This issue was written earlier this week, to allow Suzanne and me to focus on our time with our son at his Air Force basic training graduation events.

Jesus tells the parable of the ten virgins: five wise, who bring enough oil for their lamps, and five foolish, who don't - and when the bridegroom finally comes at midnight, only the ready ones go in with him. "Stay awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour." Today the Church gives us the son whose mother, St. Monica, kept her lamp lit for him through thirty years of waiting: St. Augustine, whose famous conversion in a Milan garden - "Take up and read" - became one of history's great turnings from restlessness to rest.

The deeper reflection on today's readings - and a daily prayer for your household - is waiting in the & Altar app and at andaltar.com. More after the news.

📰 Quick Hits

1. Pope Leo: AI Risks Becoming a New "Tower of Babel"

Addressing the International Catholic Legislators Network last week, Pope Leo XIV said humanity faces "a decisive choice" with artificial intelligence: either "construct a new Tower of Babel, where power, efficiency and control obscure the face of the human person," or "build a civilization in which technology serves the integral development of every person." He told lawmakers their task is "not to hinder innovation but to guide it wisely," urging legislation that protects users, preserves privacy, and safeguards human dignity.

Faith Lens for the Home: Ask your family: "What's one piece of technology in our home that could use more wisdom guiding it - and what would that look like practically?" A lamp needs oil, not just a flame that looks bright for a moment.

2. Forty-Four Years After Augustine: What Confessions Still Teaches

Augustine's Confessions - written over 1,600 years ago - remains one of the most honest accounts of restlessness and conversion ever written. Its opening line, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you," continues to be quoted across every generation, translated into virtually every language, and assigned in university courses well beyond Catholic or even religious institutions.

Faith Lens for the Home: Ask your family: "What does it mean that a book written in the 4th century still describes exactly how it feels to search for something and not know what it is?" Consider reading a page of Confessions together this weekend - even just the opening.

3. A Priest and Eleven Children: Remembering Nigeria's Christians This Week

We reported earlier this week on the killing of 31 Christians in Nigeria's Kaduna state, including eleven children and a Catholic priest. Nigeria continues to account for the majority of Christians killed worldwide for their faith. The violence has not stopped since.

Faith Lens for the Home: Ask your family: "What does it mean to keep a lamp lit for people whose suffering doesn't make headlines two weeks later?" Pray for Nigeria's Christians again tonight - not just once, but as an ongoing practice.

⛪ Family Saint Spotlight

St. Augustine of Hippo - August 28

Born in 354 in North Africa to St. Monica and a pagan father, Augustine spent his youth in ambition, a common-law relationship, and years devoted to a heretical Manichean sect his mother never stopped grieving over. In a garden in Milan in 386, hearing a child's voice chanting "take up and read," he opened Scripture to a passage that broke him open. He was baptized the following Easter. He became Bishop of Hippo, wrote Confessions and City of God, and shaped Western theology more than perhaps any figure besides Paul. He died in 430 as Vandals besieged his city. He is patron of theologians, printers, and brewers - and of every parent who has prayed for a child who seems impossibly far from God.

Ask at dinner: "Augustine said his heart was restless until it rested in God. Where do you feel restless right now - and where might God be in that restlessness?"

✋ One Simple Action

Read Augustine's famous line aloud together tonight: "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." Pray for Nigeria's Christians. Ask God to show you where your own lamp needs more oil before Sunday.

Enjoy the weekend living the faith in your domestic church. See you Monday.

📚 Read More

• Pope Leo's AI address to Catholic legislators - full text: Vatican (https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2026/august/documents/20260821-meeting-icln.html) and OSV News (https://www.osvnews.com/ai-must-serve-common-good-not-dominate-humanity-pope-tells-legislators/)
• St. Augustine's Confessions: Catholic Culture (https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/calendar/day.cfm?date=2026-08-28)
• Nigeria: Christians killed in Kaduna: Catholic World Report (https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2026/08/04/31-christians-killed-in-nigeria-including-eleven-children-and-a-catholic-priest/)
• St. Augustine of Hippo: Franciscan Media (https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saint-augustine-of-hippo/)

Five virgins kept their lamps lit and went in with the bridegroom; five didn't. Monica kept a lamp lit for her son for thirty years before he took up Scripture and read. A pope is asking legislators to keep artificial intelligence in service of the human person rather than let it become a modern Babel. Nigeria's Christians keep their lamps lit even as their villages burn. Stay awake. Keep the oil ready. You don't know the hour.