If living is important, dying is even more so.
It is necessary to live well. But living well is not indulging in the good life; it has nothing to do with that. Living well is living in God, and living according to God and for God. But if living well is important, dying well is extremely important, because there is a great difference between dying well or dying badly.
It is not the same to die confessed as it is to die without confessing, which means that it is not the same to have repented of all one's sins before dying and to have received absolution, as it is to die without doing so.
“We must ask for the grace of a good death,” a priest told me a few days ago. “Because dying well is a very great grace. A female parishioner of mine always asked God to grant her the grace of a good death. One day her illness worsened significantly and she was admitted to the hospital; her parish priest had gone on a trip, and this woman's husband became nervous because he thought it would be difficult to find another priest. But suddenly a chaplain came out of a room—no one knew where he had come from, no one knew him—this woman's husband spoke with him, they went to the chapel for the holy oils, returned to the sick woman's room, and the priest gave her Extreme Unction. Shortly after, the woman died.”
The devotion of the First 5 Saturdays of the month is like signing a passport to Heaven. Because the Virgin Mary promised Sister Lucia of Fatima that whoever followed the devotion of the First 5 Saturdays of the Month would be assisted at the hour of their death with all the graces necessary for the salvation of their soul.
Saint Joseph is the patron of a good death.
R R