When we affirm that life is a gift, what are we saying? Is life a gift in the same way as the gift of an object, a painting for example? What does the statement that life is a gift from God mean? Is life – my life – comparable to an acquired object, to one possession alongside another?
The gift can refer to the object received as a gift, to the possession acquired. I do what I want with it, because now it belongs to me. I am the legitimate owner and I do not have to answer to anyone. This is how many people, sometimes on the very day of Christmas, resell the gift received.
A simple transfer of ownership?
It is a possible meaning, but it does not seem to us that this exhausts the meaning of the gift, nor even that it constitutes its main meaning. On the contrary, if we limit ourselves to this meaning, we seem to turn away from what is at the heart of the gift, namely the relationship in which this gift finds its place and of which it is the sign. We also feel uneasy at the idea that a gift given can be immediately resold. Not without reason. This is because the donation is not a simple transfer of property. It qualifies first and foremost a gesture, that of giving, this gesture being the manifestation of a relationship. It is only by derivation that the term don is applied to an object.
To affirm that a painting is a gift is to recognize that I have received it from someone who wishes me well, and this free of charge, without compensation for work or service performed. A donation is always free in this sense. The response to the gift is the gratitude I express to the giver. I thank him, thus recognizing the meaning of his gesture and the charity shown.
This is why, in the context of a toxic relationship, the gift may be refused. It is a question of avoiding being in relation with the manipulative “donor”. The latter could very well have a different intention. He could use the gift to exercise power over me. In a way, the donor is always present through his gift, for better… as well as for worse.
A special gift
Questioning life as a gift also leads us to become aware of the particularity of this gift in relation to all the other gifts that I can receive during my life. The act by which I come into existence constitutes me as the receiver of the gift. It makes me a being capable of receiving gifts. There is therefore a difference between this initial donation and the other donations that I will receive during my story. It is a gift because I have nothing to do with this coming into existence, not because that would establish me as the owner of this life.
To speak of the gift in the sense of becoming the owner of my existence would make me miss the reality designated here. It is to consider my life in an autonomous solitude, it is my good, my ” precious “ (Tolkien), at the very moment when only relationship, communion, can account for what I am and what human life is. To affirm that life is a gift from God means to recognize that God creates and relates to me by the very fact of allowing me to come into existence. By “giving” me life, he is in fact establishing me in a relationship with Him, a relationship whose end is a total sharing of His life in eternal life. Man is created in the image and likeness of God in view of this, to allow this relationship with him.
The choice of a voluntary death
So, yes, man has the possibility of ending his biological life, a very understandable temptation in the face of certain situations of suffering. Some great saints knew this one, such as Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus and of the Holy Face. With the grace of God, they were able to overcome such trials not by putting an end to the terrible situation endured, but by trusting against all odds to the relationship with their Creator and Saviour. Voluntarily anticipating death does not just mean ending an unbearable situation, but also ending a relationship. Indeed, through the gesture of euthanasia or assisted suicide, we no longer receive the given existence.
We would then strangely resemble the prodigal son who asks his father for his property in order to then live outside this relationship, not understanding that this is, on the contrary, the condition for the authentic enjoyment of his property. “All that is mine is yours. » It is in the relationship with the Father that life finds its meaning, even in suffering. It is for this reason that the choice of voluntary death by euthanasia or suicide (assisted or not) will never be Christian and will always be a greater evil than the one from which we are thus trying to escape. It is up to us to do everything so that no one is confronted with this choice of radical negation of human dignity.