Saturday January 11, 2025

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The whole world is under the power of the Evil One. But we know that the Son of God has come and has given us discernment to know the One who is true. (1 John 5:19-20)

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Good News Reflection for:

Saturday after Epiphany
January 11, 2025

Today’s Readings:

1 John 5:14-21
Psalm 149:1-6, 9
John 3:22-30
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/011125.cfm
USCCB Podcast of the Readings:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-january-11-2025

Why are loved ones trapped in the lies of the world?

Why are there so many loved ones believing the lies of the world? It’s because there are too few of us speaking the truth — in a way that heals, in a way that invites, in a way that leads people to Christ and salvation. And in a way that inspires a desire to be filled with the Holy Spirit, because it is the Holy Spirit who convicts people of what is true and what is not.

Although we might want to tell our loved ones that they need to go to church and they need to understand the value of a true and lively faith, it’s usually not us who can make a difference. It takes others whom the Lord sends into their lives.

But there are not enough others saying yes to the Lord’s calling to be an evangelizer. And by the way, we are the “other” for someone else’s loved ones.

Jesus never gives up. He pursues the lost sheep continually. But he doesn’t have a physical body to reach out with, except the Body of Christ that is the Church. You and me. And everyone else who professes to be a Christian.

In many parts of the world, the Church is being reduced to a remnant, though it doesn’t always look like it. The liturgy can be filled with people attending Mass, but how many of them are truly celebrating Mass? How many are earnestly seeking to learn the truth and keep learning, aware that there is always more to know about God and about living the holy life? How many are in fact interested in living the holy life, becoming counter-cultural, obviously different from the world?

As Saint Apollinaris the Apologist said, “We therefore grossly deceive ourselves in not allotting more time to the study of divine truths. It is not enough barely to believe them, and let our thoughts now and then glance upon them: that knowledge which shows us heaven will not bring us to the possession of it, and will deserve punishments, not rewards, if it remain slight, weak, and superficial.”

Jesus said that more people go to hell than to heaven. (“For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” — Matthew 7:13-14 NIV.)

How many “Christians” are on the road to destruction? How many of our children have grown up and left the Church to follow the ways of the world? How many loved ones are disinterested in working on their purification to increase their holiness?

Don’t despair. We must be concerned, very concerned, but without despairing, because despair and worry are temptations from the devil to make us distrust Jesus the Good Shepherd.

So is feeling too inadequate to make a difference, which makes us sit back, blend in with the world, and don’t try very much to be the disciple of Christ who speaks up about the truth of salvation and the need for repentance — in a way that heals, in a way that invites, in a way that leads people to Christ and the in-filling of the Holy Spirit.

First we ourselves must be infilled by the Holy Spirit. It is from our personal relationship with the Holy Spirit that we receive the discernment to recognize the One who is true, Jesus Christ, and to know what to speak up about him and when and how. I always recommend this prayer to everyone who is not yet fully alive in the Spirit:

Come Holy Spirit, renew me. Come Holy Spirit, fill me. Come Holy Spirit, You have my permission to change me.

Pray it daily, even if you already have a profound, personal relationship with the Holy Spirit. Pray it throughout the day whenever you feel tempted to sin or powerless to help others overcome the lies of the world.

© 2025 by Terry A. Modica

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