Three years ago, I was given the privilege of experiencing Holy Week in a particularly poignant way. Every other year as a priest, and before, I would normally be caught up in the preparations for the liturgy, in devotions, and all the events which help us to celebrate that great week, our annual commemoration of Christ’s death and resurrection. In 2007, however, I spent the early part of Holy Week in Gethsemane. Not literally. I was actually in Stoke-on-Trent. But I was accompanying my eldest sister, Mandy, in the last days and hours of her earthly life. Nine years before she had been operated upon, apparently successfully, for cancer of the breast. Nine years on, aggressive secondaries came which seemed to steal away my sister’s life in no time at all. She gave up her soul to God on Maundy Thursday, in the afternoon.

I managed to have a quiet few moments with her during that last day, when she really affirmed her faith in God, and showed she knew what was happening to her. During the previous six weeks, my sister had been in the Stoke-on-Trent City General, and then in the North Staffs Royal Infirmary. The care she received was wonderful from very dedicated staff. But hospitals are hospitals, and are, by nature, quite noisy places with a lot of coming and going. The cancer, which had gone to her brain, meant that Mandy had quite distressingly changed in her personality. She became at times very unsettled by paranoia. I remember how it was on the last day in hospital and she struggled and fought with nursing staff and family. In spite of this, I managed to have a quiet few moments with her during that last day, when she really affirmed her faith in God, and showed she knew what was happening to her.

It was a great relief when Mandy was taken to the Douglas Macmillan Hospice in North Staffordshire. This was the same hospice where my father had died, in an uncannily similar way only six years before.  I know that the Douglas Macmillan Hospice - like all cancer care hospices - is trying to get away from the image of being a place you go to in order to die. These days they offer day care, respite care, and many other services which help in the palliative care of cancer sufferers. But the experience of our family has been that of the hospice as a place to help in the last days of life. You might think that a place like the in-patient unit of the hospice would be a sad and mournful place. It is after all a place of death. But nothing could be further from the truth. It actually more resembles a pleasant hotel - or better still, an extension of home. Unlike a hospital with visiting hours and the rather clinical environment, the hospice is a place where families are welcome, everyone is treated with respect and generosity and even love. There is something particularly vocational about the members of staff who work there - doctors, nurses, and other staff - in the way in which they demonstrate a deep respect for the dignity of the dying person.

There is something particularly vocational about the members of staff who work there - doctors, nurses, and other staff - in the way in which they demonstrate a deep respect for the dignity of the dying person.Let me be clear. This is not the false dignity of our culture, which seeks to preserve ‘dignity’ through so called ‘mercy killing’ or assisted suicide. Research done in Australia shows that the majority of the people who ask to be helped to die are really afraid of suffering alone, or being a burden, and once assured that they are not a burden, and that they won’t be abandoned, the number of people still asking for euthanasia reduced to zero. Rather, the hospice represents the true culture of life, respecting the person and every dimension of their life, in the midst of their human weakness and suffering. Some people imagine that the drug regimes in hospices are there not only to make the last moments of life pain free, but also to help that last moment come. This is evidently not the case. Indeed we can be assured by palliative medicine specialists that keeping patients pain free is more likely to keep them alive longer than otherwise.

I reflected on what it must have been like to die with the more excrutiating forms of cancer in the days before palliative cancer care. I can’t even imagine what that ‘last agony’ could have been like. I am therefore very thankful to the hospice movement, begun by Douglas Macmillan back just under 100 years ago, which now results in such fine care being given to cancer sufferers in their last days.

Seeking to alleviate pain is a true form of charity and should be encouragedI am grateful that, in the middle of a society which is so marked by the culture of death, the culture of life is alive and well in these well-respected and valued institutions. Of course pain and suffering united to Christ is redemptive, and the Church recognises that, but the Church also tells us that seeking to alleviate that pain is a true form of charity and should be encouraged (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2279).

The culture of life is seen also in the respect that is given to faith in most hospices. A great number are indeed Christian foundations, and this background is shown in a distinctive Christian ethos. The hospice is a real place of peace, even with so much evidence of suffering and human weakness around.

It is no accident that our hospices are still not fully funded by government funds. Actually, bringing them into the public sector would probably ruin them anyway as they’d be given targets, turned ‘faith neutral’, and would lose much of what makes them so human. These are places which rely on charitable funds. I’d urge anyone to get involved in a local hospice, either supporting financially or with volunteer time, or simply through prayer for the great work they do in promoting the culture of life.