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.
The First Sunday of Adventure the Opening Prayer Grant your faithful, we pray Almighty God, the resolve to run forth to meet your Christ with righteous deeds at his coming, so that gathered at his right hand, they may be worthy to possess the heavenly kingdom 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 Isaiah, second chapter, first to the fifth verse. This is what Isaiah son of Amos saw concerning Judah in Jerusalem. In days to come the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills. All nations shall stream toward it.
Many people shall come and say, come, let us climb the Lord’s mountain to the house of the God of Jacob, that we may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths. For from Zion shall go forth instruction in the word of the Lord. From Jerusalem he shall judge between the nations and impose terms on many peoples. And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks. One nation shall not rise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again, O house of Jacob. Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord, the Word of the Lord.
Responsorial Psalm Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord. I rejoice because they said to me, we will go up to the house of the Lord and now we shall have set foot within your gates. O Jerusalem, Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord. Jerusalem, built as a city with compact unity. To it the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord, According to the decree of Israel to give thanks to the name of the Lord.
In it are set up judgment seats, seats for the house of David. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord. Pray for the peace, Jerusalem. May those who love you prosper. May peace be within your walls, prosperity in your buildings. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord.
Because of my brothers and friends, I will say, peace be within you. Because of the house of the Lord our God. I will pray for your good. Let us go rejoicing to the house of the Lord. A Reading from the New Testament from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 13:11 Brothers and sisters, you know the time.
It is the hour now for you to awake from sleep, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is advanced, the day is at hand. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us conduct ourselves properly as in the day, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in promiscuity and lust, not in rivalry and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the desires of the flesh. The Word of the Lord Alleluia Verse show us, Lord, your love and grant us your salvation. Hallelujah.
The gospel for this first Sunday of Advent is taken from St. Matthew 24:37 to the 44th verse. Jesus said to his disciples, as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. In those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away. So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man.
Two men will be out in the field. One will be taken, one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill. One will be taken and one will be left. Therefore stay awake. You do not know on which day your Lord will come.
Be sure of if the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too you also must be prepared, for at the hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come. The Gospel of the Lord. Sa. In the opening prayer, we prayed for something that’s really difficult to fully understand. It’s simply that there is this question of merit.
How do you merit eternal life? How do you earn it? How do you do enough for God so that when he sees you, he’s not filled with anger and resentment and judgment? The theme of the first Sunday of Advent is always the same. It’s about being vigilant, being awake, being alert. I like to call that being conscious.
It’s so important for us to live. If we’re truly interested in a truthful life based in a true spirituality, we have to understand that one of the basic calls of that is to be in touch with reality. Just as it is who we are, who God is, what we’re doing. In that process of getting to connect to that God by reflection, by wondering, by curiosity. So many questions come up. And when we go to scripture to find answers, it is like almost going to.
I mean, I’m going to exaggerate, but it’s like throwing dice to find out whether or not you’re going to be comforted by these words or whether you’re going to be frightened to death. Because one of the themes, along with vigilance and being awake and alert, is this image of judgment. And I really want to talk about that because it’s so tricky, the word judgment. Judgment could be just simply deciding what’s right and wrong. I judge my ideas with a kind of logical process and say that’ll work or this won’t work. But judgment, when it comes between people also sounds very much like a condemnation or a rejection of them.
And it’s really hard for me to believe after reading the New Testament, after understanding through my Catholic faith, the work of God in my life as a Father who created me, as a Son who redeemed and forgives all my sins, and as a Holy Spirit who is there to fight my cause when, if I stay with the image of a judgment at the end of my life, there’s my lawyer, my Holy Spirit, God himself, biting for my salvation, in a sense, proving that I’m worthy. Not because of my performance, not because of what I’ve done, because of who God is. Who God is. So let’s take a moment to look at that. Who God is. If the Old Testament God is too present in your life, you’ll find that you’ll be looking carefully, maybe too carefully for perfection.
Because one of the things in the Old Testament about God is that human beings felt that they were imperfect by nature and that they, if they got close to God, would be destroyed because he was perfection. It’s like this image of perfection in God is absolutely contrary and completely separate and non compatible with human brokenness, with our desire, with our longings, with passion, with self will. Interesting that we have that strong, strong notion of that kind of God that is so distant. And yet we find out as we watch this God throughout the Old Testament reveal himself differently than the other gods. And we keep seeing this general progression into a God who is more listening to people than demanding from them, pays attention to when they cry out and say, don’t do this to us. We don’t deserve this.
Please help us. And he changes his mind. Particularly when Moses said, please, God, don’t destroy the Israelites because of their unfaithfulness. And he doesn’t. But that’s just the beginning of a glimmer of something that God is fully going to reveal in Jesus. And that is that when we look into the life of God in Jesus and they’re the same, we see the most beautiful image of a God that we could be attracted to and long to be close to.
But it often gets hindered by. By the Old Testament by images that are in some way very attractive to anyone in a position that I’m in right now, if I’m trying to get you to open your mind and heart to a God who wants to show you where you are and expose to you your weaknesses and faults, if I do that with the motive that if you just look at them and change, you will be saved. Otherwise, you will be condemned, you’ll be left. That image in the Gospel is tricky. When God comes, some will be taken, some will be left. Does that mean some will be condemned and some will be saved?
Maybe. There’s certainly a strong tradition that when God comes back full, or when Jesus comes back fully, he’s going to be someone who is there to say, okay, this is the final judgment, and everybody that isn’t really who they should have been is going to go to hell. And all those that struggled and found some kind of form of perfection will be saved. And it just flies in the face of everything in the ministry of Jesus. Why did he come into the world to reveal who the Father is? It was God’s will that he reveal himself fully finally in Jesus.
And we see in this God man, compassion, understanding, forgiveness, patience, love, commitment to us going when we’re lost, to find us, not to condemn us. Why is it that we fall into the trap of getting caught in shame? Because we are so drawn to look at the negative side of who we are and not what caused it, and not what else is good in us. And that’s the thing that I’m longing for you during this new liturgical year, when we focus on the Gospel of Matthew, to be so open to the realization of a God who ministers, who serves, who is there for you. So the idea of merit is really, really something that you want to be careful with. We don’t merit forgiveness.
It is a free gift. But the most important thing in the Gospel about forgiveness is unless we recognize our need for it, then it doesn’t have the ability to do the work it does. And when I’m thinking about that, I’m thinking of to face God. Ultimately, at the end of our life, will we look at a God and be thinking he is a judgmental, demanding, critical God, or we’ll be looking at someone who, when we see him seeing us, all we see in his eyes and in his heart is love and forgiveness and patience. So often we find in Christians a judgmental spirit. And you often wonder where it comes from.
But I think it comes from the fact that they expect something like that from God. And so in unconsciously, they end up being like the God they think that is going to face them. And they are as critical and judgmental on themselves as they imagine God might be. And then that just gets transmitted into a way of treating everybody around us. What a tragic way to misunderstand this beautiful image of God the Father, Creator, God the Son, Redeemer, most especially God the Helper, who’s there to fight for us, work for us, do everything he can to bring us into a place of great peace. There are images in the readings about, in the first reading, particularly about Mount Zion and about Jerusalem.
These are the places where they believed that God dwelt. And having God dwell in a place was very common for most of the gods in the time that. That the Old Testament was written. So they had a kind of location. So there was something beautiful about Zion, something beautiful about Jerusalem to come, that these would be the dwelling places of God. And one could go there and pray to those images and pray that they would be somehow able to help them.
And then there’s this explosion of love where this presence that was on Mount Zion, the presence that was coming from the mouth of Moses in the Old Testament, the presence of God in the Holy of Holies in the Temple, all of that gets shattered and broken open into a place where God says, I live inside of you. I’m part of you. I dwell in you. Not as a judge, not as someone who’s constantly there saying, don’t do this, don’t do that. No. As one who said, open your eyes.
See what you did just then. Look at this. See what you did there. Now think about you. Who are you? What is really in you that makes you happy, that brings you peace?
Is it the things you take or is it the things you give? Is it the things you choose, judge and condemn? Or is it the things that you forgive and surrender to and accept? What an interesting tension in religion to go from one extreme to the other. Maybe that’s why we have an Old Testament and a New Testament. But all I long for you to do during this wonderful season as we prepare for the birth of Christ.
We’ll be focusing on Matthew’s Gospel throughout this coming year. But my prayer is that you grow in this consciousness of the God who is forgiveness, who is patience, who is love. And I don’t know how to explain what it’s going to be like when you see God, but all I can tell you is if you think of him looking at you disappointed and angry, then I think there’s something wrong. Because he knows everything that happened to you. He knows all the things that made you into who you are. And he knew the person that he created.
And that person he created was good in its core. And that’s what he wants to celebrate at our death. You know, when we enter into the kingdom, the things that we did do, maybe what the judgment is. Look at all the things you did that you didn’t even know you were doing. And that’ll be true for so many people that live in shame and anger and fear here. So don’t think of the judgment as something that’s going to nail you for your sins, but something that’s going to free you for the surprising ways in which God has used you and transformed you.
God bless you, Satan. Sam. Foreign. Father it’s difficult for us to understand the depth of your love. Human love is so often conditional, not always, but many times. And we have a darkness in us about that power that you have to save or to condemn.
But bless us with a deep awareness of what love really means and what it is like when we experience it coming from the perfection of love, understanding and compassion and forgiveness. 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 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.