ULTIMATE REALITY JUST BEYOND THE DOOR OF TEMPORAL REALITY

Holy Week and I am struck by one of the great problems I have faced throughout my Christian walk. It is impossible for me to begin to grasp the enormity of God’s love. Quite simply, I can not internalize or understand the immense love that lies behind and beyond the Cross. For Christ to willingly suffer and die to save someone such as me is too much for my puny mind to comprehend. I must simply accept that it is true, but it is a confounding mystery!

Easter breaks my heart. How can I possibly repay Christ for what he has done for me? It is impossible! All I can do in response is surrender to Christ’s perfect love and try to love him in return. That brings me to a second problem: My love is so poor, so shabby and so fickle that it’s not even worth having – and yet Christ accepts it. It makes me think of a loving father accepting the shaky and indistinct scribbles on a piece of paper drawn by his small child and pretending it is a masterpiece of art.  But this simple analogy quickly breaks down. The small child’s drawing is the best he can do ― it was produced in the purity of innocence. The love I offer back to God has been jaded by ego, tarnished by life, and is not pure. (On the matter of love, small children are better than me.)

That is when I catch an inkling of the extent of my spiritual poverty: All I have to offer God is not worth having. Even my pitiful and wretched version of love requires Christ’s generous love to be accepted by God. The transforming love of the Cross is what will change my understanding of the true nature of love and will draw me closer to truly loving God and my neighbour.  

In the seventeenth chapter of John we find Christ’s great high priestly prayer just as His Passion was about to begin. Christ prayed for his disciples and those who believe in Him through their word (verse 20). Jesus prayed that believers would be brought to perfection through him and be with him in heaven and see his eternal glory and know God’s perfect love (see verses 23-26). Throughout his prayer, Christ made clear that although spiritual perfection is our future state with him, the transformation begins in this world.

We do not know what this perfected transformation will be like. Saint John said, “...what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed ^ we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” (1John 3.2.) Saint Paul told us that Christians can be transformed into the “same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit.” That image is Christ.

This transformation of spiritual character is still a mystery that often involves pain here on earth. Paul told us that if we share in the sufferings of Christ we share in his glory. He said that our sufferings here on earth are not worthy to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us. This transformation begins to occur when we unite our sufferings with the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ. 

And when we do this a strange and wonderful spiritual transformation begins. Our spiritual poverty is absorbed into the glory of Christ’s sacrifice. Our pain united with His pain begins to produce in us a “weight of glory” to use St. Paul’s words, that will only be fully realized in eternity. He said that “although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.^ For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,” 

Surrendered pain in union with Christ is a refining instrument, if the sufferer allows it to be. God will raise us up (just as Christ was raised) and place us with him. 

For me, decades of suffering intensified my spiritual longing to be with Christ and see him as he is in heaven. This yearning is for the ultimate reality that lies just beyond the door of temporal reality. I am reminded of my Lord’s words to the thief as they were dying on their crosses: “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

My longing is not so distant at all. The mystery behind Easter is the key to satisfying my deepest desire; God put eternity in my heart ― and yours too (see Ecclesiastes 3.11.)

Mark

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PIED PIPERS FOR MEDICAL MURDER

In 2016, Canada legalized medically assisted suicide for physically sick and disabled people whose deaths are "reasonably foreseeable."  That was not good enough for death advocates. Immediately the reasonably foreseeable portion of Canada's "Medical Assistance In Dying" law was targeted as well as the requirement to be over 18 years of age. And why just the physically disabled? Canada's liberal progressives howled, "What about the mentally ill who want help killing themselves?! Discrimination!" 

Remember that death advocates originally promoted medical assisted suicide for dying people who were in uncontrollable physical pain, and wanted to end their suffering. That was the sales pitch—but it was not all they had in mind. In 2016 assisted suicide advocates got their way after decades of advocacy. Canada legalized euthanasia under the euphemism "medical assistance in dying."

Of the thousands of people who have received "medical assistance in dying" since 2016, only six were self-administered assisted suicides as was sold to the nation by the death with dignity crowd. What Canada actually has is lethal injections. That's not medical assistance in dying, that's medical murder. Don't you just love those slippery slopes progressive liberals deny? Don't you just love the syrupy sweet euphemisms they use to disguise the bitter poison of monstrous acts!

Liberal progressives laugh at the idea of a slippery slope on moral issues. Their laughter is hollow and unconvincing. All we need to do is look at the liberals' sacred cow of abortion. It was legalized in Canada in 1969—3 years before the infamous 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that opened the path for the systematic murder of over 61,000,000 children before birth. Abortion advocates still repeat the mantra about abortion being safe, legal and rare. Well, it may be legal but abortion in America and Canada but it is neither safe nor rare. The injured and dead bodies of thousands of women attest to that fact.

In 1969, at third reading of the original abortion bill, then Canadian Justice Minister John Turner rose in the House of Commons to reassure a reluctant and uneasy Parliament about his bill:

"The bill has rejected the sociological or criminal offence reasons. The bill limits the possibility for therapeutic abortion to these circumstances: It is to be performed by a medical practitioner who is supported by a therapeutic abortion committee of medical practitioners in a certified or approved hospital, and the abortion is to be performed only where the health or life of the mother is in danger."

The bill passed into law. Was that what happened in practice? Not even close. It was a ruse. The ink was barely dry on the legislation and the law was being flouted. The Justice minister was lying. The first Prime Minister Trudeau (Pierre) smugly clarified that the law meant health to include mental health. Things got so bad in Canada that by 1982, there were more abortions than live births in Canada's largest city of Toronto.  Either the law was being ignored or Canada had the unhealthiest women on the planet! The precedent for accepting medical murder was set.

The law was completely struck down in 1988, by Canada's Supreme Court. From that day until now, there has been no law on abortion in Canada. There is no legal protection for unborn children at any point of pregnancy. A woman can have an abortion for any reason or no reason, completely paid for by the taxpayer. All she needs to do is call up her nearest friendly abortion clinic and make an appointment. She can have as many abortions as she wants and they are all paid for by the government. What was once utterly unacceptable is now a right.

You see, a monstrous idea can never be presented to the public conscience in its full hideousness. It must be skillfully sold in small increments over time. The public conscience must be massaged and lulled to sleep. Take an idea that makes people recoil in disgust an horror and present it gradually, in altruistic scenarios. Create dire situations with extreme cases. Present a lie as truth. Keep telling it with conviction, and eventually what was unthinkable yesterday becomes thinkable today and a human right tomorrow. Coarsening the public conscience takes time and skill to kill.

Abortion did not kill millions of women as we were told during the 1960s. The year prior to Canada legalizing abortion in 1969, there were 367 deaths by illegal abortion. As tragic as those deaths were, they were not thousands or even millions. 

Fifty years later we were told that assisted suicide was needed for people with uncontrollable pain at the end of their lives. But modern pain medication and techniques can completely relieve all physical pain. How do I know this? Dr. John Scott, a Canadian expert in palliative care wrote the following words:

“The World Health Organization has demonstrated that access to pain-relieving drugs, along with a simple education program, can achieve relief in the vast majority of patients. Specialists in various parts of the world estimate these basic approaches can control 85-98 percent of cases. The remaining cases require more careful attention and the use of multiple drugs and therapies to achieve complete relief.”*

Those words were written in 1995. How much more refined has pain management improved in these intervening years?! I posed that question to another end-of-life care specialist, Dr. Margaret Cottle. Not only did she confirm the veracity of Dr. Scott's words, she told me about the marvellous new advances in pain management.  Suffice to say, if you know someone who is suffering in pain in 2020, they don't need a lethal injection, they need a new doctor!

So now, Canada is thinking of legalizing euthanasia for what they euphemistically call "mature minors" and the mentally ill. Don't be placated or fooled by skilled but evil wordsmiths. Let me bluntly clarify the immoral quagmire in which we find ourselves sinking. Canada has legalized killing off its suicidal sick, dying and disabled citizens, and now it is contemplating expanding its terrible euthanasia law to include children and the mentally ill. These are the very people a civilized society should be protecting with the best care available. What we call medical assistance in dying is actually medical murder. Canada has lost the right to call itself a civilized nation. 

Mark

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* Dr. John Scott, "FEAR AND FALSE PROMISES, The Challenge of Pain in the Terminally Ill" inEUTHANASIA AND ASSISTED SUICIDE: The Current Debate, ed. Ian Gentles (Toronto: Stoddart Publishing Co. Limited, 1995), p. 96.