I made a new friend, Marlene, at a recent Magnificat Group event in Illinois. She loved her very sick husband dearly, but she had so many decisions to make she did not know which way to turn.
She asked me to pray for her and I promised I would. She had been a very faithful Catholic all her life and it had been her habit to sit before the Blessed Sacrament for an hour or so each day. But she had not been able to for some time due to all of her responsibilities and she missed it very much. When we sit quietly alone, that is when we hear God’s voice most clearly.
She told me of an experience she had had with the death of her first husband many years before. He was in the hospital and had taken a turn for the worse following open-heart surgery; he was being kept in a comatose state and on life support. The Lord kept telling her to “bless him” in what turned out to be the remaining three days of his life. She asked the Lord how she could possibly bless him with so many people around him all the time.
The very morning he died, God showed himself to her: He was holding hands with her daughter, who had died earlier; they were waiting for her dad. She finally found herself alone in the room with her husband and was able to bless him.
That vision told her clearly that God was waiting for him—and their daughter was waiting for him as well. The gift of her “final blessing” allowed her to experience a beautiful peace, which has remained with her to this day.
Marlene will soon get back to attending Holy Hours again, where she knows she will hear God’s voice clearly. He will take her through this very special time with her husband, Bob, and they will know that they are not alone.
