Welcome to Finding God in Our Hearts. The following production Pastoral Reflections with Monsignor Don Fisher is a weekly program of deep spiritual insight on Scripture, revealing the indwelling presence of God. Monsignor Fisher is a Catholic priest, a member of the Diocese of Dallas, and founder of the Pastoral Reflections Institute, a nonprofit in Dallas, Texas, dedicated to to enriching your spiritual journey. We appreciate your listenership and if you find this program valuable, please subscribe and share with your friends. This program is funded with kind donations by listeners just like you. Make your donation@pastoralreflectionsinstitute.com Good morning.

Today we celebrate the fourth Sunday of Lent. The Opening Prayer O God, who through your word reconcile the human race to yourself in a wonderful way. Grant, we pray, that with prompt devotion and eager faith, the Christian people may hasten toward the solemn celebrations to come through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen. A Reading from the Old Testament from the book of Joshua, fifth chapter, ninth verse, to the 10th and 12th verse, the Lord said to Joshua, today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you. While the Israelites were encamped in Gilgal on the plain of Jericho, they celebrated the Passover on the evening of the 14th of the month.

On the day after Passover, they ate of the produce of the land in the form of unleavened cakes and parched grain. On that same day after the Passover, on which they ate the produce of the land, the manna ceased. No longer was there manna for the Israelites, who that year ate of the yield of the land of Canaan. The Word of the Lord Response Oil Psalm Taste and see the goodness of the Lord. A reading from the New Testament, fifth chapter of Second Corinthians, 17th verse to the 21st brothers and sisters, whoever is in Christ is a new creation. The old things have passed away, behold, new things have come.

And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God was appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God for our sake. He made him to be sin, who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. The Word of the Lord Verse before the Gospel I will get up and go to my father and shall say to him, father, I’ve sinned against heaven and against you. The gospel for this Sunday is taken from St.

Luke 15 first through the third verse and 11 through the 32nd verse. Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus. But the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, this man welcomes sinners and eats with them. So to them Jesus addressed this parable. A man had two sons. The younger son said to his father, father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.

So the father divided the property between them. After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off on a distant journey, where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything. A severe famine struck the country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself, himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to the farm to tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed.

But nobody gave him any. Coming to his senses, he thought, how many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat? But here I am, dying from hunger. I’ll show you. Get up and go to my father. I shall say to him, father, I have sinned against heaven and against you.

I no longer deserve to be called your son. Treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers. So he got up and went back to his father, but was still a long way off. His father caught sight of him and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, father, I’ve sinned against heaven and against you.

I no longer deserve to be called your son. But his father ordered his servant, quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his fingers, sandals on his feet. Take the fatted calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead and has come to life again. He was lost and has been found.

And the celebration began. Now the older son had been out in the field on his way back. As he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, your brother has returned, and your father slaughtered the fatted calf because he has him back safe and sound. He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him.

He said to his father in reply, look all these years I have served you, and not once did I disobey your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns, who swallowed up your property with prostitutes for him, you slaughter the fatted calf. He said to him, my son, you are here with me always. Everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and we must rejoice because your brother was dead and he has come back to life again.

He was lost and has been found. The Gospel of the Lord. Our opening prayer, encouraged us to be enthusiastic, excited about the coming celebration. Seems strange, in a sense, that we’re working toward the crucifixion of our Savior. And that would be something we’d want to back away from, in a sense. But obviously in that act, something was given, something so powerful that everything was changed.

And we don’t focus on the crucifixion as the thing we’re celebrating. We focus on what it created. The effect of it was the most amazing, explosive expansion of the work of Jesus with those that he loved. In his resurrected state, he was most effective. I always find it interesting that Jesus spent three years with his disciples. And toward the end of his career, when it looked like he was not going to be able to accomplish his task here on this planet, he had to face the amazing rejection of who he was.

I mean, I know he knew that he would be rejected in a sense, because he was changing things so radically. But I don’t know if he understood as a human that this reaction on the part of the church, which was standing for the will of God, the way that God works with us, when he was trying to change that, help it to evolve into its next level. They were so resistant because they felt they were losing something, something. Something so important. And they were right to be afraid of Jesus because he was robbing them of the one thing that they felt was their greatest asset, power over people. The power to use their influence to make them do what they should do in the mind of the religious leaders.

And the motive that they used. The motive was the most primitive motive that has always been there for people fear. You must do what we ask you to do or you will die. You will be destroyed, you’ll be rejected by God, you’ll be punished forever. What an amazing power to have. And it was intoxicating for them, like it is for every human being to have that much power.

So the institution that was then, the Temple, was the most powerful place for the Israelite people. And Jesus came along to Put something in its place, a new temple, the temple of the individual that God no longer was limiting himself to being present in the ark of the Covenant in the center of this powerful place. No, he said, that was necessary for a while, but now I’m ready to take the next step, the most dramatic step, the most essential step of moving away from dwelling in an institution that’s run by human beings. And then its benefit is doled out for something that they are getting back, which was the sacrifices. That was a big business. But more than the money they were making, it was the power that was so intoxicating.

And they found that they could live a life that looked like they were doing what everyone else was asked to do, which was really in a way an affront to their very human dignity, their individual rights to make decisions about things. It robbed them of an evolution that they had reached that was ready to be, to flourish. And it couldn’t flourish in that system. And so he changed it and he did it by the most unusual way, by dying, by giving in to their evil. I don’t know how many times I’ve sat and wondered why, why that? Why give in to evil?

It’s the antithesis of what, let’s say the institutional church throughout the Old Testament, the institutional church still in this time that we live, any institution that’s run more by the egos of the people running it runs into this very, very sticky place of demanding obedience. Instead of engaging people in the process of becoming. You must act as if you have grown and developed and changed. That’s all we can ask. Act as if. Do always what it is you’re told to do and you are who you were intended to be.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth and nothing could be more in a sense abusive than to take someone’s God given right to make decisions and to grow into an awareness of who God has made them to be and who they are. That is our dignity, that is our value, that’s what we’re here for. And for someone to rob it of us is, is sinful, abusive, controlling. And so Jesus said, well, I have to show people what this is really like. I’m offering them something different, which is they’re having a hard time with that. Not having to follow the rules, not having to do the things that they were told to do.

It creates all kind of shame and guilt in them. I mean, it was really hard for people to follow Jesus as it still is. But here’s what he said he’d do. He said, all right, I’m going to show you sin. I’ll become sin. That’s the second reading.

I’ll become sin so I can save you. How did he become sin? Because he was manifesting the truth of a system that is, I hate to use the word demonic, but let’s just say that works against the work of God. A system that works against the work of God. Then when God came in to that system to fine tune it, to change it, to help it to see more and grow and face its problems, its shame, its guilt, do all that. They couldn’t do that.

And Jesus said, okay, well, then I can do one thing. I know I can do this. I’ll show people who you really are. When they understand who I am, and they will understand it, I will show them the sin that the institutional church gets caught up in. And that is the rejection of the very God that they claim to be speaking for. To be following a God that robs people of their dignity, of being the new dwelling place for the Holy Spirit inside of us, guiding us, directing us, showing us what we need to do.

So the crucifixion is an image of the effect of a way that the church can fall into a role that is truly abusive. So now we know that when Jesus rose, he was able to show his disciples so many things that they couldn’t understand before. So he set a seed in people. And one of the things they must have realized, once they began to feel the fullness of that seed of wisdom and understanding, they began to understand all these stories in the Scriptures, all these things that happened in Jesus life. They began to put it all together. And it must have been like this rush of insight and understanding.

And so they began to figure out, as we try, as I try to help you, we together try to figure out these stories. And this one is very interesting because this is the Sunday of the series in Lent where we try to look at the greatest gift that God is giving to human beings. And that’s to open their eyes and to remove blindness. Jesus called the leaders of the temple blind fools, leading other blind fools into pits. They didn’t see what was real. They didn’t see the truth.

They didn’t see what God’s inviting them to look at. And so we have this story, this beautiful story of the Father, who in the Old Testament is someone who is very much insistent on us becoming something before we’re loved. Before we’re loved. We come into the world in the Old Testament and right away we have a problem with God. We disobey him and he’s angry and he kicks us out. He doesn’t want to be around people who are growing and changing.

He wants only people who are fully formed. I mean, can you imagine that is the mindset, how insane that is when you know human nature. So we have a story here of two sons. One is the Old Testament, the other is the New Testament. The Old Testament is the man who has done from the beginning of his conscious life. He’s always done what the law requires and he’s dutiful and he’s righteous and he’s lonely, I think, and alone in his achievement.

He did it on his own. And then we have the New Testament character, his younger son, who as a human being begins his journey toward wisdom by making mistakes. It’s the way most 90% of us learn. Allowing his nature to take its course, to follow it, even though it was self centered and short sighted. But when he asked his father for everything that the father owed him, he was father was willing to give it. Here’s your freedom.

Money’s freedom. Takes his inheritance and goes off and does what most adolescents do with most adolescent adults do. What most all of us do is he squandered it on things that he thought would be so satisfying. Oh, I can have sex, I can have great entertainment. I can be in the hottest spot in the world. It’s the same for us today.

And then he goes through what we call conversion regret. Somehow he’s empty. And he realizes why he’s empty. Because he’s chosen the things that don’t satisfy. The interesting thing in that first reading we heard about the people getting to the land that was promised to them. That land feeds them.

No more manna is necessary. The life that God asks you and me to live will feed us and nurture us, give us life. We choose a way of life that is not according to what we want, need truly our true self. We’ll be hungry all the time. And when we’re in that painful place of hunger, the one temptation is to pick something that just separates us from the feeling level. So diversion, entertainment, do something, don’t think about it.

Drugs, alcohol, all that, that’s so common. That’s our story. And so what he’s doing is he’s showing us in this story that this is what he’s open to us doing. This, this is fine with him. This is the way we learn. So he’s always offering us love when we are at our worst.

And I love that when he comes back, he has no way of thinking or we, the listeners of this story, have no way of thinking that he went and said, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I just messed up. Then the father said, oh, now I love you. No, the father loved him when it could have been that he was coming back to get more money. I loved him because he had the courage to try whatever he thought was really his goal. He was courageous, in a sense, risked a lot. It seems funny for me to say to you it’s better to sin and risk things than to be a good person all your life.

But I guess that’s what I’m saying. That’s what the story says. I should say that because the older son had no sense of the process that God had offered us as human beings. And the fact that he was so resistant to the celebration means that he had some deep resentment in him because he thought he was doing all the things he had to do so he would have God’s love. And God loved him anyway. And so how could he celebrate something that was so devastating to the way he thought his life should be led?

A Closing Prayer Father, your love, unconditional love, is for us hard to grasp, hard to understand. We’ve been told so often that our sins so displease you, our humanness displeases you. Free us from that misconception that we’ve been given of the way in which you love. Your love is always there and you love us in our sinfulness, not because we’ve left it or disciplined ourselves into turning away from it. No, we need you to do the work of conversion. So we need your love.

So please open the hearts of all to this great gift. Free them from the fear that they’ve been given, that somehow our sins separate us from you, from your love. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen. The music in our program was composed and produced by Ryan Harner for this show. Pastoral Reflections with Monsignor Don Fisher, a listener supported program is archived and available on our website pastoralreflectionsinstitute.com and available anytime, anywhere and for free on our podcast Finding God in Our Hearts. You can search and subscribe to Finding God in Our Hearts anywhere you download your podcasts.

Pastoral Reflections with Monsignor Don Fisher is funded with kind donations by by listeners just like you. You can make a one time or recurring tax deductible donation on our website pastoralreflectionsinstitute.com we thank you for your listenership and your continued support. Without it, this program would not be possible. Pastoral Reflections with Monsignor Don Fisher, is a production of the Pastoral Reflections Institute, a nonprofit in Dallas, Texas, dedicated to enriching your spiritual journey. Executive Producer Monsignor Don Fisher Produced by Kyle Cross and recorded in Pastoral Reflections Institute Studios. Copyright 2020.