Our Lady and The Hobo

In the early 1900's, a priest; Fr. Larry, lived in an old rectory. By the front door was a tube with a megaphone attached to it. If a person needed him for a nighttime emergency, they simply had to talk through the tube and they could be heard through another megaphone attached to the priest's bed.

One very cold night there was a blizzard blowing outside; the wind and snow had been swirling around for some time. There was no furnace in the rectory, and Fr. Larry had gone to bed wearing a pair of pants, a sweater, and his slippers. He also had five blankets over him, so he was as warm as toast.

Late one night, a call came through the tube. Fr. Larry was so comfortable that he rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. Suddenly the voice shouted out an address, and bounced the poor priest right out of bed!

Fully awake, he ran down the stairs and opened the front door, but nobody was there! The snow had drifted waist-high against the door. There was also a large snowdrift that someone should have walked through in order to get to the megaphone, but there were no footprints

Fr. Larry knew he had heard a thundering voice, "Get up, Father. Someone at 55 Walter Street is in desperate need of you!" So dressing quickly, he grabbed his black bag and hurried out into the night. He ran through the town, and finally found 55 Walter Street. There in front of him stood an old abandoned house; with some boarded up windows. He pounded on the locked front door, but nobody answered. He went to the back of the house and entered through a door that was falling off its hinges.

An old man lay on the floor; dying! Fr. Larry heard his Confession, gave him the Last Rites and said, "You must have done something wonderful in your life to win this extraordinary grace … what was it?"

"No, I've never done anything!" the hobo mumbled. "I've wasted my whole life… drank it all away… never did anything for anybody!"

"But you must have done something," the priest insisted.

Fr. Larry decided to get some help. Just as he was leaving, the old man said, "Well there might be one thing, except I don't like to talk about it."

The priest stopped, "What was it?" he whispered to the old man.

"Aw, Father, I don't like to mention it to you because I did it when I was drunk, I did it in bars, I did it laughing, I did do it all these years… badly though." The priest asked what it was and waited for an answer.

The hobo replied, "Well, Father, when I was a little kid, my Mom told me that if I said 3 Hail Mary's every day, that I wouldn't die without having a priest to confess to and get the Last Rites and Father I'm dying…and it's come true, hasn't it?" Then very peacefully, the hobo died.

Say 3 Hail Mary's, every day and Mary will give you a good death too!

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