March 12, 2022

For you this week:

• Reflection for Saturday: Wow! God wants to glorify you!
• Inside the Ministry: Persevering in the struggle
• Book Study Group: “My Soul Shall Be Healed” on Joyful Hope TV
• This week’s WordBytes faith-builder: What Sacrifice Are You Making This Lent?
• This week’s video: Difficult Relationships: Is It Loving To Stay?

This week’s Trivia Challenge: When is the first time we see the Eucharist in the Bible?
(Check your answer at the end of this newsletter.)

Saturday March 12, 2022

Deuteronomy 26:16-19
Psalm 119:1-2, 4-5, 7-8
Matthew 5:43-48
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/031222.cfm
Podcast:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2022-03-12

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

Today you are making this agreement with the Lord: He is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways. (From Saturday’s first reading)

Reflection for Saturday: Wow! God wants to glorify you!

Wow! God wants to glorify you! Imagine that God the Father is so pleased with you that he’s telling the angels how wonderful you are. What is he saying? Can you imagine it?

Today’s first reading says, “Today you are making this agreement with the Lord: He is to be your God and you are to walk in his ways….”

God’s part in this covenant is: “I will then raise you high in praise and renown and glory!”

Our part of the covenant is to be holy. This gives glory to God. By your holiness, you are praising him because you’re acknowledging that his ways are good.

God the Father in turn glorifies you and praises you. Yes, really! He is so pleased with you that he’s telling the angels how wonderful you are.

When we sin, we violate our covenant. We break our relationship with God. That is to say, we break ourselves. The promise is always there because God never fails to fulfill his part of the covenant.

It’s easy to say with our lips that the ways of God are good, but when our behaviors conflict with the covenant that God has made with us, we hurt ourselves: We feel pain, stress, worry, fear, lonely and unloved. And we hurt others at the same time.

The ways of God can feel painful, too. Still we must remind ourselves, “Wow! God wants to glorify you!”

In today’s Gospel passage, Jesus tells us to love our enemies. An enemy is anyone who’s unloving toward us. It hurts to give love when we are not loved. But this is a different kind of pain; it’s the pain of the Cross. It’s unity with Christ on the Cross. In the midst of this pain, the Lord is our God, and our covenant relationship with him strengthens us and blesses us. He glorifies us.

Wouldn’t you rather suffer with Jesus and experience the joy of his glorious resurrection than suffer the self-destruction of turning away from Jesus? The problem is: Our natural inclination is to avoid all kinds of suffering, and this is probably the root cause of the sins of all faith-filled Christians.

Identify a sin you’re struggling with. Then ask the Holy Spirit, “What am I trying to protect myself from when I commit this sin?” For example, when I sin against God by disbelieving his Word about answering our prayers, I’m unthinkingly trying to protect myself from disappointment. Once we bring out into the open the lies that interfere with our trust in God, holiness becomes much easier. Wow! God wants to glorify you!

Inside the Ministry: Persevering in the struggle

In Good News Ministries, we’re still working our way through updating our websites so they can continue delivering everything that you and others depend upon. The websites GNM.org and its Spanish equivalent, GNM-es.org, are running on 10-year-old code. And we cannot ignore that this will increasingly cause problems.

These two are the most difficult sites to convert to new code because they require special PHP code for the Good News Reflections, the Saint Quotes (to which the Daily Blessings mailings are connected), and this newsletter, as well as less important but valuable resources.

Meanwhile, our long-time web developer, who wrote the custom code, has become unavailable. My search for his replacement is on-going. And so it falls onto my shoulders to keep everything running and to update everything to new code — though I understand very little PHP. What a challenge it’s been! Please pardon what doesn’t work right, and if you see anything weird or broken, please report it.

Through a lot of trial and error and re-thinking, I developed a work-around for the broken code of this Insider’s View newsletter. Each week’s issue is now being simultaneously posted at gnm.org/insidersview. It’s not been perfected yet, and when the new version is finished, you’ll see the results. (The Spanish newsletter will eventually have a similar new look and location.)

Several days ago, I wrestled with the Saint Quotes — and lost. After working on other parts of the site, I returned to it and prayed, “Lord God, since You have not yet provided me with the human help I need, I need supernatural help. Holy Spirit, tell me how to make the Saint Quotes work on the new site! Then an idea came. I followed it and — to my surprise and great relief — what had seemed impossible became easy. Wow. Praise the Lord!

The new site is still being developed and will go live hopefully soon.

I’m no longer searching for a PHP coder. I could use the help of any webmaster who is passionate about the Faith and who knows how to work in WordPress. There’s lots to be done! And until the right person comes along, I will persevere.

Thank you for your prayer support.

Book Study Group:
“My Soul Shall Be Healed” on Joyful Hope TV

Joy and Patrick Campbell are hosting on Joyful Hope TV, with me, a live study group for the book “My Soul Shall Be Healed”.

The event will take place Sunday April 3 through Friday April 8 at 7pm Eastern US Time.

The meeting will take place on Facebook and Youtube using live chat.

Order your copy of the book NOW to be sure to get it in time for the event. Go to gnm.org/terry-modica-author/my-soul-shall-be-healed. (If you cannot buy it in your country, ask me for a free PDF of it.)

To participate in the study group, sign up for notifications on YouTube at youtube.com/c/JOYFULHOPETV or Facebook at facebook.com/patrickandjoy.

This week’s recommended faith-builder:
What Sacrifice Are You Making This Lent?

What sacrifice for Lent are you making to enhance your journey to Easter? Just as Jesus knew what sacrifice He would have to make, we should discern what God is calling us to do. Sacrifices are supposed to make a difference. What’s the point of giving up candy for Lent if it doesn’t bring us spiritually closer to Christ?

Whatever you choose as a sacrifice for Lent, it should not be easy. There is no value in an easy trip to Easter.

For more on this, visit wordbytes.org/lent/sacrifice/.

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

This week’s recommended video:
Difficult Relationships: Is It Loving To Stay?

Are you wondering what God wants you to do about difficult relationships? What’s the holy and healthy way to deal with someone who is hurtful, abusive, or alcoholic?

People often write to me asking, “How do I handle this relationship? There’s something unhealthy in this relationship, but I need to do something to try to make it work, because isn’t that what God wants? I want to have healing, I want to have reconciliation, I want things to get better, I want that person to be happier, holier, healthier, I want our relationship to be happy, healthy, holy.

And didn’t Jesus say that we are to love our enemies and to love even when they seem unlovable? Does this mean staying in the relationship, keep trying, even in a self-sacrificing way?

The answer is NO. This video explains the importance of putting up boundaries while continuing to offer love and helpfulness.

Watch the video @ gnm-media.org/how-to-handle-difficult-relationships

Answer to this week’s Trivia Challenge:
When is the first time we see the Eucharist in the Bible? In Genesis 14:18, in Abraham’s encounter with the high priest Melchizedek: “Then Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High.” When he and Abraham broke bread together and shared the wine, they foreshadowed the Last Supper of Jesus.

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.

Thank you for reading this newsletter.

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

Let’s connect in GNM’s community: See you there!