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 Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. The Opening Prayer O God, who willed that your only begotten Son should undergo the cross to save the human race. Grant, we pray, that we who have known the mystery on earth may merit the grace of his redemption in heaven 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 numbers, 21st, chapter 4, 9 with their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses. Why have you brought us up from Egypt to die in the desert where there is no food or water?

We are disgusted with this wretched food. In punishment the Lord sent among the people seraph serpents which bit the people, so that many of them died. And the people came to Moses and said, we have sinned in complaining against God and against you. Pray the Lord to take the serpents away from us. Make a seraphim, mount it on a pole, and if any who have been bitten, look at it on a pole. When anyone who had been bitten by the serpent looked at the bronze serpent, he lived the Word of the Lord.

Responsorial Psalm do not forget the works of the Lord. A reading from the New Testament The Letter of St. Paul to the Philippians 2, 611 Brothers and sisters Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness, and found human in appearance. He humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this God greatly exalted him, and bestowed on him the name that is above every name that is the name of Jesus.

Every knee should bend of those in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue confession that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father, the Word of the Lord. Hallelujah we adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your cross you have redeemed the world. The Gospel for this feast of the exaltation of the cross is taken from St. John 3, 13, 17. Jesus said to Nicodemus, no one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish and might have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. The Gospel of the Lord SA the Old Testament is such an interesting set of stories about our relationship with God, how God reveals Himself to us, how we respond to what he reveals to us in terms of what he’s saying, what he’s calling us to what he’s asking of us. And probably this simplification that often happens when we’re not mature enough or aware enough to get into the depth of who God is and what this whole thing called life is about. We see in the Old Testament a very oversimplified version of what we discover in the New Testament. And the oversimplification is simply God is a God who loves, who takes a certain group of people on as his own, and his job is to take care of them, but the purpose of his care is to bring them from a place of slavery to freedom.

And what seems to be clear in their mind, almost as it is in a child’s mind, about somebody who’s going to take them on a journey and take them somewhere. They imagine that this God who says, I’m there for you, is going to take care of all their needs, going to make them comfortable, not going to put them in a situation that is painful or difficult. So in the Old Testament, it’s clear that when anybody was having difficulty, when they seemed to be without good fortune, when death would come into their family, when they’d lose their crops, when they’d fail in business, whatever it was, it was always considered that that was the sign that God had pulled away from them and that they were being punished. So bad things happen to bad people, good things happen to good people. That seems so simple. If you love me, you’ll give me what I need.

Now it’s amazing that that still creeps into our spiritual life, no matter how mature and how developed it is, we still find ourselves falling back into. Why God, are you doing this to me now? I thought you were on my side. I thought you were going to take care of me. And that leads to the most shocking, strange piece of Christianity, where the God who entered into the world as a human being, fully human, fully divine, ends up saving the world through participating in an instrument of torture. And when he responded to the pain and the suffering of.

Of that torturous death, and responded not with retaliation, not with hatred, not with revenge, but with acceptance, that act saved the world. Now, that is really worth pondering. Why did Jesus have to go through the excruciating awareness that he had failed to achieve the goal that he longed for? He had not changed the mind of the Pharisees. He had not even won over 12 men who he had been spending so much time with, trying to show them who he was and talk about what the world was, you know, what we were here for, talked about the things to come, and they didn’t grasp it. John grasped it because he could listen somehow to the heart of Jesus.

But John and a few women, after 30 years of preparation, three years of solid work, that’s all he could show to God. This is what I’ve done. So somehow what that mystery is saying to us is that what we tend to think is success, what we tend to think is the thing that we’re called to do. We sometimes imagine that our value is connected to what we do, when all of that is sort of completely blocked, blown away by this mysterious thing called the cross. To surrender, to submit to something that you don’t want, is somehow at the heart of what it means to follow what Christ is teaching us to be who we are. Now, I’ve noticed in my life, in my ministry, there’s so many people come up to me and said, you know, I gave up on God a long time ago.

And I said, why? And they said, well, you know, there was this situation, a death of somebody very young, a death of their own child. And they prayed to God, please, God, take care of this. If you love me, you’ll take care of me. And the child dies. And they say, all right, that’s it.

God can do anything. Why would he not do something good in this situation? I want to see if I can say something that I hope touches deeply into an error that we’re caught up in and can free you from it. And that is, God cannot do just anything. He has limited his power. And the way he limits his power, not that he Couldn’t take away that limit.

But he chooses to limit it. To say, my commitment to you, my desire for you to understand who I am is. I am so filled with unconditional love for you. I’ll do anything for you, I’ll stay with you. I’ll never ever stop doing every single thing in my power that I know that will help you. I will use that power instantly, whenever I can.

But my commitment to you is I will be there for you. Not simply to give you what you want at that moment, but to give you exactly what you need at that moment. I cannot be unfaithful to myself and to give you things that would not be good for you, that would harm you, that would get you somehow in a place where you don’t need to be. I can’t do that. I can’t do what you asked me to do for you. If it is not the thing that you need, the thing that is absolutely perfectly timed for you, that opens up a whole new way of looking at this mysterious thing called failure, sin, disappointment.

I mean, sin is in the world and it causes enormous amount of pain. The sin in the Pharisees and in those people who had an agenda quite different than seeking the truth or seeking to live in a way that would bring them life and goodness. All of that exists in the world. And we live in an atmosphere in a kind of condition where suffering is there. And it would seem to me if something like suffering is presented to us as somehow, when accepted, the means to enter into a fuller, richer, more, more potent life, then we really have to look carefully at what is the role of suffering, what is it for? And this is the answer I want to give you.

I don’t know. I can talk about it in a really kind of practical way. You know, it chips away at your ego and things like that. But I think it’s always dangerous for us to say, well, what God really wants is for us to be in pain. And when we’re in pain, he likes that because we say, we’re doing this for you. Can you imagine being so committed, so in love, so powerfully connected to someone and all you want is for them to grow and they’re inflicting pain on themselves for you, so that you’ll see them in pain and say, isn’t that great?

That’s what happened throughout the Middle Ages. So many people felt some kind of self flagellation, some kind of self induced pain, denying yourself all kinds of pleasures, that this would please God. Well, it’s not about that kind of sign that we’re willing to be in pain for him. And he’s not interested in us being simply in pain, as if that’s a sign that we are trusting him. No, how about this? He will create for us the pain that is necessary for us to grow to the exact degree that it needs to be, to the exact purpose and focus it needs to be.

And what we have to learn to do is to trust that and then in that sense, surrender to it, submit to it, allow it. That’s what Jesus did. He allowed this to happen to him. And when he allowed that exact witness that Jesus had to make to people, here’s the one who comes into the world to save the world. I love the phrase in the scripture today. He did not come in the world to condemn the bad people.

He came into the world to save everyone. Save everyone. Do we not want him to condemn the bad people? Do we not want him to punish people who are wrong? Don’t we want anyone who looks like they are, you know, horrible and destructive? We want that to be destroyed.

Well, there is nothing wrong with wanting to protect yourself from evil, wanting to change evil. That’s all wonderful. But there’s a way in which we get trapped in a sense that if evil is there, somehow God has failed us. I know how many times people say, oh, the world is a mess right now. Everything’s falling apart. Where’s God?

He’s right in the middle of every single thing, making sure that he’s faithful to his promise, to you and to me and to the world. We’ve got to grow, we’ve got to change. We’ve got to see things we don’t see as we see the suffering of the world. It’s incredible paradox, because at the same time he’s saying, you know, stop sinning, stop doing that. But at the same other time, if we’re not sinning, if we’re not failing, if we’re not falling down on our face, if we’re not facing our weaknesses and accepting them, recognizing that that’s the condition that we’re in. And if we don’t roll with that, in a sense, let that flow, and know that every time we make a mistake, there’s the potential addition, deep, powerful potential to change.

Until we experience the ridiculous results. No, until we experience how foolish some of our desires and longings are and we experience the emptiness of what we’re searching for, that’s probably one of the best things that changes us. Not just all of a sudden being told we have to do something and then doing it in a kind of resentful way, saying, I don’t know why I can’t do this. It’s really wonderful. There’s nothing wrong with it. Well, God does not ask you not to do that has value and that has goodness in it.

He will ask you and encourage you, but mostly ask you to experience what it’s like to participate in negativity and destructive behavior. That’s why in that beautiful first reading criticism, refusal to accept reality. I don’t like this wretched food that created a negativity that was as toxic as snakes. And, and the prayer that Moses asked of God was, how do I heal these people? And God just said, let them see what they’re doing, hold up the negativity and show it for what it is. So when they see what they’re doing, when they see that they’ve created these snakes, they’ll change.

And that is so true. So as we meditate and wonder about this mysterious thing, the cross, let’s open ourselves to two really simple things. The fidelity of a God who will do everything in his power, and he can and he will, to make us, help us to become who we are. And that includes some kind of ability to allow things to be as they are and to believe that nothing happens to us that doesn’t have value. Sam Satan. Sam Closing Prayer Father, help us to trust in your promise of fidelity.

Help us not to doubt what you long to achieve within us. If we believe that all that you allow to happen is for our good, for some mysterious unfolding of a life that you’ve called us to, we will be so much more able to embrace all that is without resentment, without feeling abandoned. Grant us his faith, and we ask this in Jesus name. 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 2024.