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Modern Western societies, including that of Europe, are going through a crisis of values, a crisis of hope, that testifies to a profound change in the individual relations with life and with death. The risk is that we forget, or deny, that death forms part of life, that it forms part of the logic of earthly life, that it is its prolongation for a new birth. Contemporary society tends to conceal death: it shows its dislike for the elderly, though paradoxically they are becoming ever more numerous, for the sick and for the disabled. To die at home, where a person has lived, is no longer normal. It’s not convenient, it’s not proper, it’s not hygienic. A person needs to die in a hospital structure. Once death has intervened, in the more modern countries, it’s no longer the custom for the body to be taken home for the vigil or wake, to receive the tribute of friends and family. No, the so-called funerarium has been invented instead: an antiseptic, impersonal and hygienic place where, on appointment, you can make a formal visit, as if to an office. Clearly, since secularism is obligatory, no religious signs are present! This reduction of death, its removal from the personal dimension, is linked to what is tantamount to a real deification of life that we may observe everywhere, in the media as in personal conduct: from the glorification of youth to the marketing for so many products that claim to preserve it, to the rejection of the accident, of fatality: nowadays, after an accident of any type, the television channels dramatically present the families of the victims, who launch accusations again the presumed culprits and demand retribution (including substantial sums in compensation…); each accident, of whatever gravity, brings a succession of doctors, trades unionists, teachers, etc, to the courthouses. Death is especially unacceptable when it happens unexpectedly. When life is deified, we enter a culture of death. This might seem a paradox, but it is true, because in the name of life, it has become necessary to remove from sight all those who represent, or could represent a nuisance, an obstacle to the fulfilment of youth, everyone whose presence might detract from the enjoyment of the real life, of the present moment: the child in the womb, the handicapped, the elderly person have become a nuisance. So, from abortion to euthanasia, there exists a terrible iron law, which in the name of life, and under the cover of fine feelings, denies life itself! Many countries in the European Union have adopted legislation in favour of abortion; some have already gone one step further and legalized euthanasia. Of course, with precise rules, but the step has been taken, and in Europe we are increasingly entering the infernal logic of the culture of death, the direct result of a mistaken idea of life. God became flesh in the weakest creature there is: an infant child! Through this weakness he indicates to us the right road to follow: that of combating the culture of death by bearing witness to the victory of life, the true life, the one that is not separated from death, but assumes it and respects it, by virtue of its transcendence from it.
