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 Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

The Opening Prayer O God, who pleased to give us the shining example of the Holy Family, graciously grant that we may imitate them in practicing the virtues of family life in the bonds of charity, and so in the joy of your house. Delight one day in eternal rewards through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, Holy One, God forever and ever. Amen. A reading from the Old Testament from the book of Sirach, 3rd chapter, 2nd through the 6th verse, and 12th to the 14th verse. God sets a father in honor over his children. A mother’s authority he confirms over her sons.

Whoever honors his father atones for sins and preserves himself from them. When he prays, he’s heard, he stores up riches who reveres his mother. Whoever honors his father is gladdened by children, and when he prays is heard. Whoever reveres his father will live a long life. He who obeys his father brings comfort to his mother. My son, take care of your father when he is old.

Grieve him not as long as he lives, even if his mind fail, be considerate of him. Revile him not all the days of his life. Kindness to a father will never be forgotten. Firmly planted against the debt of your sins. House raised in justice to you the Word of the Lord. Sponsoil Psalm Blessed are those who fear the Lord and walk in his ways.

A reading from the New Testament The Letter of St. Paul to the Colossians 3:12 17 Brothers and sisters, put on as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another. If one has a grievance against another, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also do and over all these put on love that is the bond of perfection, and let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body and be thankful. Let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom and teach you and admonish one another since singing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God, and whatever you do, in word or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. The Word of the Lord. Alleluia Verse Let the peace of Christ control your hearts and let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.

The Gospel for this feast of the holy family is taken from St. Matthew, second chapter 1323. When the Magi had departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, rise. Take the child and his mother, flee to Egypt and stay there until I tell you Herod is going to search for the child to destroy him. Joseph rose and took the child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt. He stayed there until the death of Herod and that what the Lord had said through the prophet might be fulfilled.

Out of Egypt I called my son. When Herod had died, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt and said, rise. Take the child and his mother and go to the land of Israel, for those who sought the child’s life are dead. He rose, took the child and his mother, and went to the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was ruling over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go back there. And because he had been warned in a dream, he departed for the region of Galilee.

He went and dwelt in a town called Nazareth, so that what had been spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled. He shall be called a Nazarene. The Gospel of the Lord. There’s something so fascinating about the Old Testament when it comes to focusing on the birth and life of Jesus. And that is simply that there’s over 300 references in the Old Testament to who this Messiah would be, where he’d be born, where he would live, what his name would be. It’s amazing.

I even discovered in getting ready for this homily that the very term Nazareth comes from a Hebrew word that means branch. And when Jesus end up through a series of insights that Joseph received in a dream, and they end up living in Nazareth and raising him there. It so fits the image that we started the season of Advent with where this great tree, the Old Testament, in a sense, was cut back and a new branch, a new twig, started growing. The place where this twig grew up is called the branch. Interesting but in all those images, we see something coming that is radically, radically new. And I think of all the things that I think of about Christianity is we believe part of it, but we won’t take in the whole message.

We won’t grab the whole thing and swallow it and let it come in, because it’s too different. It’s too transforming, changing. It changes everything. And I know and you know that human beings both long for change because they want to grow and they develop, but they also terrified of it when it takes away the things that are familiar, things they’ve always done. And sometimes people can make an actual virtue out of saying, I’m never going to change. I’ve always thought this way.

I’ll never change it. I’m not susceptible to all these new ideas. Nothing would be more tragic for a person who’s open to the Christian tradition to say, I don’t want to change. Because the one thing about the Old Testament is it was focused on something quite different than the New Testament. And it was supposed to be different because people were different. But the reason I chose that song, Deep river, is because the main theme of the Old Testament is God entering into people’s lives and wanting to take them on a journey from slavery to freedom.

Slavery to freedom, the promised land, milk and honey, everything wonderful. Well, who was the slave in that whole story? What were they enslaved to? Obedience to a law, obedience to external rules, Obedience that were designed to help people who were in a situation that I would like to describe as simply very, very young. It’s like you don’t give a child at 4 or 7 or 8 or 11 or even sometimes 15 or 16, freedom to go and do whatever they think is best. They’re bound to authority.

So it’s interesting, on this Feast of the Holy Family, we’re going to be talking about the transition between Old and New Testament in a certain way. At least that’s my theme for this homily. And what I think is so fascinating about the Holy Family is that. It ushered in an entirely new vision of what it was like to live in community. Community. The family.

The family. It’s impossible, I think, to put the Holy Family out there as a model of family life. After all, Joseph had married Mary, and according to the Catholic Church, one of its teaching is that they never consummated the marriage, that they had only one son. That’s the tradition in the Catholic Church. And so here is a man who never has sex with his wife, who has one son, and he’s God. So, I mean, you’ll imitate that.

How do you do that? Now, there’s something in the holy family that you have to imitate. And what it is is who each of them are, who they are. And they’re not an average mother, an average father, an average child. So how do you understand this family dynamic, this incredibly interesting father who’s willing to give up everything to surrender to a mystery that’s way beyond him, and a woman who’s taken a risk and risked her whole reputation, everything, to follow this mysterious messenger, this angel and this child Jesus who comes along, who doesn’t get married, and. And he’s basically something unique.

He’s not just another human. He is 100% human. But he also happens to be a human that possesses this unique quality that we are all working toward, and that is the quality of having God inside of him. So we have a God incarnate, a celibate couple. So who are they? Well, think of them this way.

Think of. This is going to stretch, maybe, but think of fatherhood. Who is our father? God? So this dynamic, this trio, this unity is between a father, his son, and this mysterious, feminine, unique figure who I want to call spirit. It’s the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And Holy Spirit is that part of us, that spiritual part of us that can understand and receive the mystery of something inside of us growing that isn’t us. And that thing that’s growing in us along with our broken humanity, is the divinity of God. That is the mystery. Each of us become, in a sense, pregnant through this mysterious thing called redemption, where God actually enters into us and lives there and we give birth to him every time we live, the way he’s invited us to live, every time we are who he calls us to be. Every time we resonate something out of them, out of ourselves, it’s Him. So let’s look at this first reading again.

Maybe it’s the first time we looked at it, but it says very much that a father is. Is the main figure. You must obey the father. The father’s everything. You tell any child today that their total obligation their entire life is to do exactly what their father says. They’ll look at you and say, well, that’s risky, depending on who the father is.

So you can’t take it literally. But what it seems it is being said in the Old Testament is your job in the Old Testament before you grew up enough to have your own capacity to make decisions based on a wisdom that comes into you through God’s presence in you. You’re going to have to follow authority. So the Old Testament is all about following authority, and we don’t like letting go of it. The church loves the authority and hates to see us let go of it. Do what your father says and you’ll always be all right in the Holy Spirit.

Your mother, she loves it when you’re surrendering to the Father because the Father is truth. So if you can understand in the image of the holy family, then, yeah, the truth is there. You need to surrender to it always. You need to be in touch with the feminine side of you that’s open to receive that mysterious truth. And then you’ve got to put it incarnate in the world through this power and presence of God inside of us. That’s the family we got to imitate.

But look at the next reading after we’ve listened to an Old Testament reading. It says you have a debt, your sins. The one way you can get over the debt that you owe is to do everything you’re told. Now, that is a very precise, beautiful description of the Old Testament. And we still live there. I’d say, I don’t know if I can say most of us, but certainly most of us have that in our background that feels comfortable.

And it’s the teaching of religion. It’s the teaching of any authoritarian figure in your life. It’s your parents when you’re young, do what you’re told. That’s as simple as that. Into that comes the New Testament reading from Paul. What is he saying about relationships?

He doesn’t say, obey people. I love this. He says, the first thing you have to do in relationship is have compassion. Forgive them, honor them in a sense that they are valuable. Be kind, be gentle, be compassionate, be understanding. Forgive everyone as you have been forgiven.

Isn’t that amazing? Instead of surrender yourself to a higher power, work with that power. And when it tells you the truth, that’s wonderful. And when it tells you a lie, you just have nothing but understanding, compassion. You know, I understand. I can forgive my parents for teaching me things that were destructive to me that took me years and years to get over.

I can do that. I can forgive a church who has laid guilt and shame upon me forever. And I can still love the qualities of that religion, its ritual, its eucharistic, the eucharistic presence, the. The community it creates, the forgiveness that it calls us into. I can love, love, love that part of it and still forgive the authoritarian part that just doesn’t want to let go. So we look at the gospel and what’s the gospel about?

It’s about this message. It’s not just about a man, Jesus. It’s about the message. This Trinitarian family dynamic, this incredible invitation to be free and to be yourself and all that intends you to be. That is the message that is being received by the world. How open arms, excited.

Thank you for freeing me. Thank you for bringing me to a promised better land. No, it was always and will always be rejected by some core part of humanity. It’s the part that’s afraid. It’s the part that can’t be free. It’s the part that likes to be under control because it likes to control other people.

So here is this beautiful incarnate message born into the world, innocent as a child and a king. The king of the most powerful force in the world at the time. Rome decides to destroy them, destroy the message. He goes out and kills every child under 2 years old. And so Joseph is aware that this child is carrying a message that’s going to be hated and rejected. And so he listens to these three times, four times an angel comes in and says, be careful, even though you don’t fully know and no one has even listened to Jesus, there’s enough in the prophecies of the Old Testament to terrify the people in control.

And they know this king is coming. And if this happens to be the one, they’re going to make sure he never gets a chance to give his message of freedom, of joy, of peace, of forgiveness. There is no more debt to our God for our sins. If you understand the teaching and the message and the redemption that comes to us through Jesus. There is nothing for us to be afraid of. All we need to do is to receive this gift.

And every time one receives this kind of forgiveness, this kind of understanding, this kind of compassion, they are going to have the best chance they could ever have to be that kind of person in the world. That’s all it is. You’re forgiven, you’re loved, you’re cared for. You really believe that? Guess what? You’re going to start doing that first for yourself and then for other people.

Does that sound like a scary message? No. So who would it scare? Who would be so terrified of it? Anybody who feels that. My job is to control, judge, rule over other people.

And there’s a thing in every human being, we’ve got it, it’s great part of us, if we can get it under control. But it’s called our ego. It’s called that selfish, lower conscious self that just says it’s all about me. It is all about you. But not you in control, but you on the receiving end. You the one drinking in this incredible gift of understanding and compassion and forgiveness and unconditional love.

I mean, we’re made for that. We are. But those in charge are not ready to give it often, and even those who are longing for it most are afraid of what would mean to be truly free, to be listening to a God inside of me, to want more than anything else the truth and to want to be loved. In love it’s not easy, but once you do it, its life. Closing prayer. Father, your presence in our life is beyond our imagining.

It’s really hard for us to fathom your intimacy, your joy in being part of our human nature that you created with all of its weaknesses and frailty. You love it the way it is and you want to be a part of it as it grows and changes. Thank you for this gift. Help us to see it and believe it and not fall into the trap of hating our humanity because of its weaknesses, knowing that somehow that’s a way in which you’ve planned for us to grow and change and become so. Let us begin this new year with a new vision of you and our life and what you’re asking of us. 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.