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 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The Opening Prayer Almighty ever living God, grant that we may always conform our wills to yours and serve your majesty in sincerity of heart 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 Exodus 17 in those days Amalek came and waged war against Israel. Moses therefore said to Joshua, pick out certain men and tomorrow go out and engage Amalek in battle. I’ll be standing on the top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.

So Joshua did as Moses told him. He engaged Amalek in battle. After Moses had climbed to the top of the hill with Aaron and hurt. As long as Moses kept his hands raised up, Israel had the better the fight. When he had let his hands rest, Amalek had the better of the fight. Moses hands, however, grew tired, so they put a rock in place for him to sit on.

Meanwhile, Aaron and Hur supported his hands, one on one side and one on the other, so that his hands remained steady till sunset. And Joshua mowed down Amalek and his people with the edge of the sword, the Word of the Lord. Responsorial Psalm Our help is from the Lord who made heaven and earth. A reading from the New Testament from the second letter of Timothy, third chapter, 14th verse through the fourth chapter, second verse Beloved, remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it, and that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent and equipped for every good work. I charge you in the presence of God in Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and by his appearance and his kingly power.

Proclaim the word, be persistent, whether it is convenient or inconvenient. Convince, reprimand, encourage through all patience and teaching the Word of the Lord. Alleluia Verse the Word of God is living and effective, discerning reflections and thoughts of the heart. The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from St. Luke 18. Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary.

He said, there was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. And a widow in that town used to come to him and say, render a just decision for me against my adversary. For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, while it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being because this widow keeps bothering me, I shall deliver a just decision for her, lest she finally come and strike me. The Lord said, pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them?

I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? The Gospel OF the Lord Sa Sam Sa Prayer it’s always seemed mysterious to me that you and I are asked to pray to God that His will be done, that what he longs for will happen, when at the same time I know there’s nothing more in his heart than he wants those things to happen, and his intention is that they will happen. So why do we have to ask, why doesn’t he just take care of us without our participating in the process, in the form of saying, please do this, please do that. Well, it goes to the very heart of the mystery of this thing we call our life here on this earth. Why are we here?

What are we doing? Probably the oversimplification is that we’re living in a world that is guided by a God who wants us to do certain things. He gives us the law. He tells us what to do. We ask for his support so that we’d be able to do it, and then we do it. And if we do it well, we reward it.

If we don’t do it well, we’re punished. A very superficial but so often a very common way that people imagine their relationship with God. He’s the one that tells us what to do, and our job is to do it. But it’s much more than that. It’s all about relationship. It’s all about a God who wants to partner with us, A God who wants to enter into us, a God who wants us to be a part of the process of bringing life to the strange creatures that he made that have free will.

We are rare in all of his creation. We’re these strange characters that are freedom to say no to everything that God wants us to, to say yes to. And nothing else that he created has that power. So we’re different than the rest of creation. And what are we supposed to do with this freedom? Well, obviously it’s clear that we should surrender to whatever God wants.

But is it just that, or is there something more to it? Is it more like what he wants is someone free, like himself, who will join with him in living out the role that we have so that it’s not just he manipulating the world to act in a certain way, but it’s God with me. Me with God being able to accomplish the things that need to happen. It’s almost like he’s saying, all right, I’ve given you this gift of free will. And so I didn’t give it to you just so that you’d have a chance to say no. I gave it to you.

So in your chance to say yes, we would work together in a way. We can sit back when it’s all over and say, we, we, we did this. God in me, me in God. So it seems so important that we have this connection between ourselves. Our work, our words, our gestures, our actions, and the intention of God. The two need to be in sync.

I want to call that somehow being aligned, aligned with the will of God. Let’s imagine that prayer is an expression to God that we are open and willing to align ourselves with him. And once we do. I don’t know how to describe this, because it’s about the mystery of the spiritual world, which is actually the only real world in some ways. But it’s often considered to be there’s the real world and there’s the spiritual world. But imagine that the spiritual world is really what it’s all about.

And so this world that we are called into, the spiritual world, has rules and laws that we need to submit to. And that one of the things about this rule of the spiritual life that I want to get to is that for the grace of God to flow from him into the world, he needs us. And for the spirit of human beings to flow into God, we need each other. We call this community, we call it church. We call it this mysterious thing where we are in a process where the union between ourselves and God Our union between ourselves is each other. These are the key roles that need to be undertaken in order for the work of God to be accomplished.

What’s the work of God? The glory of God. The glory of God is you and I fully alive, fully all that we’re called to be and the kingdom being established. The kingdom is a way of life, not necessarily in the next world, but the way of life here. So let’s look at the Our Father for a minute. It’s such a powerful prayer because it carries with it so much wisdom about prayer.

It starts by simply acknowledging that we have a Father, a God who has created everything. He is awesome, great, and he is in the universe. He is everywhere, he is in heaven, and he is so holy. And holy means not just that he is perfect, but that his role is to make the world whole. He is a God who calls us to wholeness, and his kingdom is what we want. So we’re asking, you know God, when we pray, what we’re saying is, I want to align my will with yours.

Your will be done. And I want the kingdom to come. I want people to live the way they’re called to live. I want this place that you have promised us, called the promised Land, where there is unity and oneness and forgiveness and understanding. I want to help create that. So what I want you to do, God, and this is at the heart of the Our Father, give me whatever I need.

Give me my daily bread. And I know there’s such a deep connection between daily bread and that prayer and the Eucharist that Christ gave us. And what he’s saying when we say, give me today my daily bread, we’re saying, give me you, give me. Let me take you in. I want to eat of your body that gives me strength. And then Eucharist includes wine, which is forgiveness.

So then feed me, strengthen me with your body, then fill me with forgiveness, which is your blood. And so when I feel that forgiveness, when I see you as you see me, when I understand that you are filled with forgiveness, I will be able to forgive my brothers and sisters so easily. And then just guide us and keep us from all those things that would rob us of life. Keep us free from temptation, deliver us from evil. So simple a prayer, but so powerful. It sets the tone for the whole thing.

So let’s look at the readings we have today, because I want you to go back to the image I was using about prayer as aligning yourself with God’s will. So in. And there’s something powerful in that. It’s not just you’re talking God into doing something. He already knows what he needs to do. You’re saying, I’m with you in this.

I’ll be able to be. I will be whatever you need me to be to enable this to happen. So, you know, when there’s a battle that Moses recognizes is important, and they go to battle with Amalek, you know, what he’s doing is by extending his hands and making it clear that whenever his hands are extended, they’re winning the battle. Whenever his hands drop, they’re losing. Just imagine this. Imagine a situation that you’re in battle with, something that you want to see happen, something you’re struggling for.

Well, prayer is your aligning yourself with whatever it is that needs to happen so that this prayer will be answered. So to pray isn’t just asking for something. It includes a offering, a willingness to be used by God for whatever he needs you to do or be in this situation. So can you feel that this connection with, I’m here. I want this to happen. I’m connected to your intention, and there’s power in that.

And that’s that beautiful image of Moses. And I love the image. It’s so literal because he gets. He gets tired, they give him a stone to sit on. Then his arms are, you know, have you ever tried to hold your arms out, you know, for a long time by yourself all day? So he has two people holding his arms up.

But it’s such a beautiful thing because it’s so clear that human beings are engaged in some mysterious way in God’s will being accomplished on this earth. And it’s not just asking for it. It’s somehow being a part of what the answer to the prayer will be. Now, many times God has compared his goodness to ours, and he’s always, jesus would do this. He did this in the gospel. But he’ll say, you know, if you, with all your sin and all your selfishness, if you know how to give your children what is good, why do you think God will give you something bad when you ask for something good?

And furthermore, in this Gospel, if a judge who doesn’t respect anybody, doesn’t fear God or believe in God, and you pester him and pester him and pester him and ask him to do something, and he finally does it, that’s an indication that persistence to someone usually works. So why do you give up on your God when you pray once or twice and nothing happens? Am I ever going to find faith on this earth? Am I ever going to find anyone who Believes in who I really am. It’s so interesting. All of us, I think, that are probably listening to me believe that God exists.

That’s kind of a given or you wouldn’t be listening to a program like this. But not all of us believe in who he actually is. We believe there is a God. He is strong, he’s powerful. But this image of a God who is so dependent on us doesn’t always fit the way we’ve been taught about God. A God who needs me to accomplish what he needs to do.

He needs our support, and that doesn’t always fit. But if you really look at it, what was it that saved the world? Who is the Messiah? It’s a human being. Yes, filled with divinity. And we know the mystery is that he truly was God.

But to focus too much on the fact of Jesus divinity robs us somewhat of the mystery of what it means to be human and how our humanity is our greatest asset in the sense of accepting it, both its weaknesses and forgiving it, but accepting its strength, its power. So when you look at the story of our redemption, it’s about a human being who is cooperating with divinity within him, going through life, saying certain things, believing something, surrendering over and over again to something that he didn’t really want to do. So this idea of the human being, Christ, in the agony of the garden, saying, all right, if this can’t pass away from me, then let your will be done. So that surrendering of a human being to the will of God, but knowing that he had to do something, Jesus just didn’t say, I’ll let whatever you want to have happen happen. But it doesn’t affect me. No, it really affected him.

I’ll be what you need to be. I’ll go where you need me to go. I’ll let happen to me what needs to happen to me. That’s the disposition that true prayer creates within us so that we really are partners with this strange, mysterious unfolding of things. How do you know that you’re spontaneously open and receptive to this role? I’d say one thing is you let go of the kind of way in which most of us pray.

And that is, I pray, I want an answer. I want it. You know, usually it’s time related. You know, I want this to happen now. That’s usually what we pray for now. And we pray, and then nothing seems to happen right away.

So we tend to say, well, you know, either God’s too busy, I’m not worthy, or this whole thing really doesn’t work. And so we drift back into the anxiety and the worry and the fear that we often live with because we’re not sure that things are going to work out. That’s the lack of faith that Jesus is so worried about when he’s talking about this whole notion of turning to God and asking him to do something for you. In our loss of trust, in those moments of waiting or those moments of having to adjust what the real answer is going to be. It takes great unselfishness to be able to be a part of something that you know you’re being used. You know that your intention is going to be.

If you pray in the name of Jesus, that means you pray with his desires in mind, the same desires Christ has, which is the desire of a human being fully alive, fully awake, fully aware of God inside of him. So that means Jesus will and God’s intention, God’s intention, Jesus intention were one. So if we can believe that when we’re praying for the right thing, it will happen. It’ll always happen. It happens. But we have to be ready to be the part that we’re supposed to be in it happening.

Maybe it’s just trust. Maybe it’s being open to an intuition that you need to say something, go somewhere. I love all those images of a person who’s truly spiritual. There’s an instinct to go, do something, pick up the phone and call someone. What you’re following when you’re doing that is promptings of the spirit. And there’s something about that kind of docility that is needed every time you pray for something, because especially if it’s something that you know needs to happen in a more immediate circle, that would probably make it more valuable to be open and ready to what you might say.

I know when I get ready to go to see someone who’s in a lot of pain, you know, I’m worried about, what am I going to say? What am I going to say? How am I going to say it? I certainly don’t write it out and then go and read it to them. But when I get there, I try to be open and receptive and say, I know you’ll give me the thing to say. And I’ll say, it takes some practice to be that docile, that open, that ready to follow things.

And God uses different motives. He doesn’t always say, it’s not always I want to say what you want me to say. It’s more likely I want to say what works, or I want to say something that doesn’t sound stupid. Or I want to say something like that, but it always boils down to the same thing. God is going to give us what we need, our daily bread. He’s going to give us what we need to enable the kingdom to come.

When our will is in sync with his, we should have the most confident petition to him connected to a willingness to be used by Him. And then, and then the kingdom is now sa satisfaction. Father, as I pray this prayer for an opening of hearts and minds to all that you are, I recognize that I’m also asking you to empower me, empower all of us to be instruments of enabling this to happen. So bless us with the faith that you call us to in this Gospel passage. Bless us with the conviction that your will, when we surrender and submit to it, will always, always accomplish what you long to see happen. 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.