Father Dan Reehil

Some people go through life not knowing, or they deceive themselves and think, I'm never going to think about it because if I can just put it off long enough, maybe I'll somehow skirt it in some way.

I don't know what they're thinking.

But the art of dying well is directly correlated to the art of living well.

And when I say living well, I mean putting God in the center of your life, acknowledging he is God and I'm not, trying to live a life worthy of the message Jesus left us with the gospels, loving God first, our neighbor second, putting our place third.

And when people do that,

that creates a lifestyle that's not focused on me.

It's focused on God and others.

And that's what creates holiness, and that's what creates virtue.

And at the end of life, that creates a person that's ready to die and open to heaven and wanting heaven.

And I even tell people, tell God you wanna be a saint.

Say it out loud, I want to be a saint.

I think there's a power to the audible with regard to, particularly with scriptures.

I'm talking about directly to God, not into the universe and the secret and all that nonsense.

And then, you know, look at some people, we have the saints as models of people who've been victorious.

That's why we don't adore the saints, we venerate them.

We say, good job, well done, you did it.

And now help us get there too.

And when you think about people preparing for death,

So there was a saint named Dominic Savio in Italy.

He was about 12 years old, and he was being mentored by a priest named Don Bosco, who also became a saint.