reflections on life
By Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD
Neatly hidden by huge waterways and bridges some 12 miles from New Orleans via the Barataria exit of the Westbank Expressway, the hamlet of Lafitte lives up to its name as part of the lair of the notorious pirate, Jean Lafitte. Although I have been there several times, the allure and lore of the area have not diminished.
A friend dating back to 1971 during my teaching years at Xavier University in New Orleans, Irishman Father John Ryan invited me to do another revival at his merged Parish of St. Anthony/St. Pius X. With the theme “Dump Anxiety; Welcome Healing and Peace,” we waded into our Saturday Mass version of the revival.
Punctuating picturesque Lafitte, Friday, March 20, marked the first day of spring with a black (new) moon, the third of six supermoons that will occur in 2015.  That moon blocked the sun in a total eclipse in northernmost European countries.
After the Saturday afternoon segment of the St. Anthony/St. Pius X Parish revival, Father John Ryan and I drove to the Sheraton Hotel in New Orleans where I was to be one of the speakers at an event hosted by the New Orleans Black Indians Alliance (NOBIA). “Soiree of Feathers,” Bury the Hatchet, Raise the Flag, was the event held to celebrate a rich and storied New Orleans culture and tradition. Once very territorial and violent, the only tribal competition now is who is “prettier” in dress.
This culture/tradition celebration can be experienced and lived through a single vision, collective work, creativity, self-determination and purpose – almost synonymous with the Nguzo Saba, seven core principles of African Heritage: Umoja (Unity), Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), Ujima (Collective Work/Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics); Nia (Purpose); Kuumba (Creativity); Imani (Faith). These are enunciated in Kwanzaa, celebrated from December 26-January 1.
I urged them to do what the city of Boston did in 1996 with huge success. Sensing that lack of communication and coordinated efforts were impeding efforts to help their violent youth, officials of Boston cobbled together The Boston Strategy To Prevent Youth Violence, an organization that melded parents, schools, churches, police, probation officers, public officials, social service agencies, community organizations – and, yes! street gangs – into close cooperating partners.
So successful was the Boston Strategy in reducing youth violence that in 1997 President Bill Clinton launched a National Anti-gang and Youth Violence Strategy modeled after the Boston Strategy. With our youth running wild in New Orleans, Chicago, Detroit and other cities, it is time to imitate the Boston Strategy.
At the Sunday 11 a.m. Mass, I admired once more the cozy semicircular design of St. Anthony Church, the thrice-flooded concrete floor marked with attractive patina, and the painting of the fish on the floor with the Greek word for fish, serving as an acronym that means Jesus Christ of God Son Savior.
Almost as old as Christianity itself, that fish symbol is found in art and architecture.
Through major hurricanes, most of the people of Lafitte have repaired or rebuilt their homes, but some have moved to higher ground. Thus, after losing a number of church members, Father Ryan is struggling to rebuild membership. If nothing else, his deep Irish faith, sense of mission and humor are in evidence to his parishioners with whom he has a very personal, spiritual relationship.
No matter what the age, condition or locale of an audience is, wrestling with negative stress (anxiety) is a theme that always strikes home, since it is something we all have in common. Public Enemy No. 1 is my personal moniker for negative stress. It sours, ruins and can ultimately destroy all peace of mind, feelings of joy, one’s nerves and – alarmingly – one’s immune system. Once our immune system is destroyed, the way is open for any disease, even cancer, to invade our body.
While there are many contributing factors to negative stress, the very worst of all is guilt/unforgiveness. Sadly, human weakness makes forgiving – even forgiving ourselves – very difficult. Yet, forgiving is the most important thing in life.
Our reward for forgiving each person without exception is enormous: peace of mind, relaxed nerves, joie de vivre, complete healing of body and soul, fulfillment.
(Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD, is pastor of Our Mother of Mercy Parish in Fort Worth, Texas. He has written “Reflections on Life since 1969.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Raissa Maritain, the philosopher and spiritual writer, died some months after suffering a stroke. During those months she lay in a hospital bed, unable to speak. After her death, her husband, the renowned philosopher, Jacques Maritain, in preparing her journals for publication, wrote these words:
“At a moment when everything collapsed for both of us, followed by four agonizing months, Raissa was walled in herself by a sudden attack of aphasia. Whatever progress she made during several weeks by sheer force of intelligence and will, all deep communication remained cut off. And subsequently, after a relapse, she could barely articulate words. In the supreme battle in which she was engaged, no one on earth could help her, myself no more than anyone else. She preserved the peace of her soul, her full lucidity, her humor, her concern for her friends, the fear of being a trouble to others, and her marvelous smile and the extraordinary light of her wonderful eyes. To everyone who came near her, she invariably gave (and with what astonishing silent generosity during her last two days, when she could only breathe out her love) some sort of impalpable gift which emanated from the mystery in which she was enclosed.”
The emphasis on the last sentence is my own and I highlight it because, I believe, it has something important to say in an age where, more and more, we are coming to believe that euthanasia and various forms of physician-assisted suicide are the humane and compassionate answer to terminal illness.
The case for euthanasia generally revolves around these premises: Suffering devalues human life and euthanasia alleviates that suffering and the ravages of the body and mind that come with that suffering so as to provide a terminally ill person “death with dignity” and death with less suffering. As well, it is argued, that once an illness has so debilitated a person so as to leave him or her in a virtual vegetative state, what is the logic for keeping such a person alive? Once dignity and usefulness are gone, why continue to live?
What’s to be said in response to this? The logic for euthanasia, compassionate in so far as it goes, doesn’t go far enough to consider a number of deeper issues. Dignity and usefulness are huge terms with more dimensions than first meet the eye. In a recent article in America magazine, Jessica Keating highlights some of those deeper issues as she argues against the logic of those who have lauded Brittany Maynard’s (the young woman who captured national attention last year by choosing assisted suicide in the face of a terminal illness) decision to take her own life as “courageous,” “sensible,” and “admirable.”
Keating concedes that, had she not made that decision, Maynard would no doubt have suffered greatly and would in all likelihood eventually been rendered unproductive and unattractive.  But, Keating argues, “she would have been present in a web of relationships. Even if she had fallen unconscious, she likely would have been read to, washed, dressed and kissed. She would have been gently caressed, held and wept over. She would simply have been loved to the end.”
That’s half the argument against euthanasia. The other half reads this way: Not only would she have been loved to the end, but, perhaps more importantly, she would have been actively emitting love until the end. From her ravaged, silent, mostly-unconscious body would have emanated an intangible, but particularly powerful, nurture and love, akin to the powerful life-giving grace that emanated from Jesus broken, naked body on the cross.
We too seldom make this important distinction: We believe that Jesus saved us through his life and through his death, as if these were the same thing. But they are very different: Jesus gave his life for us through his activity, his usefulness, through what he could actively do for us. But he gave his death for us through his passivity, through his helplessness, through the humiliation of his body in death. Jesus gave us his greatest gift precisely during those hours when he couldn’t do anything active for us.
And this isn’t something simply metaphorical and intangible.  Anyone of us who have sat at the bedside of a dying loved one have experienced that in that person’s helplessness and pain he or she is giving us something that he or she couldn’t give us during his or her active life. From that person’s helplessness and pain emanates a power to draw us together as family, a power to intuit and understand deeper things, a deeper appreciation of life, and especially a much deeper recognition of that person’s life and spirit. And this, impalpable gift, as Maritain says, emanates from the mystery of pain, non-utility, and dying in which he or she is enclosed.
In our dying bodies we can give our loved ones something we cannot fully give them when we are healthy and active. Euthanasia is partially blind to the mystery of how love is given.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)