Lady Lazarus

Last week, the local police of Palayamkottai, Tamil Nadu, India phoned the Consoling Sisters' Orphanage and Old Age Home. Would they have the kindness to rescue an old lady abandoned in the dirt outside the hospital? Yes of course, was the immediately reply. Sr. Maria Immaculata picked her up in the jeep and brought her back. The sisters washed her, cut her hair, washed her again and dressed her wounds - she had deeply infected sores on her back which smelt dreadfully and attracted the flies. She was emaciated and refused all solids; it was clear that she was dying.

The sisters whispered to her about one God, Jesus and heaven. In her pain she cried out "Jesus, Jesus!" A priest was summoned and baptised her, Maria Gertrude. She was invested with the Scapular of Our Lady of Carmel and was left asleep surrounded by the sisters, the children and the elderly ladies of the orphanage.

Two days later, her final agony began. A priest was summoned again and Maria Gertrude received the sacraments of confirmation and extreme unction. During benediction, half an hour later, she surrendered her soul to God. 

What good must this lady have done, or who had prayed for her to have merited to be brought from the dirt on the roadside to the glory of heaven within one short week? Our God is good. Deo gratias.