Today, Paul gives us the most-proclaimed wedding reading: "Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, it is not inflated, it does not seek its own interests... it rejoices with the truth." Then the Gospel gives us the opposite - a crowd that criticized John the Baptist for fasting too much and criticized Jesus for feasting too much, never satisfied, never actually listening. "We played the flute for you, but you did not dance; we sang a dirge, but you did not weep." Today's saints, Cornelius and Cyprian, lived the first passage in the middle of exactly that kind of crowd - a Church bitterly divided over how to treat Christians who had lapsed under persecution. They held firmness and mercy together, refusing to let either one win by defeating the other. That's what love actually costs.

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. The Fall Ember Days Begin Today

Today, Friday, and Saturday are this year's Fall Ember Days - one of the oldest rhythms in the Church's calendar, observed quarterly since at least the fourth century, tied to the changing seasons and traditionally kept with fasting, abstinence from meat, and extra prayer. They've fallen out of common practice since the 1969 liturgical reforms made them optional and left their observance to local custom, but they were never abolished, and many parishes and families are reviving them. The theme is gratitude and dependence: thanking God for the harvest, praying for priests (Ember Saturdays were historically ordination days), and using fasting to recalibrate desire toward God rather than toward whatever we happen to want. There's no single required practice - a full fast, a smaller sacrifice, or simply a day of more deliberate prayer can all keep the spirit of the observance.

Faith Lens for the Home: Fasting only means something in light of today's first reading - it isn't a performance or a rule to satisfy, the way the crowd in the Gospel wanted John's austerity or Jesus's feasting to fit their expectations. It's love disciplining desire. Ask your family tonight: "What is one small thing we could give up today, Friday, and Saturday - not to prove anything, but simply to make more room for God?" Decide it now, at dinner, rather than in the morning when nobody decides anything well.

2. Watchdog Finds 4.4 Million Americans in Obamacare Plans That Cover Elective Abortion

A new Government Accountability Office report, requested by Republican leadership including Speaker Mike Johnson, found that 1,719 of the 6,655 qualified health plans available through ACA exchanges in 2026 - about 26% - cover elective abortion, enrolling an estimated 4.4 million people. That's 683 more abortion-covering plans than the last time Congress requested this data, in 2014. The Hyde Amendment bars direct federal funding of most abortions but doesn't clearly restrict the premium tax credits that subsidize these exchange plans - a gap Republicans have tried to close for over a decade. Twenty-five states already prohibit abortion coverage in their own marketplace plans; this report focuses on the ones that don't. The report arrives three weeks before the Hyde Amendment's 50th anniversary on September 30.

Faith Lens for the Home: Ask your family: "What does it mean that a longstanding, broadly supported principle - that taxpayers shouldn't be forced to fund abortion - still has real gaps in the law after fifty years?" Pray for the Hyde Amendment's anniversary and for the millions of taxpayers, including many who oppose abortion, whose dollars are part of this system without their knowledge.

3. Irish School Renamed for St. Carlo Acutis, "the First Saint With an Email Address"

Last weekend, a Gaeltacht primary school in Donegal, Ireland, officially became Scoil Naomh Carlo Acutis - the first school in the country named for the teenage saint canonized by Pope Leo XIV last September. The parish had been praying for Carlo's canonization for a decade. Bishop Niall Coll of Raphoe, noting the area has been Christian for 1,500 years across 50 generations, said plainly: "There has been a stumble in Ireland over the last two or three generations in the transmission of the faith." Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo, who brought relics of the saint - including a piece of his pericardium - from Assisi, told the children Carlo was "a genius with a computer, the first saint with an email address, and a normal boy who loved Nutella," who decided at age seven to follow Jesus and brought his own parents back to Mass. "All of us are born originals, yet we want to be photocopies," he said. "Carlo made a decision."

Faith Lens for the Home: A fifteen-year-old who died of leukemia is now teaching a new generation how to hand on a faith that, by the bishop's own admission, has stumbled in recent decades. Ask your family: "What did Carlo do that any of us could do too - starting today, at any age?" His answer was simple: Mass, Eucharistic adoration, confession, devotion to Mary, and small acts of charity. Nothing about it required being a saint first.

⛪ Family Saint Spotlight

Sts. Cornelius and Cyprian - September 16

Cornelius became Pope in 251, during a fierce and often vicious dispute over how to readmit Christians who had denied the faith under Roman persecution. A rival, Novatian, argued they should never be forgiven and set himself up as an antipope over the question. Cornelius, backed by his friend Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, held the harder middle path: real sin deserved real penance, but the door home was never permanently shut. Both men were later martyred under further waves of persecution - Cornelius in exile in 253, Cyprian by beheading in 258. They are honored together because they fought the same battle from two sees, choosing mercy without pretending sin didn't matter, and truth without letting it curdle into cruelty.

Ask at dinner: "Cornelius and Cyprian refused to choose between mercy and truth - they insisted on both, even when the crowd around them wanted one or the other. Where in our own family life do we need to hold both at once?"

✋ One Simple Action

Decide tonight, as a family, what you'll fast from or offer up today, Friday, and Saturday for the Ember Days. Pray for the Hyde Amendment's 50th anniversary approaching September 30. And ask your children if they've heard of St. Carlo Acutis - then tell them about the boy who loved Nutella and decided, at seven years old, to follow Jesus.

📚 Read More

• The Ember Days: Catholic Culture (https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/liturgicalyear/overviews/seasons/emberdays.cfm) and USCCB on penitential practices (https://www.usccb.org/prayer-and-worship/liturgical-year-and-calendar/lent/catholic-information-on-lenten-fast-and-abstinence)
• GAO report on Obamacare abortion coverage: Washington Examiner (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/healthcare/4727586/gao-finds-millions-obamacare-enrollees-abortions-covered-hyde-amendment-flexible/) and LifeNews (https://www.lifenews.com/2026/09/15/new-report-shows-1719-obamacare-plans-used-tax-dollars-to-pay-for-abortions/) and Rep. Chris Smith's office (https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=415828)
• Donegal school renamed for St. Carlo Acutis: The Catholic Herald (https://thecatholicherald.com/article/donegal-school-first-in-ireland-named-after-st-carlo-acutis) and RTÉ (https://www.rte.ie/news/regional/2026/0904/1590386-carlo-acutis-donegal-school/) and The Irish News (https://www.irishnews.com/news/northern-ireland/relic-of-millennial-saint-to-visit-derry-as-donegal-school-renamed-JLAT2F5KBZH6JG5HKHNCFD4TZY/)
• Sts. Cornelius and Cyprian: Franciscan Media (https://www.franciscanmedia.org/saint-of-the-day/saints-cornelius-and-cyprian/)

Love is patient, love is kind - and Cornelius and Cyprian proved it by refusing to trade mercy for truth or truth for mercy. A fifteen-year-old who loved Nutella and computers is teaching a new generation how to follow Jesus starting today, at any age. A fifty-year-old law still has room to grow into what it was meant to be. And an ancient rhythm of fasting begins again today, asking nothing more than a little room made for God. Decide something tonight. Keep it small. Keep it real.