How to form a faithful family | This is the Day on CatholicTV

Forming Faithful Families Formational Video Series

In collaboration with St. Joseph Evangelization Network

Hosts: James & Kathleen Littleton

Forming Faithful Families – Strengthening Families in the Faith

Television Program/Contents/DVD Titles with episode descriptions

Living by a Hierarchy of Values

Since our family’s reversion to the faith, God has moved us to understand and accept what we believe are His hierarchy of values. Simply, they are the following, with the first having the highest value:

1. God
2. Spouse
3. Children
4. Work
5. Service Work or Apostolate

We should integrate all of these important values into our lives, but the key is not to

allow a lesser value to interfere with or do damage to a higher value.

Healing through Pouring and Mercy

What does it mean to pour it all out for Jesus and souls? Consider Matthew 19:1&-22: “Now someone approached him [Jesus] and said, ‘Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?’” Note the question. The man is asking what good he himself must do. He seems to be asking what the bare essentials are that he is required to do. This, unfortunately, is an example of dripping as opposed to pouring. We are called to be pourers.

Prodigal Son

God our infinitely merciful Father is always seeking us out, always ready to forgive, always, and constantly ready to pour His infinite mercy upon us. This reality is portrayed beautifully in the well-known Prodigal Son passage in Luke 15:11–24.

Road to Emmaus

Jesus draws near to these men because he cares about them.  Let’s put ourselves in their place, these men who are so afraid.  “Something prevented them from recognizing (Jesus).”  What was this something?  It is something that only Jesus himself and his Holy Spirit can fix.  They are in need of grace. They could not raise themselves up from the mud of fear, doubt, confusion, and lack of hope. Their faces were “downcast”.  They need supernatural help.  Jesus sought these souls out. He has a deep interest in these particular souls as He has a profound personal interest in your soul.

Healing through God, His Existence, and Healing through Poverty

Perhaps you are struggling with the question “Does God exist?” The answer is an unequivocal “Yes!” By the way, His existence does not depend upon our acquiescence. He is! How can we sum up Who God is, but in His own words, too deep to fully penetrate with our weak mortal minds: “I Am” (John 8:58, JB). Not “I was,” or “I will be,” but “I am.”

Healing through Mercy and Forgiveness – Part One

You see, Mercy and forgiveness go both ways, God toward us, and us toward others. As far as others forgiving us, we cannot control that. It is a futile waste of time and energy to try to control others. We can only control, with the help of God’s grace, our own attitudes and actions.

Healing through Mercy and Forgiveness – Part Two

When Jesus forgives He forgets. He does not hold our sins against us. Can our all-knowing God actually forget our sins? Yes, only because He chooses to do so, and promises that He will. When we repent, our sins are blotted out, erased. “I it is, I it is, who must blot out everything and not remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25, JB). What sins of ours do we think could possibly be too heavy for our infinitely strong God? Let’s not be foolish and proud! Come to His infinite mercy! How much does Jesus love us? He chose to bear the scars on His hands, feet, and side into heaven. He is constantly showing His wounds to His Father saying, “See how much I love them!” He tells us through His prophet, “See, I have branded you on the palms of my hands.” (Isaiah 49:16, JB).

Healing through Trust and Surrender

When we worry and obsess about our difficulties and troubles we weigh ourselves down in spirit. Most of our suffering derives from our anxiety. We can be less anxious, with God’s help, when we make the effort to be positive, to be grateful people, and to look for ways to make others happy, rather than centering on ourselves. To sum up everything, the answer to every question, doubt, or fear is to trust in Jesus. Though we are incredibly weak and fearful on our own, when we trust Him, with His always present help, we become unshakable.

The Majesty of Motherhood

We need to create a culture that honors mothers. When we hear or utter the name mother, really we should bow or genuflect. In a sense, we are encountering God in a mother.  A mother’s life is made up of so many tens of thousands of seemingly ordinary small tasks and sacrifices, but in fact each has an infinite value, when united with Jesus. Mothers have a special dignity that God has blessed them with. Mothers should be confident in this. Mothers should go through life saying, “I am a mother; I am fulfilled! I have no fears or worries because God is with me, and He loves me in an extraordinary way.”

Awe of Life – Part One

So the subjective question comes down to married couples discovering the will of God each month, each cycle of fertility, regarding their openness and readiness to embrace and be open to co-creating new life in partnership with God, of bringing a beautiful new person into existence in time and eternity, an unrepeatable, unique human person with an irreplaceable and necessary mission for the glory of God and the salvation of souls. This possibility is not an imposition, but rather a transcendent gift of the very creative power of God himself. It is humbling and awe-inspiring to think that our Heavenly Father chooses to subject His ache to pour out new life to the choice and generosity of human beings on whom he has bestowed yet another awesome power, that of free will. He will never interfere with our free will, yet ultimately we are called to respond to this and all his gifts in love.

Awe of Life – Part Two

We came to embrace truths, beautiful realities, such as the fact that each person is created in God’s own image and likeness, that he is unique and unrepeatable, that he has a unique irreplaceable mission from God for the good of the world, and for the salvation of others, that one person’s value is in fact greater than the entire created universe as the universe will pass away, but the human person is immortal. He will exist for eternity. The human person’s eternity will only be beginning when all the stars burn out, as if not even one grain of sand of time in all the oceans of the world has passed.

Awe of Life – Part Three

Why do we have abortion and so many other evils in the world?  The answer is really very simple.  It is because the world is starving for Jesus, and because there aren’t enough authentic Christians willing to radically pray and sacrifice to relieve the world’s thirst. We couldn’t expect a man who was dying of thirst to be capable of thinking clearly and functioning normally. No, he would first need to be refreshed with drink!  We need more authentic Christians willing to make the sacrifices it will take to satiate the world’s thirst for Jesus, to do the laborious work of hauling the living waters of Jesus to every soul in the world, each of these souls so precious to Jesus that he would have suffered and died for each one if he or she was the only person ever to exist. 

Our Mother Mary Leading to the Word

There is no one beside God who cares more about you than our Blessed Mother Mary. What unfathomable empathy she has for you! And there is no one who has more influence to intercede for us with Jesus than His own mother, Mary. And yes, she can and does intercede! Would we ever ask a friend to pray for us? Well, we can most certainly ask Mary to pray for us! She is as truly alive as you and I are, full of life and full of grace.

Healing by the Bread of Life

Not only do we get close to Jesus in the Eucharist, but we become one with Him, transformed into Him, divinized by Him, given eternal life by Him. This is the same Jesus we experience in the joy of receiving Him in Holy Communion, the same Jesus who walked the earth two thousand years ago, the same Jesus who suffered and died on the cross for us, the same Jesus who rose from the dead and ascended into heaven and is now seated at the right hand of the Father. Yes, Jesus is hidden from the senses. What we see, taste, feel, and smell seems to the senses to be bread and wine, but through the words of consecration by the priest in the Holy Mass these outward appearances have been truly and substantially changed into the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus, the second person of the Holy Trinity. There is no longer bread and wine, only Jesus.

Marriage is Always and Forever

The world itself is in grave need of the witness of strong and beautiful marriages today. It is desperate for this light. We must create a culture that esteems marriage and family. These words should be whispered with reverence. They are sacred sacraments or signs of God’s inestimable love for the world.