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. We appreciate your listenership and if you find this program valuable, please subscribe and share with your friends. Share this program is funded with kind donations by listeners just like you. Make your donation@pastoralreflectionsinstitute.com the second Sunday of Easter Opening Prayer God of everlasting mercy, who in the very recurrence of the Paschal feast, kindle the faith of the people you have made your own increase. We pray the grace you have bestowed that all may grasp and rightly understand in what font they have been washed, by whose spirit they have been reborn, by whose blood they have been redeemed 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 Acts of the apostles 2 chapter 4247 they devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and of the communal life, to the breaking of bread and to the prayers. Awe came upon everyone and many wonders and signs were done. Through the apostles, all who believed were together and held all things in common. They would sell their property and possessions and divide them among all according to each one’s needs. Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple area, to the breaking of the bread in their homes.

They ate their meals with exaltation and sincerity of heart, praising God and enjoying favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. The Word of the Lord Responsorial Psalm Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love is everlasting. Let the house of Israel say, His mercy endures forever. Let the house of Aaron say, His mercy endures forever that those who fear the Lord say, His mercy endures forever. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love is everlasting.

I was hard pressed and was falling, but the Lord helped me. My strength and my courage is the Lord, for he has been my Savior. The joyful shout of victory in the tents of the just Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, his love is everlasting. The stones which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone by the Lord this has been done. It is wonderful in our eyes. This is the day the Lord has made.

Let us be glad and rejoice in it. Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, his love is everlasting. A reading from St. Peter, chapter one, verse three through nine. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept for you in heaven, who by the power of God are safeguarded through faith to a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the final time. In this you rejoice, although now for a little while you may have to suffer through various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that is perishable, even though tested by fire, may prove to be for praise, glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Although you have not seen him, you love him. Even though you do not see him, you believe in him. You rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy as you attain the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls, the word of the Lord. You believe in me, Thomas, because you have seen me, says the Lord. Blessed are they who have not seen me, but still believe. Alleluia.

The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from St. John, 31st verse. On the evening of the first day of the week, when the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, peace be with you. When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them, peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them whose sins you retain are retained. Thomas, called Didymus, one of the 12, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see the marks of the nails in his hands, put my finger into the nail marks, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.

Now a week later, his disciples were again inside, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst, and said, peace be with you. Then he said to thy put your finger here and see my hands. Bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe. Thomas answered and said to him, my Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, have you come to believe because you have seen me?

Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed the Gospel of the Lord. Take the next few moments as we listen to this music to ponder the images and the thoughts that come to you as you listen to these readings. The season of Easter is a commemoration, a remembering of an event in history that is so essential, so important to believe in. We know that human beings have evolved over thousands and thousands of years. We see a natural progression that moves human beings from isolated individuals, maybe violent toward each other, to people that begin to live together. And civilizations are born.

And for thousands and thousands of years they’ve lived without something, something that God intended from the beginning to give to his people. And that’s what we’ve celebrated in this Easter season, the impregnating, if I can use that word of a wisdom, a knowledge and understanding of why we’re here and what this whole world is about. Religion is the way in which we have an ability to imagine this whole relationship between God and man. And if you’re a believer, if you believe there is a God, and you believe this world has purpose and meaning, then it’s so important for you to understand exactly what God has been doing. He started off with this with us by a story in Genesis. And it says so clearly to us that there is, there is in this world that God has created human beings, Adam and Eve, and a God who is good and loving and caring, and a serpent or some kind of being that is bent on evil, that works against the work of God.

There are many ways to imagine it, but we could imagine it as a devil, as an evil force in the world. Yes, I think that’s one way to do it. But it’s also that part of human nature that falls back into a more primitive and self centered and even very destructive mode. And so what is set up at the very beginning is a tension between good and evil. And human beings seem to be prone to believing lies that are told to them by maybe you’d say by the devil, by evil, by a lower nature. And it’s difficult for us to keep our focus on what is true, what is real.

And so what I love about the whole Easter season is we look at the life of a man who came into the world that we are told and we believe was not just a human being, but a human being filled with divinity. He was God himself coming into the world to reveal something that was hidden until that moment. And what was it? What was hidden? Well, we know things that are mysterious more by their effect than how they work. And so one of the things we listen to in Peter, in the reading, it’s clear that he says something has been given to us that creates inside of each of us something new, a birth.

And what he calls it is a living hope. A living hope. As you listen to the words as they unfold, he’s talking about something that we inherit, something imperishable, something undefiled, unfading, something powerful. And what it is, and this is hard to grasp, it is the guarantee that if we believe in this gift, we trust in it, open our heart to it. Whatever this thing about life that we’re involved in, whatever life is for, and we know that it has various trials and there’s suffering and all that. Well, whatever that’s all about is somehow about something that comes at the end, at the end of the story, when this world is gone as we know it and there is an eternal kingdom.

It’s an amazing thing to hope in that somehow all of this will make sense one day. Then we will find ourselves in the world that we all long for. And the minute you try to figure out what that’s like, you’ll get into trouble. Just imagine the promise is something good is coming. That’s what’s important. And there’s a living birth of something in you living that gives you the ability to deal with the world as it is when it comes to its darkness, its evil, its pain.

So let’s look at the way this first message was received. So we’re looking in the first reading Acts of the apostles, story of what happened after Jesus rose and ascended to his Father. And we see that they did four things on a regular basis. They were devoted to doing a work of listening again to the words of Jesus through the apostles, of trying to understand what he was saying and what he was living out for us, more about what he did than what he said. And then it led to a communal life. And the communal life was their meals together, they were breaking bread together, and they were praying together, listening to the story as a community, being fed by that community, sustained by that community.

And they were aware of something wonderful happening in that community. And it was the fact that they were there completely for each other. They would share everything they had with other people in the community. And what it meant is that there was a new image of the way the world could be. And I don’t know what the world was like at the time, but I don’t think it was anything like what you see in these disciples and in their followers. And we know the famous quote.

Everyone looked at these people and wondered about them. They’re different. And it’s look how they care for each other. So it seems clear to me that there is this invitation in this set of readings to do what Easter engages us in. If you do believe that God came into the world, if you do believe these words have life if you want to live by them, and if you can have something in you that gives you the experience of something that is hope filled, that you will be somewhere, someplace with people that you love in a way that is so much like what our heart longs for, then you’ll have it. You’ll have this gift.

And I love when Jesus came back to the disciples and this is what he says to all of us who struggle with belief. Every time we fall into the darkness and don’t believe in anything that’s going to be coming that’s better than this miserable life we’re in, we fall into a depression, into that place of fear and shame, this presence, this thing, this God, you know, how do you describe the spirit of this God that enters into you, that gives you this new birth to hope? It’s not in the words alone. It’s not just in the spirit. I don’t know. To not know is a real interesting disposition to accept, because we can’t know for sure what it’s about, but we know it brings peace.

And so into the darkness and the shame and the fear that we often have about the world as it is, comes this spirit and says, I want you to do something. I want you to get together and do two things. I want you to listen and ponder what this world is about. Whether you do that in a religion or you do it on your own, it’s important to do that, to have questions and to somehow go to whatever it is that can feed you. And so you need some kind of encouragement from other people. It’s like it’s the beauty of AA or any meeting or anything that is wanting to change radically who we are inside.

We need a community to help us do that, because we’re not good at doing it alone. And then we need to do the most important thing, forgiveness. Everything that Jesus taught can be reduced to this. A way of accepting suffering, everything without anger, without resentment, without fear that it’s all going in the dark, destructive direction that we fear. You have to forgive, not just receive forgiveness from God, who tells you that your sins will not keep his love or his care away from you. No, it’s more about.

That’s one thing, and it’s a very important thing, but you have to realize what he’s saying. Is I want you to forgive others. And that others is bigger than we think. It’s not just the person that offends us, but it’s everything that seems negative to us as it’s manifested ourself in the people around us, to us, and ourself as the negative things we do to each other. We have to forgive that, forgive what’s done to us and forgive God for doing what he’s done. And that’s put us in a world that is difficult and painful and dark and hard at times.

And he doesn’t give us enough understanding to say, oh, I’ve got it, I understand it. No, it’s got to remain a mystery. It’s a living thing, this hope that we have in God. It can die, it can get sick, it can get weak. It goes silent. And what nurtures it?

Communal life. Communal life that has a single focus of understanding. Something that is not clear, not easy to grasp, but is essential to finding peace. If we have people around us that believe that, it is easier to believe. And if we find ourselves with a new spirit that is different than our human nature, it lifts us above what we normally feel. The resentment, the anger, the disappointment, and say, no, I accept all of that.

Because one day that will be gone, one day that won’t be there, and life will be what we wanted it to be. Well, how’s that going to work? What’s it going to be like? Don’t ask those questions. Just trust, just hope. And what you’ll see is what Jesus was revealing more than his words.

You saw him doing the most amazing things called miracles. They came in two forms. One, they were mostly therapeutic. Eyes that could see, ears that could hear, mouth that could speak, hands that could work, arlegs that could get you somewhere. But he also drove out demons. And the most interesting thing about that is he addressed the demon in the person and told the demon to leave.

Is that what happens with evil in the world? Is there a power that gets inside of them that starts ruling their life? Who knows? I can’t describe. It’s hard to describe. But it’s important to know.

There is a battle going on and we’ve been promised victory. That’s our hope. That’s the Easter message. Amen. The closing prayer. Father, your promise is real.

Your desire is that we believe it so we can live a life that is life flowing from it. Not darkness, not discouragement. Keep us faith filled, hope filled, as we continue to witness, as you witness to the world, the future that is coming, the life that is promised. Amen. The music in our program was composed and produced by Ryan Harner for this show. 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 non profit 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 2023 SAM.