The chair
A man’s daughter asked the priest to come to her house to say a prayer for her father, who was very ill. When the priest arrived at the sick room, he found this man in his bed with his head propped up by a couple of pillows. There was a chair next to his bed, so the priest thought the man knew he was coming to see him.
– “I guess you were waiting for me,” he said.
– “No, who are you?” said the man.
– “I am the priest that your daughter called to pray with you, when I saw the empty chair next to your bed I assumed that you knew that I would come to visit you.”
– “Oh yes, the chair”, said the sick man, do you mind closing the door? The surprised priest closed it. “I have never said this to anyone, but all my life I have spent not knowing how to pray. When I have been in the Church I have always heard about prayer, what to pray and the benefits it brings, but always this about prayers went in one ear and out the other, because I have no idea how to do it, so I gave up praying altogether a long time ago.
This has been like this for me until about four years ago, when I was talking with my best friend and he told me: José, this prayer thing is simply having a conversation with Jesus. This is how I suggest you do it: you sit in a chair and place another empty chair in front of you, then in faith you look at Jesus sitting in front of you. It is not something crazy to do it because He told us: “I will always be with you”. So you talk to him and you listen to him, the same way you’re doing it with me now.” “That’s how I did it once and I liked it so much that I’ve been doing it for about two hours a day ever since.” Be careful that my daughter doesn’t see me… because I would immediately go to the asylum.”
The priest felt great emotion upon hearing this and told José that what he had been doing was very good, and that he should not stop doing it. Then he prayed with him, gave him a blessing, and went to his parish. Two days later, José’s daughter called the priest to tell him that her father had passed away. The priest asked:
“Did he pass away peacefully?”
-“Yes, when I left the house at about two in the afternoon he called me and I went to see him in his bed, he told me how much he loved me and gave me a kiss. When I came back from shopping an hour later I found him dead. But there is something strange about his death, because apparently, just before he died, he went to the chair that was next to his bed and leaned his head on it, so that’s how I found him. What do you think? can this mean?”
The priest dried his tears of emotion and replied: “I wish we could all go that way…”
If you liked the reflection of the chairplease share it on social networks by pressing the following buttons:
Javier’s Catholic Web Index
catholic reflections
Sign in the guest book
Subscribe for free to Javier’s Catholic Web mailing list to receive weekly updates by email.