Hi Deeown,
Why is it we all put some kind of truth into what ‘they say.”
You speak of addictions and bad habits, People do get sick, well before full effects of the consequences of use take effect. Drug addictions, alcoholism are from Spiritual sickness. Even the Alcoholics Anonymous book states it as so.
Spirituality is a like like health, there’s a good healthy spirituality and a poor or sick spirituality. It’s where man takes it too. Over time God makes us aware of the level of sickness. Even in Ye Ole Testament, God had to break or bend the Stiff necks of His people. Most people reach a stage where they realize they can’t do what they do and have a quality of life. Basically mood altering substances try to fill voids only forgiveness and The Joy of Christ can fill. Only Jesus Christ can change our nature.
Suicide is a from of deep spiritual sickness, they belieive God can help them, and do not ask.
Mat 5:3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[quote:2j5gf6y1]David guzik commentary On Matt 5:3
[url:2j5gf6y1]http://www.blueletterbible.org/commentaries/comm_view.cfm?AuthorID=2&contentID=7869&commInfo=31&topic=Matthew&ar=Mat_5_3[/url:2j5gf6y1]
The poor in spirit recognize that they have no spiritual “assets.” They know they are spiritually bankrupt..Those who are poor in spirit, so poor they must beg, are rewarded. They receive the kingdom of heaven, and poverty of spirit is an absolute prerequisite for receiving the kingdom of heaven, because as long as we harbor illusions about our own spiritual resources we will never receive from God what we absolutely need to be saved. .. The godly reaction to poverty of spirit: mourning.[/quote:2j5gf6y1]
God can use our own addictions to turn our hearts to Him. If we heed His help.. to turn our lives to him… God waited till moses turn toward him before he call him:
Exd 3:3,4 And [b:2j5gf6y1]Moses said, “I will turn aside and see this great sight,[/b:2j5gf6y1] why the bush is not burnt.”
When [b:2j5gf6y1]the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush,[/b:2j5gf6y1] “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here am I”
Wrote this several years ago in another Christian forum:
It is said, “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.”
The Church deemed it a sin, because it believes in the sanctity of Life, the sanctity of the human body, which God has created.
Depression, addictions are symptoms of deeper problems. They are the bitter fruit of a spiritual sickness; those that are not right with God are not right in spirit; or with themselves. Misery is not having enough as addiction goes. Christ came to bless the poor in spirit, a person who commits suicide is a victim of emotional ‘cancer’ or ‘stroke’ a breakdown of the emotional immune-system, and emotioanl/ spiritual fatality.
God is infinitely more understanding than we are, and God’s hands are infinitely safer and more gentle than our own. We need not worry about the fate of anyone no matter the cause of death, who exits this world honest, oversensitive, gentle, overwrought, and emotionally- crushed. God’s understanding and compassion exceed our own.
It can be too easy to be haunted with the thought, “If only I had been there,” rarely, would this have made a difference. In deed, most of the time, we weren’t there for the exact reason the person who fell l victim to this disease ; They did not want us there. they picked the moment, the spot, and the means precisely so that we wouldn’t be there.
Suicide is a spiritual disease that picks its victims precisely in such a way as to exclude others and their attentiveness.
Suicide is a sickness, and there are some sicknesses all the love and all the care in the world cannot cure.
We must trust in God’s goodness, God’s understanding, God’s power to descend to into hell, and God’s power to redeem all things even death by suicide.
John Oxios,
‘Faithful to Catholic Tradition, yet open to insights of contemporary Scholarship’
Picked this up back then also:
Answered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum Pontifical University.
[url:2j5gf6y1]http://www.ewtn.com/library/Liturgy/zlitur106.HTM[/url:2j5gf6y1]
Q: [b:2j5gf6y1]What is the current stand of the Church regarding the possibility of funeral Masses “in corpore presente” of persons who are said to have committed suicide?[/b:2j5gf6y1] Is it true that there already are mitigating circumstances, like the possibility of irrationality at the moment of taking one’s life (even if there was no note), whereby it would be possible to suppose that the person was not in his right mind, and that therefore it is licit to let the funeral entourage to enter a church and a funeral Mass be said? — E.C.M., Manila, Philippines
Answer : In earlier times a person who committed suicide would often be denied funeral rites and even burial in a Church cemetery. However, some consideration has always been taken into account of the person’s mental state at the time.
In one famous case, when Rudolph, the heir to the throne of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, committed suicide in 1889, the medical bulletin declared evidence of “mental aberrations” so that Pope Leo XIII would grant a religious funeral and burial in the imperial crypt. Other similar concessions were probably quietly made in less sonorous cases.
[b:2j5gf6y1]Canon law no longer specifically mentions suicide as an impediment to funeral rites or religious sepulture. [/b:2j5gf6y1]
[b:2j5gf6y1]Canon 1184[/b:2j5gf6y1] mentions only three cases: a notorious apostate, heretic or schismatic; those who requested cremation for motives contrary to the Christian faith; and manifest sinners to whom a Church funeral cannot be granted without causing public scandal to the faithful. These restrictions apply only if there has been no sign of repentance before death.
The local bishop weighs any doubtful cases and in practice a prudent priest should always consult with the bishop before denying a funeral Mass.
A particular case of suicide might enter into the third case — that of a manifest and unrepentant sinner — especially if the suicide follows another grave crime such as murder.
In most cases, however, the progress made in the study of the underlying causes of self-destruction shows that the vast majority are consequences of an accumulation of psychological factors that impede making a free and deliberative act of the will.
Thus the general tendency is to see this extreme gesture as almost always resulting from the effects of an imbalanced mental state and, as a consequence, it is no longer forbidden to hold a funeral rite for a person who has committed this gesture although each case must still be studied on its merits.
Finally, it makes little difference, from the viewpoint of liturgical law, whether the body is present or not. If someone is denied a Church funeral, this applies to all public ceremonies although it does not impede the celebration of private Masses for the soul of the deceased.
The same principle applies to funeral Masses of those whose body is unavailable for burial due to loss or destruction. Certainly the rites are different when the body is present or absent, but the Church’s public intercession for the deceased is equally manifest in both cases. ZE05111522
God bless,
john