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 Good morning. Today we celebrate the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
The opening prayer O God, who in the abasement of your Son, have raised up a fallen world, fill your faithful with holy joy, for on those you have rescued from slavery to sin, you bestow eternal gladness 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 Zechariah 9:10 Thus says the Lord. Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion. Shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem. See your king shall come to you a just Savior.
Is he meek and riding on an ass On a colt, the fowl of an ass. He shall banish the chariots from Ephraim and the horse from Jerusalem. The warrior’s bow shall be banished, and he shall proclaim peace to the nations. His dominion shall be from sea to sea and from the river to the ends of the earth. The Word of the Lord I will praise your name forever, my King and my God. I will extol you, O my God and King, and I will bless your name forever and ever.
Ever will I bless you and I will praise your name forever and ever. I will praise your name forever, my King and my God. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, of great kindness. The Lord is good to all and compassionate toward all his works. I will praise your name forever, my King and my God. Let all your works give you thanks, O Lord.
Let your faithful ones bless you. Let them discourse of the glory of your kingdom and speak of your might. I will praise your name forever, my king and my God. The Lord is faithful in all his words, holy in all his works. The Lord lifts up all who are falling, raises up all who are bowed down. I will praise your name forever, my King and my God.
A Reading from the New Testament from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, 8th chapter, 9th verse and the 11th to the 13th verse Brothers and sisters, you are not in the flesh. On the contrary, you are in the Spirit. If only the Spirit of God dwells in you, whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. If the Spirit of the one who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the one who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your moral bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. Consequently, brothers and sisters, we are not debtors to the flesh to live according to the flesh.
For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live the Word of the Lord. Hallelujah. Verse Blessed are you, Lord of heaven and earth. You have revealed to little ones the mysteries of the kingdom. The gospel for this Sunday is taken from St.
Matthew 11:25 30. At that time Jesus exclaimed, I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. For although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned, you have revealed them to the little ones. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.
Come to me, all who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light. 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. Sam SA the beauty of this particular set of readings is found in its promise.
Life is not supposed to be a burden. It is not supposed to be something that robs us of a sense of well being. It’s not supposed to be something filled with shame and fear. Yet we are often find ourselves in that kind of world. And this is such a clear statement in all three readings that God has done something unique and wonderful and he didn’t do it in the beginning. The Old Testament is a is a very important book to examine carefully and first and foremost you see so many references in the Old Testament to the coming of Jesus and this new life and this new earth, this new world that’s going to be created.
But it wasn’t created in the Old Testament. The Old Testament is filled with fear and shame and anger. And we see God angry at his people willing to destroy them. We see people constantly destroying each other. And we look at this way that people were living and their performance was terrible. So God came along and gave him the ten commandments which is a way of telling you how to perform, how to do things.
And you’re supposed to not do things, do negative things to each other, and you’re supposed to trust in God. But the Old Testament didn’t give the. Didn’t give people what they needed in order to, you know, not only live according to the ten Commandments, but to go beyond them. And that’s what the New Testament is all about. That’s what the revelation of Jesus is all about. A new heaven, a new earth, a new way.
And yet we go back and listen to the Old Testament and we think that this is God speaking to you and to me. And we can get caught up in a kind of darkness and an importance of how we’re performing and worrying about whether we’re earning salvation. And all of that gets caught up in our imaginations and in our minds mostly. And this set of readings just blows that all apart and is saying that the flesh, living in the flesh is living in a world where you are told what to do and you struggle to do it. And if you do it, you earn something wonderful. And if you do not do it, you are going to be deeply and powerfully punished.
It’s justice, it’s performance. It’s called the flesh. I remember as a young Catholic growing up, and when you first receive first communion and all those wonderful things and you learn you’re not supposed to disobey, that was the big sin. Don’t disobey your parents, don’t disobey your teachers or what the priest said to you. And it was also the whole image of not only that, but you were supposed to. As you get older, your body’s awakening and you’re told that anything you do sexually of any kind is going to be a sin.
And you lose God’s favor the minute you commit a sexual act. And you live with that, you know, and you feel, well, I know what the flesh is. The flesh is my body. This body that longs for intimacy or longs for release or whatever. And nothing could be further from the truth. The flesh is not our human nature in itself.
It is human nature without something, without spirit, without divinity. If we could just make ourselves conscious and clear about this one single thing. The Old Testament is about performance. Deeds, reward, punishment. And it’s necessary at the beginning of someone’s life. Even now, today, it works, but then it evolves into something so much more amazing and mystical and wonderful.
And it’s called God’s spirit. God’s presence inside of you, living there, resonating life out to those around you and creating in you an amazing understanding of the way life works. Life is not supposed to be necessarily easy in the sense of not difficult and no problems, no pain, no suffering, no. When Jesus is talking about a life without struggle and without, you know, it’s easy, it’s almost effortless. Well, there is a way to live in the world accepting its imperfection in the imperfection of individuals where it doesn’t create inside of you rage and anger and resentment. And there’s a way to deal with your own faults, your own fear, your own shame and that of others in a way that is easy and it’s not that it goes away, but that you understand this is part of what life is.
And resentment against someone else, shame for whatever you’ve done, anger that it’s too hard or whatever, all those things are the things that can be dealt with in a different way. And they become not a burden and, but a kind of tool that teaches and opens your eyes to a way of life that you do not want to participate in. So what Jesus is trying to say to us so clearly in his ministry is that when you’re living in the flesh, trying to earn my father’s affection, facing always your own shame and your own fear, you will never enter the kingdom of God. You will be in a place of stress and worry and anxiety. Look at the Old Testament and look at what happened at the end of almost 2000 years of trying to live under this notion of justice. And when Jesus came along and revealed who he really is, and that his whole notion of you is nothing other than something he sees as beautiful, loves what he created.
He is the Father, he is the Son, he is all things. And he sees everything as beautiful and everything as having meaning and purpose and working together. And he wants to reveal that to the world. And what did the world that was living then, the religion at the time, it destroyed him. And that’s always going to be the shadow of religion. Religion thrives in power over people, telling them how to act, reminding them that they need to be better.
That’s not the message of Jesus. The message of Jesus is you are human. You have faults, you have frailties, you have fears, and you have shame. And I’m come to release you from that. I’ve forgiven everything you’ve ever done and will ever do. Not because you deserve it, but because I choose to.
And I know if you know you’re loved and if you know you’re held in that kind of esteem in God the Father, God the Son are the same. That when you see God looking at you and loving what you are, you will change. And when the scripture says this spirit will be given to anyone that allows it to happen. I mean, it’s anyone to whom Jesus wishes to give it. Do you think Jesus doesn’t wish to give someone love? Does he not wish to forgive someone who’s such a horrible sinner?
No, he is forgiven. He is love. He is everything that we long for. And yet he stays at a distance as we focus on our performance and forget about what presence really means. It means allowing God to enter into you, see all that you are, all that you’ve done, look into your eyes and tell you how wonderful you are created to be, all your potential. And he said, would you let me be with you?
Would you let me be in you? And if you allow me in you, I will minister to others. That’s what I want you to do. I’m not focused so much on your performance, but I’m focused on what you are potentially to me, my instrument, my hands, my eyes, my feet in the world. I want you to allow me to work through you, even in ways you’ll never know and in ways you’ll see and be in awe of how God has used you to accomplish something for someone else. Saint Catherine of Sienna has a wonderful line.
She said to God once when she was minister or with God or Jesus, they’re the same. But I think she had a mystical experience of Jesus saying, what can I do? How can I show you how much I love you? And Jesus said, I don’t need your love, but you want to please me. I mean, if that is something you want to do, love everybody around you. That’s what I want.
That’s what I came into the world to engage in, in a life in you, my spirit dwelling in you, so that you can be what I was. And when you see the miracles I performed, they’re all about. They’re all almost medicinal. I mean, eyes that can see, ears that can hear, tongue that can speak, hands that can work, feet that can get you to where you need to be. All of that you are able to do for your brothers and sisters. If you will simply open your heart to the spirit of God dwelling in you, that first has to remove within you any fear and any shame and any anger about the world that God has created.
It is exactly as it’s supposed to be. It’s exactly the place that God has longed to create. At this point in our history and our consciousness grows and grows and grows and has since Adam and Eve. And we’re getting closer and closer to awareness of who we really are. As a species filled with divinity, we are fully human. At the same time we are filled with divinity.
And when we focus on that, and we know that that’s there, and it’s not only there for others, but also for us, will know the joy and the peace and the love that is our inheritance. It’s such a basic message, but so easy to miss, so easy to ignore. Amen. The Closing Prayer Father, your love is beyond our imagining, your presence so intimate, so close to us. Bless us with all abandonment to ways in which we’ve imagined the world to be, and open us to the way it truly is. 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 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 of 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.