Compassion and truth in labeling

"Because he listened and obliged the garden gate of his heart to remain open, Metropolitan Anthony had a wider view of suicide than many who jumped to moral closure. Not in every instance, but in different ways what he would say amounted to this: God understands where the person who is tempted by suicide is. God understands that for some, their situation has become so desperate that there are few other options remaining. Their inner torment is so great that suicide seems to them the only door out of the horror chamber their life has become. It is the last open door in a room full of inner torture, of madness. This is not a declaration of opposition to the classic position of Christians on the sacredness of human life. . . .Despair of losing a friend through suicide can break a person completely. They need to know that their friend was not alone. Indeed! While the 34th psalm says, "…taste and see that the Lord is good…", the 22nd psalm quoted by Christ on the cross identified himself with our separation from God, "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"When Christ voluntarily cried out with a loud voice and "breathed his last", it was a voluntary death. The involuntary death of many who commit suicide, may be treated as a murder, but Metropolitan Anthony believed that more light was shed on that predicament by associating the suffering that brings people to such an extremity with the compassion with which Jesus approached the human condition on Golgotha."

From a a lecture by Fr Stephen Headley, delivered at a conference in Moscow on Metropolitan Anthony Bloom of Sourozh. For more about Fr Anthony, go to this link: http://incommunion.org/forest-flier/jimsessays/metropolitan-anthony/