Today, we approach the end of the season of Trinity. It is one of the relatively few occasions in the Church year when the appointed Epistle is taken from S. Paul’s letter to the Colossians. Although S. Paul did not himself establish the Church at Colossae, he wrote to this Christian community during his imprisonment, traditionally understood to have been in Rome around A.D. 60. Colossians is commonly numbered among the Epistles of the Captivity, together with Ephesians, Philippians, and Philemon. The letter was occasioned, at least in part, by reports received from Epaphras concerning the spiritual condition of the community and the teachings that threatened to lead some of its members astray.
In the opening verses of the Epistle, we discover something of S. Paul’s profound pastoral concern for these Christians, even though he had never visited them. As in his other epistles, he begins by assuring them of his prayers and thanksgiving: We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love which ye have to all the saints…
For S. Paul, prayer was inseparable from the proclamation and advancement of the Gospel. He understood that without the sustaining power of divine grace, his ministry and that of the other Apostles would amount to little more than the sum of their own human efforts. Prayer was not simply a pious accompaniment to his apostolic work; it was essential to that work.
Here we encounter a profound spiritual truth, one that is easily overlooked. As important as it is to act in faith, we are often inclined to believe that the success of our efforts depends principally upon ourselves. If the parish is not growing as quickly as we would like, or if the parish budget is not being met, our immediate response is often to conclude that we are simply not doing enough. We must work harder, develop new programmes, devise better strategies, and accomplish more—and do so without delay!
Yet concealed within this way of thinking may be a subtle form of pride. We are not doing enough; we must do more. Without realizing it, we begin to assume responsibility for accomplishing what ultimately belongs to God. S. Paul understood that no amount of human effort, however sincere or energetic, could accomplish what only divine grace can bring about. Indeed, it is often our very confidence in our own abilities that prevents us from recognizing our dependence upon God.
This is why S. Paul recounts the words of Our Lord in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians: My strength is made perfect in weakness.
And the Apostle responds: Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
It is precisely when we acknowledge the limitations of our own strength that we become more receptive to the power of God working within us. This does not mean that our efforts are unnecessary, but that they must always be undertaken in humility, prayer, and dependence upon divine grace.
We may readily accept this principle when considering the mission of the Church, yet find it considerably more difficult to apply to our own spiritual lives. We are often tempted to approach our growth in holiness as though it were principally a matter of personal determination and disciplined effort. If only we prayed more, resisted temptation more successfully, or practised virtue more consistently, we imagine that we could make ourselves holy.
But holiness is not something we can manufacture. It is the fruit of God’s grace transforming our fallen human nature. Our part is to cooperate freely and faithfully with that grace.
Once again, S. Paul provides the proper balance in his Epistle to the Philippians: Wherefore, my beloved… work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.
Here we discover the essential relationship between divine grace and human freedom. We are commanded to work out our salvation, engaging both our will and our understanding in the pursuit of holiness. We must struggle against the passions, cultivate virtue, and persevere in obedience to Christ. Yet even our desire to do these things is itself sustained by the grace of God. We do not save ourselves; rather, we cooperate with the God who is working within us to accomplish our salvation.
How, then, do we open ourselves more fully to this transforming grace?
Above all, through prayer.
One helpful approach to developing a disciplined life of prayer is the familiar formula ACTS: Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. Through adoration, we turn our attention away from ourselves towards the majesty and goodness of God. Through confession, we acknowledge our sins and our need for His mercy. Through thanksgiving, we recognize that all we possess, and all that we are, comes from His gracious hand. And through supplication, we bring before Him both our own needs and those of others, entrusting them to His providential care.
Yet prayer is more than the offering of petitions or the fulfilment of a religious obligation. It is communion with the living God. As we persevere in prayer, our hearts are gradually purified, our desires are reordered, and our wills become increasingly conformed to His. We learn not merely to ask God to bless what we have undertaken, but to discern what He would have us do.
This is the deeper purpose of the Christian life. God does not simply call us to become morally better people. He calls us to become holy by participation in His own divine life. Through Baptism, we have been united to Christ, and through the continuing work of the Holy Ghost, that union is brought towards its intended fulfilment. As S. Peter declares, we are called to become partakers of the divine nature.
This is what the Fathers of the Church understood by theosis, or deification: not that we become divine by nature, but that through grace we are transformed into the likeness of Christ, sharing in the life of the Holy Trinity.
A life of prayer, therefore, is not merely one Christian duty among many. It is essential to our growth in communion with God. Through prayer, joined to repentance and the sacramental life of the Church, we become increasingly receptive to the grace that alone can accomplish our transformation.
And so we return to the example of S. Paul. His confidence was never ultimately in the success of his own efforts, but in the faithfulness of God. He prayed because he knew that the Church belonged to Christ, and that only Christ could bring His people to maturity in holiness.
The same is true of us. We are called to labour faithfully, to persevere in prayer, and to entrust the fruits of our labours to God.
For it is He who works within us, bringing to fulfilment the purpose for which we were created: that we might become, through grace, true sons of the living and blessed Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
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Christians cannot win the culture war from the sidelines
Political purity can hand victory to the other side
BY: Everett Piper, The Washington Times (November 8, 2026).
In his classic work “Mere Christianity,” C.S. Lewis writes: “We are in enemy-occupied territory. … Christianity is the story of how the rightful king … is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
Lewis went on to remind us that the foot soldiers who had preceded us in this war were “the Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire,” as well as “the great men who built up the Middle Ages, and the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade.” All these, wrote Lewis, “left their mark on Earth.”
Lewis’ wartime analogy was apt not only for his time but also for ours. As a man who personally experienced both world wars, he understood three important things. First, evil exists. Second, Christians are obligated to go to war against this evil. Third, war is an ugly business that involves imperfect strategies, compromises and great losses for even greater gains.
Like Lewis, Winston Churchill, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Franklin D. Roosevelt understood this. They all knew that thousands would die on the beaches of Normandy, but they also understood that this compromise with “evil” had to be made for the sake of the greater good.
They realized that purity of pacifism would only damn millions to the tyranny of the Third Reich. They knew that incrementalism and kowtowing to those who refused to choose between the “lesser of two evils” would end in the blood of countless people on their hands.
They recognized that refusing to choose was itself an evil choice.
The millions of conservative evangelicals and Catholics who refused to get their hands dirty in the elections Tuesday are the poster children of this point. Their choice to avoid the polls and opt for “the lesser” — on the assumption that it was evil — was sanctimonious and laden with moral confusion.
How, for example, is protecting babies from the butchery of Planned Parenthood and young boys and girls from sexual indoctrination evil? How is it evil to defend a woman’s right to her own bathroom, locker room, shower and sports? How is it evil to stop Iran from acquiring the means to do exactly what its regime has promised repeatedly: kill us all and wipe Western civilization off the map?
Tell me again how standing in the way of all this evil is evil.
I will say it a different way. If you are a conservative of any denominational stripe, do you believe it is OK to let drag queens groom boys and girls in your schools or public libraries?
Are you just fine with the abortion industry celebrating the deaths of our youngest children?
Are you cool with trans dudes mocking women by literally “blackfacing” them in exaggerated costume, makeup and other garb?
There is more. How about our national sovereignty? Are you all good with abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and letting into our country millions who have no desire to assimilate into American culture or swear allegiance to our flag? Is trafficking tens of thousands of boys and girls across our borders for sex OK with you? Are you fine with letting Shariah supplant our free republic’s Constitution?
If you are willing to sit back while all this is happening and smugly quote lines such as “Of two moral evils, we must choose neither,” then you clearly do not understand Football 101. Running the ball up the middle for a 4-yard gain and a 3-yard loss is the way to move forward and ultimately win the game.
If you stood on the sidelines on Election Day — or worse, just sat in the stands and watched — simply because you did not get everything you wanted from MAGA or because you had to pay a few extra bucks for gas and groceries, you might want to consider that your moral high ground is little more than the thin ice of political smugness.
My goodness, if William Wilberforce had had your “political purity,” Britain and the United States would still be trading slaves.
Therein is my key point. Wilberforce’s efforts to end the slave trade, rather than all of slavery itself, were by definition an example of the incrementalism that ultimately wins the war. Sometimes — dare I say, all of the time — you do not get everything that you want.
To win the culture wars, we will always have to vote for some very imperfect people and even some imperfect policies for the sake of overall incremental gain.
We are at war, people, and war is ugly. Victories are incremental and involve calculation and compromise. The Roman Empire was not converted, Western civilization was not established and slavery was not abolished by smug perfectionists refusing to pick up arms.
Disengagement is synonymous with defeat, and Tuesday proved it. Refusing to choose between the lesser of two evils is evil.
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Catholic Faith Is No Excuse for Political Surrender
After the Republican midterm defeat, Catholics must remember that hope in Christ demands action, not withdrawal from the world.
BY: S.A. McCarthy, The American Spectator (November 7, 2026).
In the face of major losses, it is common, I’ve noticed, for many Catholics to remind themselves and everyone else that our hope is not in this world, that our hope is in Christ. That’s certainly true, and it’s helpful to remember in times of adversity.
Following the crushing defeat of Republican majorities in Congress on Nov. 3 and the advance of Democratic radicals — committed to a pro-abortion, pro-LGBT, anti-white, anti-Western, anti-Christian agenda with unwavering fanaticism — many of my fellow Catholics have reminded me as much as themselves that our hope is in Christ.
The values that the Catholic Church promotes certainly suffered a blow on Nov. 3, but that defeat is not an invitation for American Catholics either to despair or to retreat.
Again, this is true, and it is necessary to place our trust not in worldly rulers and political factions but in Christ, who is “the same, yesterday, today, and for ever” (Hebrews 13:8).
Nevertheless, the “Our hope is in Christ” maxim must not be relied upon as a crutch or a coping mechanism excusing Catholics from engaging and participating in the world in which we live — and, importantly, in which our children live and in which their children live or will live.
In the Summa Theologica’s Treatise on Man, Doctor of the Church St. Thomas Aquinas explains that “man is not a soul only, but something composed of soul and body.” In other words, man’s essence — that which is essential to man — is the combination of body and soul. Man is neither a body that happens to have a soul nor a soul that happens to have a body; he is in fact a body-soul composite. A soul without a body is not fully man, it is a ghost; likewise, a body without a soul is not fully man, it is a corpse.
Dualism and gnosticism are heresies rejected by the Catholic Church. It is erroneous to argue that the spiritual world is the only world that matters, that the trials and tribulations of this present, fleshly world are meaningless because they are fleshly and worldly. On the contrary, it is in part through fleshly and worldly suffering that the body and soul are purified, sanctified, and perfected, to prepare not merely for the soul’s approach to Heaven but for the reunification of body and soul at the end of time.
This fleshly world brings with it obligations and responsibilities. Christ Himself, personally present on earth, makes this clear when teaching us how to pray: “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Christ lays upon Catholics an obligation to further the will of God, so far as it is in our power to do so, here on earth. This is not an invitation to a dualistic or gnostic retreat from the material world but a clarion call to, as Christ Himself says again, live in the world but not be of the world (John 17:14-16).
It would be equally dualistic, of course, to argue that the present, fleshly world is all that there is or all that matters, that defeat on this material plane is final, that loss is irrevocable. I have not, however, heard this argument from many — or in fact any — Catholics.
For those of us who recognize the Democratic Party for what it is, an existential threat to the U.S. and to Christian moral and social principles, the Nov. 3 midterm election results were not merely disappointing but downright disheartening. However, it is not the duty of Catholics to simply retreat from the world, to presume that “Our hope is in Christ” means that our work here in this world is done. Rather, Catholics should turn to the example of Christ and the Saints for inspiration and encouragement as we continue laboring to further the principles and values we hold dear here in this world.
When St. Francis of Assisi was struck with illness while a prisoner of war, his prospects no doubt looked grim, yet he went on to found what is today one of the largest religious orders in the Church, with roughly 25,000 members amongst its three First Order branches.
When St. Thomas Aquinas was locked in a tower by his family and told that he would never be a Dominican, he did not surrender. Today, he is not only a Doctor of the Church whose work has shaped centuries of thinking and writing, he is also broadly considered one of the greatest intellects to ever walk the earth.
When St. Ignatius of Loyola lay wounded after battle, knowing that he would never again be a knight, he must have been tempted to despair. Not giving in, he founded the Society of Jesus, which, despite the many foibles and follies of its present membership, succeeded in bringing the Christian faith to the furthest and most disparate corners of the world.
The greatest example, of course, is that of Christ Himself. A humble carpenter accused of blasphemy and treason, brutally executed in the insignificant backwaters of the Roman Empire, Christ defeated death itself and He and the Church that He established have been the defining and driving force of Western civilization for 2,000 years.
The values that the Catholic Church promotes certainly suffered a blow on Nov. 3, but that defeat is not an invitation for American Catholics either to despair or to retreat into dualistic spirituality and shirk their obligations and duties in this world. It is instead an opportunity for American Catholics to do as Christ instructed and “take up your cross, and follow me” (Matthew 16:24).
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America Has Welcomed the Trojan Horse
And we’re going to pay the price.
BY: MaryAnn Diorio, The American Thinker (November 8, 2026).
I am an American. An 80-year-old American. Daughter and granddaughter of Italian immigrants.
My paternal grandmother was a wise but illiterate woman. She helped me understand that knowledge and wisdom are two different things.
My mother and my paternal grandparents came to America in search of freedom and opportunity. In their eagerness to assimilate, they found both. In only two generations, my family went from illiteracy to the doctorate. My father was the first college graduate in our family. I am the first Ph.D.
I tell you all of this not to boast in myself, but to boast in God. Yes, I believe in God, and in Jesus Christ, His Only Begotten Son, and in the Holy Spirit.
Belief in God used to be the consensus in America, but it no longer is. And that is the crux of the issue: America has turned away from God and His Word.
For nearly a century, I have observed American culture firsthand, and I have concluded that America is in decline because America has rejected God. Plain and simple. Those who want to see will see. Those who do not want to see will not.
Although America’s decline can be traced back to the Enlightenment of the 1800s, America seriously began her decline in the 1960s, when she removed God from our schools. A few years before then, things were different. In the 1950s, my first-grade public school teacher kept a Bible on her desk. Every morning, the class stood respectfully as she read from the Bible. Then we prayed. Afterward, we pledged allegiance to the American flag. This was the way American schoolchildren had been trained ever since our country’s founding. Earlier Americans understood that without God, civilizations fell, and that without God, America would fall as well.
I remember the flower children of the 1960s, the “free sex,” the blatant rebellion against authority. It was in the 1960s that public prayer was banned from our schools. And it was in the 1970s that the abomination of abortion was legally accepted in our land.
The foolish thought this was progress. The wise knew that this was death to America.
In forgetting our history, we cast off the joy of serving God and put on the yoke of serving ourselves. Self became the new god as we rebelled against the only true God.
Likewise, during that time, Satan took over our universities through the guise of liberalism, socialism, and Marxism. During the years I was a university professor, I witnessed firsthand the attacks by liberal professors against conservative professors who upheld biblical values. I personally experienced the ugly smears of liberal professors who rudely opposed what I stood for. Gone were the friendly, civilized disagreements amid the vibrant exchange of ideas. Instead, ad hominem attacks replaced the civil discourse once indicative of honest, intellectual debate.
So what actually happened when God was removed from our schools and universities? In the Bible, Jesus said this: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Jesus calls Himself truth. When we removed Jesus from our schools, we effectively removed truth. When we removed truth, we invited the lie. And with the lie always come deception, division, and death.
As an older woman now, I have the responsibility to speak to the younger generations (Psalm 71: 18, Psalm 145: 4). If you truly love America, if you truly love your children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, you would do well to hear me out. If you listen, you will have much to gain.
I have lived long enough to see the pendulum swing in America from a God-fearing culture to a God-blaspheming one. It grieves me deeply. Like every other major civilization before us, we have let the Trojan horse in. The enemy has entered right under our noses. He was hiding in our lofty philosophies that sounded so compassionate and egalitarian but were distorted versions of the truth.
And a distorted version of the truth is still a lie.
Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” If you really want to be free, receive Jesus Christ. He alone can save you. He alone can save America.
This may be your last call, friend. Jesus Christ said He would return to remove from the Earth those who follow Him (John 14:2-3). Why not choose to receive Christ’s love for you now? Are you too proud to admit you’ve been wrong? Are you bent on being your own boss and living your life your way? If so, what has it gotten you so far? Has it brought you peace, joy, and love? You are foolish to think you can rebel against God and get away with it.
Jesus died and rose from the dead for you because He loves you and wants a personal relationship with you. He took the rap for your sin so that you would not have to. If you refuse Him, you will have to pay for your own sin, and that payment is Hell.
Perhaps you’re afraid that all this talk about Jesus may be hogwash? If so, ask Jesus to reveal Himself to you. He will.
Psalm 33: 12 says this: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” The converse is also true: Cursed is the nation whose God is not the Lord. Unless America makes God her Lord again, she will remain cursed and eventually die.
One final thing: I believe that the Church has failed to recognize the Trojan horse. We alone have the truth. We have the authority and the power to proclaim the truth. Yet we have failed miserably in our assignment. While we have excelled at evangelizing, we have failed at discipling. We, as the Church, must repent for having compromised truth by conflating truth with love and love with truth. Love and truth must go hand in hand (Ephesians 4: 15). Truth without Love is legalism. Love without truth is license. The mainstream Church has proclaimed truth without love. The woke Church has proclaimed love without truth. Both are recipes for disaster.
Like an old grandmother to her grandchildren, I urge you, dear ones, always to remember that the lie will enslave you, but the truth will set you free.
GFK
