P
ParkCityRich
Guest
My close friend recently died from a recurrence of cancer at the age of 52. She was born a Catholic but fell away from the Church as an adolescent or teenager, and lived most of her adult life as an agnostic.
I only knew her for the last 6 years of her life. Whenever the subject of faith would come up, she usually reacted negatively or with hostility. I eventually figured a direct approach wasn’t going to work with her, and so I hoped and prayed for a long-term future reconversion over many years. Though I never fully found out why she lost her faith, I always suspected it might have been due to some emotional trauma caused by someone or something earlier in her life. During her life, she also battled an abusive marriage that ended in divorce, as well as anorexia, and alcoholism.
I am extremely distraught that she died without an apparent reconversion to belief in God. In the last 6 weeks of her life since she found out about her terminal recurrence (she was told she had 4 to 6 months but died in just 6 weeks), I tried to reach her as best I could. Though I sensed somewhat of a softening or opening of her heart with regards to a “generic” belief in the afterlife, she never seemed to have an apparent reconversion back to the Faith or to a belief in God as we know Him. She was in coma or near coma during the last two days of her life in the hospital, and my attempts to secure a priest for her for the Last Rites were thwarted by some of her (non-religious) family members who told the hospital chaplaincy coordinator there was no need to send for a priest because “It was not what she would have wanted.”
My question is:
Despite my dear friend’s apparent lack of a reconversion before she died, might it still be reasonable for me to hope that perhaps during her last hours or at the hour of death, Christ, in His mercy, may have offered her the graces she needed to regain the light of faith, repent of her sins, and desire to reconcile with Him so that her soul would be saved? Is a “deathbed conversion” possible even when the dying person seems more in coma than conscious?
Thank you and God bless you for your thoughts on this matter.
I only knew her for the last 6 years of her life. Whenever the subject of faith would come up, she usually reacted negatively or with hostility. I eventually figured a direct approach wasn’t going to work with her, and so I hoped and prayed for a long-term future reconversion over many years. Though I never fully found out why she lost her faith, I always suspected it might have been due to some emotional trauma caused by someone or something earlier in her life. During her life, she also battled an abusive marriage that ended in divorce, as well as anorexia, and alcoholism.
I am extremely distraught that she died without an apparent reconversion to belief in God. In the last 6 weeks of her life since she found out about her terminal recurrence (she was told she had 4 to 6 months but died in just 6 weeks), I tried to reach her as best I could. Though I sensed somewhat of a softening or opening of her heart with regards to a “generic” belief in the afterlife, she never seemed to have an apparent reconversion back to the Faith or to a belief in God as we know Him. She was in coma or near coma during the last two days of her life in the hospital, and my attempts to secure a priest for her for the Last Rites were thwarted by some of her (non-religious) family members who told the hospital chaplaincy coordinator there was no need to send for a priest because “It was not what she would have wanted.”
My question is:
Despite my dear friend’s apparent lack of a reconversion before she died, might it still be reasonable for me to hope that perhaps during her last hours or at the hour of death, Christ, in His mercy, may have offered her the graces she needed to regain the light of faith, repent of her sins, and desire to reconcile with Him so that her soul would be saved? Is a “deathbed conversion” possible even when the dying person seems more in coma than conscious?
Thank you and God bless you for your thoughts on this matter.
