In the words of Pope Francis who has invited 100 comedians to the Vatican to discuss comedy’s impact on culture, “A sense of humour is a grace that I ask for every day, and I pray that beautiful prayer of St Thomas More: ‘Give me, Lord, a sense of humour,’ that I know how to laugh at a joke … it’s beautiful, that prayer, isn’t it? Because a sense of humour lifts you up, makes you see the temporariness of life and take things with a spirit of a redeemed soul. It is a human attitude, but it is the closest to God’s grace.”

So with the pope’s message in mind this week’s joke goes like this …

A television reporter at a local TV station was sent on assignment to interview a ninety-year-old woman who had just been married for the fourth time. The journalist began the interview with questions about her new husband.

“So, what does your new husband do?”

“He’s a funeral director?” she replied.

The reporter then asked if she wouldn’t mind talking about her previous husbands and what they did for a living.

She paused, then said with a smile that her first husband was a banker. After he died, she wed a circus ringmaster. Widowed again, she married a man who later became a deacon in her parish. Finally, after outliving him, she tied the knot with the funeral director.

The journalist was staggered that she had married men with such diverse careers.

“Not at all,” she told him. “I married one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, and four to go.”

Have a joke to share?  Send it to editor@majellan.org.au