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Smoke in This Life and Not the Next
Thu, May 14 – Ascension of the Lord (Ascension Thursday)
Virtue: Glory & Mission
Cigar: Candela — bright, lifted, green‑gold
Bourbon: Angel’s Envy — elegant, radiant
Reflection: “Where am I sent with joy?”
The Devotion
The Ascension is not Christ’s departure.
It is His elevation of the human race.
He rises so that man may rise.
He ascends so that mission may descend.
He enters glory so that glory may enter the world.
A Candela belongs to this day—
bright, spring‑colored, almost weightless,
a leaf that refuses heaviness.
Angel’s Envy follows it:
refined, luminous, touched by light.
Together they teach the truth of the feast:
mission is not burden; it is buoyancy.
A man sent by Heaven is carried more than he carries.
And into this upward mystery steps the soul of Leonarde Collin.
When she returned to Hugette in the evening,
she no longer hid herself:
“Know, my dear niece, that I am your aunt…
Thanks to the Divine bounty, I am saved…
The Blessed Virgin obtained for me perfect contrition…
I am permitted to finish my expiation by serving you for fourteen days.”
Her story is the Ascension in miniature:
a soul lifted by mercy,
a soul purified through service,
a soul whose final ascent depends on charity freely given.
Three pilgrimages to three Marian sanctuaries—
not as payment,
but as participation in her rising.
Glory received becomes mission given.
This is the law of Heaven.
Today asks:
Where is Christ lifting me?
Where am I resisting the upward pull?
Where is mission waiting for my joy?
The Ascension is not escape.
It is sending.
Christ rises so that His disciples may go.
The Purgatory Line
A soul once confessed:
“I was nearly lost because I lived without mission.
I received grace but never carried it outward.”
Not hatred.
Not rebellion.
Not scandal.
Neglect.
A life without ascent.
A heart that never rose to meet the work Heaven entrusted.
Leonarde’s fourteen days of service
were the final purification of a soul
that had once lived too small.
Purgatory is often the long correction
of every place we refused to rise
when Heaven called us upward.
The Cigar & Bourbon
Candela — bright, lifted.
A wrapper the color of new life,
a leaf that smokes like a green flame,
teaching the soul to rise.
Angel’s Envy — elegant, radiant.
A bourbon touched by light,
the taste of ascent without arrogance,
glory without weight.
Together they form a discipline of mission—
the willingness to be carried upward
and then sent outward.
The Question for the Night Smoke
“Where am I sent with joy?”
Not:
“What must I endure?”
but
“What glory is Christ inviting me to carry into the world?”
Let the smoke rise like the path of the Ascension—
a thin, bright column
teaching your soul how to rise.
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