Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

The Mercy of God and Modern Medicine 149 to the Gospel of love. This evangelization is accomplished through com­ municating the Christian understanding o f redemptive love in the Passion of Christ which gives significance to all human suffering. The two major goals that the Church has in healthcare are these: The humanization o f healthcare, and the evangelization o f suffering. “You” , John Paul II said to a group o f doctors who came to speak with him in 1982, “while you alleviate sufferings and try to cure them, at the same time are witnesses o f the Christian view o f suffering and o f the mean­ ing of life and death in the way it is taught by your Christian Faith.” For this reason, the moral and the ethical preparation o f doctors and nurses and all healthcare providers is vitally important, particularly at a time when, as I said earlier, mercy is misunderstood and is related to the power over life and death. Now, I want to turn from that point to the Charter’s understanding of death, and the ministry that is proper to dying people. I am going to illustrate that, as I said earlier, with some of the wonderful passages from Sister Faustina’s Diary. What is the “right to life” for dying peo­ ple? The “right to life” for dying people means living with dignity to the natural end of their life. It does not mean that someone can take in hand and control a right which no one has. We do not possess a “right to death.” Therefore, we cannot give the responsibility o f that non-existent right to another person. You can not make your doctor assist you in a “merciful death” because you do not have the right to choose the moment of your death. Life is in God’s hands. He is its Lord. He alone decides the final moment. All faithful servants watch over this fulfill­ ment of God’s will in the life o f every person entrusted to their care. They do not consider themselves the arbiters o f death; just as and because they do not consider themselves the arbiters o f anyone’s life. So a medical professional is neither the moral judge nor the ultimate authority over the lives o f his patients. As a servant he or she is called to attend to his patients with clinical expertise and professional knowl­ edge. Patients suffering from an irreversible and fatal condition are not only experiencing the effects o f an illness, or a pathology, but also the psychological and spiritual drama o f detachment which death signifies and implies. Again, when you read the Diary, as a healthcare profes­ sional or as somebody who deals with this world, you find a remarkable, remarkable objectivity on the part o f Sister Faustina. If she records these episodes and incidents in the Diary, it is because she had experienced