Last Updated:Friday - 09/24/2010

WCR Letters to the Editor

Suffering may be God's will

Re:"Personal directive gives control over medical treatment" (WCR, Oct. 29).

I am quite concerned about your article regarding personal directives. Let me start with this: "I don't know if you have been in an auxiliary hospital and seen people, half conscious, drooling, strapped to a chair. Perhaps that's a situation a person would not like to be in."

Well I must reply that this reminds me of Christ's crucifixion, which would similarly be a situation a person would not like to be in. But therein lies the mystery of our faith.

We are so used to having our own will in everything that we want our deaths to follow our choreography too. Yet isn't it primarily during the times of suffering that we must try to accept God's will?

The fill-in-the-blanks view in this article seems to be that a life like that is not worth living. Instead of remembering personhood, we are invited to picture in our minds the "undignified" appearance of these individuals.

Let us not make the mistake of thinking that a person who does not look dignified has lost their dignity.

In my final time, when I am sorely afflicted, when I am strapped to a chair, when I am drooling, when I am incontinent, you will not be able to see the inner workings of my soul. On the outside, you will barely recognize me; my friends and families may just shake their heads to see me this way.

But unbeknownst to you, I am doing the biggest spiritual work I have ever done. I am atoning for my sins, I am resigning myself to God's will, I am coming to terms with my mortality, my death. I am becoming a child again, fit for heaven.

It is not for you to stop this work of mine.

M.L. Jewell
Edmonton

Share your good fortune

Wouldn't it be nice if people who take these expensive junkets around the world would use this money or parts of it to help Third World children or for medical supplies for those suffering people.

Don't you think you would feel this as very rewarding?

Gil Gourdine
Edmonton

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