Current advances in science have meant that medicine has been able to prolong life, but not enhance its quality; very often medicine succeeds only in postponing death. This has given rise to the term “euthanasia,” by which, rather than a good death, people mean a good path toward it, and claim “the right to die with dignity,” which, according to the egotistical way we humans tend to reason, confuses dignity with the absence of discomfort and with not needing others.
Without going into the merits of the question. We simply observe that the situation described has also changed the way we view the end of an individual’s life:; we view death more as a “leaving” than an “arrival.” It would do no harm to question the second aspect.
Still, the traditional term “rest” survives. But this “rest” is conceived as falling asleep (so deeply that one is no longer even able to dream), rather than as genuine fullness, as rest in nothingness rather than “eternal rest.”
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© Union of Catholic Asian News
2023
