Truth & Mercy Series - November 1st 2026

It is unbelievable that we are three months shy of Christmas! It is a month until Thanksgiving!! The year is rolling over already. The weather has been very good. It is one of my favorite months of the year, the month of the Holy Rosary. The month of the universal mission for the entire Church. October is richly filled with diverse celebrations. A month filled with the feast of great saints like our guardian angels, St. Therese of Lisieux (the little flower), St. Francis of Assisi, St. Bruno, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, St. Theresa of Avila, St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, St. Luke, Pope St. John Paul II, Ss. Simon and Jude. It is filled with numerous graces. What a month!

While the celebration of the Saints is very important, because they offer us a road map on the journey to Heaven, they also assist us with prayers, they represent the best of the best of the children of God, those who have persevered through thick and thin. They have overcome all the storms and tempests. They have come out triumphant by the Blood of the Lamb. With them in mind, we are sure to receive all the assistance from Heaven. 

In the spirit of living both the living and the dead, it is important to spare time for the holy souls in Purgatory. Are we as rich in Charity as God is rich in Mercy? “Alas! How many Christians do little or nothing for the departed! And those who forget them not, those who have sufficient Charity to aid them by their suffrages, how often are they not lacking in zeal and fervor! Compare the care we bestow upon the sick with assistance which we give to the suffering souls. When a father or mother is afflicted with some malady, when a child or any person dear to us is a prey to suffering, what care, what solicitude, what devotion on our part! But the holy souls, who are no less dear to us, languish under the weight, not of painful malady, but of expiatory torments a thousand times more cruel. Are we equally fervent, solicitous, eager to procure them relief? No, says St. Francis de Sales, we do not sufficiently remember our dear departed friends. Their memories seem to perish with the sound of the funeral bells, and we forget that the friendship which finds an end, even in death, was never genuine friendship. 

St. Francis de Sales says, “To assist the souls in purgatory is to perform the most excellent of the works of mercy, or rather it is to practice in a most sublime manner all the works of Mercy together: it is to visit the sick; it is to give drink to those who thirst for the vision of God; it is to feed the hungry, to ransom prisoners, to clothe the naked, to procure for poor exiles the hospitality of the Heavenly Jerusalem; it is to comfort the afflicted, to instruct the ignorant- in fine, to practice all works of Mercy in one.” St. Thomas Aquinas agrees with this when he says, “Suffrages for the dead are more agreeable to God than suffrages for the living; because the former stand in more urgent need thereof, not being able to assist themselves, as the living.”

It could be by avoiding a sweet, taking upon oneself an inconvenience, practicing silence or accepting hurt maturely, by offering a Holy Mass for the dead, or receiving Holy Communion for the intention of a holy soul, fasting from social media for an amount of time, giving up one’s favorite show or past time, making a visit to the Blessed Sacrament, or praying the Holy Rosary.

In union of prayers,

Fr. Nicholas, Akindele, JCL