All He Needs is Your Little 'Yes'

by Jerome Kiley

I volunteer in a hospital in Boston as an Extraordinary Minister of the Eucharist. It is a great privilege. After several years, I also began to pray The Divine Mercy Chaplet for dying patients. The Lord always seemed to find a way for me to reach the sick and dying and reveal the greatness of His mercy.

On Palm Sunday last year, I had visited patients with Holy Communion. When I was done, I was about to leave the chaplain's office and go home when I noticed a box on a table in a corner of the room filled with palms, each tied in the shape of a cross. It was 6 p.m. The palms beckoned.

"OK, Lord, I'll go give them out," I thought.

I made it to each nurses' station. Everyone wanted palms for themselves, their patients, and their families. I even left extras for the night shift. On the last floor, as the supply ran out, one of the nurses said, "You should go into room 12." I asked why. "You should just go," she repeated.

In room 12, I saw a patient in his bed. His wife, sister, and brother stood around him. He was emaciated. He wore a mask that pumped fresh oxygen, but even with that his chest heaved with extraordinary labor. There's no way a man could live long breathing like that. His stare contained fear. Death was present.

I greeted his family and introduced myself. During this conversation, the patient motioned for attention from his sister.

"No," she said. "You can't go home until tomorrow. The doctors want you to stay overnight." I understood what he was trying to say. He knew he was going to die that night and wanted to die at home.

I asked if there was anything I could do. People sometimes think I'm a priest, and so his sister asked him, "Do you want to see the priest?" I'll never forget his response: "NO! NO!" It had the most energy I could imagine someone in his condition producing. It had defiance and permanence in it. That is a huge "No," a scary "No."

Immediately, I turned to his wife and showed her the Divine Mercy prayercard. I explained a little bit about it, then went to get the Rosary beads she would need to pray it. When I arrived back at the room, she had read more about the prayer and said, "I'm going to pray this tonight." I entrusted this man to the Lord and knew through faith that he would find mercy.

As I left the room after saying my goodbyes, I recalled in awe the Lord's words to St. Faustina: "When [souls] say this chaplet in the presence of the dying, I will stand between My Father and the dying person, not as the just Judge but as the merciful Savior" (Diary, 1541).

God conquered this man's huge, scary "No" through His Divine Mercy and my little "yes," the nurse's little "yes," and the man's wife's little "yes."

The world can seem filled with huge, scary "Nos," but God can conquer them all through mercy. All He needs is your little "yes."

Jerome Kiley lives in Boston. He describes his ministry as "dedicated to discipleship of the Lord Jesus Christ as lived in ordinary life."
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