The daughter of a man asked the priest of that place to come to her house to say a prayer for her father, who was very sick. When the priest came in the room found the ppor man lying in bed with his head leaning on some pillows. There was a chair near hisn bed and the priest thought he man knew he was coming to see him.
`I assume you were waiting for me…`the priest said.
`NO, who are you?` the sick man said.
`I am the priest your daughter called to pray for you. When I entered and noticed an empty chair near your bed I supposed you knew that I was coming to visit you.`
`Oh, yes, the chair. Can you close the door, please?` the sick man said.
The priest surprised closed the door. The sick man said:
“I have never told this thing to anyone but I spent my whole life without knowing how to pray. When I went to the Church I heard all the time words about prayer about the way how to pray and the benefits it brings but this matter with the prayer it always goes on one of my ears and goes out on the other. Anyway I have no idea how to do it. So I gave up on it long time ago. This happened till four years ago when I was speaking with my best friend and he told me:
`Dear friend, this prayer is simply a conversation with CHRIST our Lord and here is how I suggest you to make it: You sit on a chair and you put another empty chair before you and then with faith you look to JESUS Who sits before you. It is not a crazy thing as He said: I WILL ALWAYS BE WITH YOU. So speak with Him and listen to Him as you do know with me.`
`This is what I did once and I liked it. Since then I do it for about two hours a day. I always take care of not being seen by my daughter…she would take me to the mental asylum.
The priest was deeply touched hearing this thing and told Joseph it was a very good thing what he had done and that he should never stop from that. Then he said for him the prayer for the absolution of sins, confessed him and communed him, gave him a blessing and left for his parish.
Two days after that Joseph`s daughter called him to tell him her father had died. The priest asked her:
`Did he die peacefully?`
`Yes, when I left hime at about two o`clock pm he called me and I went to see him at his bed. He told me loved me very much and gave me a kiss. When I came back from shopping one hour later I found him dead. But it is something strange about his death because it seems that even before dying he went to the chair near his bed and put his head on it because this is how I found him. What do you think this thing means?`
The priest profoundly shaken wiped his emotional tears and answered:
`I wish we could all die like this.`
Source: Facebook – Priest Teodor Ciurariu
