SEPTEMBER 20, 2026

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”

–St. Francis of Assisi.

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The Epistle for today is taken from S. Paul’s letter to the Christians at Ephesus. Admittedly, some scholars, going back to Erasmus, argue that Ephesians is not an authentic Pauline epistle. This is based upon stylistic differences between Ephesians and other so-called “authentic” Pauline epistles. However, stylistic differences can also be explained by the differences in readership. Having ministered extensively throughout Asia Minor, S. Paul would know how to address specifically the culture of Christians in Ephesus and elsewhere in the Oriental world of the New Testament. 

The reasons for the specific epistles vary widely as well. The overarching theme of his Epistle to the Ephesians is the “mystery” of Christ – the divine purpose once hidden but now revealed in Him and made manifest through the Church. Ephesians is primarily a catechesis on the person of Christ for the newly baptized. S. Paul addresses the themes of Our Lord’s Resurrection, Ascension and Enthronement on the right hand of the Father, and the gathering together of all things in Him. These are not merely events belonging to the past. Through Baptism, the Christian has been joined to Christ and made a participant in His risen and glorified life.

In the portion of Ephesians appointed for this Sunday, S. Paul turns from teaching to prayer. Having spoken of the mystery of Christ now being revealed through the Church, he writes: For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you…and here he proceeds to ask God to supply specific graces to the Christians at Ephesus, “according to the riches of his glory.”

He prays that they might be strengthened with might by his Spirit; that Christ might dwell in your hearts; that being rooted and grounded in love, they may be able to comprehend the immeasurable love of Christ; and finally, that they might be “filled with all the fulness of God.” This is nothing less than a description of the Christian life itself.

Christianity is not simply the forgiveness of past offenses, nor merely the promise that we shall go somewhere better when we die. It is our incorporation into Christ and, through Him, our restoration to communion with the Father in the Holy Ghost. Having been made members of Christ’s Body in Holy Baptism, we are given the Spirit so that the life of Christ may increasingly become our life.

Thus S. Paul’s prayer is profoundly Trinitarian. He bows his knees before the Father; he asks that we be strengthened by the Spirit; so that Christ may dwell within us. The whole Christian life is a movement into the communion of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

This also explains S. Paul’s remarkable expression, “of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” God is the Father and source of every true fatherhood and every order of created being, visible and invisible. Heaven and earth are not two unrelated worlds. In Christ they are being brought together into one household, one family, one creation under its true Head.

And we have been brought into that household for a purpose. God did not create us merely that we might remain what we presently are. As S. Peter says, we are called to become “partakers of the divine nature.” S. Paul expresses the same mystery here when he prays that we might be “filled with all the fulness of God.”

We do not cease to be creatures and we do not become God by nature, but through grace we participate increasingly in the divine life. But this does not make us passive; grace calls us to cooperate, to ask in faith, to repent, to fight against those passions that so easily derail us.

When times of difficulty arise, and we feel as though we are being tested beyond our abilities, S. Paul assures us that God is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think. God desires to exceed our expectations, but we must first ask in faith and also work to remove the hindrances that come from sin.

Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen.

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Hunter Biden, Clancy jurors, Piker and Talarico: The ethics of shamelessness

From crypto stunts to courtroom excuses, conscience keeps losing ground

BY:          Robert Knight, The Washington Times (September 13, 2026).

If you have no capacity for shame, you have no conscience.

In Jeremiah 8:12, the prophet describes hypocrites who sin openly and yet still expect to be blessed: “Are they ashamed of their detestable conduct? No, they have no shame at all; they do not even know how to blush.”

Hunter Biden has come out with his own cryptocurrency meme coin that he dubbed (wait for it) $LAPTOP.

Here is a quick refresher on that story. The laptop was full of shocking evidence about Hunter’s escapades with drugs, prostitutes and shady business deals, and it could have affected his father, President Biden.

The FBI under Christopher Wray had the laptop for months before the New York Post broke the story. America’s Democratic-controlled legacy media and social media buried the story a month before the 2020 election.

Surveys indicate that if the laptop’s contents had been widely known, it could have changed the presidential race’s outcome.

Anyone with a scintilla of conscience who did the things on the laptop would want it buried forever. Not Hunter. He thought he would name his crypto coin $LAPTOP as a big, obscene gesture to law-abiding Americans.

Why not? With a presidential pardon in hand and the fact that Democrats hardly ever pay a price for criminality, it seemed like a good idea. He believed America’s culture had become so debased that he could cash in on the moral depravity.

Here is a silver lining if you like poetic justice: The coin debuted at $200 to $300 and lost more than 95% of its value within 24 hours. As of Thursday, it was at about 60 cents.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, jurors cited postpartum blues as the reason they resisted finding Lindsay Clancy guilty of strangling her three children. Some of the female jurors trashed the one juror who thought the facts outweighed reasonable doubt. His holding out led to a mistrial.

The women even trashed the prosecutors for trying Ms. Clancy and praised her defense attorney, who should be disbarred for trying to dox the holdout juror.

Jim Treacher, political comedy writer of the razor-sharp daily podcast “Cue the Crickets,” said: “I guess it makes sense that crazy people think a crazy person should get away with murder.”

Hordes of women in pink rallied to support Ms. Clancy and raised $1 million for her defense. The case may or may not be retried.

As Mr. Treacher said: “Now the tough part’s going to be finding 12 jurors in Massachusetts who aren’t insane. That state is infamous for witch hunts, and now they’re giving us a witch hunt in reverse. Instead of coercing people into condemning an innocent woman, they’re trying to free a guilty one.”

Postpartum depression is no small thing, and women who suffer from it deserve our sympathy and support. Yet turning a child killer into a heroine is shameful.

While we are on the topic of shame, news broke that socialist and Islamist podcaster Hasan Piker again parsed his remarks from 2019 about the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

He famously said that America “deserved” 9/11. Later, he said he could have phrased it better. Recently, he denied ever saying that he hated America, even as video surfaced. In one clip, he declares, “I say I hate America all the time.” In another, he says, “People will be like ‘Hasan, you hate America.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, I do. I do hate America.’”

Mr. Piker has campaigned with Michigan Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and other Democrats.

Last month, during his live podcast tour, Mr. Piker told an audience, “America does not deserve 9/11. That’s my new thing now.” (Translation: “I’ve got to say stuff like this so I won’t hurt the Democrats, but take it with a grain of salt.”)

The crowd erupted into booing and jeers. Like their idol, they really do hate this country and cheer for our enemies.

Whenever you see these frauds interviewed, they launch into virtue signaling to show their superiority. Democratic Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico excels at this. A self-professed Christian, he mangles Scripture and portrays Jesus as a rainbow-sporting free love guru from Portlandia.

The Apostle Paul warned us about people like Mr. Talarico in 1 Timothy 4:1-2: “The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.”

Voters must resoundingly end Mr. Talarico’s political career in November.

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Gloria Steinem’s war on marriage, family started at home

Changing the world for the worse

BY:          Don Feder, The Washington Times (September 13, 2026).

Gloria Steinem, who died on Sept. 2 at age 92, did not liberate women. The Industrial Revolution did that. Think of all those labor-saving devices. Still, she did a number on marriage and the family.

It always struck me as odd that a group calling itself feminist rejects the essence of femininity — the ability to give life and nurture.

As much as anyone of my era, “little Gloria” changed the world for the worse. Broken marriages, broken families and the loneliness of men and women unable to connect can all be laid on the altar of this feminist icon and her minions.

Steinem helped shape a worldview that held men are the oppressors, that a woman without a career is tragically unfulfilled, that a housewife is a domestic slave and that abortion is reproductive freedom and should be celebrated.

She helped popularize the feminist motto “A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.” Yet fish and bicycles do not marry and have children or hold each other in bed at night. They do not care for each other at the end of life’s journey. They do not assure the survival of humanity by producing the next generation.

Steinem had an abortion in 1957, when it was still illegal, and spent the rest of her life trying to justify it. She once told an interviewer that “abortion gave me my life” and “I wouldn’t have been able to live my life otherwise.”

In other words, her journey to self-fulfillment started with the death of her child. Did the child get a say in this? Like other totalitarian “isms” — communism and fascism — the starting point of feminism is death.

She also helped advance Islamism, another death cult, by supporting “inclusive immigration laws.” She probably considered female genital mutilation, child brides and honor killings just quaint customs.

She never spoke out against societies where women are flogged for appearing in public bareheaded. Did she understand that a Methodist was probably less likely than an Islamist to fly a plane into a building?

When the twin towers came down, she was probably leading a march for equal pay.

The 1970s cute chick with aviator glasses always had to be in with the “in” crowd. Her ideas on transgenderism necessarily changed with the times.

In 1977, she questioned some aspects of surgical transitioning/mutilation. By 2013, she had apologized for her earlier “transphobic” remarks. “I believe that transgender people, including those who have transitioned, are living out real, authentic lives,” Steinem wrote.

Sure they are — about as real and authentic as women who deny their nature and make abortion the starting point of their quest for authenticity.

Steinem ended up throwing women under the bus by supporting the entire transgender agenda, including biological men on women’s sports teams and in women’s spaces.

She and her sisters shaped the society we live in. They taught young women that men are the enemy, ogres who would use and abuse them if given half a chance.

It worked.

In a 2025 Survey Center poll, 66% of Democratic women ages 18 to 29 said the problems women face are largely because of men. Only 18% of Republican women in the same age group had a similarly warped perspective.

The triumph of feminism is reflected in the dramatic decline of marriage and childbearing.

Since 1970, the marriage rate has dropped by nearly 60%. According to the Census Bureau, in 1949, married couples made up 79% of U.S. households. Today, that number is 46%.

Our fertility rate — the number of children the average woman will have in her lifetime — is at an all-time low of 1.6, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. Soon, our population will begin shrinking with no end in sight.

Humanity is going out of business. Feminists are hanging the “closed” sign on the door.

Has all this made liberated women happier? The National Institute of Mental Health reports that the percentage of adult women experiencing a “major depressive episode” is approximately twice that of adult males.

Gloria Steinem grew up in a world without men. She had a sister but no brothers. Her parents divorced when she was 10. Her mother, who suffered from acute mental illness, never remarried.

She was raised in a world without masculine role models. Perhaps that was why she thought of men as creatures from another galaxy and taught other women to see them the same way.

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A story of James Talarico and Thomas Paine

A cautionary tale (and perhaps prophetic one)

BY:          Everett Piper, The Washington Times (September 13, 2026).

“I always think of myself as a Christian who hates Christianity. … [I am against] religion in neutral and public spaces. … The Bible is all over the place [on marriage and morality]. … I trust women [and men] to make their own decisions.”

These are just a few quotes from Democratic candidate James Talarico, who is running (and leading in the polls) against Ken Paxton to replace John Cornyn as senator from Texas.

If you have a sense of deja vu — that you heard this all somewhere before — you are right. In fact, one of America’s most influential historical leaders said something similar more than 200 years ago. Consider the following:

“Whenever we read the obscene stories … with which more than half the bible is filled, it would seem more consistent that we called it the word of a demon than the Word of God. … I do not believe in the creed professed by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.”

These are quotes from Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason.”

Now, some who fancy themselves to be more progressive in their thinking may say, “Well, there you have it! We’ve been trying to tell you that America was founded as a secular nation, not on religious dogma. These quotes are the proof that James Talarico is more in line with our founding ideals than you conservative Christians.”

Not so fast. Before we jump to such conclusions, maybe we should consider what the other Founding Fathers actually said about Thomas Paine’s work. In other words, did the preponderance of America’s patriarchs agree or disagree with him?

Here is just a sampling of responses from the likes of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and others.

Adams was quite blunt in his opprobrium for Paine’s “Age of Reason”: “The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity; let the Blackguard Paine say what he will.”

Franklin, likewise, pulled no punches: “I would advise you,” he wrote to Paine, “not to attempt unchaining the tiger, but to burn this piece before any other person sees it; whereby you will save yourself a great deal of trouble, and your enemies a great deal of triumph.”

Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, called Paine’s writing “absurd and impious.”

Charles Carroll, another Declaration signer, described Paine’s work as “blasphemous writings against the Christian religion.”

John Witherspoon, president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton) and another signer, said Paine was “ignorant of human nature as well as an enemy to the Christian faith.”

Sam Adams, whom some called the firebrand of the American Revolution, delivered a stiff rebuke to Paine: “When I heard you had turned your mind to a defense of infidelity, I felt myself much astonished.”

He urged Paine to reconsider writing what Adams considered a betrayal of the very moral foundations that made the Revolution possible.

Elias Boudinot, president of the Continental Congress, did not just criticize Paine; he also wrote a full-length rebuttal titled “The Age of Revelation.” In it, Boudinot systematically dismantled Paine’s arguments and showed that Christianity, not secularism, was the true foundation of human flourishing and the American experiment.

Paine, though hugely influential in the first days of the American Revolution (he is the one who wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls,” after all), died a pariah. His enthronement of himself as the final authority over all morality led nearly all his fellow Founders to condemn him as a menace rather than a hero of freedom.

Paine set reason against revelation as if they were enemies and became more a champion of the French Revolution than of America’s.

Thomas Paine died on June 8, 1809, in New York City. Only six people attended his funeral. He was buried in a cow pasture in an unmarked grave. The man who had helped birth a nation was laid in the ground and forgotten.

Why was he so ostracized and shunned? As one writer puts it, “A man cannot build a house and then burn down its foundation and expect to keep living in it.”

Let this be a cautionary tale (and perhaps a prophetic one) for the likes of James Talarico and all those who align with such a broken and arrogant worldview. Elevating your feelings above facts and your reason above God’s revelation never ends well.

We should all pray that in November, Texas voters will remember the wisdom of John Adams and Benjamin Franklin: Let the Blackguard Talarico say what he will. His words are ignorant of human nature as well as an enemy to the Christian faith and freedom.

GFK