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 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

The opening Prayer O God, strength of those who hope in you, graciously hear our pleas and since without you mortal frailty can do nothing, grant us always the help of your grace that in following your commands we may please you by our resolve and our deeds. For our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, who one God forever and ever. Amen. A Reading from the Old Testament from the book of Ezekiel 17:22 thus says the Lord, I too will take from the crest of the cedar, from its topmost branches tear off a tender shoot, and plant it on a high and lofty mountain. On the mountain heights of Israel I will plant shall put forth branches and bear fruit, and become a majestic cedar. Birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it, every winged thing in the shade of its boughs, and all the trees of the field shall know that I, the Lord, bring low the high tree, lift high the lowly tree, wither the green tree, and make the withered tree bloom.

As I the Lord have spoken, so will I do the Word of the Lord. Responsorial Psalm Lord, it is good to give thanks to you. A reading from St. Paul’s second letter of the Corinthians, fifth chapter six through the 10th verse. Brothers and sisters, we are always courageous, although we know that while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord. For we walk by faith, not by sight.

Yet we are courageous. We would rather leave the body and go home to the Lord. Therefore we aspire to please him, whether we are at home or away. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil. The Word of the Lord the seed is the word of God Christ is the sower. All who come to him will live forever.

The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from St Mark 4, 2634. Jesus said to the crowds, this is how it is with the kingdom of God. It is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land and would sleep and rise night and day, and through it all the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how. Of its own accord the land yields fruit. First the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the earth. When the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.

He said to what shall we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable can we use? For is like a mustard seed that when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all seeds of the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest plant and puts forth large branches so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade. With many such parables, he spoke the word to them as they were able to understand it. Without parables. He did not speak to them, but to his own disciples.

He explained everything in private. The Gospel of the Lord Satan. Sam Satan. We’ve entered ordinary time, the time when we simply reflect upon one of the evangelists, reflections on what it was like to know this God man, Jesus. And so this is the year that we focus on the Gospel of Mark. So we’re going to look at his view of this experience with this God man, Jesus.

And when you think about it, the responsibility that we have to each other as a church, as a believing community, is to witness the truth of who God is and who we are and what we’re here to accomplish. I mean, if you go to religion for something, you know, you say, well, I’m going so I can have a relationship with God, or I go to be forgiven for my sins, or I go to learn more about, you know, the mysteries of my faith. Well, no matter what focus you might have for what you’re looking for, the one thing that the heart longs for more than anything else, as well as the mind, and that is truth. Healthy religion shares the truth of who we are and why we’re here and who God is. And when you get a number of people living out of that truth, they witness it to one another, and it grows and it is more and more fruitful and more abundant. So my prayer is, as we go through these many Sundays of ordinary time coming up, we will grow in our understanding from the witness of this one man, you know, Mark the evangelist.

And to enhance whatever is in the gospel, we have these other two readings. You know how it works. They’re chosen because of the gospel. And the first reading is interesting because I’d like you to put this whole set of readings in a context. What is God’s role in your life? What is it that we’re asked to turn to him and ask for?

Or what is it? We’re asked to have a strong, strong conviction that he will do something for us. He will be someone for us. So this first reading is about, in a way, the work of God in the Old Testament. What does God do for his people? Well, one of the things.

He gathers them together and he wants them to follow his rules and his laws. That’s important. And they were at such a level of consciousness that they had to be told pretty much what to do. Ten Commandments, the best user manual for human nature, basically says, you have a God that is real, that is true. You need to speak, spend time with him, and you have his power dwelling in you. Never, never use it in vain, never use it in a way that is destructive.

And for goodness sakes, take care of each other. I mean, that’s very simple advice. And that’s exactly what God longs to enter into our life, to help us to achieve. So the question is, how much of what we do is what we asked for in the opening prayer, the grace, his help to enable us to do what we’re here for, to achieve what we’re here to achieve. And it’s interesting. There are two forms of, I guess you might say, faith or religion.

One is called deism and one is called theism. And theism is a good description of Christianity. Theism is a belief in one God, and that this God is very powerful and very much engaged in the work of guiding us through this journey on this plane that we’re living on, so that we can accomplish the task that we’re here to accomplish. And we can’t do it without his grace. So theism believes that God exists and that God is intimately engaged in everything going on in the world. And deism is like that.

But it does believe that there is a God, but it doesn’t believe that he has anything to do with what’s happening. He is completely neutral as far as the way the world is going. Whatever it is that you’re engaged in, it’s up to you to figure it out, how to get out of it, or how to make it better. And he just is pretty much of a absent landlord, an absent father. And you say, what’s attractive in that? Well, the thing that’s attractive in it is you don’t have to believe in something that you can’t explain, that you can’t prove.

But it’s impossible to listen to the Christian message without realizing that God has revealed himself as not only someone who cares about how we live, but. But recognizes how impossible it is for us to accomplish the things we’re here to do without his intimate personal attention and his presence within us. This first reading is from the Old Testament, from Ezekiel, is about the role that God has in the life of the people that might say their political life on this planet. As it is in. In a way that humans are in charge. And the interesting thing about the image of the cedar is that’s the different kingdoms.

And if a kingdom fails and falls apart, he takes the top of it off and clips it and then plants it somewhere else on a higher level of consciousness, let’s say a higher place. And then it grows into a new kingdom, a new political system. And as those systems go through, as they all do, you know, good times, bad times, times when they’re very, very fruitful and very effective, and other times when they all fall apart, what God is saying in the Old Testament in this, in through this prophet is, look, I’m the one that’s in charge of all that. I can make a kingdom flourish or I can let it fall apart. If you need to have in your history right now the human race, you need, this group of people needs to have a calm, you know, protective government. That’s what they need at that time, and that’s what God has prepared for them.

And then if it’s somehow they need something more that tests their resilience and their trust, they’re going to go through a horrible experience of abuse and tyranny. And what God is saying in the Old Testament. Look, I don’t think this is all just happenstance. I am in charge of the way the kingdoms of the world are affecting you. And I’m careful that they are always there for you, for what you need. Sometimes you need comfort, sometimes you need challenge.

Sometimes you need to be at ease. Sometimes you need to be in pain. I’m in charge. Amazing. How does that work? Have no idea.

If he’s in charge of everything, then we’re nothing but puppets. No, we’re absolutely free to choose whatever we want. But in some mysterious way beyond our imagining, everything works for the good of each of us. A pandemic, a time of peace, prosperity, a time of horrible war and conflict. All of those. He knows exactly what’s happening.

He allows it. He allows it to the point that it’s just perfect for us. And then you see in the second reading another image of the way God works with his people. And in that old time system in the Old Testament, one of the things that’s clear is that there is a relationship with God that’s under the law and you must perform and keep the law in order to have God’s favor. That’s definitely Old Testament stuff. And yet in the New Testament it’s radically different.

Instead of a law being the core of what relate that connects us to God, following His rules and laws, no, it’s now receiving and accepting his forgiveness, his love, his presence, living in us on a daily basis. The New Testament is so new, so different, that it’s often never fully embraced. Because we hang on to the old, because it makes sense to the mind, not to the heart. The heart loves the image of being loved and being forgiven. But listen to Paul, because Paul did not ever experience the physical presence of Jesus. He had a vision and he worked with this vision in his heart and he worked with Jesus working in him.

But the interesting thing about what he’s saying there, if you listen to the words carefully, he’s saying, you know, we live in this world and when we’re in this world, we’re separated from God and that’s painful to be separated from God. So we look forward to dying, but we don’t really want to kill ourselves is what he’s saying. You know, because we need to stay here, we need to work with, you know, whatever it is. But basically it’s clear that what Paul is simply saying is we’re here to perform and a way that pleases God. And when we finish with our performance, we go to heaven and then we’re going to be judged and we get rewarded or punished. Now think about that.

That is not New Testament, that’s Old Testament. Separated from God and being judged. At the end New Testament, God is in us, God is with us. And when it comes to the end, we go and we put present to God our faults, our weaknesses. And he said, oh, by the way, someone has already come here ahead of you and they paid for all your debts. It’s somebody who died in Jerusalem.

You know him. Amazing. We live in a world. If we live in the world that God has intended us to live in, there is great joy and peace because we’re not being held to, to the responsibility of our failures. We’re being held to a relationship that we have to trust in where God is there for us. And one of the Things that Jesus did.

That has always been God’s plan. He reveals to us that we flourish in an atmosphere where we really, truly believe that we are safe and that we are loved and we are valued. That’s the gift of God’s presence within us. So we look then to the gospel, because now what I’m trying to do is put you in touch with how it is that God is engaged in your life in an intimate way. We are theists, not deists. We believe that God has a role in our life.

And so how would we describe that role? And then Jesus gives us the image, a parable, A parable about how it is that he is engaged daily in your life and in mine. Well, let’s see if I can dig deep into this parable and awaken it for you, because it’s beautiful. What it’s saying is, basically, in your life, in my life. God has planted a seed inside of you. It is your true self, your authentic self.

It comes in the form of an undifferentiated, unconscious form. You’re a baby. You come into the world and you don’t know anything. But when you’re not fed and when you’re not safe, you scream and you cry. And that’s that low level of consciousness where we need definitely to find a place where we’re safe. And then as we grow older, we realize that we need very much someone to be there for us.

And if we don’t have someone who loves us first, people have created a safe place for us, and then we’re loved and honored. And then as that evolves and we grow into maturity, we discover something in us. This seed in us that now is safe and loved and feels like it has value. A creative force is in us all. And then we have this awakening, and the spirit awakens us to our gift. What is it that’s in me that has been there from the beginning that God wants me to develop?

I know that if I develop it and I use it for good, I will find joy and happiness in my life. So the image of this field is. The field is you and me. And the seed is this gift of God, that unique person that he’s created each of us to be. And how it grows, you don’t know. I mean, how is it that I evolved from this whiny little baby screaming to an altruistic, loving, giving person who creates something so valuable to other people and gives it away with the simple joy that I’m doing something that brings me joy?

Because when I’m loving And saving and healing, feeling I’m the happiest I could ever be. That evolution, how does it happen? Well, through all the weird things that go on in your life, but there’s always the promise that it will happen. You will grow and develop the seed that is planted inside of you. It’s not. You didn’t create the seed.

You didn’t create that unique thing that you, that you need to believe in and trust in and develop and give whatever gift you have away. You didn’t do that. That was a gift from God. But you, your consciousness is in charge. And what a thing that God would give each individual a role in the communities they live in that is integral to the work of saving everyone and bringing everyone into the truth. And he gives us complete freedom, whether to use it or not.

And what a tragedy when we don’t. And it’s often because we’ve never found a place where we’re safe. We’ve never found a place where we’re loved. We never found a place where someone gave us value. And if we count on other people to do that, it’s pretty risky. But if you understand finally and fully as a full blown theist, God is engaged in your life and he wants more than anything else for you to not only survive, but develop and grow and become who you are.

And he is so dedicated to that, that nothing in world, no absence of love and no other problem is going to keep you from it. That’s the trust in a God who is engaged daily in your life. And that’s what makes life so much different. And there is such a thing as a religion that has peace, joy and love instead of shame, fear and anger. Closing prayer Father, your goodness and the intimacy that you long to have with us is beyond our imagining. It’s so difficult for us to understand this because there’s a way in which we don’t feel worthy.

But in another sense, there is a kind of frightening part of being so close to someone so powerful that somehow we won’t survive or that we’ll lose our individuality. So bless us with the capacity which would be your grace, enabling us to embrace something that goes beyond our mind, but yet feeds and nurtures and awakens our hearts to a life of true service. 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 tab 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 podcast. 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.