Saturday June 25, 2022

• Reflection for Saturday: If you feel deceived by God, read this!
• Inside the Ministry: Recovering from covid
• This week’s WordBytes: What does Catholic doctrine teach us about Mary?
• Paracletia: Enliven your relationship with the Holy Spirit

This week’s Trivia Challenge: When did devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary begin? (The answer is at the end of this newsletter.)

Saturday June 25, 2022
Memorial of the Immaculate Heart of Mary

Lamentations 2:2, 10-14, 18-19
Psalm 74:1-7, 20-21
Luke 2:41-51
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/062522.cfm
Podcast:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2022-06-25

Saints Calendar:
gnm.org/saints-find/saints-calendar

And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand. (From Saturday’s Gospel reading)

Reflection for Saturday: If you feel deceived by God, read this!

Have you ever echoed the words of Mary and Joseph found in today’s Gospel reading? “Jesus, why have you done this to us?” If you feel deceived by God read this!

Recently (and not for the first time), I quoted another scripture: “God, You duped me and I allowed myself to be duped” (Jeremiah 20:7).

In the journey of following Jesus, we are being tested and tried. The test is for our benefit. We learn from it just how much our trust in God has grown (or not).

If you feel deceived by God read this, for example! God “duped” me into wanting a priest-friend to become the first chaplain of Good News Ministries. We later discovered that alcoholism was handicapping him emotionally and in his ministry. Jesus knew that we would never have invited him to move to Florida if, during our 20 years of prior friendship, we had discovered his alcoholism and understood the effects of codependency. God also knew how much more effective in helping others I would become after learning how to deal with our friend’s problems.

When situations happen outside of your control, God is planning something good that seems (at first) very confusing. Ride it out. Keep praying. Trust your Wise Father. Even if the Devil is behind the confusing, God is allowing it so that he can humiliate the Devil by raising you up in an awesome, better-than-expected plan.

This was excerpted from my Day 9 of my book The Father’s Heart. The chapter is entitled Abba’s Hidden Love in Our Confusion. For more, visit tothefathersheart.com.

Inside the Ministry: Recovering from covid

This week has been much better. Ralph and I are mostly done with covid, except my energy level has been very low. Our symptoms were mild, praise the Lord, but it’s frustrating to have no energy to do anything.

Next week will be spent catching up. I’m careful not to push myself harder than the Holy Spirit energizes me to do. I don’t understand why God “blessed” me with a month of no productivity, but I suppose someday it will make sense.

During this month of resting in the misery of covid, our house has been in disarray. My mother moved out during Ralph’s surgery (God’s perfect timing), and he was still recovering when he returned to the hospital with an infection. There is where he picked up covid. Before the symptoms began, we painted and recarpeted my mother’s bedroom, converting it to a new GNM office (see the photo). But we got sick before we finished. Meanwhile, we still need to sort through and give away my mom’s stuff that she didn’t want to keep, repaint what she had used for her living room, and reorganize our house.

If you feel deceived by God read this and reflect on it! Maybe Jesus will send some angels to help!

This week’s recommended faith-builder:
What does Catholic doctrine teach us about Mary?

Frequently asked questions about Catholicism regarding the Blessed Virgin Mary are answered @ wordbytes.org/faqs/#TOC3.

1. Was Mary an immaculate conception?

2. What do we know about Mary’s birth and life?

3. How do we know Mary never sinned?

4. Was Mary the Mother of God?

5. Did Jesus have a brother named James?

WordBytes is a library of Catholic faith-building articles by Good News Ministries. Come on in and explore! Visit WordBytes.org today.

Enliven your relationship with the Holy Spirit

Did you miss the Holy Spirit Consecration that we ran? One of the 825 people who signed up for it, Dr. Akele, said:

“Thank you for this wonderful experience. It has helped me to appreciate and see God in simple and small situations that never mattered to me before now.”

It’s not too late to experience it yourself. We have three courses on the Holy Spirit, each with easy-to-handle short videos. You’ll find them in our Paracletia ministry. Visit gnm.org/paracletia.

Jesus promised, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate – the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth – to help you and be with you forever” (see John 14:12-17).

Or perhaps you’d like to take some of the other courses. “Paracletia” is our ministry of online courses to bring Spirit-filled education to Catholics that will empower them to more fully understand the truth, uniting them more closely to Christ and the counsel of the Holy Spirit so that they do the works of Jesus, even miraculous ones like he promised, thereby advancing the Kingdom of God on earth.

Visit gnm.org/paracletia.

Answer to this week’s Trivia Challenge:
When did devotion to the Immaculate Heart of Mary begin? In the Middle Ages with Saints Anselm of Canterbury and Bernard of Clairvaux. Saint Anselm’s insights into Mary inspired him to write, “From the moment of her fiat, Mary began to carry all of us in her womb.” And Saint Anselm said, “She [Mary] is called the Queen of Mercy because she opens the abyss and treasure of Divine Mercy to whom she chooses, when she chooses and as she chooses.” Want to see more Saint quotes? Search @ gnm.org/SaintQuotes.

God bless you!

Every morning, I lift up in prayer everyone who helps Good News Ministries in any way (donors, volunteers, prayer supporters, etc.) and all the prayer requests posted on our site. What can I cover in prayer for you? Post your prayer request.

How else can the team and I serve you today? Visit our homepage.

Let’s connect in GNM’s own SmartCatholics community, called Good News Faith Builders. I’m available to interact with you there.

Thank you for reading this newsletter.

Your servant in Christ,
Terry Modica, Executive Director
Good News Ministries
gnm.org

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