Jesus Christ, my God, I adore You and thank You for all the graces You have given me this day. I offer You my sleep and all the moments of this night. I place myself and all my loved ones, wherever they may be, in Your sacred side and under the mantle of Our Blessed Mother. Let Your holy angels stand watch and keep us in peace. Amen.
Quote of the Night
“Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.” Ephesians 5:21
Today’s Meditation
“Anyone who tries, on a given day, to practice either recollection or detachment cannot ignore the fact that he is doing a double stroke of work.” —Raoul Plus, pg. 40
Join Fr. Joseph Matlak every evening for spiritual reflections and prayer.
Introducing Little Way Design
What began as a small design studio run from by a Catholic mom of five outside of Pittsburgh, PA, has now blossomed into one of the most stunning collections of original Catholic designs and items.
From stickers and mugs to t-shirts, shop items with lovely designs to bring the saints with you on every adventure.
The daily examination of conscience is an ancient Catholic practice. It’s very simple, and it’s designed to help us identify our sins and weaknesses so that we can improve and grow stronger in the spiritual life, while providing an excellent ongoing preparation for regular Confession. It consists of taking a few minutes at the end of the day to prayerfully review our actions in the light of God’s commandments, followed by the Act of Contrition.
Reflect on the victories and losses
Review your actions, words, and thoughts today.
Did you actively guard yourself against temptation? Where did sin creep in?
In what moments did you practice virtue and moral courage?
Were you attuned to the Holy Spirit’s promptings today? Where did you feel His inspiration?
Ask Him for the graces necessary to follow His Will more purposefully tomorrow.
Practice Gratitude
Where did you feel His loving gaze upon you today?
What people or moments helped you see God in your life?
Thank God for all these moments!
Ask Him to help you recognize His blessings and providence tomorrow.
Renew your Christian commitment
Thank God for the gift of His Son Jesus and our call to be His disciples
Write down an intention for your day tomorrow, and ask Our Lord for His help in carrying it out
Pray a Hail Mary, Guardian Angel prayer, or another beloved prayer
O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin. Amen.
My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.Isaiah 32:18Vespers (Evening)Compline (Night)
There are postseason spots to be clinched, of course, but the award races and stat chases could come down to the wire in what figures to be a compelling final month of the regular season.
The 2026 postseason is approaching. As you keep an eye on the standings, here is everything you need to know about how the field is shaping up, plus info about tiebreakers and contenders’ clinch scenarios.
If Mariners designated hitter Dominic Canzone was sad about grounding out to the pitcher, Red Sox lefty Payton Tolle helped soften the blow with a warm embrace as he applied the tag.
Sonny Gray has led Boston’s rotation this season. As a teenager in Tennessee, he lived the plot of “High School Musical” — landing the lead in the stage production while also being a star athlete.
Germany invades Poland, marking the start of World War II. The swift attack, known as Blitzkrieg, led to the rapid fall of Poland. This event triggered Britain and France to declare war on Germany, setting off a global conflict that lasted until 1945.
(26) And He said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, (27) and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how. (28) For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head. (29) But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.” New King James VersionChange email Bible version
This parable has obvious similarities to the Parable of the Sower, but it teaches a completely different principle. It is like the parables in Matthew 13 only in that it is a Kingdom parable and that it has a similar form. As a Kingdom parable, it is a metaphoric explanation by Christ about how God’s Kingdom works. Jesus tells His disciples in a kind of spiritual code how they should expect the Kingdom of Godto function.
We must understand that the Kingdom of God that He is speaking about is not what we normally think of as God’s Kingdom, that is, the time after Christ returns in great power to the earth to set up His government. A future aspect certainly exists in the Kingdom parables, but in most of them, He specifically refers to the present reality of God’s church and its future until the return of Christ. Recall that Paul writes in Colossians 1:13 that we have already been “conveyed into the kingdom of the Son of His love.” Spiritually, then, we, as members of His church, are already under the dominion, reign, and rule of God. We have been called out of this world (I Peter 2:9) and given citizenship in God’s realm (Philippians 3:20).
Kingdom parables show generally how the true church and true Christianity operate in this world. When He brings the Kingdom in its fullness in the Millennium, Christ will deal with matters much differently. His instructions in these parables, however, are to help us in our current, physical lives, not later, for how helpful would they be if they spoke only of things that will occur after the resurrection? As part of Christ’s instruction to His disciples, these parables describe how God’s Kingdom—in its present, spiritual manifestation—and its citizens function among men on the earth.
In this parable, therefore, Jesus uses the natural process of plant growth to explain how those whom God calls develop spiritually in this world. The process is quite simple, paralleling the growth of a seed into a full-grown, food-producing plant. Just like the growth of a plant, it happens invisibly and somewhat mysteriously, too.
The people of the first-century church would sow seed in their fields, the rains would come, and they would wait. In a few days, they would see sprouts coming up—a miracle! It was just as miraculous to think that the sprout would develop and not only produce another seed, but many other seeds, a great crop.
Jesus says that one becomes spiritually mature similarly; the spiritual process contains many parallels. For instance, He says that the sower sows the seed and goes his way, sleeping and rising, watching how things are going, but he really does not know how these things work. He knows that they happen, and he trusts that they will.
This reveals that the sower in this parable is not Christ but a human. Notice that He does not say, “The Sower goes out to scatter seed,” but “A man goes out.” In other places, especially Matthew 13, He is specific about who the Sower is, but here it is general, a man. If it were Christ, it could not be said that He does not know how they grow. No, this sower is a man God uses to sow the seed. He scatters the seed and then goes about his other tasks.
Soon, the seed sprouts due to the resources that God provides. At a certain time, He supplies the light, warmth, water, and nutrients, and the seed germinates. The sower does little more than cast the seed. All that the sower—a minister—does is speak a word, write an article, or preach a sermon. The recipient is attracted by it, but it is God who does the bulk of the work.
Ministers are unaware of all the ways God works behind the scenes to bring a person to the knowledge of the truth. They understand that He does it but not the mechanics of how He opens an individual’s mind, turns him to the truth, and allows him to begin to accept His way of life. Ministers, like the sower, just go to bed at night and get up the next morning to continue to do His work. God does the rest, working invisibly. He is the Prime Mover, working unseen and mysteriously to bring forth a productive “plant.”
His work goes far beyond just helping the plant to sprout, for He also wants to see, as Jesus says, “. . . the head, after that the full grain in the head” (Mark 4:28). He is looking forward to the fully developed plant, along with ripened, finished fruit—spiritual maturity.
A Christian develops spiritually in the same way as we see in this analogy. God will use whatever method He chooses to get a person’s attention. It might be something insignificant that we might not think would catch anybody’s eye, but in God’s hand, it is sufficient to lead the individual to the truth.
That is just the beginning. God continues to work with him in ways that are beyond human discernment. A minister can be highly instrumental in feeding and cultivating the individual, but he cannot see the invisible, spiritual ways that God is developing that person for His Kingdom. He may have a long experience in the churches of God, but it is not necessarily the case that a minister will be able to see someone’s spiritual growth in detail.
If a person inspects his plantings each day, he will see almost no growth from the day before, but if one waits a few days or weeks between inspections, it is amazing how much they have grown! Similarly, each Christian grows in stages and at a slow enough pace that it can seem like no growth at all. But God is working, and He is aware of the growth—and that should be very encouraging.
Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Today’s edition is brought to you by Matt Monagan.
You’ve probably seen clips of Sonny Gray pitching. Maybe you’ve even seen clips of him hitting?
Back in 2007, at Smyrna High School in Tennessee, Sonny Gray was the star of “High School Musical.” In this recently resurfaced footage, he is seen playing lead character Troy Bolton in an adaptation of the hit movie starring Zac Efron, where a high school basketball star breaks social norms to get the lead role in the school play.
Gray, a legendary football player at Smyrna High, said he was basically living out the plot of the movie at the time.
“I was in high school, playing high school football,” he said. “It was literally like real-life Troy Bolton, except instead of basketball, it was football.”
Gray, who also starred in “Grease” and “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” at Smyrna High, said that acting helped to make him a more well-rounded person.
“I’m thankful for it,” Gray said. “I can’t sing, and I didn’t know anything about it, but it got me on stage and out of my comfort zone. It got me doing something I was very unfamiliar with and I actually really, really enjoyed it. It was beneficial to my life.”
Gray, of course, doesn’t have much time for acting these days. He’s busy being one of the best pitchers in baseball for the Boston Red Sox, but the theater bug has never left him.
“My family has season tickets to ‘T-Pack’ [Tennessee Performing Arts Center] in Nashville,” said Gray, who still has his home and farm in Tennessee. “When I was here in New York, I would do musicals a lot. My wife and I, one of our first dates was flying to New York to see ‘Wicked.'”
A lesson to kids these days from Gray and, I guess, Bolton: Don’t get stuck in one clique or stereotype. Go try it all.
You might think there should be an asterisk on that one, but a ball over the fence is a ball over the fence. And Jenkins argued he was more nervous for this particular at-bat because he didn’t want to look foolish.
“Dude. Just don’t strike out,” he remembered thinking.
Jenkins is in good company, anyway. Fellow Top 100 prospect Luis Lara of the Brewers also hit his first Major League homer off a position player just a few weeks ago. Another pitch that hardly registered, also coming in at, go figure, 37 mph.
The AL Wild Card race is shaping up to be a doozy, and these two teams are right in the thick of it. Seemingly out of the picture only a few short weeks ago, the reigning AL pennant winners now sit just 1 1/2 games behind Cleveland for the final spot and have a prime opportunity to erase that gap starting tonight.
San Diego’s backstop of the future is here. The team called up 20-year-old Ethan Salas when rosters expanded, and if he appears in a game behind the plate he will be the youngest catcher in a big league game since Pudge Rodriguez in 1991.
It’s a southpaw showdown with huge Wild Card implications, as Jesús Luzardo and Eduardo Rodriguez face off. Rodriguez comes in with a scoreless streak of 17 2/3 innings, while Luzardo’s 1.31 ERA in August was second best in the bigs over that span. Who will blink first tonight?
TURNING UP THE HEAT
How early is too early to say “Paul Skenes is back”? Because we’re tempted to do it right now.
Maybe we should wait and see what Skenes does tonight against the Giants (6:40 p.m. ET, MLB.TV), or what he does over the final month.
But we really liked what we saw from Skenes his last time out. Obviously the stat line looked good — six scoreless against a dangerous Padres lineup. But beyond the box score, the reigning National League Cy Young winner just looked a little bit more like himself.
And there’s one big reason: His velocity is coming back.
Skenes’ decreased velocity has been the biggest story of his rocky past few months. Three starts ago, on Aug. 11, his four-seamer averaged “just” 95.7 mph — his lowest in any game of his career, and the first time he sat below 96.
Over his last two starts, though, the velo has crept back up. On Aug. 19, he averaged 96.8 mph. And in his most recent start, he averaged 97.2, his highest in a game since May 28 (which was a 10-strikeout outing against the Cubs).
Skenes also broke the 99 mph barrier in his previous start for just the third time all season, and recorded a strikeout on a nasty sinker at 98.6 — tied for his second-fastest K of the year, behind only a 99.4 mph strikeout of NL MVP favorite Pete Crow-Armstrong in that May 28 game.
Skenes was throwing pretty much everything in his arsenal harder, and a harder-throwing Skenes is a more dominant Skenes. For better or worse, dominant has become his standard.
But baseball can be so much more. It has so many moments that remind us, for reasons that don’t fit so neatly into those categories, how great this game is.
Sometimes it’s just that, as our very own Sarah Langs likes to say, baseball is the best. For today’s 250 for 250, we have 10 moments that prove it.
With the playoff chase heating up, fans can purchase an MLB.TV Seasonal package at a new low price for the season at $29.99. The Single Team package is available for $24.99.
Jesus Christ, my God, I adore You and thank You for all the graces You have given me this day. I offer You my sleep and all the moments of this night. I place myself and all my loved ones, wherever they may be, in Your sacred side and under the mantle of Our Blessed Mother. Let Your holy angels stand watch and keep us in peace. Amen.
Quote of the Night
“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.”Ephesians 1:7
Today’s Meditation
“In order to succeed in abandoning ourselves to God as much as He desires, we must watch attentively over all the movements of the soul, in spiritual matters as well as in the most common one.” —Br. Lawrence, pg. 33
An excerpt from The Practice of The Presence of GodSHOP NOW
Join Fr. Joseph Matlak every evening for spiritual reflections and prayer.
Our Best Flavors: Now As K-Cups
Browse our full collection of rich coffee that inspires you to aim for heaven. With flavor profiles like Guadalupe Mexican Mocha and St. Benedict Chocolate Hazelnut, there’s a selection for every Catholic coffee lover, and K-cups make for a quick and easy brew without sacrificing acclaimed flavors.
The daily examination of conscience is an ancient Catholic practice. It’s very simple, and it’s designed to help us identify our sins and weaknesses so that we can improve and grow stronger in the spiritual life, while providing an excellent ongoing preparation for regular Confession. It consists of taking a few minutes at the end of the day to prayerfully review our actions in the light of God’s commandments, followed by the Act of Contrition.
Reflect on the victories and losses
Review your actions, words, and thoughts today.
Did you actively guard yourself against temptation? Where did sin creep in?
In what moments did you practice virtue and moral courage?
Were you attuned to the Holy Spirit’s promptings today? Where did you feel His inspiration?
Ask Him for the graces necessary to follow His Will more purposefully tomorrow.
Practice Gratitude
Where did you feel His loving gaze upon you today?
What people or moments helped you see God in your life?
Thank God for all these moments!
Ask Him to help you recognize His blessings and providence tomorrow.
Renew your Christian commitment
Thank God for the gift of His Son Jesus and our call to be His disciples
Write down an intention for your day tomorrow, and ask Our Lord for His help in carrying it out
Pray a Hail Mary, Guardian Angel prayer, or another beloved prayer
O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of Thy grace to sin no more and to avoid the near occasions of sin. Amen.
By day the Lord commands His steadfast love; and at night His song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.Psalm 42:8Vespers (Evening)Compline (Night)
News for you, Peter
Today’s game
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