Saturday, October 10, 2026
. SMOKE IN THIS LIFE, NOT THE NEXT Sat, Oct 10 — Saturday of the Twenty-Seventh Week in Ordinary Time Cigar: Dark Maduro Pour: Old Forester 1920 Reflection: The fire we choose now spares us the fire we cannot choose later. During the novitiate of a certain monastery, a spirit appeared repeatedly, urging the young religious to pray for the souls in Purgatory. Its plea was urgent, almost desperate: they suffer frightfully, and they are grateful beyond measure to those who help their deliverance. Then came the harder word—of the five priests who had died in that Abbey, not one had yet entered Heaven. All were still undergoing purification. The Abbot himself signed the account, leaving the conclusion unstated because it did not need to be spoken. Holiness is real, and so is the fire that makes a soul capable of Heaven. The modern man shrugs at Purgatory, imagining it as a waiting room rather than a furnace of love. But the saints speak differently. Catherine of Genoa describ...
