the anti-human practice of euthanasia can become a legal right in lands where Christ once reigned is perhaps the most pathetic symptom of men and women who have hardened their hearts toward God. During Holy Week, above all, God offers true life, eternal life, to anyone who desires it. The one criterion, acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and God, is exceedingly simple—provided hardened hearts do not reject its condition.

“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly,” said Jesus shortly before His passion (John 10:10). His death on the cross unleashes a living water from His very side that provides this life in abundance, a life that is fundamentally the opposite of nihilism. “Faith in Jesus,” Pope Benedict XVI writes in his first Jesus of Nazareth volume, “is the way we drink the living water, the way we drink life that is no longer threatened by death.”

Freedom from suffering does not come through death, as “MaiD” advocates falsely believe. It comes through Christ, who allows us to see God, the author of life, and to transform our suffering into a means of union with Him. Assisted suicide is the rotten fruit of blind laborers who refuse to see with their hearts the God who lovingly created them.

Now more than ever, the post-Christian West must see the graces wrought by Christ in Holy Week to prevent more tragic deaths by nihilism’s handmaid, which is what MAiD is.