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 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The Opening Prayer Almighty ever living God, who govern all things both in heaven and earth, mercifully hear the pleading of your people and bestow your peace on our times 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 Exodus, 16th chapter, 2nd through the 4th verse, and 12th through the 15th verse. The whole Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, would that we had died at the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our flesh pots and ate our fill of bread. But you had to lead us out into this desert to make the whole community die of famine. And the Lord said to Moses, I will now rain down bread from heaven for you.

Each day the people are to go out and gather their daily portion. Thus will I test them to see whether they follow my instructions or not. I’ve heard the grumbling of the Israelites tell them, in the evening twilight you shall eat flesh, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread, that you may know that I, the Lord, am your God. In the evening quail came up and covered the camp. In the morning a dew lay all about the camp, and when the dew evaporated, there on the surface of the desert were fine flakes like hoar frost on the ground. On seeing it, the Israelites said to one another, what is this?

They did not know what it was, but Moses told them, this is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. The Word of the Lord his sponsorial psalm the Lord gave them bread from heaven. A reading from the New Testament St. Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, 4th chapter, 17th verse and the 20th or 24th verse Brothers and sisters, I declare and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the Futility of their minds. That is not how you learned Christ, assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus, that you should put away the old self of the former way of life, corrupted through the deceitful desires, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds and put on the new self, created in God’s way of righteousness and holiness of truth. The Word of the lord.

Alleluia verse 1 does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. The gospel for this 18th Sunday is taken from St. John 6, chapter 24, 35th verse. When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea, they said to him, rabbi, when did you get here? Jesus answered them and said, amen.

Amen. I say to you, you are not looking for me because you saw signs, because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life which the Son of Man will give you from him. The Father God has set his seal. They said to him, what can we do to accomplish the works of God? Jesus answered and said to them, this is the work of God that you believe in the One he sent.

They said to him, what sign can you do that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert. As it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat. So Jesus said to them, amen. Amen.

I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven. My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. They said to him, sir, give us this bread always. Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never hunger.

Whoever believes in me will never thirst. The Gospel of the Lord Satan. We’re continuing the same theme that we started last week, the image of the bread of life. Jesus is the bread of life. So what I’m praying I can do in this homily is open your minds, your hearts to a way in which God has intended us to live in this world with Him. We’re not here to please Him.

We’re not here to be tested by Him. We’re not here to just obey his rules and laws and prove that we are willing to surrender our wills to His. No, no. He wants partnership. He wants Us to be in him and he in us. And we together work to engage in whatever this mysterious thing is that is called life.

Now this first reading is a reminder, and it’s a great image of what we’re here to accomplish. The Israelites were found themselves in a. In a very negative position. They were, they were slaves. Slaves to something outside of themselves. They were having to do what they were told to do and couldn’t be who they were.

Just keep that in mind. That, that image of human beings living in a world of authority is not what we’re intended to live in. And so there’s this image of God intervening in, in their life and calling, you know, Moses, to lead these people from this place of slavery to a place of freedom, a land of milk and honey, a place of wonder and beauty. That’s, that’s a, a very strong way for you to understand what we’re here on this planet to do. We’re here as participants in a process of all of us together moving to a place of greater fullness. And so in that story, we can see that there is a part of human nature that doesn’t like to go through a process of transformation that demands a loss of certain levels of comfort and well being.

I think it’s fascinating that even though they perhaps didn’t remember what it was like to be in an environment where they were slaves, they felt that the accommodations in this process of moving to a new place was unacceptable. You know, we don’t like the food. We don’t like it. We don’t like living this way. We want to go back. Even though it was imperfect, it was more comfortable.

Comfortable. God, that image of we want comfort is so big in our, in each of us. And so what’s wonderful about this story is we see something in God that is, in a way, a sign of patience and a sign of compassion. And he listens to the Israelites who are really complaining about the food. So he said, all right, I’ll feed you. Don’t worry about it.

I will make sure you have some food. And so Moses is the one that proclaims to everyone that they will then be fed by God with this miraculous, mysterious hoar. Frost on grass in the morning, and then quail, you know, will be plentiful in the evening. So they were fed for a very long time. That whole journey was 40 years in the desert. And then they were to get to this new land, this new place.

And the new place is, of course, the new life that God promises us. When he himself entered into the world to guide us. So you have this image that is a strong image in what life on this planet is for. It is about a journey from one place to another. And the journey is not necessarily comfortable. It’s painful and difficult.

All right, now let’s go to St. Paul. St. Paul says something really interesting about what it is that we are here to become. And he says we have to become something different. And so he says that the work of God in your life and in mine is to bring us into a place where we’re renewed in spirit and understanding and we put on a new self created in God that’s whole and complete, living in the truth.

Okay, so let’s just talk about this new creation, this new self. It’s different than the old self. And the old self could be described as a lower level of consciousness where we’re always basically longing for the most simple primitive needs. You know, give me a couch, give me a beer, give me a football game, whatever or whatever it is that we love comfort. But there’s a new self in us that needs to be born of spirit. And it has a different disposition about how we are to live in this world.

And so we have it in the gospel, the secret part of the secret. All right, now, let’s go now to where the crowds are. You know, the crowds around Jesus were amazing, and the life of Jesus is amazing. And the one thing about his life that is both confusing and wonderful and challenging for us to understand completely is his miracles. And you have to understand what those miracles were for. Because the shadow of misunderstanding the miracles that Jesus performed, and he’s saying that anything I did, you can do, we may say, oh, well, then if God is in me and I’m a new person in God, and I believe that Jesus was filled with divinity and that that’s the symbol of who we are.

The sign that Jesus gave us was this image of a human being filled with divinity. That’s why the work of God, the work of God described in the scriptures today is that we, in the words of Jesus, is we believe in the one who sent him. When you believe in someone, we tend to think of belief as just, I believe in God. That means he exists. Well, it’s pretty hard to imagine the world without some kind of intelligence when you understand how the world works. But nevertheless, there is something important about believing that God exists, but believing in someone.

If somebody says, I believe in you, they don’t mean, I believe you’re alive and standing in front of me. They say, I believe in you means I trust in you. I feel something good in you. I would trust you with my needs and wants. I believe in you. If the work of God is believing that he came and lived in Jesus and that was the model of the new self that we were going to live in in the New Testament, then we’re getting close to the truth.

We are gifted through this mysterious thing called redemption, which was Jesus somehow, as a human being, struggling with all the things that he wanted to do, had to face the fact that it wasn’t going to turn out the way he wanted. And he was going to have to endure the humiliation of failure. And he accepted the suffering that that entailed. He accepted the role that God gave him. And it was the most painful thing he could have endured. And when he did it, there was an explosion of life within him.

And that’s our model. Jesus is the model of surrendering to the way things are. And yet we make him the model of a world that he created for us, where he says, I’m in the world with you. And we put all the emphasis on Jesus. Jesus did this for me. But just like the people said about Moses, they said, moses gave us bread from heaven.

Why can’t you do these miracles for us? And Jesus said, no, Moses didn’t give you the bread from heaven. God gave you the bread from heaven through Moses. Jesus is saying, jesus the man is saying, I am not the source of what I. I can do for you. God in me is doing it.

So my power as a human is just like your power as a human. We’re limited. We can’t do that much that we need to do in order to engage in the world in the way it is, a place of growth, change, and development. So what are we learning? This God, who entered into a man who’s the model of who we are, performed marvelous miracles. And he said, we can do the same thing.

So what do you do when something happens to you that’s painful and difficult? Or worse? What do you do when somebody you love deeply is going through something really painful and difficult? A disease that will take their life, A struggle with addiction. How is it that we’re to imagine this power of God flowing through me like it flowed through Jesus, doing the work that Jesus showed us we can do? Well, the mistake we make is we think that the miracles of Jesus were always to remove suffering.

They did remove some suffering. But what are the miracles about? They’re about this mysterious way in which God is saying, I came into the world to empower human beings. To be all that they’re intended to be. The healings of Jesus were about physical healings. Eyes that couldn’t see can now see.

Ears that couldn’t hear can hear. Mouths that couldn’t speak and speak. Arms that couldn’t work now work. Legs couldn’t move. So it’s all about being fully alive and fully human and being open to the truth, seeing what’s real. Open my eyes, God, let me see who I am and what I’m here for.

That’s the miracle. He also drove out demons. It’s interesting that in John’s gospel, he never mentions the driving out of demons, because as if he saw that as something a little different. But John wanted us to know in his gospel who he is, who God is, who Jesus is, what it’s like for a human to be filled with divinity, because that’s our task. And if we think that we have this divinity in us to be able then to accomplish something, that isn’t really what Jesus did in his miracles. And we think it’s about taking away suffering.

And what if suffering is not to be taken away? If we look at the crucifixion of Jesus, then if suffering is to be taken away, the death of Jesus makes no sense at all. If he’d have trusted more in the Father, the Father would have been able to allow him to conquer everything, destroy all those enemies. And Jesus could have, he said, you know, God could do that, but that’s not God’s will. God doesn’t want to be in you and in me, empowering us to be the instrument that when I’m suffering or somebody else is, he gives me the power to take away the suffering. What would happen to us?

We wouldn’t grow. We wouldn’t change. We wouldn’t become who we’re intended to be. So when you pray for yourself or for someone else, asking God to be inside of you, giving you the wisdom you need to be able to make this move in a direction that creates life in me and in everyone around us who knows this story, we’re out asking for removal of the pain, though we long for that, but that the pain will do its work and the work will be finished and we’ll surrender to it. And when the work is done, the pain stops. The pain goes away.

When we’ve learned what the pain is there for. That’s a very different way to deal with these issues of suffering and the miracle of God giving us power to be in charge. You know, if God is in charge of the world, that means he can make it all happen a certain way. Well, he is in that sense in charge. But he isn’t going to change the way the world is and the way it’s designed. Because we don’t want to be uncomfortable, we don’t want to be in pain.

It’s almost like saying, you know, and this is naive, but if we just had enough health, enough money, enough talent, then whatever we would do would be so successful. We would just soar into fullness and greatness. And do you know anybody that has ever had a lot of money or just can do anything or have super success in everything? Have you ever spent time with them? They’re obnoxious, they’re self centered, they’re self consumed. I want to be with somebody that knows what it’s like to be changed by suffering and has wisdom and truth inside of them.

And they look at me and they say, I want to be there with you in your suffering because I know it will bring you to a new place. And then you wait, trusting, believing that when you have turned to God and given him the ability to work through you, dealing with yourself or dealing with somebody else, you will be a powerful agent in moving that person to the place the pain is intending them to be. And it will be less pain. So in a sense you are healing them in a way that means less suffering. But the most important thing you’ve got to have in your heart is this is in God’s hands and he will make this work. And we’ll look back on this and smile and say, without this, I could never be who I am.

Closing prayer Father, your presence is your greatest gift to us, that you dwell within us, creating a new person, a new self. And in that presence of you within us, we find the most important gift we’ve received is wisdom, understanding, compassion, empathy for the plan that you have for the world and the honor that you’ve given us to be a part of that unfolding is beyond our imagining. So bless us with the kind of faith that truly opens our hearts so that we take on and become your heart, your compassion, your love. And let us share that with the people around us that we love, that we’re called to be there for. And when we feel the power of this grace flowing through us, give us the confidence that it is a gift. Never us alone, always with you, always in you, always because of you.

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 pastoralreflectionsinsinsinsinsinsinstitute.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.