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.

Today we celebrate the second Sunday in Ordinary Time. The Opening Prayer Almighty ever living God, who govern all things both in heaven and on earth, mercifully hear the pleading of your people and bestow your peace on our times 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 Isaiah 49th chapter, third verse. In the fifth through the sixth verse, the Lord said to me, you are my servant Israel, through whom I show my glory. Now the Lord has spoken, who formed me as his servants from the womb, that Jacob may be brought back to him, and Israel gathered to him.

And I am made glorious in the sight of the Lord, and my God is now my strength. It is too little, the Lord says, for you to be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob and restore the survivors of Israel. I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach the ends of the earth. The Word of the Lord. Responsorial Psalm Here am I, Lord, I come to do your will. I have waited, waited for the Lord, and he stooped toward me and heard my cry, and he put a new song in my mouth, a hymn to our God.

Here am I, Lord, I come to do your will. Sacrifice and offering you wish not but ears open to obedience. You gave me holy costs or sin offerings you sought not, then said I, behold, I come here, my Lord, I come to do your will. In the written scroll it is prescribed for me to do your will. O my God, is my delight, and your law is within my heart. Hear, my Lord, I come to do your will.

I announce your justice in the vast assembly I did not restrain my lips, as you, O Lord, know. Hear, my Lord, I come to do your will. A reading from St. Paul’s letter to 1 Corinthians, first chapter, first through the third verse Paul called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and Saucinus our brother to the church of God is in Corinth to you who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be holy with all those everywhere who call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord and ours. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The word of the Lord.

The Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us. To those who accepted him, he gave power to become children of God. Hallelujah. The gospel for this Sunday is taken from John 1st. Chapter 29:34. John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.

He is the one of whom I said, a man is coming after me who ranks ahead of me because he existed before me. I did not know him, but the reason why I came baptizing with water was that he might be made known to Israel. John testified further, saying, I saw the Spirit come down like a dove from heaven and remain upon him. I did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, on whomever you see the Spirit come down and remain, he is the one who will baptize with the Holy Spirit. Now I have seen and testified that he is the Son of God. The Gospel of the Lord as we listen to this music, I ask you to breathe in deeply and breathe out slowly, knowing that breath is one of the strongest images in scripture of the presence of God inside of you.

So take deep breaths, deep, long exhales as you listen to this music, to open you to the words I pray God uses to help me reach you in your needs. Sa. I want to begin my reflections, as I always do, with the opening prayer and what we pray for, what we long for, and it’s so clearly something we need. And that is a sense of well being, peace. And the only way we can find peace is not so much to make a world free of sin or problems or destruction or evil, but to make peace with it, to somehow know it has a purpose, it has meaning, it has a reason for being there. And I want to go back to an image I use over and over again, and that is the partial revelation of the Old Testament.

It’s not the fullness of who God is, and it’s all based in justice. And justice is a good thing. I mean, the world should be just and fair. It isn’t always that way, but it would be good. We love that kind of image of finding peace when there is justice always administered. Those who are good rise to the top Those who are bad are pushed to the bottom.

But that’s not the message in any shape or form of Jesus. He radically changed all of that. And peace is no longer found in a kind of perfection, but rather in a participation in the most amazing invitation on the part of God. And that’s where he looks at you. And he looks at me and said, you know what? I formed you.

The way you look, the race that you belong to, the place where you are, the time in history that you are participating in my work, all of that was my plan for you. And it’s not by accident. It’s not. Nothing is by accident. Everything God would say to you is part of his plan. And so what he’s inviting you and me to do in the New Testament, the fullness of the message, is to believe in one single thing.

What is, is what must be. And that has to do with you, your actions, and the world. So let’s look at that for a moment. I want to go back to the Old Testament because there was a person there that I always find very fascinating because he feeds my ego. And that is the rich man who came to God and said, hey, I have done everything really, really well. I mean, I’ve kept every commandment.

I have paid attention to you. I’ve tried never to treat anyone unfairly. I’ve been just in my dealings with it. I don’t want another person’s life. Mine is perfect. But it’s really interesting Jesus reaction.

And it’s. He’s filled with love for a person who’s trying to save themselves by their actions. He really does see it as something good, but it has a very bad aftertaste, a terrible side effect, and that is pride and judgment against other people. So when the rich man says, I’ve done everything well, I am pretty wonderful. He didn’t say those words, but I think that was the intention. And God said, Jesus said, excuse me.

Jesus said to him, and this is in the New Testament, not the Old Testament, but Jesus said to him, you’ve got one problem. Let go of your possessions. If you look up possessions, what it means is not ownership, that’s different, but the thing that you have that makes you feel better than someone else. A bigger house, a bigger car, a bigger job, a bigger whatever, a bigger talent than most people have. Those are things that God gives to people, and we are never to compete. So the clear image I want to work with from the New Testament is the image that we do not gain our own salvation by what we do.

We participate in this extraordinary work of God using you and me to enlighten other people. We’re not here just to become some perfect being focused on us and our actions, but we’re communal. We’re here to have some impact on other people. And that’s a wonderful role. And we don’t always think of it as something that’s our responsibility. When we look at the world, we often condemn everybody that’s bad and try to hope that those that we think, think the way we do, that they’re doing the right thing.

And there’s something so much more than simply evaluating what’s going on in the world. We need to understand that God has given you and me a certain destiny. And the destiny includes to make ourselves into, or to have God make us, a light to the nations, a light to the circle of friends, a light to your family, a light to your partner, your spouse. It’s wonderful that that’s the challenge that’s before us. And the minute we try to think of it as being perfect, we’re in trouble. Because it’s very clear that there is something about our nature that was never promised before the coming of Jesus.

And that is not only do we have this destiny from God formed in the womb, to be able to accomplish this by participating in something, not rules and regulations, but a presence, a presence that’s in you and in me. Look at how John the Baptist recognized Jesus. There are many, many people that came along that said they were messiahs. That’s even true today, in a way. Somebody comes along and says, I’m going to save the world. You know, I’m going to save everybody.

But the thing about the Messiah that’s so unique and so important is that and he’s a model for us is that he didn’t do what he was doing because of his humanity, which we all have. We have the same humanity that Jesus had. He struggled with understanding the fullness of who God is inside of him. Otherwise he wouldn’t be human. He didn’t always want to do what God was asking him to do. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t be human.

So what we see in John’s description of Jesus is something happened to him. The Spirit, the Holy Spirit came down upon Jesus and entered into him and dwelt in his heart. It’s a very, very beautiful image of who we are in the eyes of God. Not Jesus himself literally, but like Jesus, filled with a gift. Not full divinity, but a participation in divinity, particularly in the need and the want and the desire of God. To light, truth, wisdom to other people.

So when we ever get caught up in the rich man’s problem of wanting to be perfect, we have to again, watch out for the many other side effects. One of which of course, is that you condemn everybody that’s not as good as you are because you resent the fact that they might claim to be in God when they’re not perfect. And there’s a kind of unfortunately well known experience that people have with having religious people be condemning people that are not of their religion, not doing what they’re doing. But the relationship with God is not solely because of the denomination that we live in. It’s a more personal thing. It’s about the promise that God made to you.

A personal promise that everything about you is exactly what you need to be. And there will be sins that you deal with that are specifically your weakness. And you will grow by dealing with that sin, not through perfection, but through mercy and forgiveness. And in some cases you will live with the same sin the rest of your the whole existence that you have on this earth. St. Paul had a.

A problem, a moral issue that he begged God to take away. And God said, no, your grace is enough for you, for my grace is enough for you. It’s a beautiful image of God creating you and me, imperfect. So that we can live on this planet with an understanding of imperfection in our brothers and sisters and can recognize when we meet them with mercy and forgiveness and understanding, we are spreading a light, a light called peace. It’s okay where you are, it’s okay to be who you are in this moment. And yet it is not simply about this moment, and it’s not simply about you.

It’s about your participation in a gift called salvation. And when you feel it as a gift, and you know that comes to you from God, you’re going to naturally resonate. It just comes out of you because you’re a man of peace, a woman of peace, a child of peace. And it brings such hope to the world that often gets caught up in the need for perfection. So we’re beginning our ministry of Jesus in this ordinary time. We’re going to look at Matthew so carefully and what he’s going to teach us is going to lead us into the two things that are mentioned in this set of readings that stand out.

You receive grace. That’s redemption and peace. That’s everything as it must be. God bless you. Foreign. Your wisdom is so clearly manifested in your acceptance and understanding of our human condition.

You never ask us to be more than we are more than we can be. Yet we stand off and back and look at ourselves and say so many things that could be better and we get consumed with our imperfection. Help us to know your will for us. Help us to accept everything that you ask us to deal with and let us find peace. 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.