My name is Don and I’ve been a Catholic priest now for over 50 years, and during that time I keep going back to the same readings over and over again, only to discover that they contain something I never understood was there before. It gives me new enthusiasm and excitement for the message that keeps revealing itself, and I pray that the message that I’m sending you will be valuable and if you find it so, please share these podcasts with your friends. Thank you. Good morning. Today we celebrate the 19th Sunday in Ordinary time. The opening prayer Almighty ever living God, whom taught by the Holy Spirit we dare to call Father Bring, we pray to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters we may merit to enter into the inheritance which you have promised 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 The Book of Wisdom 18 the Night of the Passover was known beforehand to our fathers that with sure knowledge of the oaths in which they put their faith, they might have courage. Your people awaited the salvation of the just and the destruction of their foes. When you punished our adversaries in this you glorified us whom you have summoned. For in secret the holy children of the good were offering sacrifice and putting into effect with one accord, the Divine institution, the Word of the Lord. Responsorial Psalm Bless the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.

Exalt you just in the Lord. Praise from the upright is fitting. Bless the nation whose God is the Lord the people he has chosen for his own inheritance. Bless the people the Lord has chosen to be his own. See, the eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear him, upon those who hope for his kindness to deliver them from death and preserve them in spite of famine. Bless the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.

Our soul waits for the Lord, who is our help and our shield. May your kindness, O Lord, be upon us. We have put our hope in you. Bless the people the Lord has chosen to be his own. A reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Hebrews, 11th chapter, first and second verse, and the eighth and 19th verse.

Brothers and sisters, faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen because it the ancients were well attested by faith. Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, he went out, not knowing where he was to go. By faith he sojourned in the promised land as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise. He was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and maker is God. By faith he received power to generate, even though he was past the normal age. And Sarah herself was sterile, for he thought that the one who had made a promise was trustworthy.

So it was that there came forth from one man himself as good as dead, descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky, as countless as the sands of the seashore. All these died in faith. They did not receive what had been promised, but saw it and greeted it from afar, and acknowledged themselves to be strangers and aliens on earth. Earth. For those who speak thus show that they are seeking a homeland. And if they have been thinking of the land from which they had come, they would have had to return.

But now they desire a better homeland, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them by faith. Abraham, when put to the test offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was ready to offer his only son, of whom it is said, through Isaac, descendants shall be bear your name. He reasoned that God was able to raise even from the dead and received Isaac back as a symbol the word of the Lord. Hallelujah. Stay awake and be ready for you do not know on what day your Lord will come.

Hallelujah. The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from St. Luke 12:32, 48 verse Jesus said to his disciples, do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out. An inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.

For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be gird your loins, light your lamps. Be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding. Be ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks. Blessed are those servants whom the Master finds vigilant on his arrival. And men, I say to you, he will gird himself, have them recline at table and proceed to wait on them. And should he come in the second or third watch, and find them prepared in this way.

Blessed are those servants. Be sure of this. If the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared for an hour. You do not expect the Son of Man will come. Then Peter said, lord, is this parable meant for us or for everyone?

And the Lord replied, who then is the faithful and prudent steward whom the master will put in charge of his servants to distribute the food allowance at the proper time. Blessed is that servant who his master on arrival, finds doing so. Truly, I say to you, the master will put the servant in charge of all his property. But if that servant says to himself, my master is delaying in coming and begins to beat the maidservants to eat and drink and get drunk, then that servant’s master will come, whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival. And then I say to you, he will gird himself, have the servants recline at table and proceed to wait on them. Surely come in the second or third watch and find them prepared in this way.

Blessed are those servants. Be sure of this. If the master of the house had known the hour when the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be prepared for an hour. You do not expect the Son of Man will come. The Gospel of the Lord Every time I begin to reflect upon a set of readings like this, I spend time trying to see a theme that runs through all of them.

And normally the readings are shorter and maybe not so complex. So this was a kind of an interesting challenge. I kept going back and forth trying to figure out what I wanted to say. But, you know, often I feel that when I’m talking to you, it’s in drawing things from the scripture. I’m not just trying to do an academic sort of activity or be a scripture scholar or anything like that. I feel like what I’m doing and God is using me to draw something out of these readings that you need right now, this moment.

And so I have a struggle at times just to try to, you know, make sure I’m not looking at trying to be, you know, a really insightful, you know, person, or whether I’m a servant and what I really want to be, where my heart is, I want to be a servant. There’s such a beautiful image of a God of the Old Testament being a God of a master God that basically, you know, took care of his people by destroying their enemies. And he was powerful. The difference between this God and the other gods was the pagan guides were gods that didn’t really care that much about the people that had to serve them. They were demanding and always demanding that they praise him and please him. And if they didn’t, he would punish them with horrible plagues and all kinds of things.

And then when God tries to explain who he is, he does something interesting. He builds on that knowledge they have of the gods and said, well, I’m one of those gods, but. But I’m different. And one of the first things he says to them that says that he’s different is the difference between Yahweh and the other gods is this God is committed to taking care of his people. He will never, ever desert them. That’s his promise.

So I want you to begin this set of readings with me to look at one of the things that’s the most important gift that God is going to give to his people if he’s going to take us on a journey. And that’s what he does. You and I are always in some kind of state of flux between an illusion and the truth. We are always moving in that direction. Hopefully that’s our destiny to understand more who we are, why we’re here, what we’re doing, who God is. And so one of the things that I feel that is so clearly stated in the story of Abraham, and not only does God reveal himself as a God who is for them, promises to be with them, promises never to leave them, and then also promises to take them on a journey.

He’s going to test Abraham. And Abraham, who is the master teacher of how we are to live, going on this journey with him, he has faith. Faith. That’s what I want to talk about today. Where’s your faith? What do you believe?

How do you see the world? How do you see yourself? Wherever you are on this journey, if you’re moving in that space from what you know to what you don’t know, if you’re facing things you never had to face before, you’re going to always be in a state of anxiety, somewhat a liminal space. You’re not where you were in the past. You’re not where you’re going to be. That’s the area I think a lot of us are in these days.

With things in the world the way they are, with things not seeming to work, nothing’s balanced, nothing seems to be trustworthy. What do we trust in? Where we go for some kind of peace? Well, it has to do with faith and Abraham’s our model. And listen to the way Hebrews and Paul in Hebrews describes faith. It’s such a cool way of saying it.

Faith is the realization of what is hoped for. Faith is the realization, the knowledge that what you hope for is happening is happening. Not it might happen or it could happen, or if you do everything right, it will happen. No, faith is the realization that anything you long for, especially the longings of your Heart will be taken care of. And what’s the most basic thing we long for as human beings? What’s our most core?

Strip back everything else. What do we want to do? We want to live. We want to exist. We don’t want to die in the sense of losing life. And God is saying, listen, I make a promise to you.

You are my children. As we said in the opening prayer, I’m your father and I’m not going to let anything happen to you that’s going to take away that longing you have for having a life that is full and rich and beautiful. That’s your inheritance. That’s the journey that I’m taking you on. That’s the promised land. And so he wants you to feel that conviction.

And he also says, you know, Paul says faith is also the evidence of things not seen. And what that means is, you know, that the thing is working in the direction that God has promised it will work, which is somehow for you, you know, that’s true. Even though you can’t see it, you can’t feel it. I don’t know where you are these days, but I have been, you know, off and on, feeling, I think, just scared, afraid. Where are we going to go? What’s going to happen?

Whether it’s climate, whether it’s politics, whether it’s medicine, whatever it is, we’re struggling with a sense of peace in the midst of a lot of anxiety. And the anxiety, if you’re not feeling it, I don’t think you’re paying attention to what’s going on in the world. It is a scary place right now. There’s no doubt about it. It doesn’t feel secure. But what a gift.

What a gift. Because on that journey that the Israelites took with Moses, it was anything but everything they expected. It wasn’t moving from one place to another. And each one was closer to the promised land. And they got better, and then they got better and they got better until they got to the final thing. It’s not that at all.

It was really a difficult journey. And Abraham becomes our model. So let’s look at the things that are described in Paul’s reading that makes it so clear that this wonderful thing that Abraham left us as a father in faith is clear. And the first thing is that Abraham basically had to go somewhere where he didn’t know where he was going. And that’s, you know, hard to do, but if you’re 20 years old, it’s not so hard. You know, you like to try something new.

Abraham is 90. His life is over, in a sense. Why would he think that God is going to take him to anywhere new, different? But he had a longing. He had a longing inside of him for a son. And think of that as his longing for having impact on the world.

Because to have a son at the time in the Old Testament was the only way you considered yourself as continuing on in the world. Because there was no talk about a resurrection after death. None of the first five books of the Bible have anything in it about dying and rising. But there was something about having posterity, having somebody continue after you that gave you a sense of meaning and purpose. And that’s what God had promised and put that seed inside of Abraham. And it didn’t happen for 90 years.

And he lived with that wondering and doubting and questioning and probably had given up hope. And then he’s called to do it because of a miracle. And the miracle was he had a sense, a real sense that God would answer his longing all his life. Like, he saw something, he felt something. What it was, it was the angels appeared, you know the story and basically tell him, hey, you’re going to have a son. THEY LAUGH Sarah laughed because they were well past the age of raising children.

It was hopeless, hopeless. And it happened. So here’s a man who had a dream inside of him that wasn’t fulfilled for so long and had given up hope. And then this sign comes to him from this God that says, no, it’s never too late for you or for me to work together to find the solution to what your core longing is. Think of that as your calling in life. Whatever there is this core thing inside of you said, I want to accomplish this.

And you keep moving toward it. But then it seems to be more and more elusive. Or like if we’re working for a world that is filled with peace and comfort and everyone’s unified and working together. Where’s that? It’s nowhere right now, it seems. So in that kind of moment, we need a sign.

We need a sign that we’re going to have it and get it. And the only sign that I’m calling you to pay attention to is Abraham, because he’s the model of what you have to do. He went so far as to trust in something that actually did. He got a glimpse that it was going to happen that was exciting to him. And then God said, I want you to kill your son. You know, I always wondered about that.

Why would God do that? Well, not only. It was a question of, obviously, we know why God did it. He was going to test him. But the thing is, why would Isaac do it? And it says in the passage we just listened to is he did it because he believed that God could even use the loss of that to keep a promise that would.

That would eventually get him what he wanted. He said he’ll bring him back to life. That’s what he said. I’ll do this sacrifice, but I know he’s going to come right back to me. That’s the trust we need. How do we trust in a God who says, I’ll be there in you, with you, to deal with everything going on.

And there’s no anxiety that should. Should remain in your core. You’ll feel it now and then, but not. Not all the time. And that image is so beautiful to me because what God is saying is that my work with you is to awaken in you, My presence. That’ll help you get through everything.

That’s my gift to you. That’s my food for you. That’s my nurturing you. And so you have this image in these readings about a God in the Old Testament. In the first reading, it’s a God of justice, and he destroys our enemies. That’s what the Israelites would say.

He’s great. That makes us feel good. All our enemies are slaughtered. And that master kind of power, God slowly dissolves over the Old Testament into the New Testament. And what do you have in Jesus? An entirely different God.

Not a God who’s demanding or controlling or even aggressively fighting evil and destroying it. Like, we got to fix everything that’s wrong in the world, get rid of everything that’s broken. Now you get this new image of this God who comes into the world to give us an idea of what we believe God will do for us. The promise he made to Abraham, he makes to you that we will find this promised land. The promised land is not in the Middle East. It is in your heart.

So what he’s saying, I want to be in your heart with you, ministering to you that images of the Master coming home and finding, you know, the servants doing their work. What is the work that we have? Building each other up in faith, giving each other confidence and trust. There’s anything you can give to people around you these days is give them a hopeful message that this is all for a reason. This is all moving in a direction. This is the way God works.

He takes us through the darkness, and then it gets to light. There’s no other way to get to the light. Things have to be bad before they get good. The ministry of Jesus in your heart. His presence in you is to awaken in you. And he’s God.

So he’s God in you, awakening you to this trust, the realization that everything you hope for is unfolding, is happening. It’s becoming, it’s beautifully orchestrated, it’s in the right time, it’s in the right place. And what we have to do is take those moments of anxiety and turn them into acts of faith. The most important thing to know about faith, it’s a gift. It’s not a thing you can do. The faith you want is the faith that you never face any of these difficulties alone.

He’s there in you, with you. So what you do to get faith is not to say, I’m going to muster up my own strength and I’ll have the strength inside of me to face anything that’ll never work. I muster up in myself a humble, beautiful prayer to God. I can’t face these things without help. I can’t understand what’s going on in my life without help. I can’t hope for something that I can’t see unless you somehow show it to me and give me a sense that you’re there with me.

That’s what I long for. That’s what I pray for. That’s what I’m preaching to you for. This morning. I want you to feel that kind of gift flowing inside of you. And when you do, there’s an immediate shift in your body.

You can feel something almost possessing you, just breaking out and leaving you. It’s called peace. It’s your inheritance. It’s your dad who’s promising it to you. Trust him. You will not disappoint.

Sam Sa Sam. A closing prayer Father, at the beginning of the Gospel of this set of readings, Jesus said to his disciples, don’t be afraid any longer, knowing that they were afraid. And he says, sell all your possessions, Give alms. Don’t hang on to any material thing or any way. The story’s unfolding as your treasure. Your treasure is.

It’s all in God’s hands, and he’s in you to help you do it. The indwelling presence is the greatest gift. And we ask God to fill you and fill me with that gift so that we can feel light, hope, peace, all of which is what God wants in the midst of anything he’s put us through, because there’s a reason and a purpose. Amen. The music in this program was composed and produced by Ryan Harner. I’m excited for the opportunity to awaken your spiritual journey.

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