Divine Mercy: The Heart of the Gospel

156 Divine Mercy: The Heart Of The Gospel health professionals in alleviating pain can only be developed through education, experience and personal commitment. But as we have just realized pain is not just physical. There are many kinds o f suffering that cannot be touched by pain killers. They cannot be alleviated, certainly, by putting the patient to death! The Church understands pain killers as helping to make the course of an illness less traumatic and contributing to the humanization and acceptance of death. For the believer, pain, especially that o f the final moments o f life, assumes a special meaning in God’s salvivfic plan. It is a participation in the Passion and union with the redemptive Sacrifice of Christ. “For this reason,” the Congregation for the Doctrine o f the Faith said, “the Christian can be freely induced to accept pain without alleviation or to moderate the use o f pain killers. But, heroic behaviour cannot be imposed on everyone. And very often pain diminishes the moral strength of a person; sufferings aggravate the state o f weakness and physical exhaustion, impeding the impulse of the spirit, debilitating the moral powers instead o f supporting them. The suppression o f pain, instead, brings organic and psychic relief, making prayer easier and enabling one to give oneself over to God more gener­ ously.” The point o f that is that pain killers have a very powerful and noble and spiritual purpose. Sometimes the most demanding is not the holiest choice. Doing what is hardest is not always doing what is best. So, while recognizing the burden o f severe pain and the anguish that it brings, the Church proclaims that it recognizes and proclaims that Christ has redeemed us through the mystery of His death on the Cross. In expe­ riencing human death Jesus has united Himself to the dying of each and every one in order to bring us to redemption. Believers who enter into the mystery of death and resurrection, and are incorporated into Christ, seek to identify themselves ever more with Him. So this may lead a dying person to experience the sufferings and pains o f a final illness and death as a participation in Christ’s Passion and His redemptive death. Hence, a terminal patient may wish to limit his usage of pain medica­ tion in order to engage this identification with Our Lord more deeply. It may also have a reparational or expiatory dimension for the dying per­ son, depending upon his own understanding o f personal sinfulness and amendment in his experience o f Catholic spiritual traditions. Such an application of the mystical identification of the Christian believer to the Passion of Jesus may be a somewhat difficult area o f the Church’s teach­ ings as far as “end of life” issues are concerned to present to physicians and nurses, whose whole outlook is based on the relief of suffering. But