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 Easter Sunday, the Resurrection of the Lord. Opening Prayer O God, who on this day through your only begotten Son, have conquered death and unlocked for us the path to eternity, grant, we pay, that we who keep the solemnity of the Lord’s resurrection may, through the renewal brought by your Spirit, rise up in the light of life 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 Acts of the apostles 10:34 and the 37th to the 43rd verse, Peter proceeded to speak and said, you know what has happened all over Judea. Beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit in power, he went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses of all that he did, both in the country of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree. This man God raised on the third day, and granted that he be visible not to all people, but to us, the witnesses chosen by God in advance, who ate and drank with him.

And after he rose from the dead, he commissioned us to preach to the people and testify that he is the one appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead. To him all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him will receive forgiveness of sins through his name, the Word of the Lord. Responsorial Psalm this is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad. A Reading from the New Testament from St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians 5, 6, 8 brothers and sisters, do you not know that a little yeast leavens all the dough?

Clear out the old yeast, that you may become a fresh batch of dough, inasmuch as you are unleavened. For our Paschal Lamb, Christ has been sacrificed. Therefore let us celebrate the feast, not with Old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. The word of the Lord. The verse before the Gospel. Christ, our paschal victim, has been sacrificed.

Let us then feast with joy in the Lord. The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from St. John 29. On the first day of the week. Mary Magdala came to the tomb early in the morning, while it was still dark, and saw the stone removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and to the other disciples whom Jesus loved and told them they have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know know where they put him.

So Peter and the other disciples went out and came to the tomb. They both ran, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and arrived at the tomb first. He bent down and saw the burial cloths there. He did not go in. When Simon Peter arrived after him. He went into the tomb and saw the burial cloths there and the cloth that had covered his head, not with the burial cloths, but rolled up in a separate place.

Then the other disciple also went in, the one who arrived at the tomb first. And he saw and believed. But they did not yet understand the Scripture, that he had to rise from the dead. The Gospel of the Lord Satan. The way the church celebrates this great feast of Easter is more than just Easter. Sunday morning after Vatican Council, we renewed so many of the traditions that had somehow gotten lost over centuries.

And one of the things that we recovered after Vatican II was the fullness of this celebration of Easter, where we focused primarily on the three days, not just Easter Sunday, but Thursday night, when Christ instituted the Eucharist and revealed the heart of his ministry to his disciples. And then his death on Friday and then his resurrection on Sunday. It’s one story. It’s a beautiful, full revelation of what we believe in as Christians, as believers in this mysterious creature that came into the world, this God man who was just like us, but also God, and that he did this thing for us out of his humanity, and it just revealed his divinity that was hidden inside of him. And I love that phrase from the opening prayer when it said that Easter is this celebration that brings us into the light of life. And to me, light of life sounds so much like entering into enlightenment, full consciousness.

And so my intention then, in this homily this morning on Easter, is to give you a perspective on who this figure is and what he was really leaving us with and what he’s inviting us into now. A life in him, he in us, we in him, this oneness, this commingling of two spirits, divinity, humanity. Jesus lived that life, and he is the example of how we’re to live the same kind of life, even though we’re not in terms of intensity, we’re not divine, but we are infused with the light, the enlightenment of what it means to be in touch with the divine. We can use all kinds of images for what the divine is. But the one I love the most is when we think of divinity and who God is. He’s also, as John says in his opening Gospel, that this Jesus that came into the world is the incarnation of truth, reality.

I’ve spent so much of my life looking and struggling for perfection. No mistakes, no sins. And that may not be necessarily a bad goal, but it’s incomplete when you realize that we’re not here to stop sinning as much as we are to be shown by God, by divinity, inside of us the illusion that sins carry and the lack of their ability to give us what they promise. And it’s like the gift of divinity is to expose all that isn’t real, isn’t true. And isn’t it interesting? When you look at the world today, it seems like almost every institution, whether it’s politics or medicine or the church or religion, whatever.

I mean, it’s all we’re aware. So much of what is in those institutions and those kind of ministries that is impure, that is not what it should be. And that can be a depressing time in one sense. But in truth, it’s the way people enter into the light of life, to see the darkness and to name it and to not be afraid of it and to not be ashamed of how we participated in it. Because the greatest goal of this God man, Jesus, was to come into the world to convince us of a couple of things that are very simple and very direct. One is that God is living with us and guiding us.

He’s our mentor, our teacher, our friend, our advocate, and also he forgives us of everything we’ve ever done. So I want to take you back then to Thursday night, because I believe that night is so essential to understand the person of Jesus. He’s with his disciples. He wants us to spend the last meal with them. And during that meal, he did two things that seemed completely confusing to his disciples, which means they hadn’t grown enough in consciousness and awareness of who Jesus is. If you see Jesus as we do now, and we know who he is, the things that he did make total sense.

But to them it must have been strange, because when they went through the Passover day celebration that was a part of their tradition. And Jesus did the ritual as it was always done. And there was a cup of blessing and there was bread that was always there. And these were blessed. But Jesus said the most bizarre thing in a way to them. He said, you know, this blood, this wine, it’s not just wine.

It’s not just blessed wine. I want you to realize this is my blood. My blood, this is part of me. It’s the life force in me. And what it does for you, if you let it course through your veins, if you let this life giving red liquid that brings oxygen and cleans all our cells constantly 24 7. If you let it into you, my blood, it is going to do something for you.

And the blood of the chalice is for forgiveness. So Jesus makes a profound statement by asking them to drink of the cup when he said, if you don’t drink this cup, you have nothing, none of my inheritance. You have to believe you’re forgiven. You have to believe that. And I don’t know why. Forgiveness is a very difficult thing for us.

Because of our minds, in a way, our brains work and we can understand justice. It makes sense. You do a good thing, you get rewarded. You do a bad thing, you get punished. That’s clear. But it’s only the heart that can understand what it means that this, this God man wants us to believe that no matter what we do, no matter how far we drift from him and from the truth and from reality, no matter how much damage we do, it never ever changes the intention in his heart that he wants to be there for us and lift us into the light of life.

That’s hard for us to understand, but that’s what Jesus was establishing that night. And then the bread. The bread is his body. He said, take it and eat of it. And what he’s saying is that this bread, which is a nurturing element in our life, it’s food and it’s for our strength. So it’s so interesting.

He’s saying, if you’ll eat this bread and drink this cup in memory of me, you will have the inheritance, I promise you. And that has become the ritual of so many Christian churches, especially Catholicism and major sacramental religions. Without that, I can’t imagine us being who we are. Without the Eucharist daily, every Sunday. It’s the most amazing promise. And that’s what Jesus was establishing that night.

I want you to know something about me going to leave you. And he knew he was going to die and he knew they’d be scattered. He knew they would doubt him, and so he had to say these things. And even though they didn’t comprehend it, they went back and they did comprehend it. And when they were infused with the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, they saw the light, they saw the truth, they saw who he is, they saw what he’s doing for them, they saw what they have to do for others. It was a powerful night, that night that he spent having dinner with his disciples.

But then there was the other thing, the most interesting one. It’s funny that John’s Gospel, which is the most spiritual I think basically when he recalls that dinner, he never mentions the Eucharist, but he does mention the next thing, the strange thing that after Jesus dined with his disciples, he stood up, took off his cloak and put a towel around him and said, I want to wash your feet. And that seemed very strange to all of them because that’s the role of a servant. And probably the least attractive for the servants themselves. Which job they were going to get when someone held a banquet was the guy who had to a couple of men that had to sit at the doorway and wash dirty feet that had come in. If it was a rainy night, there were muddy feet.

If it was otherwise, it was dusty feet. But they had to clean the feet because people reclined a table and didn’t wear shoes and socks, obviously. So it was the kind of thing like washing your hands before you sit down if you’ve been working in the fields or something. Why would he do that? Why would he say, I want you to let me wash your feet? And it becomes clear in the conversation, particularly between Peter and Jesus, because Peter just said, absolutely not.

You’re not going to wash my feet. And the interesting thing about that is Jesus response. He said, look, unless you let me wash your feet, you will have no inheritance from me. You won’t receive what I’m leaving you as a legacy, as a gift when I die. It’s like the person who leaves their wealth to their firstborn son. Well, he’s leaving the thing that made him so powerful, so effective, so life giving.

He’s going to give that to human beings if they allow him to do what? To be a servant to them. What? A servant? You notice when Jesus is talking to Peter, he said, you know, yes, I’m your master. You call me a master, you call me a teacher.

Yeah, I am all that. You’re right. But I’m also a servant. And you who are attached to me and who are looking forward to the kingdom and looking forward to a political kingdom as they did, thinking they were going to be in positions of authority and power in the world because they followed the Messiah and they would be the ones in the temple running the whole operation. They thought all that. And what he’s saying to them is, that’s not it.

You’re not being empowered with my life and my blood and my body inside of you, my nourishment to be a master. Here’s the secret. You have to understand that you’re empowered for one reason only, and that’s to minister to the need and the wants and the desires of other people. Not any of their whims, but what they really need, what their heart longs for, what their souls are meant to be. And you need to help them be that. You’re not their master, but you’re their servant.

Jesus himself said to Peter, look, you call me master and teacher. That’s right, but I want you to be a servant. But the interesting thing about that image to me is that when you look at what Jesus was doing and saying to Peter, it’s almost like he’s saying, look, I know you who have an ego, like everyone has an ego. You’re looking forward to being a master over others, and that’s normal. But what I’m calling you to is to be a servant to others. Okay?

But then the interesting thing is it seems that when someone refuses to allow another to serve them, then there’s often, you see that resistance reveals something. And it means in the relationship with God, is that if you don’t let God serve you, if you don’t accept his service humbly, then you can’t be in his kingdom either. That means that unless you allow God to be the source of life in you for the work that you have, you’ll never be able to do that work. And the thing about being effective in this world and everybody, I think that’s honest, knows that human nature loves to be effective and loves to be held up as somebody who is effective and powerful and helpful. And it goes right to our head and not to our heart. Our head just says, well, you know, I am special.

I am special. I’m special. Well, everything that we do that’s powerful and transformative and bring people into the light is not us, it’s us with God. And so the idea of being a servant means you have to receive the gift that comes from the master to the servant, who gives the servant the ability to do the work that they do. So there’s something very much Hidden in a way, but not hard to see, that this whole idea of service is essential to this relationship we have with God. Let him serve you.

Let him be the source of the healing power in you. Always acknowledge it’s him in you doing the work, and then do it in a way that is generous and wanting only the goodness that the other needs to be there, not to make you good or not to look good. So to move from master to servant, to move from somebody who is on their own to somebody who realizes that everything I am is because of God’s nourishing love and his life giving forgiveness, when we have that rooted in us, we are then capable of becoming the servants that God intends us to be. That’s the mystery of Easter, this transformative union between God and man. And without it, we end up being people that control and people that tend to use and people that tend to be self focused. Sam Satan SA Closing prayer Father, the fullness of your revelation, the God that you are, was shown to us in this mysterious creature, this God man, Jesus.

There’s so much about it that is hard for us to grasp and hard for us to comprehend. In terms of the reason you do this is so that we can become ministers just like you were. And it’s so easy for us to create a God that is more like a master than a servant, and help us always to be servants, servants to each other, but most especially allowing you to serve us. So we ask this in Jesus name, Amen. Hello, my name is Will Richie and I work for Pastoral Reflections Institute. Monsignor Fisher has asked me to share my personal reflection on today’s homily.

I love it. He talks about how the whole concept of ESIR is the transformation from man being alone to man being empowered with God within his spirit. He tells Peter, unless you let me wash your feet, you will have no inheritance from me. He wants to serve Peter. He says, peter, yes, I am your master, but I am also a servant and I want you to serve. The biggest lesson I learned this Easter connects back to this, believe it or not, through my seven year old son.

I got home late one evening, my wife’s cooking, my son’s drawing, and clearly it’s an assignment from school. At the top there was a line that said advice for. And there was a blank. And he had written capital D, a D. And I could tell by the picture that he had a basketball, goal, stick figure. It was playing outside and there were two objects there.

My wife says, dad, you’ve come home right on time. Sebastian, tell dad, what you got here? I said, well, there’s basketball and you’re playing with me. But you see those two things right there? I’m like, yeah, I don’t know what those are. And he says, well, that’s your cell phone and there’s a charger, and you got to put your cell phone in your charger in the office for an hour so you can come outside with me.

Oof. I gave him a huge hug and I thought about this message. I’m not just a master of my children with power over them. I am here to serve them. I’m not just here to critique them and to bring structure. I am here to play with them.

I realize now more than ever that God, the Christlike spirit in my son, was also serving me through a very basic drawing saying, dad, without critique, without judgment, go plug that thing up. Let’s go outside and play. Jesus is risen, everyone. Happy Easter. 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, pastoralreflectionsinsinstitute.com and available anytime, anywhere and for free on our podcast, Finding God in Our Hearts.

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