The hospital parking garage was crowded (as always), and as I made my way down the stairs to Christiana’s main entrance, a woman stops me. She had been crying.
“Father, are you from St. Francis Church? I’ve been calling for my Mom. She’s dying.”
I told her I wasn’t from that parish but would be happy to stop and anoint her Mom, which I did. Interestingly, she was only two doors down from the parishioner-patient I had gone to visit.
When I walked into the room of the dying woman, another woman immediately burst into tears. “My Mom’s whole life was the Church – she was a lector, laundered the linens, did whatever was needed around St. Francis. And she always prayed for a happy death. Father, her prayer has been answered.”
As a priest, I am constantly amazed at how God works in the lives of his faithful children. It was no coincidence that I ran into the woman in the parking garage, nor was it a stroke of luck that a woman who spent her life praying for the grace of a happy death received Last Rites within hours before dying. It is God at work in the world, pure and simple.
It was also a good reminder to pray for the same grace that the St. Francis parishioner prayed for daily. When God calls me Home, I want to be ready to spend eternity with Him. I hope we all do.
It is certainly one request that our loving Father would never refuse to answer.