pacheco
The day before he died, my grandpa gave me a gift and asked me to pray for his soul because he was on the way to our Father’s house. We talked a lot that evening. Very lucid, he repeated once more: ‘My dear, pray for my soul.’ I went home, and at four in the morning we received the news that he had died. I remembered then what he had asked me. Before she died, eleven months later, my grandma asked me the same thing. I was 18 years old. Keeping my promise, I pray for them and for all my loved ones. Through them I saw that life is a passage. God permits us to live, but death is the passage from a life that ends to one that goes on for eternity. Today I am 87 years old, and I keep praying every day for their souls. I know they also pray to our Father for me and are waiting for me.

MORE STORIES

Basil Brave Heart

Here’s another time my grandmother taught me about forgiveness. We used to go out and pick cherries and plums. Before we started picking the fruit, she would take a little bread and some dried meat, and we would go sit down on the canvas, and then she’d make a prayer: ‘These plums are our relatives,…

VIEW THIS STORY

Constance Caruso

It is never too late to become who you might have been. I was tomorrow’s woman in the 1950s, and I didn’t fit. I was in a job that didn’t fit me because they wouldn’t pay attention that there was somebody in here. I had no sense of my capability. So, I lived each day…

VIEW THIS STORY

Desmond O’Grady, SJ

Desmond O’Grady is a Jesuit priest who served in many prominent positions throughout Ireland. He was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He shares what living with the disease has taught him and how it has changed the way he lives life.

VIEW THIS STORY

Christine Nampande

After my husband died in 1989, his relatives attempted to evict me from our family house and land. I decided to rent land for cultivation. I had to travel four miles from home to that land every day with a child on my back. But I thank God that I reported the case and the…

VIEW THIS STORY

Desmond O’Grady, SJ

Desmond O’Grady is a Jesuit priest who served in many prominent positions throughout Ireland. He was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He shares what living with the disease has taught him and how it has changed the way he lives life. [Interviewer] You have a great sense of, first of all, honesty. You tell the truth…

VIEW THIS STORY

Greg Boyle, SJ

With the help of parishioners and the local business community in Los Angeles, Greg Boyle has worked to build Homeboy Industries into one of the largest, most comprehensive, and most successful gang intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry programs in the United States. In this audio clip, he discusses the power of going to the margins. [Interviewer]…

VIEW THIS STORY