According to the International Association for Suicide Prevention, suicide remains the third leading cause of death among persons aged 15-29. Approximately 1.5 million young Filipinos in this age bracket attempted to end their life in 2021.

You will be surprised to know that there are people who justify suicide by invoking the popular Biblical passage contained in our Gospel reading today: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).

They argue that since Jesus knew redemption could only be achieved through His suffering and death, then God must have sent Him to commit suicide out of love for humanity. Accordingly, suicide is an act of supreme compassion, sacrifice, and heroism.

This reminds me of the story of a man named Charles who received the sad news that he was terminally sick with cancer. Unwilling to trouble his wife, he kept this to himself. A few weeks later, his wife, Vivian, suffered a stroke. He placed her in a nursing home so she could receive adequate care and attention. He also rented a nearby apartment so he could visit her every day.

Although he himself began to suffer the pain brought about by cancer, Charles never missed a day to cheer up his wife and eating his meals with her. He would tell funny stories to make her laugh. But deep inside, he was haunted by a sense of helplessness and despair.

So, one Saturday morning, Charles helped Vivian out of bed and calmly pushed her wheelchair to a secluded corner of the nursing home’s garden. He then aimed a gun at her head and pulled the trigger. Then he fired another shot, into his own heart.

He left a letter wherein he confessed that he committed suicide because he feared that if he died ahead of Vivian, nobody would take care of her. He also declared that he and Vivian agreed to die together. He wrote: “If not for her sickness, she would pull the trigger herself.”

This story seems to prove that suicide is, indeed, a compassionate, even heroic act. But scratch the surface, and what we see is not heroism but obsession with control. With the current advances in science and technology, we presume we can control many things in life, including pain and death. So why go on living in despair when death promises deliverance? Killing oneself has become an instant solution to life’s problems, especially if such problems make life unbearable.

Suicide, as the deliberate destruction of one’s own life, is fundamentally an act of malignant pride that refuses to accept that there are many things in life that eludes human control. Suicide is driven by our inability to assert dominion over everything.

Christ’s death, however, was the exact opposite. His passion and death were motivated not by despair but by His surrender to God’s will. Jesus Himself declared: “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18). This statement reveals both freedom and purpose. Christ was not a victim of hopelessness.

In His sacrifice on the Cross, death was not His goal. He merely considered it as the possible cost of His great love for us. His willing acceptance of death was inseparable from His mission to save. He willingly surrendered His life so that others might live.

Moreover, Jesus did not directly kill Himself. His death was inflicted upon Him by others. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus never behaved like someone who was suicidal. In the Garden of Gethsemane, He naturally recoiled from pain and death, just as every human being does. He even prayed that He be spared from these. Yet He freely surrendered Himself to the Father’s will, saying: “Not my will, but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).

The death of Jesus cannot be separated from His Resurrection. Suicide ends in the triumph of death and hopelessness. Christ’s passion culminates in victory over death itself.