After Ten Years

Extract

Knowing his end to be drawing near—it was in fact the day before his death—Fr Vincent McNabb was concerned to make certain provisions for his funeral. Calling one of the younger brethren to him, he said to him: ‘Dear Father, I may well be dead tomorrow and there is a service I would ask of your charity. I don't want a shaped and polished coffin such as they usually provide, nor should I like to have a brass factory-made cross on it nor be labelled with a brass label. I want an ordinary box made of the same sort of wood as this floor'—and he pointed with a smile to the common deal floor, uneven and knotted, which he had swept day by day with his bare hand, a floor such as had been his only bed for forty years and more.