The Ordinary Ones

Last week, I was laying out rocks to line the edges of our road inside our property. In the front of our property is a school. We live behind the school, separated by some trees and a basketball court. I was working on the road coming from our houses, leading up towards the school. As I was laying rocks down, I heard some little voices calling my name, “Sara, Sara!” To me, it always sounds like they are saying, “Sa-lah!” It was a group of about ten kids from the school, calling to me from the back of a meeting room at the front of our property. I looked up, saw them, and waved. They waved back and giggled. I wasn’t sure if I should talk to them because they were supposed to be in school (I think this was like their “recess” time), so I went back to laying down my rocks. They stayed there and kept watching me. A couple minutes later, I heard them again. “Sa-lah, Sa-lah!” I looked up and they giggled again and waved more. I waved back, and decided to go talk to them, at the ri

I have always thought of praying for the souls in purgatory as just that random prayer that people sometimes tack onto the end of their meal blessings. I prayed sometimes for the souls in purgatory, more often when I knew someone who had passed away, but not very frequently. On November 2 nd , All Souls Day, we went to a monastery here that is up a mountain, about an hour away from us. When we got there, we went to pray in their adoration chapel. A few minutes later, their priest asked to talk to us about purgatory. He told us that many saints have said that one second in purgatory is more painful than all of the pain that we could ever experience on earth. He had printed out a paper for us. On the paper, there were some quotations from a soul in purgatory who had appeared to a sister or nun to warn her about purgatory. The first quotation said this: “If you could only know what I suffer! Pray for me, please. I suffer intensely everywhere. My God, how merciful you are! No one c