1. As I mentioned yesterday, today is the memorial of St. Augustine on the Church calendar (and yesterday was his mother) and perhaps his most well-known passage from The Confessions is in the prayer of the Church:

Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.

(There’s a fuller passage here.)

Not living Christianity is at the heart of what’s being uncovered right now. St. Augustine is a patron and model for conversion.

2. I suspect that you’ve read Ross Douthat today.

3. Have you read Sohrab Ahmari? He’s a convert to Catholicism and he came just in time.

If Viganò is telling the truth about these things, then the moral catastrophe he describes is horrifyingly real.
Everything else is noise.
…
Lay Catholics should pay close attention to those who follow the truth, wherever it may lead, and tune out the noise and its sources. And we need to pray.

4. Michael Gerson makes good points in his “Cynic’s Finest Hour” column.

5. A candid homily from Michigan.

6. Fr. James Schall: “Buck up! Your redemption can be at hand.” (On the 51st Psalm.)

7. By now, too, I hope you’ve read David French on adoption and our infuriatingly heartbreaking times. A Christian friend who has had a similar experience comments: “Satan hates adoption because it is a picture of the Gospel for all to see — parading around the extravagant love of God beckoning the skeptic to consider Him once again.”

8. Kentucky launches an adoption/foster-care initiative.

9. Teaching the good kind of silence to children.

10.