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 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

The Opening Prayer Almighty ever living God, increase our faith, hope, and charity, and make us love what you command so that we may merit what you promise 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 Sirach, 35th, chapter 12th, 14, and 16 the Lord is a God of justice who knows no favorites. Though not unduly partial toward the weak, yet he hears the cry of the oppressed. Lord is not deaf to the wail of the orphan or the widow when she pours out her complaint. The one who serves God willingly is heard.

Their petition reaches the heavens. The prayer of the lowly pierces the clouds. It does not rest till it reaches its goal, nor will it withdraw till the Most High responds, judges justly, and affirms the right, and the Lord will not delay the word of the Lord. The Lord hears the cry of the poor. A Reading from the New Testament from St. Paul’s letter to Timothy Beloved, I’m already being poured out like a libation.

At the time of my departure is at hand. I’ve competed well. I’ve finished the race. I’ve kept the faith. From now on the crown of righteousness awaits me, which the Lord, the Just Judge, will award to me on that day, and not only to me, but to all who have longed for his appearance. At my first offense, no one appeared on my behalf, but everyone deserted me, may it not be held against them.

But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the proclamation might be completed, and all the Gentiles might hear it. And I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. The Lord will rescue me from every evil threat, and will bring me safe to his heavenly kingdom. To him be glory forever and ever. Amen. The Word of the Lord Alleluia Verse God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ and entrusting to us the message of salvation.

The gospel for this Sunday is taken from St. Luke 18. Jesus addressed this parable to those who were convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else. Two people went up to the temple area to pray. One was a Pharisee, the other was a tax collector. The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself.

O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity, greedy, dishonest, adulterous, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week. I pay tithes on all my whole income. But the tax collector stood off at a distance and would not even raise his eyes to heaven. But he beat his breast and prayed, O God, be merciful to me, a sinner. I tell you, the latter went home justified, not the former.

For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted. The Gospel of the Lord. The theme of today’s liturgy is something that I’ve been wrestling with for some time. And it’s interesting to me how this homily is going to come across, because I really believe that the problem that this parable addresses is one that I wrestle with all the time, being perfect. And I know that sounds so presumptuous to say that I want to be perfect, but that seems to be the thing that I learned from so many voices, including the voice of my Catholic faith. Because somehow I was taught that the thing that God wants more than anything else is performance.

And that’s part of my makeup. I’m a three on the Enneagram. So anybody that knows the Enneagram knows that that’s one of my greatest fears, that I will not do a good performance. I remember a priest when I was in the seminary, so said to me, you’ll probably give pretty good homilies. And I said, why do you say that? And he said, because you’re so proud.

You know what you want to look good. He was right. I hope I’ve grown past that. But nevertheless, the image that I feel that I’ve been stuck with is to do the best you can, is what God is asking of me the best. So everything hinges then on what do you imagine the best is in the eyes of God. There’s a phrase in Scripture that threw me off a lot, I think.

And it was a phrase, and I’m not even quite sure because I don’t have that wonderful Protestant background where, you know, every Verse and every chapter. But anyway, it’s be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. So there you are. Scripture says, be perfect. My psyche says, do the best always that you can. The harder you work and the better you try to be your best, the better it’s going to be.

But the danger of all of that is to get out of balance. Because what I really now know and what I believe in my heart is that it’s not the biggest issue that I have and each of us have. When we come onto this earth as spiritual beings living in a. In a physical form, what God is really asking us to do is to be comfortable with this situation that we’re in, to be perfectly human, which is different than being a perfect human being. A perfect human being is when I impose upon a human being myself and ask myself to be something that I can’t be perfect. And the irony is that I’m anything but perfect.

But I. I tend to hate that part of me that’s imperfect. And so when you hate something, you push it aside. You don’t want to look at it. You separate from it. It’s that very interesting thing that we have in the scriptures today when we’re talking about this man, this Pharisee, who is seeing himself as perfect and yet he despises everyone else.

Isn’t that interesting? What he really despises is imperfection. And what he sees in everyone else is imperfection, because he probably sees them pretty much as they are. But he won’t look at himself as he is. And he tries to imagine himself as being perfect. So when we want to be perfect, we usually pick two or three, four things that we really feel would be the sign that we’ve reached perfection.

And we fine tune them to the point where they are absolutely in. Let’s say, objectively, we do them perfectly, following a couple of rules. Absolutely perfectly. Follow the laws of fasting, follow the laws of tithing. That’s what the man was doing in the parable. And so he says, I do these things perfectly.

So implying that he does everything perfectly. But whenever we deny something that’s in our human nature by, let’s say, not wanting to look at it, take it even deeper, despising it, we find ourselves separating ourselves from ourselves. And then we’re likely very much to be separating ourselves from our brothers and sisters who we perceive as being imperfect. Now, the benefit of seeing everybody as imperfect means that we make ourselves even more important, so we seem even more perfect. It’s such a vicious cycle that pulls us into a Dark place. And the dark place is a place of separation and a place of anxiety and fear and a place that lacks peace.

So the one image I’d like to give you and give myself over and over and over again is that what we’re here to do is to make peace with the world in which we live and the person who we are, the people with whom we work, and to look at all of it with a kind of understanding heart, a loving heart, that has two very important ingredients. A thing called empathy, where we feel the pain of the world, the pain of individuals in the world struggling to be more than they are. It’s a difficult task. It’s a daunting task, and it often leads to a lot of shame or guilt. But there’s a way to make peace with that, and that’s to have compassion for it, which is a very positive thing, where you’re saying, I’ll work with things as they are, and I’ll help them to be better. Better.

Not perfect, not the best, but better. Better is a tricky word also, because it carries a certain image of perfection, but it means accepting and being what you are as a human being. So to be perfect as your father is perfect. God is a perfect God. We are perfectly human. And I was looking up in the Oxford English Dictionary the word perfect.

And one of the meanings, actually kind of far back from the beginning of all the descriptions of this word, perfection is about excellence. Flawlessness, you know, perfection in the sense that nothing is wrong, nothing is out of balance with some high level of excellence, like a perfect diamond, a perfect painting, perfect homily. So when I look at that image of perfect, and I realize that as I looked at the more common usage of perfect, it means acting in a way that was always intended to act, being what it was intended to be. It says, being made in the way it was intended to be made. So it functions in the way it was intended to function. So the key is not.

Well, the key is to get in touch with what does it mean to be human. That’s the key. A perfect human being is perfectly human. And if you look at the first story, you realize that one of the things that God is very open to and receptive to is people that ask for things to be the way they’re supposed to be. So the poor, the widow, the orphan, these are people who are in a situation that isn’t really very, very good for them. They’re in an outcast position.

They can’t really have the part that they want to play in society. And so when somebody cries out to God this is not what it should be, then that prayer really connects with God. It leaves the heart of the person praying it, and it goes out into the sky and it floats around until it’s answered. It’s like when people say, I want this world to be the way you intended it to be. God, us all to be who we’re intended to be. Not more, not less, but just who we’re intended to be.

And there’s no one out there that should consider themselves as more in terms of valued, if they are being who they are, if they are really in touch with who they are, their gift, their part in this whole mysterious process of life. Since we’re all interconnected, it’s like Paul’s image of the body. If an eye wants to be a foot, or if a hand wants to be an ear. We’re all involved in this world of having to be what we’re called to be. And that position that we are supposed to be in is perfectly tuned to the world around us and who we are and the people in our circle. So think how dangerous it is to want to be more than that.

I think it’s even more dangerous than being less than that. Because if we try to be more than that, it means we’re probably trying to be of a greater influence or at least have more attention from other people. It’s when you’re with somebody that all they can talk about is themselves and they have no idea they’re doing it. When I was a young priest, I went to visit some old friends from school and. And I was so excited about my new life as a priest. And I’d been a seminarian for nine years.

And now I was out there and people were saying, oh, you’re so wonderful. What a nice, sweet young priest. And I bought into it, you know, and I was telling him all the stories of all the things I do and all the wonderful ways in which people respond to me and people really like me and, you know, were they interested in that? Well, a little bit. But their comment to me when I met him the next time I said, God, you’re really full of yourself. When did that happen?

You didn’t used to be that way, to be full of myself. Look at the man in the parable. He’s praying to himself. It’s an interesting phrase in there. He does say, oh, God. But the parable, the way Jesus gives it, is that he says to himself.

So he’s really praying to his ego, which is really weak. But we’ll talk about that in a minute. But he’s praying that he’s giving thanks to God for making him so perfect. And then the man, of course, who’s sitting there beating his breast is the human. And the human is always there realizing that this thing we come into the world with, this personality, this body, this set of past experiences from our ancestors and all that, all of that works together to make us perfectly who we are called to be. And that perfection always includes a longing for something that we need to enhance who we are.

And that that we need is not us. It’s something we need from outside of us. It’s the presence of God, it’s the presence of people that love us. It’s the presence of our ancestors who pray for us. It’s angels working with us. When we’re in touch with all those forces that are there for us, and we take the little that we are and we offer it in service to the world and we have all these other ingredients that make it effective, then you’re human.

And you’re human. I mentioned earlier that the ego is something pretty risky and tricky because people would say of a person who’s self centered, they say, oh, he’s so egocentric. But if you look at what ego means, it’s a sense of self. And if you have a sense of yourself as someone valuable without having to be better than anybody else, or not needing to be worse than anybody else, which is a kind of humility gone to the extreme. If you just want to be yourself, then that’s comfortable with that. That’s a strong ego.

But a person that wants to be more than they are constantly has this gnawing anxiety that there’s something missing in them. They’re not good enough and they’re onto something. They aren’t good enough because they’re not yet really accepting their humanity. And the plan that God has for all of us, they’re denying that. So there’s a guilt and a shame that’s unconscious going on inside of them. So they already have a very negative feeling about themselves.

Otherwise they wouldn’t be talking constantly about who they are and how wonderful they are. Unless they doubted their own value, unless they felt they were not valuable. They have self hatred. And that’s not a strong ego. Strong ego is in the man beating his breast saying, this is who I am, I’m a sinner, I accept it. I need forgiveness, I need help, I need support.

That’s who I am. That’s who you’ve made me to be. That’s what it means to be a perfect human being. And I feel good about myself. Even though I’m acknowledging at this moment that I am not what I would like yet to be. I’m not yet what I would like to be.

Now, that’s a very beautiful human stance I am becoming. Today I am not what I was yesterday, and tomorrow I won’t be the same as I am today. If the intention is a perfect intention, a perfect human intention, it goes something like, I don’t see it all yet. I don’t know it all yet. I want to see more. I want to know more.

I know that you will give me these gifts as I long for them, not for myself, but for those around me. And if I do well with those around me, I will take pleasure in that. If it doesn’t work, I will not blame myself, because I’ll know somehow that whatever I have to give them is not yet whatever I have. Maybe they already had and I sort of missed the point. Or maybe they’re so resistant that I hit the point, but they rejected it because it was too frightening. So I’ll wait for the right thing that comes along that’ll get right in, that’ll go in past all that resistance, and that person will receive the truth, that I’ll be the one bringing it to them.

What could be better? What could be more perfectly human and what would make a more perfect life than. I’m growing, and I’m there to help others grow, and we will grow and develop. I was bragging to a new friend the other day, someone I just met, about all the new and wonderful things in Dallas and how beautiful the city is. Great architecture and these great bridges and everything is just getting better and better and better. And she looked at me and said, well, that’s nice.

It’s interesting. How’s the rest of the city? And I just recognized that I was trying to pick everything that was perfect in the city and saying, that’s the city, the perfect buildings. When you know the city’s not perfect, no city is perfect. There’s all kinds, kinds of darkness that needs to be healed, pain that needs to be understood, and compassion that needs to be shared. And there I was sort of like looking at the clothes rather than the person, because some of the architecture is pretty perfect as architecture.

So it’s a very fascinating call from the Scriptures to be perfect. And I pray that these words will help you understand what I deeply long to understand. What I think I’m beginning to fully understand is the more I become myself, the more I become conscious of my role, which is kind of ordinary in a way, the way it works. I mean, I’m not going around healing people instantaneously. I’m hoping I’m saying things that change people’s hearts and open them up to something more. It’s a gradual process, organic process.

It’s a beautiful process, and it’s imperfect in the way we might think of perfection, but it’s perfect in the eyes of the God who planned it, and it turns out to be perfect in the eyes of those of us who participate in it. Closing Prayer Lord, help us to witness our humanity, our human nature, which is a strange combination of things that are beautiful and loving and dark and not loving. Help us to welcome all that we are so that as we present our life to our friends, as we witness who we are to them, it will always come from a deep honesty and a deep truthfulness and we’ll avoid that terrible addiction of somehow trying to present ourselves as more than we are. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. The music in our program was composed and produced by Ryan Harner for this show.

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Executive Producer Monsignor Don Fisher Produced by Kyle Cross and recorded in Pastoral Reflections Institute Studios. Copyright 2024.