Footsteps to Heaven Podcast Show

A new report has come out exposing more clergy corruption. It reveals that Church review boards have a long history of protecting clergy instead of their victims. Should we feel discouraged? No! Jesus is exposing more and more in his holy light because he is calling us to stand strong against the Enemy. Ephesians 6:12 tells us that our struggle is not truly against abusive clergy and the bishops who fail to protect their flocks but against the Devil. In this episode, Terry Modica explains three weapons that God is calling us to use for defeating the demonic strategies that have been trying to destroy the Church from within.

The article quoted in this episode, published by The Epoch Times, can be read on their website.

The Rosary Walkathon (episodes #49 and #50), another of the most powerful weapons, can be found at https://gnm-media.org/apostolate-of-the-laity-part-4/ and https://gnm-media.org/apostolate-of-the-laity-part-5/.

Who else should hear this episode? Please share it!

Do you believe more people should hear this podcast show? Please sponsor upcoming episodes. Go to gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship.

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
• To listen to other this and our other podcast shows, go to gnm-media.org/podcasts/.

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When your prayers are not answered, the Devil says, “God has abandoned you.” God is saying: “Keep praying, pray with persistence, and use this time to lean on Me harder.” It’s a faith-builder. God will move mountains for you, but he wants you to put him first before everything else. He wants you to spend more time with him.

“Do not grieve if you do not at once receive from God that which you ask. He wishes to benefit you still more by making you persist longer in your patient prayer before Him. For what can be higher than to address one’s converse to God and be in communion with Him?”

This quote by Saint Nilus of Sinai, which is used in this podcast, can be downloaded full size by clicking on the image above.

One of the ways you can lean in on God more fervently and deeply is to subscribe to and read the the Good News Reflections recommended in this podcast. You can receive them by email or by text message. Sign up at gogoodnews.net/good-news-reflections.

Do you believe more people should hear this podcast show? Please sponsor upcoming episodes. Go to gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship.

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
• To listen to other this and our other podcast shows, go to gnm-media.org/podcasts/.

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Listen in on the lively discussion between podcast host Terry Modica and her brother, Kurt Repsher, who leads people to Christ with his wife Sue at motorcycle rallies and in the motorcycle safety training classes he teaches. He’s a great example of how to make opportunities to evangelize.

My brother Kurt has some really neat stories that I want you to hear. One of the things that I admire about my brother, and what makes me excited to have him on this podcast episode, is that he is really, really into sharing the love of Jesus with others and helping people discover that Jesus loves them and cares about them.

He rides a motorcycle, but he best of all teaches others how to ride safely — and best of all, more than that, he uses that as an opportunity to help people find the love of Christ….

Do you believe more people should hear this podcast show? Please sponsor upcoming episodes. Go to gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship.

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
• To listen to other this and our other podcast shows, go to gnm-media.org/podcasts/.

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In this final episode in the series on the Apostolate of the Laity, Terry Modica invites you to the Apostolate of the Rosary Walkathon, which is based on her personal experience helping a parish that was suffering from an abusive priest. It was very effective.

All forms of abuses are evil and inspired by demons. The Blessed Mother has said many, many times in apparitions around the world that we must pray the Rosary for the defeat of evil. She’s warned us again and again that if we don’t live holy lives and pray for the defeat of evil, terrible things will happen, very terrible.

To learn more about the Apostolate of the Rosary Walkathon and to download the packet mentioned in this episode, go to https://wordbytes.org/church-crisis/rosary-walkathon/.

Who else should hear this episode? Please share it!

Have you heard the introduction to this series? What is God doing in the Church Crisis?

To keep this ministry going by sponsoring future episodes, go to http://gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship.

Join the Apostolate of the Rosary Walkathon!

All forms of abuses are evil and inspired by demons. The Blessed Mother has said many, many times in apparitions around the world that we must pray the Rosary for the defeat of evil. She’s warned us again and again that if we don’t live holy lives and pray for the defeat of evil, terrible things will happen, very terrible. And so we are offering the Rosary Walkathon as something you can do.

The Blessed Mother’s warnings at Fatima

Pope Saint John Paul II said, “The message of Fatima is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the ‘dragon’ whose ‘tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth’ (Revelation 12:4).” (May 13, 2000, in his homily during the beatification of Blessed Jacinta and Francisco)

Much earlier in his papacy he had preached: “Can the Mother with all the force of the love that she fosters in the Holy Spirit and desires everyone’s salvation, can she remain silent when she sees the very basis of her children’s salvation undermined? No, she cannot remain silent.” The Fatima messages, he revealed, concern Our Lady’s warning that the foundation of our salvation is being undermined. (May 13, 1982)

And we have seen it happen. So many have left the Faith. Many others claim to be Catholic without living by the teachings of the Church. Few fully know what the teachings of the Church really are! They have some idea, but not clearly enough to protect them from the teachings of the world (the teachings of Satan).

[ continue ]

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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Here’s what you can do to drive evil from the Church and help restore it to the true Holy Catholic Church. God is purging the Church and he wants you to be part of his plan! And so Good News Ministries is inviting you to join the Apostolate of the Rosary Walkathon.

The Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity says (para. 7): “The whole Church must work vigorously in order that men may become capable of rectifying the distortion of the temporal order and directing it to God through Christ.” This includes the distortions in the Church that have been undermining people’s faith.

Canon Law #212 says in paragraph 3 that we, Christ’s faithful, “have the right, indeed at times the duty, in keeping with their knowledge, competence and position, to manifest to the sacred Pastors their views on matters which concern the good of the Church. They have the right also to make their views known to others of Christ’s faithful, but in doing so they must always respect the integrity of faith and morals, show due reverence to the Pastors and take into account both the common good and the dignity of individuals.”

Jesus says, “Enough is enough!” It is time we speak up. But what if the hierarchy doesn’t listen? Terry Modica proposes in this episode a Rosary Walkathon based on an experience from her own life. And she explains why the Rosary is especially effective in defeating evil. In the next (and final) episode in this series, she will explain how to do it and invite you to join The Apostolate of the Rosary Walkathon. To read about it now, go to wordbytes.org/church-crisis/rosary-walkathon/.

Have you heard the introduction to this series? What is God doing in the Church Crisis?

Next: The Apostolate of the Laity in the Church Crisis – Part 5

THE DECREE OF THE APOSTOLATE OF THE LAITY
CHAPTER II – PARAGRAPH 7 EXCERPTS

In the course of history, the use of temporal things has been marred by serious vices. Affected by original sin, men have frequently fallen into many errors concerning the true God, the nature of man, and the principles of the moral law. This has led to the corruption of morals and human institutions and not rarely to contempt for the human person himself. In our own time, moreover, those who have trusted excessively in the progress of the natural sciences and the technical arts have fallen into an idolatry of temporal things and have become their slaves rather than their masters.

The whole Church must work vigorously in order that men may become capable of rectifying the distortion of the temporal order and directing it to God through Christ. Pastors must clearly state the principles concerning the purpose of creation and the use of temporal things and must offer the moral and spiritual aids by which the temporal order may be renewed in Christ.

The laity must take up the renewal of the temporal order as their own special obligation. Led by the light of the Gospel and the mind of the Church and motivated by Christian charity, they must act directly and in a definite way in the temporal sphere. As citizens they must cooperate with other citizens with their own particular skill and on their own responsibility. Everywhere and in all things they must seek the justice of God’s kingdom. The temporal order must be renewed in such a way that, without detriment to its own proper laws, it may be brought into conformity with the higher principles of the Christian life and adapted to the shifting circumstances of time, place, and peoples. Preeminent among the works of this type of apostolate is that of Christian social action which the sacred synod desires to see extended to the whole temporal sphere, including culture.

Do you believe more people should hear this podcast show? Please sponsor upcoming episodes. Go to gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship.

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
• To listen to other this and our other podcast shows, go to gnm-media.org/podcasts/.

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It was a prophetic message, given in the 1960s — more true today than when it was originally written. In Chapter 2 of “The Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity” from Vatican Council II, it says, “Since in our own times new problems are arising and very serious errors are circulating which undermine the foundations of religion” (which is sadly becoming more and more obvious in the Church), “the moral order” (increasing the immorality of so many priests), and human society itself…” the lay faithful have a very important apostolate of renewing the Church from within.

Many people have asked me down through the years what does Jesus want them to do about the sins they witness in priests. Part 3 in this series answers that question.

The actual text of Chapter 2 is below.

Have you heard the introduction to this series? What is God doing in the Church Crisis?

Next: The Apostolate of the Laity in the Church Crisis – Part 4

THE DECREE OF THE APOSTOLATE OF THE LAITY
CHAPTER II
OBJECTIVES

5. Christ’s redemptive work, while essentially concerned with the salvation of men, includes also the renewal of the whole temporal order. Hence the mission of the Church is not only to bring the message and grace of Christ to men but also to penetrate and perfect the temporal order with the spirit of the Gospel. In fulfilling this mission of the Church, the Christian laity exercise their apostolate both in the Church and in the world, in both the spiritual and the temporal orders. These orders, although distinct, are so connected in the singular plan of God that He Himself intends to raise up the whole world again in Christ and to make it a new creation, initially on earth and completely on the last day. In both orders the layman, being simultaneously a believer and a citizen, should be continuously led by the same Christian conscience.

6. The mission of the Church pertains to the salvation of men, which is to be achieved by belief in Christ and by His grace. The apostolate of the Church and of all its members is primarily designed to manifest Christ’s message by words and deeds and to communicate His grace to the world. This is done mainly through the ministry of the Word and the sacraments, entrusted in a special way to the clergy, wherein the laity also have their very important roles to fulfill if they are to be “fellow workers for the truth” (3 John 8). It is especially on this level that the apostolate of the laity and the pastoral ministry are mutually complementary.

There are innumerable opportunities open to the laity for the exercise of their apostolate of evangelization and sanctification. The very testimony of their Christian life and good works done in a supernatural spirit have the power to draw men to belief and to God; for the Lord says, “Even so let your light shine before men in order that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (Matt. 5:16).

However, an apostolate of this kind does not consist only in the witness of one’s way of life; a true apostle looks for opportunities to announce Christ by words addressed either to non-believers with a view to leading them to faith, or to the faithful with a view to instructing, strengthening, and encouraging them to a more fervent life. “For the charity of Christ impels us” (2 Cor. 5:14). The words of the Apostle should echo in all hearts, “Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16).

Since, in our own times, new problems are arising and very serious errors are circulating which tend to undermine the foundations of religion, the moral order, and human society itself, this sacred synod earnestly exhorts laymen-each according to his own gifts of intelligence and learning-to be more diligent in doing what they can to explain, defend, and properly apply Christian principles to the problems of our era in accordance with the mind of the Church.

7. God’s plan for the world is that men should work together to renew and constantly perfect the temporal order.

All those things which make up the temporal order, namely, the good things of life and the prosperity of the family, culture, economic matters, the arts and professions, the laws of the political community, international relations, and other matters of this kind, as well as their development and progress, not only aid in the attainment of man’s ultimate goal but also possess their own intrinsic value. This value has been established in them by God, whether they are considered in themselves or as parts of the whole temporal order. “God saw that all He had made was very good” (Gen. 1:31). This natural goodness of theirs takes on a special dignity as a result of their relation to the human person, for whose service they were created. It has pleased God to unite all things, both natural and supernatural, in Christ Jesus “so that in all things He may have the first place” (Col. 1:18). This destination, however, not only does not deprive the temporal order of its independence, its proper goals, laws, supports, and significance for human welfare but rather perfects the temporal order in its own intrinsic strength and worth and puts it on a level with man’s whole vocation upon earth.

In the course of history, the use of temporal things has been marred by serious vices. Affected by original sin, men have frequently fallen into many errors concerning the true God, the nature of man, and the principles of the moral law. This has led to the corruption of morals and human institutions and not rarely to contempt for the human person himself. In our own time, moreover, those who have trusted excessively in the progress of the natural sciences and the technical arts have fallen into an idolatry of temporal things and have become their slaves rather than their masters.

The whole Church must work vigorously in order that men may become capable of rectifying the distortion of the temporal order and directing it to God through Christ. Pastors must clearly state the principles concerning the purpose of creation and the use of temporal things and must offer the moral and spiritual aids by which the temporal order may be renewed in Christ.

The laity must take up the renewal of the temporal order as their own special obligation. Led by the light of the Gospel and the mind of the Church and motivated by Christian charity, they must act directly and in a definite way in the temporal sphere. As citizens they must cooperate with other citizens with their own particular skill and on their own responsibility. Everywhere and in all things they must seek the justice of God’s kingdom. The temporal order must be renewed in such a way that, without detriment to its own proper laws, it may be brought into conformity with the higher principles of the Christian life and adapted to the shifting circumstances of time, place, and peoples. Preeminent among the works of this type of apostolate is that of Christian social action which the sacred synod desires to see extended to the whole temporal sphere, including culture.

8. While every exercise of the apostolate should be motivated by charity, some works by their very nature can become specially vivid expressions of this charity. Christ the Lord wanted these works to be signs of His messianic mission (cf. Matt. 11:4-5).

The greatest commandment in the law is to love God with one’s whole heart and one’s neighbor as oneself (cf. Matt. 22:37-40). Christ made this commandment of love of neighbor His own and enriched it with a new meaning. For He wanted to equate Himself with His brethren as the object of this love when He said, “As long as you did it for one of these, the least of My brethren, you did it for Me” (Matt. 25:40). Assuming human nature, He bound the whole human race to Himself as a family through a certain supernatural solidarity and established charity as the mark of His disciples, saying, “By this will all men know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

ln her very early days, the holy Church added the agape to the eucharistic supper and thus showed itself to be wholly united around Christ by the bond of charity. So, too, in every era it is recognized by this sign of love, and while it rejoices in the undertakings of others, it claims works of charity as its own inalienable duty and right. For this reason, pity for the needy and the sick and works of charity and mutual aid intended to relieve human needs of every kind are held in highest honor by the Church.

At the present time, with the development of more rapid facilities for communication, with the barrier of distance separating men greatly reduced, with the inhabitants of the entire globe becoming one great family, these charitable activities and works have become more urgent and universal. These charitable enterprises can and should reach out to all persons and all needs. Wherever there are people in need of food and drink, clothing, housing, medicine, employment, education; wherever men lack the facilities necessary for living a truly human life or are afflicted with serious distress or illness or suffer exile or imprisonment, there Christian charity should seek them out and find them, console them with great solicitude, and help them with appropriate relief. This obligation is imposed above all upon every prosperous nation and person.

In order that the exercise of charity on this scale may be unexceptionable in appearance as well as in fact, it is altogether necessary that one should consider in one’s neighbor the image of God in which he has been created, and also Christ the Lord to Whom is really offered whatever is given to a needy person. It is imperative also that the freedom and dignity of the person being helped be respected with the utmost consideration, that the purity of one’s charitable intentions be not stained by seeking one’s own advantage or by striving for domination, and especially that the demands of justice be satisfied lest the giving of what is due in justice be represented as the offering of a charitable gift. Not only the effects but also the causes of these ills must be removed and the help be given in such a way that the recipients may gradually be freed from dependence on outsiders and become self-sufficient.

Therefore, the laity should hold in high esteem and, according to their ability, aid the works of charity and projects for social assistance, whether public or private, including international programs whereby effective help is given to needy individuals and peoples. In so doing, they should cooperate with all men of good will.

Do you believe more people should hear this podcast show? Please sponsor upcoming episodes. Go to gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship.

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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Jesus is shedding his holy light on the demonic activities in the Church to expose it, because he’s saying, “Enough is enough! I’m about to do something that is going to change the Church from within because the Devil has been trying ruin the Church from within” — from the Vatican to everyday Catholics.”

A Brazilian bishop, Bishop Emeritus José Luis Azcona Hermoso, said in an Oct. 20 homily that Pope Francis’ Oct. 4 ceremony in the Vatican gardens prior to the opening of the Amazon Synod, where people prostrated themselves before pagan idols, was a “scandalous, demonic sacrilege.” He pointed out that a genuine illumination from the Holy Spirit is required: “We should distinguish between what comes from Satan or from the human mind, or from what is of the Holy Spirit. This discernment is fundamental in order to belong to the Church and even more so to evangelize.”

In this episode, Terry Modica reveals some surprising conclusions from his homily.

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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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We are digging into Chapter 1 of “The Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity” from Vatican Council II to reveal God’s plans for the lay faithful in today’s world, especially in the problems that today’s Catholics have with Pope Francis and corrupt bishops. We have a shared mission that depends on us for success!

“In the Church there is a diversity of ministry but a oneness of mission…. The laity share in the priestly, prophetic, and royal office of Christ and therefore have their own share in the mission” — which today includes purifying the Church from the evil infiltration of sin.

The actual text of Chapter 1 is below.

Have you heard the introduction to this series? What is God doing in the Church Crisis?

Next: The Apostolate of the Laity in the Church Crisis – Part 3

THE DECREE OF THE APOSTOLATE OF THE LAITY
CHAPTER I
THE VOCATION OF THE LAITY TO THE APOSTOLATE

2. The Church was founded for the purpose of spreading the kingdom of Christ throughout the earth for the glory of God the Father, to enable all men to share in His saving redemption, and that through them the whole world might enter into a relationship with Christ. All activity of the Mystical Body directed to the attainment of this goal is called the apostolate, which the Church carries on in various ways through all her members. For the Christian vocation by its very nature is also a vocation to the apostolate. No part of the structure of a living body is merely passive but has a share in the functions as well as life of the body: so, too, in the body of Christ, which is the Church, “the whole body . . . in keeping with the proper activity of each part, derives its increase from its own internal development” (Eph. 4:16).

Indeed, the organic union in this body and the structure of the members are so compact that the member who fails to make his proper contribution to the development of the Church must be said to be useful neither to the Church nor to himself.

In the Church there is a diversity of ministry but a oneness of mission. Christ conferred on the Apostles and their successors the duty of teaching, sanctifying, and ruling in His name and power. But the laity likewise share in the priestly, prophetic, and royal office of Christ and therefore have their own share in the mission of the whole people of God in the Church and in the world.

They exercise the apostolate in fact by their activity directed to the evangelization and sanctification of men and to the penetrating and perfecting of the temporal order through the spirit of the Gospel. In this way, their temporal activity openly bears witness to Christ and promotes the salvation of men. Since the laity, in accordance with their state of life, live in the midst of the world and its concerns, they are called by God to exercise their apostolate in the world like leaven, with the ardor of the spirit of Christ.

3. The laity derive the right and duty to the apostolate from their union with Christ the head; incorporated into Christ’s Mystical Body through Baptism and strengthened by the power of the Holy Spirit through Confirmation, they are assigned to the apostolate by the Lord Himself. They are consecrated for the royal priesthood and the holy people (cf. 1 Peter 2:4-10) not only that they may offer spiritual sacrifices in everything they do but also that they may witness to Christ throughout the world. The sacraments, however, especially the most holy Eucharist, communicate and nourish that charity which is the soul of the entire apostolate.

One engages in the apostolate through the faith, hope, and charity which the Holy Spirit diffuses in the hearts of all members of the Church. Indeed, by the precept of charity, which is the Lord’s greatest commandment, all the faithful are impelled to promote the glory of God through the coming of His kingdom and to obtain eternal life for all men-that they may know the only true God and Him whom He sent, Jesus Christ (cf. John 17:3). On all Christians therefore is laid the preeminent responsibility of working to make the divine message of salvation known and accepted by all men throughout the world.

For the exercise of this apostolate, the Holy Spirit Who sanctifies the people of God through ministry and the sacraments gives the faithful special gifts also (cf. 1 Cor. 12:7), “allotting them to everyone according as He wills” (1 Cor. 12:11) in order that individuals, administering grace to others just as they have received it, may also be “good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (1 Peter 4:10), to build up the whole body in charity (cf. Eph. 4:16). From the acceptance of these charisms, including those which are more elementary, there arise for each believer the right and duty to use them in the Church and in the world for the good of men and the building up of the Church, in the freedom of the Holy Spirit who “breathes where He wills” (John 3:8). This should be done by the laity in communion with their brothers in Christ, especially with their pastors who must make a judgment about the true nature and proper use of these gifts not to extinguish the Spirit but to test all things and hold for what is good (cf. 1 Thess. 5:12,19,21).

4. Since Christ, sent by the Father, is the source and origin of the whole apostolate of the Church, the success of the lay apostolate depends upon the laity’s living union with Christ, in keeping with the Lord’s words, “He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit, for without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). This life of intimate union with Christ in the Church is nourished by spiritual aids which are common to all the faithful, especially active participation in the sacred liturgy. These are to be used by the laity in such a way that while correctly fulfilling their secular duties in the ordinary conditions of life, they do not separate union with Christ from their life but rather performing their work according to God’s will they grow in that union. In this way the laity must make progress in holiness in a happy and ready spirit, trying prudently and patiently to overcome difficulties. Neither family concerns nor other secular affairs should be irrelevant to their spiritual life, in keeping with the words of the Apostle, “What-ever you do in word or work, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (Col. 3:17).

Such a life requires a continual exercise of faith, hope, and charity. Only by the light of faith and by meditation on the word of God can one always and everywhere recognize God in Whom “we live, and move, and have our being” ( Acts 17:28), seek His will in every event, see Christ in everyone whether he be a relative or a stranger, and make correct judgments about the true meaning and value of temporal things both in themselves and in their relation to man’s final goal.

They who have this faith live in the hope of the revelation of the sons of God and keep in mind the cross and resurrection of the Lord. In the pilgrimage of this life, hidden with Christ in God and free from enslavement to wealth, they aspire to those riches which remain forever and generously dedicate themselves wholly to the advancement of the kingdom of God and to the reform and improvement of the temporal order in a Christian spirit. Among the trials of this life they find strength in hope, convinced that “the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory to come that will be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:18).

Impelled by divine charity, they do good to all men, especially to those of the household of the faith (cf. Gal. 6:10), laying aside “all malice and all deceit and pretense, and envy, and all slander” (1 Peter 2:1), and thereby they draw men to Christ. This charity of God, “which is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5), enables the laity really to express the spirit of the beatitudes in their lives. Following Jesus in His poverty, they are neither depressed by the lack of temporal goods nor inflated by their abundance; imitating Christ in His humility, they have no obsession for empty honors (cf. Gal. 5:26) but seek to please God rather than men, ever ready to leave all things for Christ’s sake (cf. Luke 14:26) and to suffer persecution for justice sake (cf. Matt. 5:10), as they remember the words of the Lord, “If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24) . Promoting Christian friendship among themselves, they help one another in every need whatsoever.

This plan for the spiritual life of the laity should take its particular character from their married or family state or their single or widowed state, from their state of health, and from their professional and social activity. They should not cease to develop earnestly the qualities and talents bestowed on them in accord with these conditions of life, and they should make use of the gifts which they have received from the Holy Spirit.

Furthermore, the laity who have followed their vocation and have become members of one of the associations or institutes approved by the Church try faithfully to adopt the special characteristics of the spiritual life which are proper to them as well. They should also hold in high esteem professional skill, family and civic spirit, and the virtues relating to social customs, namely, honesty, justice, sincerity, kindness, and courage, without which no true Christian life can exist.

The perfect example of this type of spiritual and apostolic life is the most Blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Apostles, who while leading the life common to all here on earth, one filled with family concerns and labors, was always intimately united with her Son and in an entirely unique way cooperated in the work of the Savior. Having now been assumed into heaven, with her maternal charity she cares for these brothers of her Son who are still on their earthly pilgrimage and remain involved in dangers and difficulties until they are led into the happy fatherland. All should devoutly venerate her and commend their life and apostolate to her maternal care.

Do you believe more people should hear this podcast show? Please sponsor upcoming episodes. Go to gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship.

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
• To listen to other this and our other podcast shows, go to gnm-media.org/podcasts/.

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What we have in today’s Church, as you well know, is a lot of darkness. Evidence that the devil has infiltrated our Church — through heresies that are being preached from pulpits (possibly even by Pope Francis), clergy who are sexually molesting minors, and we have recently found out that there have been clergy in the seminaries who have been abusing seminarians and increasing the homosexual lifestyle.  And there are other ways I’ve shared in in previous episodes, all which have hurt the laity.

Now I would like to talk about what God is doing about this. In Matthew 25 Jesus talks about the separating of the sheep from the goats. I believe that’s what is happening now. I believe that’s what God is doing. It’s a time of making clear who is the shepherd and who is the wolf in shepherds’ clothing, who are the wolves that have been the devil’s instruments bringing darkness, bringing evil, increasing sin and promoting sin in the Church and trying to destroy the Church from within. That’s the devil’s plan: to destroy the Church from within, to drive people away from Christ by driving people away from the Church.

But God is bigger than that! That’s the good news that we need to remember. Jesus is still on the throne! God has a plan and it involves the laity.

This series uses the “Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity” from Vatican Council II to reveal how God plans to work through the lay faithful in the purification and healing of our Church and in the world that the devil has infected so thoroughly. Our mission has become extremely important!

Who else should hear this? Please share it!

The actual text of the Introduction of the Decree is below.

Next: The Apostolate of the Laity in the Church Crisis – Part 2

Have you heard the introduction to this series? What is God doing in the Church Crisis?

DECREE ON THE APOSTOLATE OF THE LAITY
APOSTOLICAM ACTUOSITATEM
SOLEMNLY PROMULGATED BY HIS HOLINESS,
POPE PAUL VI
ON NOVEMBER 18, 1965

INTRODUCTION

1. To intensify the apostolic activity of the people of God, the most holy synod earnestly addresses itself to the laity, whose proper and indispensable role in the mission of the Church has already been dealt with in other documents. The apostolate of the laity derives from their Christian vocation and the Church can never be without it. Sacred Scripture clearly shows how spontaneous and fruitful such activity was at the very beginning of the Church (cf. Acts 11:19-21; 18:26; Rom. 16:1-16; Phil. 4:3).

Our own times require of the laity no less zeal: in fact, modern conditions demand that their apostolate be broadened and intensified. With a constantly increasing population, continual progress in science and technology, and closer interpersonal relationships, the areas for the lay apostolate have been immensely widened particularly in fields that have been for the most part open to the laity alone. These factors have also occasioned new problems which demand their expert attention and study. This apostolate becomes more imperative in view of the fact that many areas of human life have become increasingly autonomous. This is as it should be, but it sometimes involves a degree of departure from the ethical and religious order and a serious danger to Christian life. Besides, in many places where priests are very few or, in some instances, deprived of due freedom for priestly work, the Church could scarcely exist and function without the activity of the laity.

An indication of this manifold and pressing need is the unmistakable work being done today by the Holy Spirit in making the laity ever more conscious of their own responsibility and encouraging them to serve Christ and the Church in all circumstances.

In this decree the Council seeks to describe the nature, character, and diversity of the lay apostolate, to state its basic principles, and to give pastoral directives for its more effective exercise. All these should be regarded as norms when the canon law, as it pertains to the lay apostolate, is revised.

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When the sex abuse scandals first caused a Church crisis two decades ago and the bishops met and made some policies to protect minors, I predicted that God was not finished purging the Church of abusive clergy. The bishops did too little. There are other kinds of abuses and all are terribly sinful. In this episode, I share how I’ve dealt with abusive priests. While this exposes more about the Church crisis we’re still dealing with today, it also shows the power of prayer for stopping abuses. By asking, “What is God doing in the Church Crisis?” we find the divine purpose that each of us are called to get involved in.

Next: The Apostolate of the Laity in the Church Crisis

We’re living in very tough times right now in our Church, and I’d like to talk about that now. As I was preparing to create this podcast, reflecting on what to say, when I went to Mass the first reading really spoke to me.  So I’d like to start this podcast by sharing that Scripture with you. It comes from Romans 1:16-25.

(NIV) For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed—a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools ²³ and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.

Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

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When all seems bleak — a crisis happens and there seems to be no solution, or when a problem brings darkness and there seems no way out — God has a plan. Jesus as our Redeemer always wants to redeem bad things that happen, turning them into blessings. If God’s plan gets blocked or ruined by our sin or by someone else or by the devil, he makes a new plan that is even better than the first.

To find God’s help, we need to trust him. Proverbs 3:5 instructs us to trust him instead of leaning on our own understanding of the situation. We see only what looks bleak. God sees so much more! And he is using this knowledge to bring a miracle into the problem.

Terry Modica explains how to do it by sharing her own recent experience as an example.  

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Psalm 147:3 promises that “he heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”

How does God heal us when our hearts are broken? When does he heal us? If we feel brokenhearted, we want a fast cure. What do we need to do to make ourselves more available to the healing of our hearts? And where does God do the healing?

Terry Modica provides answers to these questions to set you on the path to healing. As an example to encourage you, she shares what God has done to heal her own broken heart in a situation that has been ongoing for two decades. Despite the seemingly unending hurt, the Lord healed her so that she can wait with hope and joy. He will do the same for you.

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What are the weapons for making the devil flee from you that Jesus has placed in your hands?

With the humble power of prayer, we can do much. The Sacraments give us supernatural graces that conquer the devil.

Here’s how to free yourself from the ways the devil has been interfering in your life. Dare to be on the side of Christ so strongly that the you can make the devil flee from you.

Good News Ministries has resources to further help with this, including “The Prayer of Authority to Conquer Demons”, which is a mighty weapon against evil strategies and demonic interference: gnm.org/prayer-of-authority/

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This podcast series uses the book Rebuking the Devil by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops about Pope Francis’ teachings on defeating Satan. The book can be ordered from the USCCB at http://store.usccb.org/rebuking-the-devil-p/7-608.htm or from Amazon at https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1601376081 (US residents, please choose Good News Ministries of Tampa Bay for the charity your purchase supports at AmazonSmile).

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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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What is the devil doing now in the Church? And what can we do about it? In this episode, Terry Modica talks about the heresies and divisiveness of the German bishops and the Amazon Synod. We are at a crucial turning point in the Catholic Church. We each can make a difference! All the faithful are being called by the Holy Spirit to rebuke the devil and push him out of the Church. This episode explains how to do it. 

Who else should hear this episode? Please share it!

This series uses the book Rebuking the Devil by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops about Pope Francis’ teachings on defeating Satan. The book can be ordered from the USCCB at store.usccb.org/rebuking-the-devil-p/7-608.htm or from Amazon at smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1601376081 (US residents, please choose Good News Ministries of Tampa Bay for the charity your purchase supports at AmazonSmile).

Do you believe more people should hear this podcast show? Please sponsor upcoming episodes. Go to gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship.

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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Pope Francis points out that “snares are one of the strategies of the devil.” What is a snare? How do good people unwittingly walk into snares and get trapped? Terry Modica shares the story of how the priest who as the first chaplain of Good News Ministries got ensnared by alcoholism and why this eventually destroyed his ministry. She then explains how snares are why the Church is suffering from bishops who have been perpetuating abuses, and why the Church in Germany is pulling away from the authority of the Vatican. Finally, she explains the most important help that God provides for escaping snares.

Who else should hear this episode? Please share it!

This series uses the book Rebuking the Devil by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops about Pope Francis’ teachings on defeating Satan. The book can be ordered from the USCCB at store.usccb.org/rebuking-the-devil-p/7-608.htm or from Amazon at smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1601376081 (US residents, please choose Good News Ministries of Tampa Bay for the charity your purchase supports at AmazonSmile).

Do you believe more people should hear this podcast show? Please sponsor upcoming episodes. Go to gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship.

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
• To listen to other this and our other podcast shows, go to gnm-media.org/podcasts/.

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When we are not aware of what the Holy Spirit wants to do through us, Satan keeps other people from finding the kingdom of God. Pope Francis said, “There are terrible, terrible, terrible things in the world, and this is the devil’s work against God. But there are holy things, saintly things, great things that are the work of God. There are hidden saints.” When we were baptized, you made saints. When we become who we truly are in Christ, we can defeat the devil easily. The Holy Spirit makes this possible. This episode includes prayers of renouncing what the devil has done in your life, freeing you to do what God created you to do.

Who else should hear this episode? Please share it!

This series uses the book Rebuking the Devil by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops about Pope Francis’ teachings on defeating Satan. The book can be ordered from the USCCB at store.usccb.org/rebuking-the-devil-p/7-608.htm or from Amazon at smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1601376081 (US residents, please choose Good News Ministries of Tampa Bay for the charity your purchase supports at AmazonSmile).

The book used for renouncing the devil is Prayers That Rout Demons: Prayers for Defeating Demons and Overthrowing the Powers of Darkness by John Eckhardt, available at smile.amazon.com/gp/product/159979246X

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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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In this exposé of the infiltration plans of Satan worshipers, I share what I learned from a Satanist high priest who converted to Christ. This episode exposes the agenda of Satan worshipers and their methods of satanic infiltration to influence our society and even our churches in order to destroy us from within. This is an episode that no one should miss as I continue on the topic of why there is so much evil in today’s world.

Who else should hear this episode? Please share it!

This series uses the book Rebuking the Devil by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops about Pope Francis’ teachings on defeating Satan. The book can be ordered from the USCCB at store.usccb.org/rebuking-the-devil-p/7-608.htm or from Amazon at smile.amazon.com/gp/product/1601376081 (US residents, please choose Good News Ministries of Tampa Bay for the charity your purchase supports at AmazonSmile).

Do you believe more people should hear this podcast show? Please sponsor upcoming episodes. Go to gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship.

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
• To listen to other this and our other podcast shows, go to gnm-media.org/podcasts/.

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Is the devil real? Many believe that evil is created by people making bad choices, and this leaves us vulnerable to being tricked by demons. Your host Terry Modica shares her story of how she was tricked into turning away from Christ by getting involved with the demons of the occult because she didn’t believe they existed.

Using the book Rebuking the Devil by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops about Pope Francis’ teachings on defeating Satan, we start the series by examining the devil’s role in why there is so much evil in today’s world.

The book can be ordered from the USCCB at store.usccb.org/rebuking-the-devil-p/7-608.htm or from Amazon at smile.amazon.com/Pope-Francis-Rebuking-Devil/dp/1601376081/ (please choose Good News Ministries of Tampa Bay for the charity your purchase supports at AmazonSmile).

Who else should hear this episode? Please share it!

Do you believe more people should hear this podcast show? Please sponsor upcoming episodes.
gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
• To listen to other this and our other podcast shows, go to gnm-media.org/podcasts/.

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What obstacles are interfering with your plans? Have you been searching for a job but nothing opens up for you? Are you being rejected by a loved one who refuses to reconcile with you? What other obstacles are you dealing with? In this episode, we look at how to overcome obstacles by following Jesus and listening to the Holy Spirit. 

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There are three sources of obstacles: circumstances, demons and humans. First I want to talk about demons because this can really be the easiest to overcome if we truly are in Christ, following Chris, believe in Christ, trust in Christ, are under the authority of Christ because Christ has given us his authority over demons. If you are truly under the authority of Christ, understanding what he did for you on the Cross and how he defeated Satan on the Cross and how he defeated Satan on resurrection Sunday by coming back to life — if you understand these basic principles of our faith, you can easily overcome demon.

The second type of obstacle that I want to talk about are those created by humans, and this can be much more difficult than doing spiritual warfare against demons because now we’re dealing with people’s free will. We’re dealing with obstacles caused by people’s ignorance of God’s plans and, in their free will, they’re sticking by their own plan. Or more often, were dealing with obstacles are caused by the sins of others.

And then there are obstacles created by circumstances — circumstances such as nature. That could be an illness, physical handicaps, mental handicaps — things that are controlled by biological, physical, and natural things such as the problems of aging. Another type of obstacle created by circumstances is a lack of opportunity. For example, people who have been searching for a job and not getting it, and they keep searching and keep trying and keep praying and get lots of people praying for their job search, and they still don’t get the job that they need the job.

This podcast covers what to do about all these types of obstacles.

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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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This episode was inspired when Terry Modica and her husband, Ralph, went to the funeral of a neighbor who was a Jehovah’s Witness. The description of Heaven that they heard from the leader of the congregation was not one that we want to believe in. Terry is joined by Ralph to explain why. Here’s a much better description of the afterlife based on the teachings of the Catholic Faith and the Bible.

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Recently Ralph and I went to a funeral of a neighbor who was a Jehovah witness. Well, it wasn’t really a funeral. It was a memorial — of the person’s life. There was no casket, no urn with ashes, and nothing that I would consider to be a religious service. It was an hour-long story-telling about the woman who had died.

The leader of the congregation gave a very long eulogy. At the end everyone sang the song about the afterlife. However the description of the afterlife that we heard from the leader was not one we would want to believe in.

There was no joy in it, no awareness of going to a better place, no point in dying. In true Christianity, with Jesus as a divine savior who took our sins upon himself when he died and whose resurrection gives us eternal life, there is a very important point in dying. In true Christianity, we die to be perfected. We die to become completely holy — purged of all that is not of God — to enter into the fullness of God’s love and God’s life – eternal life — which we can never completely understand and receive while we are still in our earthly lives with limited brains and limited understanding.

My neighbor’s friends and family who are Jehovah’s witnesses sadly think she has just gone to sleep and can do no more as she awaits the day when the Earth is perfected enough by people becoming perfect enough for the earth to become like the garden of Eden used to be. They believe that Adam and Jesus were the only two men who were created to be perfect. They believe Jesus is the son of God only in the same sense that we are all sons and daughters of God. They believe that Jesus came as a Messiah to show us what perfection looks like so we know what to imitate. They believe that he sacrificed his life for this. But there is no divine Savior and no understanding that we need a savior because we will never be able to be good enough, perfected enough on our own to reach the goal of the new heaven and new Earth that the Jehovah’s witnesses look forward to. There is no supernatural grace available to help us in our struggle against sin. There is no supernatural grace that come from sacraments, which are God’s divine gifts given to us directly by Jesus.

When I go to a Catholic funeral, I come away from it sad for the loss that the friends and family are suffering but full of joy for the new life that the person who has passed away has entered into.

What do you think Heaven is like? And in this question I include purgatory. Let’s think for a moment about purgatory not as a place of suffering, because that is only part of it. St. John Paul II pointed out that there is joy in purgatory. There is joy even while our friends and family who have died and are not yet in the fullness of heaven are going through a painful process of being purged of everything that had not been holy, experiencing the excruciating pain of regret and remorse and whatever other sufferings this caused by any sinfulness they died in.

So for the sake of this discussion let’s stay focused on the joy of purgatory and heaven, and everything else that is good in it. What do you think that goodness looks like?

While I was growing up as a protestant, I had very little understanding of what heaven is like. It seemed to me to be just a place of floating around as a spiritual being, happy that I was with God. And that is all I could imagine. And that sounds rather boring!

My understanding changed after I began to look into the teachings of the Catholic Church, and after I was filled with the Holy Spirit and had begun to enjoy an active, personal relationship with the Holy Spirit, who teaches us everything we need to know, as Jesus promised.

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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
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What if while driving down the road you say a prayer for every person that you see along the way. Surely they all need your prayers. Would you intercede for others more often and more readily if you saw your prayers get answered? In this episode, Terry Modica reveals that the real stumbling block is not a lack of fruits but a lack of understanding how intercessory prayer works. By clearing up misconceptions, you can discover greater faith to become a more effective intercessor.

We all have people in our lives who need our prayers. And the strangers that you see only once:  Some of those people don’t have anyone praying for them. Your prayers are important!

We could all do a better job of being prayer intercessors for others. But what I think holds us back is the lack of seeing enough encouraging fruits of our prayer efforts to motivate us to keep doing it and even to do more.

The real stumbling block is not a lack of fruits but a lack of understanding how intercessory prayer works.

A good example of how we misunderstand intercessory prayer is in the way we so often hear official prayers in church. For example, the common prescribed response to the Prayers of the Faithful during Mass is, ‘Lord hear our prayer.” The implication that unconsciously undermines our thought processes and our understanding of God’s role in answering our prayers is that the Lord won’t hear our prayer unless we ask him to.

So, to cure that, we could change it to, “Lord, thank You for hearing our prayers.” Even if we do this silently in our hearts while everyone else is saying the prescribed formula, this can build our faith.

But we can go even deeper than that to uncover greater faith. Think about the word “our” in “Lord, hear our prayer”. How much weight do you give to the fact that it is your prayer? What if you turned that upside down and thought about it as God’s prayer being spoken through you? Suddenly the effectiveness of the prayer seems so much greater.

You see, prayer, real prayer, is communion with God. It’s a form of union with God, or it should be. It’s communication. Notice how these words all tie together: communion and communication. Prayer should be a form of experiencing the communion of the Eucharist. The Eucharist is Christ’s real presence in the form of bread and wine. Prayer is Christ’s real presence in your communication with God.

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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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What causes the Sacred Heart of Jesus to break? Well, in what ways are you suffering? Jesus suffers with you. Who has broken your heart? Jesus is broken-hearted with you. Which of your loved ones have been rejecting Christian faith and morality? How have you been misled into Satan’s territory? How have you been tricked by his deceptions? This breaks Jesus’s heart, too. 

What heals the Sacred Heart of Jesus? The same thing that heals your heart! In this episode, Terry Modica shares three steps that will heal your heart while also serving as healing balm for the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

For a Prayer to Place Your Child into the Sacred Heart of Jesus using the prayer of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, visit our website: https://gnm.org/prayers-for-parents/sacred-heart-novena/ 

I would like to bring some healing to your heart. I would like to bring to you the healing that comes from Jesus, from his Sacred Heart to your precious heart, because your heart is very precious to him.

Your feelings — your suffering of pain, of hopes of dreams, of joys, of everything that we say goes on in the heart, the heart of our being, heart of our soul, the heart of our life, that center of us — this is where the Lord Jesus wants to dwell more fully so that he can heal you more fully.

And so that he can help your dreams come true — the dreams that God the Father has planted in you — and so that Jesus can help you to become the saint that the Father has designed you to be and the Holy Spirit is empowering you to be so that Jesus’ Sacred Heart is alive in you, so that others can see the presence of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in you — I’m going to share with you something that happened to me a long time ago regarding the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

I was a young Catholic, a young mother, and the Sacred Heart of Jesus was not something that I was very familiar with. I’d heard about it. I’d seen holy cards of it. I’d seen statues of it, but I was raised Protestant. In my particular branch of Protestantism. I never heard the phrase “Sacred Heart of Jesus”….

Scriptures used in this podcast:

Matthew 25:44-45
“Those who are condemned say are, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ … Then the King will answer, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for Me.'”

Mark 9:42
“If anyone causes one of these little ones — those who believe in me — to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea.”

Matthew 18:12-14
“If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go out to search for the one that is lost? And if he finds it, truly I tell you, he rejoices more over that one sheep than over the ninety-nine that did not go astray. In the same way, your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should perish.”

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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
• To listen to other this and our other podcast shows, go to gnm-media.org/podcasts/.

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This episode was motivated by a burden I feel whenever someone tells me that they are suffering because of what a priest has done — and here we are not talking about the sexual abuse of minors and the horrific cover-ups by the hierarchy. There are other types of sufferings, and they all contribute to pain we all feel as a suffering Church.

So I dared to take a frank and honest look at what happens when priests do not have an active and alive, personal relationship with the Holy Spirit. When it causes suffering and drives people away from the Church and from Christ, it is “diabolical” (quoting from Bishop Robert Barron’s Letter to a Suffering Church). It shows up in homilies that preach heresies, in nit-picking about the “right” way* to receive the Eucharist despite the best of intentions, and in abuses that, because they are not victimizing children, remain covered up and undealt with.

*This episode includes what the General Instruction on the Roman Missal actually says and means about the “right” way. For more information, see my article The correct posture at Mass: Can we genuflect when receiving Communion? @ wordbytes.org/faqs/posture-communion/.

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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
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What do you wish could be better? Your life? Your relationships? Your faith? If it were better, what would it look like? The first step in making anything better is to envision what better really means. Then ask: How does Jesus envision it? What are Father God’s dreams for me in this? What is the Holy Spirit telling me about it? And: What strongholds are holding me back?

In this episode, Terry Modica shares how to break through the strongholds in your life so you can have a better, stronger faith. 

For more information about the book she mentions, “30 Days to the Heart of the Father”, go to gnm.org/books-by-Terry-Modica/30-days-to-Abbas-heart/.

“Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33)

Therefore the most important thing to improve is the faith life.

So, what does a better faith life look like for you? And what strongholds in your life are interfering with reaching this goal?

Now comes the most important question: What are you going to do about it? What effort are you willing to put in to make it better?

Jesus described what a good – really, really good — faith life looks like. The Gospels are filled with it. All the New Testament books show it and explain how to achieve it. The Book of Acts show that it’s possible to achieve.

In a nutshell, Jesus described it when he told us that the greatest commandment — the most important commandment — is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30). 

Anything less is detrimental to our faith life. Anything less is mediocre. Lukewarm. And you know what Jesus thinks about mediocre faith? He said in Revelations 3:16, “Because you are lukewarm … I am about to vomit you out of My mouth!”

Why such a drastic reaction? Because he can’t work miracles through someone who has mediocre faith. He can’t change the world through us unless we come fully alive in faith — which is why he provided us with the Holy Spirit. 

So, back to the most important question: What are you going to do about it? What effort are you willing to put in to make it better?

If you’re not willing to make it better, if you put only minimal effort into it, this is a sin. It’s a lifestyle of sin, because it’s being less than who God designed you to be. It’s keeping you from fulfilling the dreams that God planted in you — dreams that feel important when you think about them, because they are important. 

Jesus allowed himself to be tortured and nailed to the cross to free you from this so you can be all that God designed you to be. He died for this! Giving him less than your best efforts — what does that say to him?

Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength”. This also means: Work at making things better with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength”.

How do you begin? What’s the first step in reaching a fully alive, fully rewarding, dream-fulfilling faith? And with this, a better life and better relationships? Ask the Holy Spirit for help.

And do this every day! Step by step we become better at it. Step by step we grow in faith. Step by step we smash the strongholds that have been holding us back. Day by day. There’s no such thing as sitting down on this journey. When we stop moving forward, first we stagnate, then we start sliding backward. That’s because there are demons ready to pull you down. They are watching for the opportunity. And since giving God less than our best — being mediocre, lukewarm — is a sin, we’re in effect giving demons permission to drag us down.

This happens so easily! So Jesus gave us the Sacrament of Confession, which, because it is a sacrament, provides us with supernatural grace to grow stronger in resisting the temptation to feel satisfied with mediocrity.

God gives us everything necessary for a fully alive faith. He gave himself to us. Jesus died for this. The Holy Spirit was given to you for this. What are you going to do about it? What effort are you willing to put in to make it better?

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Feeling the angst of frustration? Want to get rid of it? Here are 8 steps for finding true and lasting inner peace no matter what is going on around you and who is causing it. 

Step 1: Identify what is making you frustrated.

Then think of this: Some people can deal with the very same problem and never feel frustrated. So why is it irritating you so much? Take a look at the true cause of where your anger is coming from: Look at yourself! Here are some very common sources of frustration:

• I feel frustrated whenever someone doesn’t change fast enough to suit me.
• I want others to improve in order to make my life more pleasant.

Step 2: Acknowledge your frustration as a sin.

When we are frustrated, our attitude is not very loving, is it? 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 describes our behavior when we are living in love:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. (NIV)

When we love, we do not hang onto hurts, because love is not self-seeking. Frustration occurs because we insist that our pain will only go away when the other person shows us they are truly sorry for what they have done.

Love is patient. Frustration is short-tempered.

Love doesn’t take offense when others do something offensive. Frustration is a defense against the offense.

Love doesn’t insist on having its own way. Frustration is the emotional act of insisting that somebody else must do something to bring justice when we have been unfairly treated.

We like to point the finger at other people, because it’s easier than admitting the sin of our unloving reaction to what they have done. To overcome this, ask God to help you see them as He sees them, through His loving eyes.

• See the offender as weighed down by bags of garbage (the abuse that’s been inflicted on them, the rejection and misunderstanding and poor role modeling, etc.)
• Look past the garbage to see the real person underneath.

Step 3: Repent. Turn away from the feeling of frustration.

To repent means to change your mind. Choose to accept people the way they are even though you don’t like everything about them. What if they never improve? Could you still accept them that way?  If they do begin to change, is it okay if they don’t change fast enough? What if their lack of improvement or slow growth causes more problems? If you try to repent under your own will-power, you won’t get very far. Ask the Holy Spirit to intervene in your life and give you help. God gives us supernatural help!

Repentance also means forgiving yourself for getting frustrated, and forgiving those who are making you frustrated. Jesus said we have to be ready and willing to forgive continually and repeatedly (“seventy times seven times”), and frustration usually only happens when we are continually and repeatedly offended.

Even after deciding to repent and forgive, the feeling of frustration usually remains. Why? To discover the answer, we move into:

Step 4: Recognize that your desire for people to change is another sin.

Love means seeing the good in others while not holding their sins (their bags of garbage) against them. Because we do love them, we want to see them become free of their garbage. For their own sake, we wish they’d change, and then we get angry when they don’t. To overcome this frustration, we need to stop looking at the garbage. But how?

Step 5: Learn what is the root of your desire for the other person to change.

Usually, the root is Fear. We’re afraid of getting hurt again and so we reach the conclusion: “I should be upset with them for not changing.” This really means: “I must hurt that person now because he might hurt me in the future.” And so we hurt them by being frustrated with them. They don’t even have to know we’re frustrated, as long as we feel frustrated, we feel like we’re getting some sort of revenge.

In other words, fear leads to disapproval of the other people, and disapproval is not love.

• We’re offering conditional love: “If you change, then I will be happy and loving with you.”
• The people causing our problems need our acceptance. To give this to them, we need to get in touch with God’s love for them.
• When we love them with His unconditional love, they experience God’s healing touch.

Step 6: Discover the true source of your happiness.

Our happiness does not depend on others and how they treat us. We don’t need constant kindness from others to feel good. Our happiness depends on how good our relationship is with God. God is our true source of joy and inner peace and a calm, non-frustrated spirit.

• We’re happy because we’re partners with God making a difference in someone’s life.
• We’re happy because God will never do anything to hurt us.
• All other sources of joy only last short time.

But knowing this is not enough. The next time a problem occurs, we’re unhappy and frustrated again. It seems like we’ll only be happy if the person hurting us changes or leaves us alone.

Step 7: Kill off all illusions about other sources of happiness.

We need to become a sign of the true, loving and healing presence of Jesus. Philippians 3:17-21 tells us:

Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.  Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. (NIV)

“Enemies of the cross of Christ end in destruction.” Get your eyes off the people who hurt you and look at your own relationship with God, who is love ~ God, whom you rejected when you gave to others your anger and frustration instead of God’s love.

How are you being an enemy of the cross? By rejecting your own crucifixion. People who hurt you are trying to crucify you; they are nailing you to their belief system, their garbage, their sinfulness. And when you’re frustrated, you’re fighting the cross. Jesus showed, by example, that going to the cross for someone is good! He allowed you to crucify Him to your garbage 2000 years ago. But how can it be a good thing for you to be nailed to someone else’s unloving behavior?

John 12:24-26 says:

I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me; and where I am, my servant also will be. My Father will honor the one who serves me.

A grain of wheat must fall to the ground and die to produce much fruit.Your desire for the unloving person to love you must be nailed and killed, and with that you will be killing the source of your frustrations. Then, you will experience the growth of much peace and joy.

If we love our life we will lose it. By hanging onto your life of frustration, you lose what you want most. In your desire for the unloving person to love you the way you want him to, you focus on what is hurting you and you lose touch with whatever amount of love that person has to give.

To serve Jesus, we must follow Him. Where did He go? To the cross! We’ve grown up with the illusion that happiness comes from being right and protecting ourselves from hurts and from crucifixion. To find true happiness in troubled relationships, we must allow these people to crucify us. It doesn’t make sense in the world’s view, but Jesus showed us from the cross that it makes perfect sense from the perspective of love. He said: Stop fighting AND offer no resistance.

But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. (Matt. 5:39-41 NIV)

Our flesh-nature says, “I don’t want to do this! Let this cup pass from me!” Our spirit-nature, connected to Jesus, says: “If they can’t give me love, I must let them crucify my desire to receive love from them.”

St. Ignatius of Antioch said, “I am the wheat of Christ, ground by the teeth of beasts to become pure bread.” By letting people grind us into the ground, we become sacrament for them (the Bread of Christ). We become a sign of the true, loving and healing presence of Jesus.

8. Follow Jesus all the way to the cross in order to reach the resurrection.

To truly love others, we embrace them despite their garbage. Jesus, in order to take our sins to the cross, had to embrace us while we were still laden down with bags and bags of garbage. Embracing the bearer of garbage is truly following Jesus all the way to the cross ~ all the waythrough the cross to the resurrection!

The other person might not change, but you will. You will find inner peace and joy no matter how much you suffer. You will no longer be damaged by the hurts inflicted upon you. You will no longer have any reason to feel frustrated!

Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice. Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. (Eph. 4:31-5:2 NIV)

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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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If you want to experience all that the Holy Spirit wants to do in you and through you, rather than live a mediocre faith, use the Penitential Rite during Mass as one of the most important of spiritual exercises. We have given in to the ways of the world – believing lies that Satan wants us to believe – and this is stifling the Holy Spirit. In this episode, Terry Modica teaches spiritual exercises that strengthen what is weak so that you can become who you really are as a believer in Christ: a saint!

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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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I’m going to let you in on a secret that the Devil does not want you to know….

It’s time we reclaimed what is rightfully ours as followers of Christ: a faith that works miracles. A faith that fulfills the promises made by Jesus! Read the Bible — the New Testament — to find all the times when the supernatural happened and ask, “Is this happening in my life?” And if the answer is no ask, “Why not?” The answer is in your relationship with the Holy Spirit.

The Devil does not want you to know this, because he is afraid of what you will do if you become fully aware of what you can accomplish through the Holy Spirit.

Demons do exist, and they are trying to interfere with your relationship with Christ and stifle your relationship with the Holy Spirit.

I know I’ve been spending a lot of time in these podcasts, lately, talking about the devil. Most of my time is not spent focused on evil. But we cannot solve the problems in our Church or in our world or in our lives if we ignore what the Devil wants us to ignore – the reality of demonic forces and our power over them when we are united to Christ who has already defeated them.

It’s time we reclaimed what is rightfully ours as followers of Christ – a faith that works miracles. A faith that heals broken hearts. A faith the drives the Enemy out of the Church. A faith that convinces non-believers that turning to Christ is a good idea. A faith that fulfills the promises made by Jesus! Read the Bible — the New Testament — to find all the times when the supernatural happened and ask, “Is this happening in my life?” And if the answer is no ask, “Why not?”

The answer is in your relationship with the Holy Spirit.

8 Ways We Stifle the Spirit

1. Clericalism – religious hierarchy holding onto power and control.
2. Legalism – another form of power and control: wielding the letter of the law even when it drives people away from Christ and away from the Church, instead of applying the spirit of the law.
3. Unbending policies – similar to legalism except policies don’t carry the same weight as laws.
4. Trusting the lies of Satan – every idea that’s unloving. Hurtful. Self-defeating. Self-serving. Unlike Christ. Embraced by those who don’t want to follow Christ.
5. Trusting our perceptions and understanding – (Isaiah 55:8) “My thoughts are not your thoughts; my ways are not your ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
6. Insufficient time in prayer – Satan is thrilled with our laziness and busyness that keeps us from praying.
7. Choosing your own agenda over God’s – we have lots of excuses for doing what we want to do.
8. Mediocrity – Jesus said in Mark 12:30, “Love the Lord your God from your whole heart and your whole soul and your whole mind and your whole strength.”

How to un-stifle the Spirit: The 3 Rs

1. Repent
2. Renounce
3. Retreat into prayer 

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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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The daily hardships we experience are affected by Satan and the prayers that we do and our connection to Christ. How much are your hardships demonically influenced? Some hardships are simply because we live in an imperfect world, but how do you know when you should take action against demons? In this episode, As a follow-up to the 4-second prayer that defeats Satan (episode #12), Terry Modica explains in episode #13 how to interpret your hardships in light of the 7 phases in the battle for union with Christ — 7 phases of spiritual growth that lead to a life of joy in the Lord during hardships through union with Christ.

These phases are:

1. temptation
2. conversion to Christ
3. re-temptation
4. retaliation
5. persecution
6. joy
7. union with Christ

After listening to this empowering message, you can find further encouragement and helpful tips on the Good News Ministries website at https://gnm.org/how-can-i-find-healing-from-hurts/.

If you believe that this podcast show is important enough to continue, please sponsor upcoming episodes. 
https://gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
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Why is it that we expect less, not more, from God? Why are we not living a miraculous faith? Why do we receive less from God instead of the abundant “more” that he actually wants to give us? Listen to this important episode. Satan is doing everything he can to disempower the Church, because we are a huge threat to him. Satan doesn’t want us to fully grasp the truth about what we can receive from God, because with it we can change the world. So here’s a 4-second prayer that immediately defeats Satan. 

If the Body of Christ on Earth today (you, me, and all who have faith in Christ) were to come fully alive in the Holy Spirit and be who we really, truly, are — little Christs banded together and covering the whole earth, doing what Jesus did — it is Satan and all evil-doers who would be disempowered.

Download the prayers and scriptures and the spiritual exercise of this podcast by going to the transcript at https://wordbytes.org/holyspirit/the-4-second-prayer-that-defeats-satan/ 

Find the recommended three mini-courses on the Holy Spirit at https://gnm.org/paracletia/.

If you believe that this podcast show is important enough to continue, please sponsor upcoming episodes. 
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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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In John 14:12 & 13, Jesus says to us, “Truly, truly, I tell you, whoever believes in Me will do the works that I am doing and even greater things. And I will do whatever you ask in My name, so that the Father may be glorified.” Well then, why do we have unanswered prayers? Terry Modica uses an often over-looked clue in this scripture to turn your prayer requests into miracles.

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One of my favorite scriptures is John 14:12. Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I tell you” — and, you know, whenever he says it twice, “truly, truly”, he saying, “Listen, this is very, very important. I tell you, whoever believes in Me will do the works that I’m doing. And in fact, he will do even greater things than I’ve been doing, because I’m going to the Father.”

When Jesus goes to the Father, he will send us the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit manifests God’s divine power in us and through us — in us for our own faith growth, and for others through us, so that we can bring the world to Christ, so that we can minister to others and be Christ’s hands and feet, doing the works of Jesus in this world today. In other words, we’re supposed to be able to do miracles!

Scripture is never meant to be read one verse at a time, out of context with the bigger picture. He says, “Truly, truly I tell you: Whoever believes in Me…” verse 13: “Whatever you ask in My name, I will do, so the Father may be glorified in the Son.” His motive is the glorification of God the father.

This needs to be our motivation anytime we ask for miracles. See, we don’t ask rightly. We don’t receive what we asked for, because we’re not asking rightly. We are not asking for God to be glorified as the primary, most important reason for the asking.

James 4:2 says, “You do not have because you do not ask.” But we say, “Wait a minute! I pray every day. I’m always asking God for things and I’m still waiting for him to answer my prayers. He answered some of them, yes. But there are some very important things he hasn’t answered yet.”

Let’s continue into verse 3 to see what James means here. “And when you do ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives. What were the wrong motives he’s talking about? He says right here, “You squander it on your own pleasures.”

Go down the list of all the prayer requests that you’ve had in which you feel like God has rejected you, abandoned you, forgotten you, doesn’t care about what you’re praying about. Do an examination of conscience with that list. How many of those prayer requests are based on what you want?

Do our prayer requests glorify God? Or are they for selfish motives?

God does want us to ask things for ourselves. God does want us to say, “Hey Daddy, I’m your child.

When we pray for something that benefits us, it is asking selfishly. But think about: How can the answer to this prayer glorify God? How can the answer to this prayer be turned into ministry? How can God solving my problem, healing me, getting me the new job — whatever — how can the miracles I seek be turned into ministry? I want to glorify God with it.

And if we don’t find any way to glorify the Lord with what we’re asking for, then we need to change our prayer request. We need to stop expecting God to give us what we want, and we need to stop blaming God when he doesn’t give us what we want. We need to do a good examination of conscience and look at what is most important to God. This is what should be most important to us.

In Matthew 6:33 Jesus says, “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added onto you.”

Also see these WordBytes:
https://wordbytes.org/holy-spirit/

Please help us continue producing more episodes of Footsteps to Heaven. If you believe that this podcast show is important, please sponsor upcoming episodes.
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Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

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Do you feel like you’re on trial? Is someone misjudging you? In this podcast, Terry Modica unpacks 8 scriptures to assure you that God is defending you. Jesus said that he would give his Holy Spirit to us to be our Advocate. But before the Holy Spirit, Jesus was our Advocate, and before that, the Father was our Advocate. There is no reason to be self-defensive. God has our backs!

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Also see these prayer resources:

• A Prayer to the Holy Spirit
• Novena to the Holy Spirit

Are you under trial? Think about the people, the circumstances and situations that you are in right now that make you feel like you are on trial being judged. Do you feel misjudged? Are you being judged unfairly? Or perhaps, you actually did something wrong and it is being held against you. Maybe there’s somebody who is not forgiving you, even though you’ve asked for forgiveness.

You need somebody to stand up for you. You need somebody to care and say, “It’s going to be all right.” You need somebody to speak to someone else and say, “This person isn’t as bad as you think he (or she) is.

A couple of years ago, my father, who was living with us, fell and cracked the second vertebrae in his neck. He spent several months in a rehabilitation center. When they discharged him, he was too weak to come home. We needed to find nursing care where we could still give him our time and attention, but he would get good care. Just as his Medicare insurance ran out, the Lord opened up a bed for him in a six-resident assisted living home two miles from our house. Just two miles! It was perfect timing. We knew God was working on the family’s behalf to make this happen.

A few weeks ago, Dad ended up back in the hospital, because he had an infection. When it was time to be discharged from the hospital, he needed to go into rehab again.

Now he is weaker than he was before, and the house where he had been living could no longer handle his level of care. So the hospital sent him to a rehab center. We selected a facility where he’s been on a waiting list for long-term skilled nursing care. It’s the best in the area. Praise the Lord, they had a room available in the rehab wing! We had been told that if this happens, he gets bumped to the top of the waiting list for long-term care. Dad and I thought our prayers had been answered.

He was in the rehab wing for three weeks when the decision was made by the physical therapists that he is too weak to benefit for more physical therapy. The administrators said, “He’s got to leave. There is no bed open in the long-term wing.”

I said, “Can’t he stay right there in the rehab room until a bed opens up in the long-term wing?”
They said, “No, we are discharging him this weekend.”

So I went scrambling to find another place as close to home as possible. I found one that was not as nice but they would take decent care of him. And so the wheels were set in motion for him to be transferred to this other nursing home.

Meanwhile I’d been covering all of this in prayer, of course. I’d been saying, “Lord, please, please be my advocate and help convince those people in charge to let him stay where he’s at.” And I was extremely frustrated that there seemed to be no divine intervention to help my father stay there.

Well, the story doesn’t end when everything seems to be lost. Remember that! The story does not end when it seems like you are losing the trial. At the last minute, we got a phone call from the county ombudsmen. An ombudsman is an advocate, a volunteer who stands up for (in this case) the elderly. She receives the paperwork whenever someone is discharged from a nursing home. Something made her take a closer look at the paperwork — and we know Who that something is, right?! She wondered why this nursing home patient was being transferred from one nursing home to another. So she contacted us and asked, “Why is this happening? Do you really want him to move to another nursing home? What’s going on here? Was he mistreated at the place he’s leaving?”

We explained the situation to her. She immediately called up the nursing home’s Director of Social Services and reminded her that the law says that he does not have to leave if the family and the patient himself wants to stay. Then she called us back and told us how to appeal his discharge.

We did not know we had an ombudsman to go to! We did not know there was an advocate who would represent my dad to help him stay where he was. But the Lord had her call us. The Lord’s hand is at work again, because ultimately it is the Lord who is our advocate, our ombudsman in every trial.

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To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.

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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.

To further the releasing of supernatural faith, use our video courses on life in the Holy Spirit.

In this podcast I would like to talk about the greatest virtue that releases our faith. That virtue is submission — submission to the Holy Spirit, because it is when we have this attitude or this virtue of being submissive to the Holy Spirit working in our lives that we hear what Jesus is leading us into and what he is telling us. We recognize the voice of our Good Shepherd.

We also are able to feel the generous love of our divine daddy, God the Father, and we are able to be more aware of how much he wants to dote on us and to assist us and that he never abandons us.

When we are submissive to the Holy Spirit, we do mighty things for the Lord, for the kingdom of God, for the sake of those around us and for the sake of the world, for the transformation of the world.  Jesus does it through us when we are submissive to the Holy Spirit, one soul at a time, reaching out in love and faith — miraculous faith — to those whom God puts in our path and calls us to bring his love to….

Learning how to be submissive to the Holy Spirit doesn’t come naturally. It goes against our human nature, our fallen nature, our undivine that wants to be in control, the nature that likes what’s familiar and comfortable and does not like to be submissive to anyone, including God. We need to fight against that to become submissive to the Holy Spirit, so here’s a spiritual exercise that will help with that….

One last thing I would like to share is how important — how very, very important — it is to be submissive to the Holy Spirit. It is so important that when we are not submissive to the Holy Spirit, we will have to spend time in purgatory dealing with that. Unless, of course, before we die we repent of it, go to Confession and be absolved of the sin of not being submissive to the Holy Spirit, and if we use the grace — the miraculous supernatural grace — in the Sacrament of Confession for God’s divine power to come and help us overcome this sin.

And that is another one of the miracles, by the way, that is divinely available to us. Any time that we go to the Sacrament of Confession (a sacrament is Jesus interacting with us) we are given supernatural grace to stop committing a sin that has been difficult for us to resist….

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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. 

(If you believe that Good News Ministries’ podcasts are important enough to continue, please support this work with a donation. If you’d like to sponsor upcoming episodes, go to https://gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship.)

Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit to send us out in mission to change the world, to transform the people around us, helping them to see — through us — a faith that’s alive. 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?

One of the biggest reasons “why not” is idolatry. At its root it’s the thinking that “I know better than God about what’s not supposed to happen now. I do not have the faith to believe that God is going to perform a miracle, so therefore I’m not going to ask for the miracle.” That’s us trying to usurp God’s wisdom. That’s us trying to rewrite the truths that he has written throughout the scriptures.

We don’t live a supernatural faith because we trust our doubts more than we trust God.

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.

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only

To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.

To listen to other this and our other podcast shows, go to gnm-media.org/podcasts/.

How God brings our loved ones to Christ

Footsteps to Heaven Podcast Show

God wants to do work supernaturally through us to bring others to conversion and faith growth. None of us can convince our loved ones who are rejecting Christ to change their minds and become faith-filled believers — not by our own efforts. God needs to intervene with supernatural evangelization.

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If you have teen or adult children who have left the Church, you can find helpful prayer resources on our website. See our Prayers for Parents at gnm.org/prayers-for-parents/.

Jesus said in John 14:12, “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these.” What was the work of Jesus? Everything he did was for the sake of the salvation of souls. Preaching the truth was just part of how he served as Savior. He also did supernatural works: healing diseases, raising people from the dead, multiplying the food — etc. When he sent his disciples out to help him with his mission, he gave them the power to do what he did. Later, after his death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven, the Holy Spirit empowered every follower of Christ to do the same.

When he sent his disciples out to help him with his mission, he gave them the power to do the same. Later, after his death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven, the Holy Spirit empowered every follower of Christ to do the same — and even greater works. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles is filled with evidence of this. Signs and wonders give testimony to the truths that are preached. 

Instead of relying on our lives to prove the truths we teach, we should be relying on God (because we live the truth so imperfectly). Instead of expecting our words to make a difference (and then getting frustrated and angry when we don’t succeed), we should — and can — expect God to do something supernatural.

Do you believe more people should hear this podcast show? Please sponsor upcoming episodes. Go to gnm.org/podcast-sponsorship.

Our podcast shows are also available in audio-only:

• To listen to Footsteps to Heaven on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.
• To listen to other this and our other podcast shows, go to gnm-media.org/podcasts/.

Footsteps to Heaven Podcast Show

Hebrews 2:3-4 holds the key to experiencing joy even in the midst of trials and sufferings. By knowing how to read God’s signs, you can discover that he truly cares about your problems. God’s signs, which he provides as often as we need them, gives us reason to rejoice. God always reassures us that he cares and that he’s involved in helping resolve our problems. Learn how to identify the divine interventions that he’s providing for you right now, today.

In this episode, Terry Modica shares stories of miraculous signs she has experienced in her own trials. The hawk in the photo below was spotted in a tree in her back yard. It is the actual hawk that was one of God’s signs for her — as described in this episode.

What is the FOOTSTEPS TO HEAVEN podcast show?

Life’s a journey full of challenges. Sometimes we get stalled. Sometimes we get sidetracked. When we walk with Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit to the destination that God the Father designed for us, the results are better than we could ask for or imagine. This podcast series provides faith-builders based on what GNM founder/author/speaker, Terry Modica, learned from her own journey and what people tell us they’re seeking in their daily struggles. It will be straight from her heart.

In the last 5 minutes of each episode, Terry takes a step in faith to provide what is called a “Word of Knowledge” for listeners, and then we close with prayer. She asks the Holy Spirit for a Word of Knowledge that would demonstrate his love to some of the podcast listeners.

To listen on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.

To listen to other this and our other podcast shows, go to gnm-media.org/podcasts/.

Footsteps to Heaven Podcast Show

Satan’s biggest strategy in today’s world is the disempowering of Christians so that we cannot successfully evangelize non-believers and doubters. In John 14:6-14, Jesus tells us the key to defeating this strategy. We must proclaim the truth about Jesus. However, this is only the first step! People do not become believers in Christ because we tell them that he is the only way to reach heaven. People become believers because they discover that (1) he is real, and (2) he cares about them, and (3) he is more powerful than all the evil they have been suffering. It is hard for non-Christians to believe in Christ when they have not witnessed miracles.

The problem is — the thing Satan is counting on — is that it is hard for us Christians to have enough faith in Christ to evangelize others if we have not witnessed miracles in the midst of our own sufferings. This is Satan’s biggest strategy.

God wants to change that. God is calling each of us to become his venues of truth and divine power. We are the voice of Christ in the world today, called to proclaim the truth. We are also the hands of Christ, called to reach out to prove that he cares by doing the works of divine power.

What is the FOOTSTEPS TO HEAVEN podcast show?

Life’s a journey full of challenges. Sometimes we get stalled. Sometimes we get sidetracked. When we walk with Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit to the destination that God the Father designed for us, the results are better than we could ask for or imagine. This podcast series provides faith-builders based on what GNM founder/author/speaker, Terry Modica, learned from her own journey and what people tell us they’re seeking in their daily struggles. It will be straight from her heart.

In the last 5 minutes of each episode, Terry takes a step in faith to provide what is called a “Word of Knowledge” for listeners, and then we close with prayer. She asks the Holy Spirit for a Word of Knowledge that would demonstrate his love to some of the podcast listeners.

To listen on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.

Footsteps to Heaven Podcast Show

Is there someone in your life who’s difficult to forgive? Terry Modica shares from personal experience and from scripture how to do it and why. In this podcast, she busts some myths about forgiveness — false ideas that make it more difficult to forgive than it needs to be. When we forgive someone, it does not mean everything is going to be okay. But it does mean that the person who has hurt you no longer has control over you. Protection is part of healthy forgiveness.

After listening to this podcast, you can find helpful articles by Terry on the Good News Ministries website at https://wordbytes.org/suffering-and-healing/.

What is the FOOTSTEPS TO HEAVEN podcast show?

Life’s a journey full of challenges. Sometimes we get stalled. Sometimes we get sidetracked. When we walk with Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit to the destination that God the Father designed for us, the results are better than we could ask for or imagine. This podcast series provides faith-builders based on what GNM founder/author/speaker, Terry Modica, learned from her own journey and what people tell us they’re seeking in their daily struggles. It will be straight from her heart.

In the last 5 minutes of each episode, Terry takes a step in faith to provide what is called a “Word of Knowledge” for listeners, and then we close with prayer. She asks the Holy Spirit for a Word of Knowledge that would demonstrate his love to some of the podcast listeners.

To listen on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.

Footsteps to Heaven Podcast Show

What is the heart of the Church? It’s the same place as the heart of your faith. It’s where you can feel closer to God and know, better than ever, that he truly cares about you. Terry Modica discusses the heart of the Church on a physical level and a metaphysical level, and she makes it easy to understand by sharing a couple of stories from her own experiences. She also explains that we enter into the heart of the Church when we go to Mass — and why daily Mass can make such a big difference in our lives. It’s not just a building that we enter into. It’s the heart of God himself.

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What is the FOOTSTEPS TO HEAVEN podcast show?

Life’s a journey full of challenges. Sometimes we get stalled. Sometimes we get sidetracked. When we walk with Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit to the destination that God the Father designed for us, the results are better than we could ask for or imagine. This podcast series provides faith-builders based on what GNM founder/author/speaker, Terry Modica, learned from her own journey and what people tell us they’re seeking in their daily struggles. It will be straight from her heart.

In the last 5 minutes of each episode, Terry takes a step in faith to provide what is called a “Word of Knowledge” for listeners, and then we close with prayer. She asks the Holy Spirit for a Word of Knowledge that would demonstrate his love to some of the podcast listeners.

To listen on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.

In the premier episode of FOOTSTEPS TO HEAVEN, Terry Modica unpacks the rich meaning of the first three verses of Psalm 1 while sharing why it’s her personal Life Scripture. (“She is like a tree planted by running water; whatever she does, prospers” — adapted from Psalm 1.) Listen in to find out how this promise of God has been the key to success for Good News Ministries since 1995.

DOWNLOAD THE TRANSCRIPT

Name *

Email *

What is the FOOTSTEPS TO HEAVEN podcast show?

Life’s a journey full of challenges. Sometimes we get stalled. Sometimes we get sidetracked. When we walk with Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit to the destination that God the Father designed for us, the results are better than we could ask for or imagine. This podcast series provides faith-builders based on what GNM founder/author/speaker, Terry Modica, learned from her own journey and what people tell us they’re seeking in their daily struggles. It will be straight from her heart.

In the last 5 minutes of each episode, Terry takes a step in faith to provide what is called a “Word of Knowledge” for listeners, and then we close with prayer. She asks the Holy Spirit for a Word of Knowledge that would demonstrate his love to some of the podcast listeners.

To listen on your mobile device, choose an app at breadboxmedia.com/footsteps-to-heaven/.