Saturday April 27, 2024

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“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? … The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves.” (From John 14:7-14)

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Good News Reflection for:

Saturday of the Fourth Week of Easter
April 27, 2024

Today’s Readings:

Acts 13:44-52
Ps 98:1-4
John 14:7-14
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/042724.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-april-27-2024

Embrace your true self as the Father’s beloved child

Jesus’s mission is to take us to the Father. First he reveals the Father to us by being an example of what the Father is like. Throughout our lives, Jesus continues to reveal the Father to us. When we pray, he delivers our prayers to the Father, and he speaks the Father’s words to us through the Holy Spirit.

Can you hear your Abba (Divine Daddy)? Can you see him at work in your daily life?

When Jesus is speaking to you, either through scripture, song, the homily at Mass, the Eucharist, direct revelation, or through a friend, it is the Father you hear, because Jesus delivers his words. Jesus was the Word of the Father made flesh (John 1). Jesus repeatedly says in scripture that everything he said and did came from the Father.

Since Jesus ascended to Heaven, now we, the Church, have become his earthly presence. The Father wants to do his works through us — which is why Jesus says in John 14:12, “Whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and they will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father.” That’s astounding! Have you walked on water or raised anyone from the dead yet? I haven’t (not yet, anyway). But Jesus expects it. In fact, I think he’s not making an observation but a command. And because Jesus said it, the Father said it first.

The Father expects you and me and the rest of the Church to work miracles. Why? For the same reason he worked miracles through Jesus and then through the Church in the Book of Acts: (1) because he cares. And (2) because it evangelizes. Wouldn’t you say that today’s world needs a much better relationship with Father God than what it has?

I’m convinced that the reason why the Father is not working mightily and supernaturally through everyone in the Church today is because most of us don’t know, down deep in our core, that we are God’s beloved children. We don’t realize what we’ve inherited. We feel too faulty. We don’t like looking at our faults. We fail to go to the Sacrament of Confession because we don’t like taking the blame for our sins.

This is how the spirit of guilt (the lying spirit, not the compassionately convicting Spirit of God) disempowers us. We don’t realize how very much Father God adores us as his beloved children. If we knew how readily he forgives us and joyfully embraces us and rebuilds our joy, facing our faults — and thereby overcoming them — would be so much easier.

In other words, most of us are not as close to Abba as we need to be in order to be true Christians (a title that means “little Christs”) imitating Jesus Christ fully, like he expects us to do.

I want to help you discover your true identity in Christ — your true identity as a beloved child of Father God. I’ve designed 30 spiritual exercises for this. They are in the book “The Father’s Heart“, a set of 3 workbooks (10 exercises per book), being published this year by En Route Books and Media.

Sign up {click here} if you’d like to receive news about these workbooks. Get a sneak peek of the chapters on the website ToTheFathersHeart.com.

Meanwhile, an article I wrote in 1999 might be of interest to you: Healing Our Image of God’s Fatherhood @ wordbytes.org/suffering/gods-fatherhood.

© 2024 by Terry A. Modica

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