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 this is the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
Almighty ever living God, grant that we may always conform our will to yours and serve your majesty and sincerity of heart through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen. A reading from the book of Isaiah 53, chapter 10 through the 11th verse. The Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity. If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life, and the will of the Lord shall be accomplished through him. Because of his affliction he shall see the light in fullness of days.
Through his sufferings my servants shall justify many and their guilt he shall bear the Word of the Lord. Response Oil Psalm Lord, yet your mercy be on us as we place our trust in you. Upright is the word of the Lord, and all his works are trustworthy. He loves justice and right of the kindness of the Lord. The earth is full. Lord, let your mercy be on us as we place our trust in in you see the eyes, O Lord, upon those who fear him, upon those who hope for his kindness to deliver them from death and preserve them in spite of famine.
Lord, let your mercy be on us as we place our trust in you. Our soul waits for the Lord, who is our help and our shield. May your kindness, O Lord, be upon us. We have put our hope in you, Lord. Yes, your mercy be on us as we place our trust in you. A reading from the New Testament From Letter to the Hebrews 4:14 16 Brothers and sisters, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.
We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who was similarly tested in every way, yet without sin. Let us confidently approach the throne of grace to receive mercy and to find grace for timely help. The Word of the Lord alleluia verse. The Son of man came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Hallelujah. The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from St.
Mark, 10th chapter 35th to the 45th verse. James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus and said to him, teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask you. He replied, what do you wish me to do for you? They answered him, grant that in your glory we may sit one at your right and the other at your left. Jesus said to them, you do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?
They said to him, we can. Jesus said to them, the cup that I drink, you will drink. And with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized. But to sit at my right or my left is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared. When the 10 heard this, they became indignant at James and John. Jesus summoned them and said to them all, you know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles, Lord it over them and their great ones make their authority over them felt.
But it shall not be so among you. Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant. Whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. The Gospel of the Lord Ram Sam the piece of music that was written for our show was composed by Ryan Harner, entitled Humble. This set of readings is loaded with key images, like, I guess, all sets of readings are.
But it begins with an image that is so essential for us to grasp, and that’s the image of the suffering servant. The suffering servant. Nothing is more paradoxical, nothing is more confusing when you think about it. That God sent. God came into the world in the person of Jesus. And when he came in this form, he took the human form.
And what he did is he made it clear that humanity has a dignity and a value in it, that it has this capacity to surrender to something greater than itself. Yet there is this weakness in humanity that we all know. It likes to be in charge. It likes to be in control. It likes to be perfect. But in the midst of all of that humanity, all that ego in humanity, there’s also this deep longing and a deep awareness that there’s something more about being human than about being great and special.
It’s about surrendering to something bigger than ourselves. And so the one that we’re invited to follow, the one that we are invited to be like this God, man, Jesus, who was just like us in every way as a human, but filled with divinity in a way that didn’t override his humanity. He embraced his humanity. He wanted his humanity to be the thing that we paid attention to, because he’s the model of what it’s like to live in the world that God has created for us, a world in which he enters into us and supports us and stays with us and teaches us and encourages us and challenges us. So the key in that relationship between humanity and divinity is to stay in the disposition of being human, but at the same time, to be filled with a power that’s so beyond our humanity. How do you do that?
How do you find a balance in that? Because if I could imagine the problem that Jesus had with everyone around him, is he had this divinity inside of him, and he was able to do extraordinary things. They would come to him and say, you’re amazing. You can do anything. And so if I can tap into that strength that you have, use it for me. Give it to me.
And it’s something you can see in this gospel passage, because the disciples who had watched Jesus do all these miracles, and they’re so excited about the fact that he’s going to restore Israel and he’s going to restore the kingdom. So they think it’s going to be a political kingdom. But I love the image in this gospel when they come to Jesus and they say, I love the opening line. We know you can do anything. So without us telling you what it is, would you promise that the thing we’re going to ask for, you will give us? I think that’s great.
If he can heal the blind and if he can raise people from the dead, well, he can certainly give me this request. And all they want to be is great. All they want to be is important. Give us a place of honor when you come into your kingdom that’s going to run the world. We want to be engaged in something that is really bigger than just our own limited humanity. We want to be more than we are.
You know that feeling? I want to be more than I am. I don’t like being this fragile creature that I know I’m supposed to embrace at times because I see myself fall apart under pressure, and I like to be beyond that. No, we remain weak. We remain needy. We remain just as God revealed to us in Jesus what it was like to be connected to humanity.
Jesus was not Always in charge or in or capable of making things the way he wanted them to be. He had to surrender. He was the suffering servant. So what’s fascinating about this image that Jesus gives, but the answer is amazing. It has an image in it that’s so powerful. But he said, you know, you don’t even realize what you’re asking you, really, your humanity, who you really are, does not want to be in charge and on top of everybody else.
It’s not really who we are. It’s a part of humanity, but it’s not the essence of humanity. The essence of humanity is like God, like the God who created us. If you look up the word humanity in the Oxford English Dictionary, which I did before, I. As I was planning this homily, and you think it would say being alive or something. Humanity is a being that walks and talks.
The images of humanity are things that are like kindness and gentleness and humane. We say, where’s the humanity in that decision? So there’s an image that humans are made without a gigantic ego that demands a lot of attention and a lot of affirmation that we’re made in the way that is like God. So when our ego gets in the way and we want to be great and strong and better than everybody else, then, whoa, the message of Jesus comes up loud and clear, which is the message of God living in him and living in us. And what it’s saying is, whoa, whoa. You have something, you’ve got to do.
Two things. You got to drink the cup and you got to be baptized. Drink the cup. What is the cup? Well, it’s pretty easy to see that what Jesus was teaching by his actions while he was on this planet were clearly for all of us. And so when it came time for him to reach the fullness of his ministry, when he was most what God wanted him to be as a human being, he had to surrender to something that was absolutely at odds with his.
I would say his. The part of humanity in him because he was fully human, that wanted to be successful and wanted it to go the way he felt it should go, and the cup was nothing more than the idea that he had to surrender to evil. He had to give in to evil and let it seemingly destroy him in the eyes of everyone around him. His mother, his family, his followers. He had to be a failure. That’s the cup surrendering to what is, what the plan is, what’s best.
And it wasn’t easy for him. If we think Jesus did that just in a kind of, oh, well, yeah, I Know I’m going to rise and it’s all going to be fine. No. He as a human being struggled so much with, please, Father, let this cup pass. Don’t make me drink it twice, three times he asked, please take it away. But he surrendered.
He’s saying to his disciples, the key in your relationship with my Father that I am witnessing for you is you’ve got to surrender to the way in which he has invited your life to unfold for not only you, but for the world to watch and to learn from. Drink the cup. And every one of those disciples that were hearing that, except for John, were executed, murdered, gave up their life just as Jesus did. And then he says also, you have to be baptized. What does it mean to be baptized? When Jesus was baptized, it was an amazing moment because it was twofold.
It was he surrendering to something that was very human. In a sense, he didn’t need to be baptized as God. But again I said, the model of Jesus is that he’s fully and stays as humanity and God is in him and he has to surrender to that presence and all that it asks of him. And so one of the things that he went through was this baptism, which John said, oh, you should be baptizing me. And Jesus said, no, baptize me. Baptism is a symbol of this thing I’m trying to get you to feel and understand with me about surrendering to the things we don’t want.
It’s a death, it’s a dying to the ego and all the self centered parts of us. And that death, that surrender, that suffering, it is what opens us to making in a sense a container, a place for divinity to work through us. And when it happened, what happened to Jesus is there was an overwhelming sense that the Holy Spirit came down and entered into this human. Now God was already in Jesus. So it wasn’t the first time the Spirit entered into him. But it’s a symbol that says what we as human beings are invited to experience in this world is that when we go through this baptism, this ritual, and even though it happens when we’re infants in the Roman Catholic Church and in other churches too, but it’s still, it doesn’t matter when it happens to you.
It’s what it is symbolizing. It means that there is a moment when we have an experience of something entering into us. It’s divinity in humanity. And when it comes in, something in humanity ceases to want to be in charge and in control. That’s the death. And it’s a power.
It’s called the anointing of the Spirit. When Jesus was baptized, people saw the Spirit come down and enter into us. Well, baptism is a ritual, yes, but it also is an experience that we are invited to believe is going on all the time. You and I, if we accept baptism, have acknowledged the reality that the core that we are is never going to be enough for the things we’re called to do. And we have to have this pouring out of Spirit constantly in us as being baptized. And when it comes in, there has to be room for it.
There has to be some place in which this Spirit can dwell. And that’s the transformation thing that God promises that he will come into us and create a place where we can surrender. Surrender our ego and our desire to be in charge or on top of, you know. So I think if you can understand, then what I’m trying to say about the disciples, how far off they were when they were in that disposition, that disposition of saying, give me a place of power. Give me a place of importance. And, you know, I don’t know.
I smile when I’m saying all this because as silly as it might sound, I do this, you do this. We do it all the time when we’re somehow in a situation where we find the situation is more than we can handle. And I don’t know if you’re like me, but when I feel that I am unable to accomplish the thing that I’ve been asked to do, there’s an anxiety. There’s a tension inside of me, and I start really being afraid that. That I’m not going to be able to do it. And if it’s something really important, the anxiety becomes really dark and I feel afraid and even I would say, maybe depressed.
And I think to myself, what is that moment like? Why would God put us through that? Because I think that’s something that happens to the greatest saints and it happened to Jesus, so it can happen to all of us. You would think he was so confident that the Father would take care of him. Why would he be afraid in the Garden of Gethsemane to say yes if he knew God was going to be there? So that experience of saying, I don’t know if I can handle this.
This is too much for me. I’m going to fail. I know I’m going to fail. I’m not going to be able to do it. And that’s. That’s a baptism.
That’s a moment of death. Because the only way you get through it, to be honest, is to say, then it’s all Right. That I’m not enough. It’s all right that I fail. It’s all right that nothing is able to come about for the very thing that I want to make sure happens, the thing I want to see another person to see, the thing I want to see or how I want to grow, and I. I can’t accomplish it.
So I just say I’m a failure. No, no, you’re not a failure. You’re a person engaged in a dynamic action called baptism, called drinking the cup. It happens over and over and over again, especially at 3 o’ clock in the morning when you can’t sleep and you’re lying there saying, I can’t believe I did what I did, or I can’t believe that I’m going to be asked to do what I’m going to do and I don’t think I have enough in me to do it. All those kind of feelings are those moments when you feel that there is something, something missing, something amiss, something not the way I want it to be. That’s the suffering servant.
I don’t know why, but unless you go through those kind of experiences, emptiness and darkness, then the light is never as bright as it’s intended to be. So welcome those moments. And when you do, you’ll find life. I promise. That’s always there. The promise.
Darkness brings light. Suffering brings wholeness. That’s the promise. That’s the gift. Let us pray. Father, your gift of life is beyond our imagining and the challenges that we surrender to.
The way in which that life is poured into our hearts give us the courage. Give us the trust and the understanding. It enables us to become like you. 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 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.
