This past week we celebrated the Feast Day of St Joseph.  St Joseph, is considered to be a great intercessor for Christians, especially in the area of a “happy death”.  I wanted to deepen my relationship with St Joseph this year, so I attempted to do the 9-day Novena and ask for his help on a few important things. Unfortunately, I am challenged in the novena department, and failed to remember to check in with St Joseph every day. I would start again, do two in a row,  back it up, stack them….to no avail.  Then, on his feast day, March 19, what some Catholics consider to be the real “Father’s Day”, I made a decision.  As prayer requests from friends and emails were pouring in, I decided I would start at noon and do a nine-hour novena to this humble, obedient man who took such good care of Jesus and Mary.  I started at noon and put my alarm on my phone for every hour.  Many of those hours I was driving so I would listen to the podcasts from “Pray More Novenas” as I drove.  I gathered up all the people who had emailed or texted asking for prayers, plus some of my usual intentions, and of course, my husband (because I mean, come on, it’s St Joseph.) As I listened to Relevant Radio‘s Drew Mariani show (#53) that day, all of these miraculous stories came over the airwaves of people who had great relationships and answered prayers and miracles with the help of St Joseph’s intercession.  One thing that struck to me in the course of my nine-hour novena, were the words from the prayer “a happy death”.  In my heart, I wondered what a happy death looked like and even spiritually posed the question as I prayed.  I feel like I got a miraculous answer the next day when I met a dear friend for lunch.  She related this story of her own.

A friend from another state came to visit back in the fall and did not seem herself.  She was confused and experiencing other symptoms.  She went to the doctor when she returned home and blood work revealed a devastating diagnosis.  She had a blood disease and her prognosis was only a few months left to live.  She and her husband had been very active and vibrant members of their church community.  They had a big family and many friends.  To watch her decline, and finally be told there was nothing left that medicine could, was heartbreaking.  Hospice was called in, and the family spent the next three or four days around her bed, spending their last moments together, reminiscing and laughing, crying and giving thanks for the life that they had shared together.  Every day a priest would stop by and visit her, but on the last day she asked for the “last rites”; the final sacrament of her journey on this earth.  She confessed her sins, received anointing with oils, and took communion, one final time.  She then called in her family.  She was bright, alert and coherent.  She said to her family, “I have made peace with each of you.  I have made peace with God.” Then she closed her eyes and passed away.

What Constitutes A Happy Death?

One element of a “happy death” seems to be time. As opposed to an accidental form of death, some that believe a diagnosed illness can be a blessing in the way that you know you have the time to set things right and make amends.  Many people became saints because they were falsely given a deadly prognosis, only to turn their lives around and serve God with a fervor like never before.

I once talked to a man who said that he knew he was dying and begged the Lord to give him a final assignment that could bring glory to God in the way that would allow Him to stand before the Lord with a pure heart, knowing he had done what he could.  As he knelt in prayer before the Eucharist, the Lord showed him a Holy Card image design to be drawn up and distributed.  Not only did this man live, but he went on to form a ministry around these holy cards to glorify God and lead others to consider the importance of spending their life for Him.

Repentance.  Not only do we have time to make things right with each other, but we have time to make things right with God, and this Sunday’s gospel directs us to do just that.

Gospel LK 13:1-9

I had a friend who told me that while he was driving once when he was younger, he was praying and happened to asked God to give him the grace to understand how God really felt about abortion.  He was forced to immediately pull his car over to the side of the road and heave and sob, and grieve unlike anything he had never experienced in his life.   It took him twenty minutes to physically recover from that one glimpse of “holy pain” but it was never forgotten and spoken of many times since.

We cannot measure God’s feelings by our human feelings, but a small glimpse of His grace tells much of the magnitude of His great love for His people.