Suicide -- a Decidedly NON-Theological Point of View

Several days ago in Crystal's blog I made a short comment about suicide, and promised her that I'd write something up that was a little longer, about a young teenager here in the parish who had killed himself. This is what I sent her. I didn't have my notes from that homily years ago, but I remember very well the ideas that I was trying to put into words. The following is NOT very "theological," but it does represent, I think, what I believe about God's love, judgment, our free choice, and suicide.


Several years ago there was a young high school student in our parish who killed himself. When his parents were out, the young man had spent the previous night drinking at home with a friend. The next morning he was good and sick from drinking, and on top of that he got a good bawling out from his parents for what he did. Not much later that day he wound up taking his dad's gun and shooting himself in the head. The pastor was out of town on vacation, and so I spent several hours, with one family member after another, listening to their pain and questioning.

Of course his parents were beside themselves, since they had come down on him for getting drunk at home. But the whole community was in pain – other parents, the boy’s friends. There were a lot of his friends who said things like "If only I would have called him, he would still be alive."

I was asked to give the homily at his funeral Mass. I had known him fairly well. I had often talked with him when he served at Mass, which was often. I had plenty of things to say about him, all good things, things that many of his friends and family knew and had shared with me, about why he was a great kid and why they loved him. But I felt I had to say two things first, two things that everyone in that church was thinking consciously or unconsciously.

So I opened by saying that I was glad so many people came to church to be there that morning, at such a difficult time, to pray and to support one another and the boy's family. But then I paused and said that there were two things I felt were "out there" as things I needed to talk about, before we could go on with the service, to remember and celebrate the young man's life.

The first was just to talk about what had happened, along with the many feelings that I knew were “out there,” from talking to so many people about this tragic event. “What were we all feeling about this suicide?” We couldn’t just pass over that event in silence.

So I recounted the events that led up to his suicide... what he had done, and how he had rightfully gotten in trouble for what he did, in getting drunk... and that somewhere, in the physical pain from his hangover and in the emotional pain from having gotten in trouble, he did something really, really stupid, something that he couldn't take back afterwards. And I spoke what was the truth: that any one of us who were present at that service, if we had known what was happening to him, if we had guessed at all what he might do, would have intervened. We would have stopped him. We would have helped him. But we just didn't know, and we couldn't have guessed. In the state he was in, he didn't have the sense to reach out to any of us, when any of us would have tried to help him. So I told all of those present that they should not run themselves into the ground wondering what they could have done... that any of us would have done something if we had known, but we didn't.

But then I took up the second question, which I said that I didn't hear anyone talking about... and yet I knew that many people were thinking about it, so we HAD to talk about it. The question was, "What did God think about his suicide?"

I recounted what we had all been taught: that taking life was fundamentally wrong, and taking one’s own life was to destroy with our own hands the gift of life that God had given us. And the problem with suicide was that there wasn't any time afterwards to be sorry and ask for forgiveness. And without forgiveness, something so wrong as killing was would condemn the killer forever.

I asked myself aloud -- "Do I believe in hell?" And I answered, "Well, I certainly do, because if we're beings who are made for God, then for us to be without God for all eternity would certainly be hell."

And I asked again, "Do I believe that anybody is in hell?” And I answered again, “Well, it’s surely possible for people to willingly and freely choose to be without God in their lives, to want to live without God. And God usually respects our individual choice.” And I added that my idea of judgment is this: “I think we have the opportunity to look at who we are and what we’ve done. And we can say, 'Yes, that’s who I am, and I did this and that.' And I think that some people still choose and affirm those things that they know hurt others or even themselves. They still choose those things because that really is who they are. So they say, 'Yes, I know it was wrong, but he hurt me, and I don’t feel sorry for that.' Or 'Yes, I knew it was wrong, but I did it anyway and I’m glad, and I really don’t care what anybody else thinks about it.'

“But right now, I know that Tim (not his real name) has his head buried in God’s chest, and he’s crying his eyes out, because there’s just NO WAY that he would have wanted to hurt all of you like this.”

And after saying that, I just looked around at everyone – family, friends, others – and after a few moments of quiet, went ahead with talking about the young man and his life.