Saturday November 11, 2023

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“No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.” (From Saturday’s Gospel reading)

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Good News Reflection for:

Saturday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time
November 11, 2023

Today’s Readings:

Romans 16:3-9,16,22-27
Ps 145:2-5,10-11
Luke 16:9-15
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111123.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-november-11-2023

To love God whole-heartedly, we need a healing

It’s impossible to love God so much that we whole-heartedly serve him and only him; it’s impossible until we have consciously differentiated, in our minds, the character and nature of God’s fatherhood from the imperfect father-figures we’ve known. This is why there are so many people who are not active in the Faith. This is why your family and friends have been resisting your evangelization efforts.

In my many years of ministering to people, I’ve seen it often. It was true in my own life until I learned one amazingly simple but powerful fact: God is much better than the examples we’ve witnessed.

Before being healed of the images of imperfect fatherhood that we have in our minds, God as Father is the scary Person of the Trinity. He’s the one who punishes us. He expects perfection from us. Or he’s too far away up there in Heaven to help us with our little daily problems. If our human daddy was emotionally distant or absent or self-focused, Our Divine Father can seem uncaring — and we pray (or don’t pray) accordingly.

The truth is: Our Divine Father gives us total love and kindness and mercy. He gave us Jesus so we won’t have to face punishment for our sins. He is completely patient with us regardless of how faulty we are. And he’s intimately and infinitely concerned about our daily trials.

For more about this, read the Good News WordByte, “Healing Our Image of God’s Fatherhood” @ wordbytes.org/suffering/gods-fatherhood/.

And here’s a great idea for evangelizing your family and friends: For Christmas, give them the gift of my book The Father’s Heart. Order now to be sure to get it before Christmas. Visit tothefathersheart.com.

© 2023 by Terry A. Modica

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