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Good morning. The long-awaited debate about assisted dying is a recognition of human failure. On one side are the limitations of medicine: there are some conditions science can’t cure, some states of suffering that medication can’t alleviate. For some people, the path toward death is painful, unrelenting and humiliating. Our culture prizes dignity. The notion of dignity is tied to rational choice; and rational choice is linked to the ability to effect positive change. When rational choice can’t effect the eradication or significant alleviation of suffering, the impulse to effect tangible change is so great that even assisted suicide is regarded as positive.

On the other side are the limitations of love. We want to be able to say to one another, ‘There’s nothing you can go through that I won’t face with you. There’s no suffering you can reach that will scare me away. There’s no pain you can have to bear that will stop me walking beside you every step of the way.’ When we make marriage vows, when we bring children into the world, when we say to one another, ‘You’re my best friend,’ we want to believe in a love that will not let us go, a love that’s enough to endure through the very worst that life can bring, can transcend the isolation of pain and fear and remorseless indignity. But sometimes love can’t do this. Sometimes love can only go so far. And sometimes that love from another person is not available to us.

So both sides of the assisted dying debate are facing up to failure – or at least, limitation. Both are reckoning with tragedy. Neither can fix the problem they’re facing.

The word at the centre of the debate is compassion. One side sees compassion as the ability, in an unusual and exceptional crisis, to set aside our customary reluctance to walk towards death, together with our longing for the one we love to go on living, and participate with a person making a rational choice that there’s no purpose in their continuing. The other side sees compassion as being willing to accompany a person when there’s no solution to their predicament, showing by our love that there’s something truer and deeper than suffering.

One is about holding on – the other is about letting go. It turns out both notions are central to Christian faith. Deuteronomy has the precious words, ‘Beneath are the everlasting arms.’ This is a love that never lets us go. Yet Jesus says to Mary, ‘Do not cling to me’: letting go is the heart of forgiveness and vital to faith. Maybe what compassion means on Friday is finding it in our hearts to recognise how profoundly both sides are speaking the truth.

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