What Ilyich faces in the final moment is grace. He is graced with the realization that he needs to offer care. Knowing that the real is compassion is not his accomplishment but is the gift of his son\u2019s presence. We, who would so quickly assist him out of this life, would do so because we can bear with neither grace nor compassion. They ask too much of us for another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because death is not taken from him by \u201cassistance\u201d that offers no real help, Ilyich is graced with realization that death is no more. \u201cInstead of death there was light.\u201d He sees this light and realizes that \u201cdeath is over . . . there is no more death.\u201d Ilyich\u2019s realization echoes Revelation 21:4 that \u201cdeath will be no more.\u201d Only a culture that can see death and care for those who are dying can be a culture open to the One who bore all our burdens. Christ\u2019s dying offers us abundant life even in our deaths if we are willing to face them. In his Good Death, death itself dies. Euthanasia denies us a good death because it is the denial of care, the denial of facing death authentically, and the denial of the goodness of life. It is thus the denial of the Author of Life\u2014or of any possible spiritual breakthrough at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each fall for many more years, my students and I will read a novella about a dying, loveless lawyer from Tsarist Russia. We will ask what the real life is and wonder if we are living it. We will consider what love and care look like and whether we live in a culture in which we bear each other\u2019s burdens. To bear those burdens is to face our deaths together. The direction of our culture is increasingly toward \u201cdeath pods<\/a>\u201d where we will die alone, because we, like Ivan, have refused to really live together. Resisting such a culture of solitary and uncared for assisted dying will take legislation, but it will also require that we spend some time with Ilyich and try to recover the goodness of a good life and of a good death. Someday I will face death. Someday my students will face it as well. Will we do so in a world detached from reality or attached to it? A culture that dispatches the burdensome or bears their burdens? A culture that offers care or that offers death? The euthanasia of Ilyich would have made impossible his eu thanatos<\/em>. Our society\u2019s growing practice of euthanasia may well prove to be the denial not only of our good deaths but also of the only real thing, a good life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read it all<\/a>.<\/p> Resisting the march of euthanasia will require numerous approaches. I hope this reflection on the good death of Ivan Ilyich contributes in some small way. https:\/\/t.co\/wOO6VTKdnF<\/a><\/p>— Terence Sweeney (@TerenceJSweeney) February 19, 2025<\/a><\/blockquote>