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 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The Opening Prayer O God, from whom all good things come, grant that we who call on you in our need may at your prompting discern what is right by your guidance. Do it to 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 Genesis, third chapter nine to the fifteenth verse after the man Adam had eaten of the tree, the Lord called to the man and asked him, where are you? He answered, I heard you in the garden, but I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.
Then he asked, who told you that you were naked? You have eaten then from the tree which I have forbidden you to eat. The man replied, the woman whom you put here with me. She gave me the fruit from the tree, and so I ate it. Lord God then asked the woman, why did you do such a thing? The woman answered, the serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.
Lord God said to the serpent, because you have done this, you shall be banned from all the animals and from all the wild creatures. On your belly shall you crawl, and dirt shall you eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers. He will strike at your head while you strike at his heel. The word of the Lord with the Lord there is mercy and fullness of redemption. A Reading from the New testament from the second letter of St.
Paul to the Corinthians Brothers and sisters, since we have the same spirit of faith according to what is written, I believed, therefore I spoke. We too believe, and therefore we speak, knowing that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus and place us with you in his presence. Everything indeed is for you that the grace bestowed in abundance on more and more people may cause the thanksgiving to overflow to your glory. Therefore we are not discouraged. Rather Although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. This momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
As we look not to what is seen, but to what is unseen. What is seen is transitory, but what is unseen is eternal. We know that if our earthly dwelling, a tent, should be destroyed, we have a building from God, a dwelling not made with hands, eternal in heaven. The Word of the Lord. Hallelujah Verse. Now the ruler of the world will be driven out, says the Lord.
And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself. The Gospel is taken from St. Mark, third chapter, 20th to the 35th verse. Jesus came home with his disciples. Again. The crowd was gathered, making it impossible for them even to eat.
When his relatives heard of this, they set out to seize him, for they said, he’s out of his mind. The scribes who had come from Jerusalem said, he’s possessed by Beelzebul and by the prince of demons. He drives out demons. Summoning them, he began to speak to them in parables. How can Satan drive out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand.
And if a house is divided against itself, the house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand. That is the end of him. But no one can enter a strong man’s house to plunder his property. Unless he first ties up the strong man. Then he can plunder the house.
And may I say to you, all sin and all blasphemies that people utter will be forgiven them. But whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin. They had said, he has an unclean spirit. His mother and his brothers arrived, standing outside. They sent word to him and called him. A crowd seated around him told him, you mother and your brother and your sisters are outside asking for you.
But he said to them in reply, who are my mother and my brothers? And looking around to those seated in the circle, he said, here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother. The Gospel OF the Lord Sam Sa we’re now in the ordinary time of the church year, which means we’re going to go over the extraordinary life of Jesus. And in that life we have a story. A story of a human being who, like us, grew in age and wisdom, ended up living a life different than the ones around him.
He never Married. He was incredibly interested in scripture and spent 30 years of his life studying and wondering and pondering and meditating. And then at age 30, he stood up in his hometown and stated something that seemed almost completely insane. He somehow had a feeling that he had a message deep in his heart that had been revealed to him by God. That he was the one who was to come and to open the minds and hearts of human beings to the truth, the truth of who they are and who God is. And the ultimate plan that he began when he called Abraham, the ultimate plan being fulfilled, and he was the one who was to proclaim it.
He was the one to announce the kingdom. John the Baptist was, in a way, his mc. He’s the one that announced him to the world. This is the one. This is the one. He’s the one you have to listen to.
So what’s his message? What is it that Jesus gave? How can we summarize that message? Well, one of the things he said when he spoke in his hometown that Sabbath, he said that he knew that the work of God that he was there to perform had something to do with awakening something in human beings that laid dormant. And what it was, was awakening in mankind. And that there was a way out of a world of violence, destruction, shame, fear, anger.
There was something that was offered to them. And what was being offered was described by its effect. And it went like, eyes will be opened. You’ll see what you’ve been blind to, whatever thing that keeps you from being who God intends you to be, the prison that you’re in, the. That’s going to be broken open, and all the burdens you feel about life so that it’s somewhat joyless and not about pleasure, but about struggle, that’s going to change dramatically. And what you’re going to find is there is literally a world that God has created for us that is beautiful and it’s.
It’s filled with joy and peace and most especially freedom. Freedom. The United States of America is founded on that. And it’s been an amazing journey to watch a country that was established not on the authority of its leadership solely, but on the rights, the needs, the wants of individuals and the government. Was there more to protect the ability of a human being to make decisions about how they live their life, who they worship, what they do, freedom. So if we see Jesus coming to bring this new freedom of an inner voice that’s deep within us, guiding us, and what we have to look at carefully is sin.
And I love the Adam and Eve story every time I Go back to it. I see something I didn’t see before, but I want to draw from that reading. You just listened to something about the nature of sin. You know it’s based in a lie. The serpent lied to them. And what the lie contained was a way of being in the world that created separation, dividing the world into good people and bad people, right and wrong, valuable and less valuable.
It’s, in a way, a kind of binary world, but it’s more complex than that. It gave to human beings this lie that you have the right to judge, you have the right to control, you have the right to make things happen. And it sounds like every adolescent who begins to leave the comfort of a parental household and goes off and wants to make their own mark. I really think the story is not about some horrific lie, but about our own story, our own salvation history. We start our independent life by taking charge, deciding who is in and who is out and what is right and what is wrong. And it’s all that.
And what it creates is separation. So look at what’s the first words that were spoken to sinful human beings from God? Not what did you do, but where are you? Like you’re not with me. I don’t feel you’re with me anymore. What is it?
Where you’ve gone, you’ve gone somewhere else. You’re not in harmony anymore. And they say, well, it’s not our fault. I mean, we were tricked. We were tricked. Well, I love that because it makes human beings in the story seem a little less malicious.
But the malicious one, the one that divided division is going to be punished by receiving what he’s seducing these young creatures into. And that is a divided world. And so what you see the curse implying is, okay, I don’t know whether serpents walked, but now, from now on, you’re going to crawl on the ground and human beings are going to smash your heads. Whenever you see a snake, your first instinct is usually destroy it. Not, oh, let’s bring it home. They crush its head.
And yet the serpent, to protect itself, is to go to the lowest part of your body and bite you on the heel. You’re running away. Interesting. So the fascinating part of that is when you see Adam and Eve choosing this world of division, the first two human beings that lived, Cain and Abel, ended up one killing the other. It’s when there’s division, there is that desire to control or to destroy. And that’s the issue that Christianity is seeking to free us from.
I remember, gosh, it’s been 58 years ago that I entered the seminary. And I remember when I walked into that place and I put on my cassock and walked around, I knew this was the place I wanted to be. But there wasn’t that much interest in being a priest in the classic sense. I mean, I thought priests were nice and good, but they didn’t seem to be very, I don’t know, influential in my life. I didn’t know any priests personally. They were always ritualizing something on the altar, and there was something in that that was attractive to me, but they didn’t seem real, like real people.
And so here I was, choosing to be one. And yet I said, the one thing I want to do is find out what is really real, what is true, what is the message of Christianity? If you peel away all denominations and you look at all the different ways in which denominations create different rules and regulations, and, you know, one’s better than the other, the world of division shows its head again. I don’t know. I knew there had to be something universal. And so I’ve always tried to find the universal truth of Christianity, and I tried not to focus on denominational differences.
That’s been the heart of my ministry on this radio program. And it seems to reach a certain group of people that I think are hungry for something more, I think simple and pure and direct. And so we see in the next set of readings this image of. In Paul, like whatever it is you believe, however you see the world, that’s how you’re going to act. That’s how you’re going to. He says, I believe.
So I spoke. And what is it you have to believe? We have to believe in what’s unseen and what’s unseen. Unseen is all the essential things that happen in your spiritual life between you and God, you and other people. It’s not. Christianity is so much more than being nice, being polite.
It’s more than, you know, doing things you’re told by an authority figure. It’s more unseen. It’s more of an inner work of transformation, of a God who said, I want to dwell inside of you. The most dramatic thing that Jesus was teaching is the indwelling presence of God in a human being. It was a blasphemy. That’s why the Pharisees saw Jesus when he started talking about intimacy with God.
You’re blaspheming. You can’t say God is that close to us, that God loves that way, that God forgives. You can’t. We’re in charge of doling out forgiveness. We’re in charge of telling people who God is, don’t tread on our world and don’t take away our power, our ability to control. And so it’s a shadow of every institution that’s ever claimed that name of God as their source.
Because the most exciting thing about the fullness of the message of God is the freedom he gives us to trust in that inner voice in our hearts, creating in us a space of goodness and life, that presence of God inside of us. That in the teaching of the Catholic Church on conscience, which is the most beautiful thing, read it in the catechism. It’s, it’s all about the dignity and the worth of every individual, because the God who made him is in him, guiding him and making the ultimate decisions as what is right and wrong. The authority of the church is valuable in keeping order. It’s also valuable in giving us good advice. But I don’t think the church’s authority was ever intended to be in place of you struggling with the issue you’re dealing with, and with God’s help and God’s wisdom and your own self knowledge, you come to a decision and the church says that decision must be followed.
Your obligation is to follow your conscience. So we look at the gospel and it’s so perfect because if you look at the experience people had initially of Jesus, it’s the same, I think, reaction we have when you see religion as it was always intended to be a thing given to each individual person personally so that they can speak the truth, see the truth, live it. So what you see is his family coming. And they were not open to the truth because they couldn’t fathom the fact that their brother relative would end up being a voice of God. There was no way they could wrap their mind around that. And so rather than opening their mind to it, they decided to shut him up, to say he’s nuts, write it off, tie him up, tie the message up.
And the leaders of the church are caught in a classic projection of their sin onto Jesus. They are the ones that want to destroy the message of Jesus. They’re the ones that want to silence his message of freedom and hope and life and peace. They want to rob us of the authority that God’s presence in us creates so that we can be guided by his wisdom, his truth. SAM the closing prayer Father, your inner voice is your great gift to us. Your truth, your life, living within us, guiding us, directing us, opening our heart to everything that we need to become in order to bring the world to the place that you have intended it.
To be a place of peace and joy and true freedom. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Every year I take a group of people to Tuscany and to visit some very, very sacred, beautiful places. They’re in Orvieto, in Assisi, a beautiful monastery in La Verna. It’s in November from the 2nd to the 9th this year and if you’re interested please go to my website and hit the events t and then you’ll have a full description of what we do.
It never ceases to amaze me how much it changes people’s perspective and opens up a newer world that they haven’t seen before. 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.
