As I lay dying of laughter -or- The well-oiled Catholic
Last night I had the pleasure of dining in the rectory of one of the churches in Arlington. A friend of mine is the Parochial Vicar and he invited me over for a visit. I was regaled with wonderful stories like this one:
A retired priest was living in the rectory of one of these priests. He visited a nursing home once a week but was so forgetful about who he was supposed to see. The elderly padre was going on vacation and the pastor told him to anoint every Catholic in the nursing home before he left.
That Sunday a man came up to the pastor after Mass, told him that his father was at the nursing home and was near death. He asked if the pastor would give him last rites. The pastor said he was sure the man’s father had been anointed. “Are you denying my father the sacraments?” The man asked. The pastor didn’t want to get in a row with this man so he agreed to anoint his father.
The next day the man called the rectory and asked for the other priest. He asked again if his father could be anointed. The conversation went exactly as it had on Sunday with the pastor, and the priest went to anoint the dying man.
The next four days the man called around to other churches to have other priests anoint his father. They all complied.
One Friday the man’s father passed on. He had been giving last rites five times before he died.
At the funeral the pastor eulogized him in this way:
“When we lose a loved one it is normal to ask ‘is my father in Heaven now?’ I can say with great faith that you father is certainly in Heaven. He was anointed so many times before he died that he slid in!”