April 30th
"What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it wills, and you can hear the sound it makes, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
-John 3:6-8
I’m reminded of my favorite passage in Sacred Scripture. If you’ve been to one of our Women of Grace events, then you’ve heard me proclaim it. The passage is Ephesians 1:3-4: “Praise be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has bestowed on us in Christ every spiritual blessing in the heavens. God chose us in Him before the world began to be holy and blameless in His sight, to be full of love.”
(Photo courtesy of Wikicommons Images Sarah Rozenthuler and Gil Dekel CC BY-SA 3.0)Some of today’s hottest selling New Age books were written by a middle-aged man who turned to God after four divorces, countless career changes and a car wreck that left him with a broken neck. In the middle of a February night in 1992, Neale Donald Walsch picked up a pen and wrote an anguished letter to God. “What does it take to make life work?”
April 29th
“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, which the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows it. But you know it, because it remains with you, and will be in you."
-John 14:15-17
April 28th
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
-Galatians 5:22-23
AA asks: “Is our spirit considered energy in a scientific way? One that we cannot see with our eyes but we know it is there. How does our Christian view differ from the new age movement? I think of our spirit as energy that cannot be destroyed and it is created by God.”
April 27th
“In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings.”
-Romans 8:26
CO writes: “I recently attended a Catholic women’s retreat. There was a speaker there that referred to “Sophia, as the feminine face of God”. I am a cradle Catholic and this is something I have never heard of and it made me uncomfortable for the rest of the day. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit in the New Testament are all masculine. Nothing else was mentioned about this until the end of the day during a sending forth prayer ritual in which Sophia, Wisdom of God was thanked 3 times (“for your continual invitation to relationship with the Holy One, for showing yourself in our experiences today and for your presence in this circle”). This bothered me also so I did not say the prayer aloud as we were instructed. . .
April 26th
“The Advocate, the holy Spirit that the Father will send in my name—he will teach you everything and remind you of all that [I] told you.”
-John 14:26
(All photos courtesy of The Catholic Witness)By Jen Reed
Promoting the dignity of women and their fundamental call to transform the world as daughters of God, the Women of Grace apostolate welcomed Hispanic women for a Morning of Grace on Saturday, April 1 at the Diocesan Center in Harrisburg.
