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 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time.

The Opening Prayer O God, who caused the minds of the faithful to unite in a single purpose, grant your people to love what you command and to desire what you promise that amid the uncertainties of this world our hearts may be fixed on that place where true gladness is found 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 Joshua, 24th chapter, first and second verse, and the 15th through the 18th verse. Joshua gathered together all the tribes of Israel at Shechem, summoning their elders, their leaders, their judges, and their officers. When they stood in ranks before God, Joshua addressed all the people, if it does not please you to serve the Lord, decide today whom you will serve. The gods of your fathers serve beyond the river, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose country you are now dwelling.

As for me and my household, we will serve the Lord. But the people answered, far be it from us to forsake the Lord for the service of other gods. Was the Lord our God, who brought us and our fathers out of Egypt, out of slavery. He performed those great miracles before our very eyes, and protected us along our entire journey. And among the people through whom we passed, therefore we also will serve the Lord, for He is our God. The Word of the Lord Responsorial Psalm Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.

A reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, fifth chapter, second verse and 25th through the 32nd verse. Brothers and sisters, husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over to her to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water and the Word that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. So husbands should love their wives as their own Bodies. He who loves his wife, loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh, but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the Church.

Because we are members of his body. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. This is a great mystery. But I speak in reference to Christ and the Church. The Word of the Lord. Hallelujah.

Verse. Your words, Lord, are spirit and life. You have the words of everlasting life. A reading from the holy gospel of John 60th to the 69th verse. Many of Jesus disciples who were listening to him said, this saying is hard. Who can accept it?

Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, does this shock you? What if you are to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some among you who do not believe. Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him.

And he said, for this reason, I have told you that no one can come to me unless it be granted him by my Father. As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said to the 12, do you want to leave also? Simon Peter answered him, master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.

The Gospel of the Lord. Sa Sam, I’ve said to you often that the opening prayer sets the tone for whatever a man like me wanting to communicate to you what these readings mean. It just sets the tone. And it’s saying, you know what I want from God. Would God please give me this God? And that is, I want to understand what you ask of me, what you command me to do.

And I want you to remind me always of what it promises when you say, I need to do what you command. And. And then you also promised me that there’s going to be a gift, something wonderful. I love the way that opening prayer sets it. In this way. It says, the world is filled with uncertainties.

We turn to the world for understanding, for protection, for all the things that we need. And we know that it’s wanting. So we need something, something that we can go to that’s going to nurture us and remind us of a promise that there is a place where we can find wholeness, gladness, joy. So with that focus for the homily, we’re going to be looking at, what is it we turn to, to give us some kind of sense of stability and strength in the midst of all the uncertainties we deal with. Take the first reading. Because the first reading says everything about who God is, not so much about what people are supposed to do for him, but who he is.

Joshua has gathered all the people together. And what’s interesting about gathering the people together, it’s the. It’s the ordinary folks, but it’s also everybody that has any kind of authority over them. So there’s everybody, judges, leaders, elders. And they all gather together. And he wants to say something to them.

And he’s basically saying, all right, you need to be able to turn to a source that’s bigger than any individual or any other of these authorities that I’m gathering together. Everyone needs to turn to a power beyond themselves and invite that power to come into them. Now, whether on whether Joshua understood or the people understood all that that meant, but when he was saying, I want you to choose the God that you believe in, that you trust in, because that’s going to say everything about who you are and what you want in the world. The God you serve is going to be the one that has formed you, given you everything. So what you hear in this story is, what’s the motive for surrendering to the authority of someone? Well, it’s not just because they’re the boss.

It’s because you see this authority giving you something that you couldn’t have on your own. You’re being served by it. And so these people are saying, okay, if we think about it, who do we want to serve? A false God or a God who’s taken care of us and shown us all kinds of kindnesses and fed us and is guiding us on a journey. You know, he’s been taking care of us. Why would we pick another God?

So we’ll serve the God who serves us. And that’s exactly what we do. The God we choose. The truth we choose to live by is a truth that we believe. When we choose it, it will produce for us everything that we long for, everything we want, everything we need. And yet the truth is, there’s only one truth.

There’s only one God. There’s only one message. And everything else seems perhaps valuable and interesting and something we desire depending on what we believe in, depending on how we see the world. But here’s the weakness of human nature. It was there at the very beginning in the story of Adam and Eve. What was Adam and Eve’s basic sin?

I’ve said this to you over and over again. Autonomy. God said, don’t eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Don’t ever think that you can have an understanding and a complete comprehension of what is. And then you determine the rules and laws you yourself will set them. An autonomous person is free of any outside authority, any outside law, and they can create a world of their own making.

It’s like an author can write a novel, and the novel can be a comedy or a tragedy, and basically he can do that, then he has a book. But basically the image of that that’s terrifying to me, is that we can write our own book, but then the danger is that we expect life to then like that book. And the things that we’re choosing that we believe will promise us fullness and wholeness. If it’s not true, if it’s not real, if it’s fiction, then you’re in trouble. So that’s the fundamental issue. In terms what Jesus asked, when anyone asked, or when you ask yourself the question, what do I believe in?

What do I believe in? What God is the God that’s guiding me and directing me and showing me how I should live. What is the God that serves? That’s one way to look at it. What is it that brings me the most joy and the most satisfaction? Well, depending upon your level of consciousness, you may pick something pretty low down, like saying, when I get everything I want, then that’s the only time I’m happy.

But if you live in that long enough, you lose it. So let’s hope you’re of a higher consciousness where you realize, you know what? I really don’t know what will make me completely content and happy, but if I pay attention to what does, I begin to see has something to do. Like that great mystery that Paul reveals about marriage. Everything that God is asking you to live in when it comes to a truth is not just about yourself and God, but mostly about you and your neighbor, you and yourself. All his commands, his commandments are about your relationship to God and your relationship to each other.

So basically, the wisdom that God wants to give you is the wisdom that will enable you to live in the world as it is, as he has created it. And it’s going to be a lot like a marriage. And a healthy marriage is when husbands love their wives as they do themselves, wives love their husbands as they do themselves, that they’ll listen to each other that’s what the word obey means to each other. And they will grow from each other’s experiences, and they will be able somehow to feel that they are to each other something so valuable that you want to give back to it because it’s constantly giving to you. That’s the ideal, to live in that kind of world. And so what Jesus is inviting us into is that kind of world.

But then there’s something else that he has to do for us, to tell us there’s a world out there that is truthful, and when we’re in it and living it, we’re going to be able to find all the gladness and all the joy we want. Well, the problem is human beings have never been designed to be able to do that on their own. You’re not given that gift at birth, so it had to be one for you. It had to be given to you. And so when Jesus is talking to his disciples in the Gospel, and he’s asking them, you know, look, there are a lot of other ways to live out there. I know you have choices.

I know you can turn away from me. I know the things I’m explaining to you are so tough. He had just been saying, eat my body and drink my blood. And they’re saying, I don’t understand any of this. So Jesus is talking to them as if they had the capacity to understand what he is saying. And Jesus knew in his heart they couldn’t understand it yet.

They couldn’t. They had to be given something. And the whole story of salvation history is what they are given is given in this thing called redemption. Jesus dying on the cross and through this death, somehow empowering human beings to see more than they ever could see, understand more than they could understand, and be closer to their true nature than ever before. And when that happened, at Pentecost, the disciples went from frightened young men that didn’t know quite what they believed and didn’t know quite how they could ever accomplish what they were going to do, if they were going to do it. And they weren’t sure they were going to do it.

They were like the rest of us most of the time. And then redemption happened, and boom, they changed. And all of a sudden, they saw it, they understood it. And their understanding was like a power of communication. Everybody understood everybody because there was one truth everybody was immersed in. It’s the beauty of living in a community that is grounded in what is real and what is true.

And the key is you’re living in a community where everyone is serving everyone else. So There’s a line that I really want to focus on in this gospel because it’s the one that I think may be most confusing to a lot of people. We’re talking about faith, believing in the truth of who you are and what will make you happy. And the point is that in that very thing that you’ve been given, where do you get the conviction? Can you prove it? Do you have examples that are the opposite of it?

Absolutely. So what Jesus is saying in this gospel is that God has to give you something that you don’t have. And if you don’t have it, you’ll not be able to comprehend and live what I’m asking you to live. So basically he says, no one can come to me unless the Father draws him. Well, how does God draw you to Him? He has this gift of redemption.

What is redemption? The Spirit enters into us. What is the Spirit? Wisdom, understanding, knowledge. We have to have some core intuition, I’ll call it first in a negative way. We have to have some intuition that the things the world presents to us, power, control over people, and all that stuff, as exciting and as interesting as all that is, it’s never going to work.

How do you know that in your gut? Do you have to go through a thousand experiences? I hope not collectively, as whenever we go through a bunch of experiences as a human race, we grow and we change, we evolve. But what I’m saying is there was something that happened at the time that Jesus died on the cross that lifted us to a higher level of a capacity to understand the mystery of what it is that finds. That gets us to the place we need to be. And it’s not by writing our own story.

It’s not being the author of life. It’s not being autonomous. Isn’t it interesting that the freedom we long for that’s so core to our body almost gets interpreted like. Well, if we’re free to be who we want to be and who we need to be, we’re also free to decide what that is. No. Yeah.

You’re free to accept the journey toward that which brings wholeness. Only if you awaken yourselves and open yourselves to the reality of a gift that comes from God. And some people don’t call it God. They might call it an insight into what is real and what is true. Think about that. Something given to you by God through his death on the cross that enables you to have in your core a compass that has the right direction branded in you.

Now you have something to guide you, to take you, and where it’s going to take you on is a journey with a God who is not only inviting you into a place of wisdom and knowledge and therefore joy, but is taking you on a journey where it’s going to take you. It’s going to require of you a deep conviction that the path is going to be challenging. And the key to getting through the path is trust. Trust belief. Because belief is not just that God exists or the law exists, it’s I have within me because of God. I believe that I have within me the capacity to find what I need, what I want.

I call it God’s presence. Most of us name it God. The reason we allow it is because we know that the intention of this God is that he will give us something that will guide us and give us this focus of where to go and where to find the things that we need. So belief is not just he exists, but he has a purpose in his existence. And it’s the entering into us which is redemption, the possibility of God entering into us, living inside of us, guiding us on a regular basis. And you know what?

The greatest thing that faith promises, it’s not just that you’ll see this is a way of understanding it, but you will experience it, experience it until we feel the service of God living inside of us, giving us life. And that’s given to us in glimpses, and it never really becomes quite as real as it’s intended to be. So bottom line, we have to serve someone. So serve the God who has taken care of you, guided you, given you life, given you a destiny. If you believe all that, you’ll serve him without ever questioning it. And when you’re in that, you’re going to feel his service.

But usually it starts because we’re human, with him serving us first. Taste that and know it’ll never stop. That’s the gift of faith. So much more than just a flat. I guess God does exist. No, he lives in you, empowers you, awakens you, and you’re a new person.

Let us pray. Father, we’re weak. We. We are longing for your strength and your support. And that support comes in the. In the form of awareness.

Bless us with greater knowledge of who youo are, how youw work within us, the promises that yout’ve made, the support yout give us so that we can see youe as yous are, believe in youn as yous are, and find the gladness that is our inheritance. 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.