May 13, 2023

For you this week:

• Reflection for Saturday: What is blocking your faith?
• Inside the Ministry: Time out for my Mom
• This week’s recommended WordBytes: Faith-building miracles of the Holy Spirit
• This week’s recommended podcasts: 2 steps to unblock your faith

This week’s Trivia Challenge: Which two books of the Bible were written by a doctor? (Check your answer at the end of this newsletter.)

Saturday May 13, 2023

Acts 16:1-10
Psalm 100:1-3, 5
John 15:18-21
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/051323.cfm
Podcast:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/daily-mass-reading-podcast-may-13-2023

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

Day after day the churches grew stronger in faith and increased in number. (From Saturday’s first reading)

Reflection for Saturday:
What is blocking your faith?

Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to send us out in mission to change the world by helping others see a faith that’s alive. A supernatural faith. This means we have to have a personal relationship not just with Jesus Christ but with his Holy Spirit.

Sin blocks this kind of faith. And the biggest sin today is idolatry: the idolatry of thinking that something other than God himself should be in charge of our lives.

It could be the idolatry of money, thinking that if we get rich, this will solve our problems and we will be happy.

It could be the idolatry of self, wanting to do what we want to do rather than discerning what God wants us to do. The moral relativism that was increasing as I was growing up and increased a lot more while my kids were growing up — it’s still going further and further. The envelope of evil is pushing the moral relativism to the Nth degree to see how far we can go. This is so destructive, but people don’t know it. People don’t know that they are destroying their eternal souls.

It could be the idolatry of science, where if something is improvable by scientific methods it can’t be true, therefore, why worship God? Or the idolatry of the career, where the career comes first and, if it keeps me from going to church, so be it.

Fear is often our idol. We trust the messages of fear more than we trust God and what he has told us in scripture.

Think about the idolatry of suffering. For example: “I’m in so much pain that I am going to pursue every avenue to get rid of this pain — except God.” And why does this kind of idolatry happen? Because the Church has not been teaching how to live the supernatural life where we pray for one another for miracles of healing and the miracles happen! There are pockets of it. There are dioceses where bishops have said every priest needs to go through the Life in the Spirit Seminar of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal in order to come alive in a personal relationship with the Holy Spirit, and every parish needs to have a prayer group where people pray for one another and the miraculous manifestations of the Holy Spirit become commonplace.

Pope Francis has called for the Charismatic Renewal to not be a movement within the Church but to be the Church! To be waves of grace coming through the parishes bringing the supernatural life of Christians like we read about in the Book of Acts.

We have such a long way to go due to the idolatry of not understanding that God really does want to make miracles happen today. We fail to trust what we read in scripture. My favorite verse is John 14:12 where Jesus says, “If you believe in Me — if you really believe in Me — you will do the same works that I do and even greater ones.” He didn’t say, “You will do the good deeds that I did,” but he said “the works”. That includes everything: preaching the truth and working miracles. Miracles prove that what is spoken about God is true.

We tell people that God cares. We even tell people that we will pray for them. And then what? Do we see miracles happen? If we don’t, we need to ask: Why not?

We need to identify how we are committing idolatry. Each one of us is committing idolatry today. God wants to work the miracle of curing our wrong thinking. He does it through the Holy Spirit. He does it through the Sacrament of Confession and the Penitential Rite at Mass. We need to repent.

We also need to get to the root causes of what leads us to trust our own idolatrous thinking instead of God’s Word. A Christian counselor could help us with this, or a spiritual director.

Scripture is full of reasons to trust that God wants to do miracles in our lives. God longs to do miracles in our lives. Why don’t we believe it? It’s because we are believing something else. And that “something else” is our god. Jesus is our Lord and Savior; we are not committing idolatry all of the time, but any time we are not alive in the faith the way we see happened in the Book of Acts, we need to repent of our lack of faith and the idolatrous ways we are disbelieving God.

Inside the Ministry:
Time out for my Mom

My mom is 92 years old this May 12th. (This photo was taken on her birthday in 2018.) Her doctor recently informed me that he thinks she can no longer live where she is because of her blindness (macular degeneration) and dementia.

In 2012, Ralph and I took my parents into our home. My dad passed away in 2020. By the end of 2021, Ralph and I became physically unable to properly care for my mom in our home due to our own health issues. So God led us to a lovely place where she could thrive, and she’s been very happy there, but now her needs seem to be changing. God will lead us through this too.

Please pray for us as we walk through the process of figuring out what and where is best for Mom. I’ll have to take time off from GNM work to do the research, tour various facilities, and move Mom to her next home. And I’ll need to protect my health and energy, as helping Mom is very draining.

This means I’m putting on hold the plans I’ve had for live zoom meetings in “Terry’s Corner.”

Meanwhile, there is a way that you can help me — and it’s quite significant. Make a donation to Good News Ministries. Generously if God has graced you with abundance. It’s getting near time for the mid-year fundraising, and gifts from December’s donors will be depleted by August. It would be significantly helpful if I don’t have to worry about the future of Good News Ministries at the same time I’m worrying about Mom’s future.

I know I’m not supposed to worry, and I do trust the Lord. I’m leaning on him heavily. But I’m far from perfect. Undoubtedly my trust in the Lord is going to grow.

A few members of GNM give large monthly support; I am super grateful to them. May the Good Lord, the Provider, multiply the few into many during this challenging time — amen.

This week’s recommended WordBytes:
Faith-building miracles of the Holy Spirit

Miracles are not meant to be extraordinary events. To evangelize non-believers in today’s world, with its escalating relativism and immorality, we have to rely heavily on the Holy Spirit. It is only the Holy Spirit who can change hearts and minds. But how do we get people to pay attention to the Holy Spirit?

For more on this, visit wordbytes.org/miracles/faith-building-miracles.

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 podcasts:
2 steps to unblock your faith

(One) When we identify the sin that interferes with our faith in God, we can overcome it to grow in holiness and live the way God intended — with the same miraculous faith as the first Christians that we read about in the Book of Acts. The biggest sin is culture-wide, it has infiltrated the Church, and we easily give into it every day. We can change that! And in so doing, we will become more alive in the faith and — if enough of us repent from this sin — we will transform the world.

Listen to the podcast episode “The sin that blocks faith” @ gnm.org/footsteps8. Or if you prefer to read it, download the transcript @ gnm-media.org/the-sin-that-blocks-faith.

(Two) The greatest virtue that releases our faith is submission to the Holy Spirit. This enables us to recognize the voice of Jesus and hear his guidance, his concern for us, and his desire to work miracles in our lives. It enables us to feel the generous love of the Father. And it frees us to do mighty things for the kingdom of God and to transform the world. Terry Modica shares stories from her life to illustrate how this virtue releases supernatural faith. This podcast includes a simple, easy spiritual exercise that can help you overcome your human nature’s desire to be in control.

Listen to this podcast episode “The virtue that releases faith” @ gnm.org/footsteps9. Or if you prefer to read it, download the transcript @ gnm-media.org/the-virtue-that-releases-faith.

Answer to this week’s Trivia Challenge:
Which two books of the Bible were written by a doctor? The Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts were written by Saint Luke the Evangelist (feast day October 18). A Gentile, he was a companion of St. Paul, who wrote that Luke was a “coworker” and a “beloved physician.” He probably accompanied Paul on several missionary journeys. He is a patron saint of physicians and artists.

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

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