Eden on A Little Guide for Your Last Days

What will probably be seen correctly as an ignoring of Our Lord's injunction not to let your left hand know what your right is doing (Mt 6,3), yet apropos of All Souls Day, here is Dawn Eden's latest at Headlinebistro.com:

Catholic Convert, Cancer Patient, Pens Little Guide for the Dying

by Dawn Eden

News stories about health issues often note fluctuations in “mortality rates,” but, as writer James Taranto often observes, except for one notable exception, the mortality rate in fact remains stable at 100 percent.

That all of us must die is modern society’s most inconvenient truth. One of the few bulwarks of the culture that acknowledges it is the Catholic Church, but, even so, when was the last time you heard a homily on mortality?

My friend Jeffry Hendrix, who was a Methodist pastor before being received into the Church in 2001, was reluctant to think about the “last things” – until the day he learned he had bladder cancer. The shock of the news caused the 55-year-old husband and father to explore the meaning of Catholic teachings on suffering and death. Now, a year and a half later, he is the author of the first self-help manual for terminally-ill pewsitters since St. Alphonsus Liguori’s Preparation for Death. A Little Guide for Your Last Days (Bridegroom Press) has earned praise from the likes of Mark Shea, Joseph Pearce and Father Dwight Longenecker..MORE>>