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 20th Sunday in Ordinary Time, the Opening Prayer O God, who have prepared for those who love you, Good things which no eye can see fill our hearts. We pray with the warmth of your love so that loving you in all things and above all things we may attain your promises which surpass every human desire through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, Holy One, God forever and ever. Amen. A reading from the Old Testament from the Book of Proverbs, ninth chapter, first through the sixth verse. Wisdom has built her house. She has set up her seven columns.

She’s dressed her meat, mixed her wine. Yes, she has spread her table. She has sent out her maidens, she calls from the heights out over the city. Let whoever is simple turn in here to the one who lacks understanding. She says, come, eat my food, and drink of the wine I have mixed. Forsake foolishness that you may live and advance in the way of understanding the word of the Lord.

Taste and see the goodness of the Lord. A reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians 5:15 20 Brothers and sisters, watch how you live, not as foolish persons, but as wise, making the most of the opportunity because the days are evil. Therefore do not continue in ignorance, but try to understand what is the will of the Lord. Do not get drunk on wine in which lies debauchery, but filled with the Holy Spirit addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and playing to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks always for everything, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to God our Father, the Word of the Lord Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him, says the Lord. The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from St.

John 6:51 58 verse Jesus said to the crowds, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world. Now the Jews crawled among themselves, saying, how can this man give his flesh to eat? Jesus said to them, amen. Amen. I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you.

Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, my blood true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in Him. Just as the living Father sent me, and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven.

Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever. The Gospel of the Lord sa we continue with the theme of the bread of life. And one of the things that I find so fascinating in the opening prayer of this liturgy is the promise. That it is reminding us of a promise made by God initially to Abraham. And the promise was he would choose us all those he created. In the beginning, it was just the Israelites, but obviously the fullness of his revelation is he calls every man, every woman on a journey, while they’re here on this earth, to move from a place of slavery to a place of freedom, from a place of scarcity to a place of abundance.

This is his promise. I will take you there. And so in the opening prayer, we have this beautiful image that this thing that we are called to experience, this fullness, is something very, very good. But yet it’s clear in the prayer. It says that no one can see it. No one can see it.

And perhaps what that points to is that this process we’re moving toward, this wholeness, this fullness of life, this abundant place, is not something that is literally promised to be at a particular place in time, but something much more mysterious. And when it happens, when is that, it strikes me that it’s more like moments, at least before it becomes full, when we leave this earth and enter into another place. But those moments of peace, those moments where all seems well, everything is in its place, those are beautiful moments. And. And also there’s something else about the slavery that we’re caught in, because it strikes me that the slavery that we often get caught in is the slavery of judgment. Judgment.

It’s one of those things that God made so clear. Stop judging. And we do it all the time. I do it all the time. So it’s saying that we are given. This opening prayer says we are Given this great promise, it will happen, you’re not going to be able to stop it.

You can say no to it, and in that sense maybe stop it. But would you really say no to life, to fullness, to freedom? Maybe that’s the reason there’s a hell, because it’s possible that we do that. Otherwise we’re puppets. But in my own understanding of human nature, unless there’s been such severe damage, most of us will choose to be free, to be alive, to be connected, to be at peace. So as we look at this promise unfolding, we’d have to say, what is it that we need to do?

What do we need to be engaged in in order for this promise to be continually feeding us, nurturing us, enabling us to grow, not lose hope? Well, everything in the Old Testament is a prefiguring of everything that happened in the New Testament. Everything in the New Testament, in a sense, reveals what the Old Testament was all about. It’s not two separate stories. It’s one story. And they’re both filled with incredible wisdom.

That mysterious thing that we listen to in the first reading, this feminine figure that wants to do the same thing that Christ wants to do, wants to feed us. She feeds us with this rich food, this choice wine. And somehow what she knows is the thing that she is giving us is not something you can explain or figure out. Otherwise, she might have called it knowledge. No, she calls it wisdom. Wisdom.

And a good definition, I think, of the difference between knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is information, but wisdom is a knowing, a kind of inner knowing about one primary thing. Life. Life. You can be smart and not grounded in the truth and not have life. But if you have wisdom, it would seem that you would be grounded in the reality of what God has asked us to participate in the fulfillment of a promise.

Sometimes it feels like we’re on a test track. I don’t know if you get that feeling sometimes. I did when I was younger. Here’s all these beautiful, wonderful things you could do. But I’m telling you, those are things you can’t. They’re very attractive.

But if you don’t do those for me as a sign that you love me and you get through this whole test and I’ll grade you at the end, and if you make a, I don’t know, C minus, all right, you can get in. But then a D plus, well, that’s purgatory. An F, well, you know where that goes. It’s not that kind of test. No, it’s an adventure. It’s an experience.

Experience we’re asked to be engaged in, in this experience. It’s called life. Life. So wisdom, that knowledge of what it really is about, the ability to be engaged in something is mysterious and hidden and trust in it. That’s the gift of wisdom. And it’s interesting, that gift of wisdom in the Old Testament, who is a, it’s a figure, a feminine figure, but becomes in the New Testament a person.

It becomes Jesus. And this Jesus is the wisdom is in his essence, his body, the blood that courses through him. It’s in his life. The wisdom of Jesus is that he is the manifestation of the work of this journey. The fullness of the work is primarily in allowing the same thing that happened to Jesus to happen to us, that God entered into Jesus. God is in Jesus.

Jesus is God. Jesus said it over and over again, the Father is in me, I am in the Father. I want to come into you. If I come into you, I’ll bring the Father to you. The goal is the Father. The goal is a relationship, a life giving relationship with God the Father.

In my spiritual life, in the beginning, until rather recently, my focus was primarily on Jesus, which of course is nothing wrong with that. But if I met him, if I stood before him, and I’d say, I love you so much, I want to do everything for you, for you, for you, Jesus. And he’d say, well, I know you do, but know that I’m the Father. If you’re looking at my face, these are the words of Jesus. You’re looking at my face. That’s God.

That’s what your God looks like, just like you. And if you could believe that this God is just like you and get through the mystery of the way he reveals himself in the Old Testament, where he seems often so violent, so harsh, so difficult, yet he’s only working with people who are only capable of understanding him. If he’s like someone that they know some God that they know, he can change their mind about gods. If they first say, okay, he’s saying, I’m a God, but I’m the only God, the true God. And I’m like the other gods. But watch me, listen to me, pay attention to me, and you’re going to see me revealing myself.

Self revelation, self disclosure, over years and years of working with him. And then you see him finally manifested in his absolute, incredible power, the God who wants to come and dwell inside of you and in me. When Jesus pointed that out to people, they had been formed by the Old Testament by the images of God, but also by the images of the people who ran their religion and the thought of God even being able to get near material things was considered to be a blasphemy. God is perfect, God is pure. The world is impure, material world is evil. That’s what basically happened.

One of the great heresies in the early church, for the first thousand years of the church, was a thing called Manichaeism. And it was that very teaching. God is goodness, God is pure, God is grace, God is life. But the material world is destruction, darkness, sin, corruption. That’s like saying, you know, the, that the two are separate and they’re not. God is the world.

God is in everything. God created it exactly as it is. The idea that it’s been corrupted is a misunderstanding, I think, of the power of the fallen angels who came into this world to test us, to work with this, to be actually, believe it or not. Almost like a personal trainer, though I’m sure they wouldn’t like to think of themselves that way. They’d like to think they’re robbing you of life. But if you have this core trust in a promise and you feel like you don’t have it, then rather than doubting that it is there, you say, wait, I believe it’s there.

I know it’s there. I’ve got to exercise this kind of faith and I believe it. If you then trust in it, knowing you can’t see it yet, but you get glimpses of it, and then you keep pushing and struggling and cease judging. And when I say cease judging, the most interesting thing about that, if you’re going to find life, you’re going to find that it’s exactly the way life really is. The truth is reality. So if I’m going to say, well, who am I?

Well, I know that I’m a male. I know that I live in the United States of America. I know that I’m 35 foot 11. I know that I’m 78 years old. I know. You know.

Yeah. Well, that’s not my full identity. But that is part of who I am. That’s my body. That’s part of my essence in this world. And someday I’m going to have my body back again.

So there’s something about the way I look that’s important to embrace and to accept. But the culture I grew up in filled with judgment about something as simple as your body. I mean, I was a late, mature. I was the last guy picked in the gym, you know, when we chose teams. I was 5 foot 2 when I was a freshman in high school. And weighed about 80 pounds, I think.

And, you know, I always thought I had a bad body. You know, I mean, I just thought it was not as good as I should have had or wished I’d have had. And there’s all that coveting, coveting. I wish I had this. I wish I was that. I wish I was taller, shorter, thinner, more muscular, whatever.

Judgment, judgment, judgment. It becomes almost a way of life. And so I’m thinking about, how do you enter into life? How do you live a full life? Well, the first thing you do if you stop judging is you stop and, you know, acting as if the life that has been planned for you and for me, each of us and all the people in it, in the place and the time I live and all of that, if you. If you start judging it, then it means that it’s.

It’s random. It just happened. I wish I’d got. I wish I’d. You know, if. If we.

If we’re models that come out of some kind of factory, you know, like, I wish I got that other model, you know, the convertible. I like that one. You know, convert. Crazy. No, we’re exactly who we should be. We look exactly as we should look.

Today is exactly as it should be. I know when you start doing that, you get into this, oh, it’s all predetermined. I’m just sitting here. No, no. It’s so much more mysterious than that. But there is something so crucial about entering into the fullness of life by simply not judging the life that you have or the judging the life someone else has, adding value to that judgment.

You end up living with someone that I learned to befriend some time ago. It’s called the silent observer. You just. You replace judgment with observation, curiosity. Hmm. I’m still alive at 78.

A lot of my friends aren’t. Hmm. You know, wonder what that means. I embrace it. I accept it. I don’t want it to be different.

I don’t want to be. I don’t want to live longer than I’m supposed to. I don’t want to live shorter. I just want to be present to this thing that God has given me, called me. And that kind of life we call a life of real authenticity. Authenticity.

What does it mean? It just means it’s real. When you’re with somebody who acts as if they’re someone else, when you’re with somebody who is dressed in such a way that it doesn’t seem to fit who they are, when you see somebody overly made up or whatever, you know, you say, well, I guess it looks better, maybe, but what’s wrong with just, you know, just working with what you have and enhancing it, make it more what it is. That’s my. That’s my way of seeing what God means when he says, don, and he says to you, me, all of us, I want you to have an abundant life. Abundant life.

And then I think, okay, well, then how do I do this? How do I do it? Well, if I say to myself and I say to you, stop judging, just observe. You say, well, that’s so hard. It is. But then think of the thing that is at the heart of the promise.

I’m not asking you to do this on your own. I’m not asking you to come up with the strength to do all this. No, I’m inside of you. I’m with you. I’m there next to you. Somebody once said to me, give me a partner.

I can accomplish anything. Leave me alone and I lose hope and I get all messed up. We have that kind of connection with the truth, with the God who made us. And when you’re observing things with his eyes, when you’re sensing he’s in you and you’re looking at things, asking him to say, now what is it really? Contemplation. Meditation.

Wondering. Curiosity. No judgment. It’s amazing what a gift that can be to the inner, most core part of us that sometimes wakes up in the morning and says, I don’t want to get out of bed. When in truth, the essence of who we are is we can’t wait to get out of bed and experience the day and wonder about it and just, I don’t know, feel good about being who we are, where we are, and what’s happening around us. When that happens, I guarantee you there’s an inner calm and an inner peace that people will pick up and they’ll want to know, what do you have?

What is it about you? And you can just smile, I guess, and just say, well, I’ve learned to just accept myself and I have support from the God who created me. And I’m enjoying my life, even the hard parts, even the painful parts. I have life. I have abundant life, and I’m going to live forever. Closing prayer.

Father, your love for us is beyond our imagining. And your interest in the smallest things that we do somehow baffle us because we can’t imagine you all, your awesome otherness and majesty are so deeply concerned about each and every one of us. But bless us with this knowledge. Bless us with an awareness of your presence so truly we can be engaged in the life that you planned for us and share that life with our brothers and sisters. 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.