November 12, 2022

For you this week:

• Reflection for Saturday: Why is God slow in bringing justice?
• Inside the Ministry: Important news
• Terry’s Corner: Health update
• This week’s WordBytes faith-builder: What is God saying in evil times?

This week’s Trivia Challenge: Why did King Solomon threaten to cut a baby in half? (Check your answer at the end of this newsletter.)

Saturday November 12, 2022

3 John 5-8
Psalm 112:1-6
Luke 18:1-8
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/111222.cfm
Podcast:
bible.usccb.org/podcasts/audio/2022-11-12-usccb-daily-mass-readings

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

Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary. (From Saturday’s Gospel reading)

Reflection for Saturday:
Why is God slow in bringing justice?

In the parable about the widow who nagged the uncaring judge until he finally complied with her wishes, Jesus asks us, “Will not God (the Judge who does care) then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night?” It’s a question meant to make us go, “Oh, duh, of course he will!”

“Will he be slow to answer?” he continues. And then, in case we still don’t get it, he says: “I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.”

Remember, this is a parable about the necessity to pray always without becoming weary. Think about it: If God were speedy when we call out to him for justice, there would be no need to keep praying. Right? This sure seems like a contradiction!

I have suffered more than a few injustices and, in each situation, I went running to God. And I’m still waiting for justice in most cases. What’s up with that? Why he is slow to respond? Have I not nagged him enough? Probably you have encountered the same dilemma too. Am I right?

The key to understanding what Jesus is teaching here is to separate — in our minds and in our hopes — God’s justice from the worldly idea of justice. For example, in the guise of “justice”, there’s a lot of unjust social pressure to accept evil as good and good as evil. One glaring pressure is to accept homosexual activity and transgenderism as normal and healthy and good. In the guise of “justice”, we are not allowed to research into it and look at possible unhealthy causes, and therapists are not allowed to help clients heal from traumatic events that may have contributed to their sexual aberrations — how unjust! And we who follow Christ, because we refuse to make moral compromises, are accused of being unjust.

My point is: We need to be careful about how we define “justice”. There are lots of counterfeits of true justice vying for our acceptance. Vengeance is another one. So is entitlement (as in, “give me, give me, give me, and give it to me for free, because I deserve it just for the asking, without working for it”). You can think of several more.

In today’s world, we all need to examine our consciences for ways we have made compromises with counterfeits.

God is always slow to bring justice to these situations because he waits for sinners to turn to him for repentance and purification before it’s too late.

God is the author of holy justice. Holy justice is what Jesus did for us on the cross: he accepted an unjust punishment because he loves us so much, thereby justifying repentant sinners so that we can go to Heaven.

Our “final judgement day” is when we come face to face with Jesus as we pass away from Earth. Will he find faith in us? If we want justice — God’s version of justice — we don’t want to accept any counterfeits.

Inside the Ministry: Important news

Praise the Lord! We moved to a much, much better donor giving tool.

For years we’ve happily used Stewardship Technology, but recently they sold their company to Suran. We were forced onto a completely different — and unwelcome — program. It’s clunky and very difficult, especially for the GNM team’s admin work.

Now we’re closing our account at Suran. We’ve switched to “Continue to Give,” made for churches and ministries. It includes the Giving App for your phone, Text-to-Give, and a Giving Form on our website.

IMPORTANT: We are closing GNM’s account on Suran at the end of January 2023. If you have ever made online donations through the EGS site (Stewardship Tech), you need to take the following steps. I apologize for the inconvenience.

1. Log into the old platform @ engage.suran.com/goodnewmin/s/login. If you do not remember your login, you can have it emailed to you. (If you don’t remember setting up an account, it was made automatically at the time of your donation.

2. If you have a recurring donation, use the menu to find and select “Scheduled Gifts” and cancel it.

3. Use the menu to select “Payment Methods” and delete your credit card or bank connection.

4. Go to gnm.org/donate and choose the giving app, text-to-give, or online form, and get started with a new donation today. We need the support! There have been very few donations in the past two months.

Remember, when you donate to Good News Ministries (and when you pray for us), you partner with us in sharing the Light of Christ. We can only continue this ministry with sufficient financial support.

Health update

I’m making good progress but still recovering from September/October’s intestinal parasite infection. My immune system was knocked out by autoimmune suppressant drugs for arthritis. Rebuilding it is taking time. I’ve not yet been able to work a full day. Thanks for your prayer support!

Right now, the time I spend working must be dedicated to our new Giving Tool (described above). While I was sick, very few donations came in. Good News Ministries is running low on funds. Please help!

When my energy is back to normal and I have more time, we’ll finally start the live Terry’s Corner meetings that we’ve been planning. Watch this space for announcements!

This week’s recommended faith-builder:
What is God saying in evil times?

God will not hold back his justice forever. Demons know that God is soon going to do something tremendous to bring his justice into the world, and so they are desperately trying to cause as much damage as they can. They have upped their efforts to take to hell as many souls as they can before Christ intervenes.

For faith-filled followers of Christ, this is good news. The worse an evil gets, the bigger the blessings. Nothing happens that God has not chosen to allow, no matter how terrible or disruptive it gets, because he knows that it’s the best (perhaps only) way to turn stubborn hearts toward Christ and bring more souls to heaven. God is still and always will be in charge.

For more on this, visit wordbytes.org/victory/what-is-god-saying-in-evil-times/.

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

Answer to this week’s Trivia Challenge:
Why did King Solomon threaten to cut a baby in half? Because two women were fighting over it, each one claiming the child was theirs. King Solomon offered to cut the baby in half and give each woman half of it. In his wisdom, he knew that the real mother would protect the baby’s life by telling him to give it to the other woman (see 1 Kings 3:16-28).

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.

Let’s connect in GNM’s own SmartCatholics community, called Good News Faith Builders. I’m available to interact with you there.

Thank you for reading this newsletter.

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

Find this and past issues at gnm.org/newsletter. Please share what will minister to others.