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 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time.

The opening Prayer O God, by whom we are redeemed and received adoption. Look graciously upon your beloved sons and daughters that those who believe in Christ may receive true freedom and everlasting inheritance 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, 35th chapter, fourth through the seventh verse. Thus says the say to those whose hearts are frightened, be strong, fear not. Here is your God.

He comes with vindication, with divine recompense, he comes to save you. Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared. Then will the lame leak like a stag. Then the tongue of the mute will sing. Streams will burst forth in the desert, and rivers in the steep. The burning sands will become pools in the thirsty ground, springs of water.

The Word of the Lord Bonsoil Psalm Praise the Lord my soul A reading from the New Testament from the Book of James, second chapter, first to the fifth verse. My brothers and sisters, show no partiality as you adhere to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ. For if a man with gold rings and fine clothes comes into your assembly, and a poor person in shabby clothes also comes in you, pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say, sit here please, while you say to the poor one, stand there or sit at my feet. Have you not made distinctions among yourselves and become judges with evil designs? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Did not God choose those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him?

The Word of the Lord Jesus proclaimed the Gospel of the kingdom and cured every disease among the people. The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from St Mark, 7th chapter 31st to the 37th verse again Jesus left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district of Decapolis. The people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him off by himself, away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man’s ears and spitting, touched his tongue. He looked up to heaven and groaned and said to him, ephphatha, that is, be opened.

And immediately the man’s ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly. He ordered them not to tell anyone, but the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it. They were exceedingly astonished. And they said, he’s done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak the gospel of the Lord. The Scriptures this week begin with an issue that I think is probably one of the most important issues for all of us who are believers in the God that is revealed in the Old Testament and New Testament as the issue of fear.

There’s nothing stated more often in scripture than the phrase be not afraid. It’s 365 times. I think that’s so interesting. A time for every day of the year. And yet there are so many of us that live a kind of fear based life. And it’s an interesting thing.

Why is it that we human beings have this sort of anxiety in the core of our being that somehow we’re not enough, or the relationships we have will not be there for us, or the financial security in the future won’t be there for us? There is this voice that I always talk about, this voice that is a critic that comes along and constantly tells us we’re not enough. And if you’re told you’re not enough and you have to look at your future, you’re wondering, who outside of me or what outside of me is going to take care of me. And then you end up with a severe to mild case of anxiety and it stays with you. And I never thought of this before, but one of the reasons why we get addicted to things that relax us, be it some kind of medication or alcohol or activity or whatever we choose that keeps us from thinking and feeling things that the root cause of so much of that addiction is simply that we have this unsatisfied longing for something that we think needs to be there in order for us to make it. And I’m thinking to myself, you know, what is it about believers in God that doesn’t trust the most simple, most direct statement that he’s made to us throughout the history of his story?

Revealing himself to us. For the most part, he’s there for us. He’s there to care for us, to awaken us to things that will satisfy us. There’s a life that he’s created for us and he promises that we’ll be able to be in touch with it. And its core value is that it has a resonance of peace and well being. When he says over and over again, don’t be afraid, another way to say that more positively is be at peace, relax, everything’s going to be okay.

Now what’s interesting to me about this notion of not trusting God, that one of the reasons, I think is because the God of the Old Testament had a way of entering into our life and being there for us. And it wasn’t as comforting as it is in the New Testament. But basically when God entered into people’s lives through Abraham and then the journey to freedom from a place of slavery, the core gift that God gave to his people to give them a sense of hope and well being was a law, the ten Commandments we talked about last week. And when you think about it, basically the law was given to people and in its effect on them, how it worked on them, it was controlling their behavior. And it controlled their behavior with a certain motivation. And the motivation was reward or punishment.

So for the most part, you look back at the Old Testament and you see a God who is dealing with people who I would say from the way he dealt with them, were very childlike. I think it’s interesting, just recently I’ve been doing research on how long ago was Abraham, when did he appear in history? It was 4,000 years ago. That was the time when the wheel was invented, the Alphabet was invented, the government that we. The kind of control of a government over people, all that was brand new. So to have a God entering into the lives of these people at a time when in a way they were just beginning to understand the fullness of who they could become.

It made sense that he had to treat them like children, do this. And if you don’t, what he’s really saying is, if you don’t do this, your life is going to be miserable and you’re going to be living in fear and anxiety and worry and blah, blah, blah. But basically he said, if you don’t do it, I will punish you, I will destroy you. And that doesn’t exactly instill in a person a lot of confidence. Because if a God who is giving you the things you need to do, if you have to do them in order to please him and you don’t do them that well, then you’re always going to be, in a sense, anxious of whether or not you’re going to be condemned. So you’re afraid of his judgment.

Now. Take that as something that’s in the Old Testament. Take that as our origin. In our families, it often we have depends on the parents that we have. I know when I grew up in the 40s, you know, disciplining a child was the smartest, wisest thing you can do. Punish them whenever they do anything wrong.

That’ll teach them both what’s right and wrong. But it’ll also teach them how to be disciplined, control their behavior. And that lingered, still lingers in people’s imagination. That’s what we’re here to do. Control our behavior so that we act in the way that we’re supposed to, so that people accept us and God accepts us. And that isn’t very comforting, because you know what?

It’s based on my performance, my ability to do what I’m told. Though in the New Testament, it’s very, very different. In the New Testament, we have a God who is revealing not simply the wisdom of a law, a way of life that we’re asked to live. And if we don’t, we’ll be punished. He brings something else onto the scene, and it’s very different. I will call it the gift, the gift that he wants to give us.

Not a rule to live by, but a gift. And the gift is something that he’s going to give to you and to me. That awakens us and empowers us. The law had the role to awaken, awaken people to what people really basically want. They want to live in a community where people are grounded in something besides their own egos. They want to live in a community where people are caring and loving, loving and supportive.

But when we come to, can you do that? What’s the motive to do that? Well, it seems like the motive that you need in the New Testament, which is where we are supposed to be living now. The real core challenge is not to follow a rule or a law, but to believe in a promise. And the promise is, I will really take care of you. I’m not any longer going to hold you responsible for your actions.

This is something that’s really hard for people who are grounded in the Old Testament to believe that God comes with this most amazing gift. He wants to be the one who comes, and he just basically takes care of you and forgives all of your sins and releases you from everything you owe and all you then have to do is allow him to take away all your faults by just not paying attention to them. And then he’s going to be there to take care of you and guide you and lead you and empower you. And if you want to know exactly how we’re supposed to imagine that fulfillment of who God is, because he talks about it in the Old Testament, but the Isaiah piece we have today is part of the Old Testament. But there’s so many other passages in the Old Testament that sort of fly in the face of that. So it’s interesting about the New Testament and old testament.

There’s 300 references in the Old Testament to the New Testament. But the New Testament didn’t happen until God entered the world as a human being in this incredibly connection between humanity and divinity. This God and this man were in such union, and they did something for the human race and they took away all of the punishment, all of the retaliation that is due us because of our faults. It’s all gone. Well, if that’s all gone, then I guess we can do anything we want, right? Well, that’s probably what they would have thought back in the Old Testament, 4,000 years ago.

They had to have some kind of punishment. But we have now is the image that we have in the gospel of a healer, a miraculous healer. This is the image of God now not just holding us against a law that we have to, that controls our behavior, but a God who’s revealing to us a promise. And the promise is, I will awaken you into who you are, and I will empower you to live out of that awareness you have of your core nature, your authenticity. And so that’s the miracles. And the one we have in the gospel today is, is.

Is the one that I think might be the most interesting. He basically is saying, you know, that, that, that the gift. And I don’t know if this makes any sense to you, but I think it’s interesting that I heard this this week. But it’s the idea that of all the senses that we have, the last sense for us, if you’re dying, let’s say, and your brain is shutting down, the last sense to go is hearing like you’re all, you know, to the very end. You’re listening for something. Listening.

So in this gospel from Mark, we have one of the miracles of Jesus, and it’s the one in which he enables a person to speak clearly by improving the way he listens. Now think about speaking as proclaiming something that is true and authentic. That’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to speak the truth. And the thing that keeps him, this figure in this gospel that’s healed, what keeps him from doing that? He can’t hear.

He can’t hear. Right. And it’s true. I mean, speech is a. How would you say it? It is established in our brain by what we hear.

So if you live in a certain country that has a certain language, you’re going to speak that language. But let’s just say the speaking that we need to hear in God’s plan for us to grow into who we are is the truth. So the man can’t hear. He’s not ready for the truth. When you tell someone the truth about who they are or what they’re doing, they’re very likely to say, that’s not true because I can’t hear it. I can’t accept it.

I’m not open enough to it. So he opens his ears with his finger. Interesting. And then he does something else interesting. He takes spit, which is considered to be breath, which is the spirit of God in a tangible form, in saliva, and touches his tongue, like your tongue is now touched by spirit, by truth. And the other interesting thing about this thing is that when Jesus does this, he does two things.

He looks up to heaven, which is say, this is not me. The man Jesus is doing this is God. And he groans. And I don’t know what the groan is. It’s fascinating. Was it difficult for him or was it risky for him?

Because he knew if he did this, it was going to get in the way of his ministry. And that’s one of the reasons why he would always say, don’t tell anybody about this. Don’t tell anybody. He almost had to do it, which is a beautiful image of God. He can’t resist the healing that he wants to give to people. So in this story, we see then the man who can hear the truth is able to speak the truth.

Everybody is astonished. And you look at all the miracles of Jesus. It’s so interesting. Every single one of them has to do with awakening, empowering some natural quality that we have from God in terms of being a human being. Eyes that see, ears that hear, tongues that make speech, clear. Hands that get the work done, legs that get you to where you’re going.

Every one of them, if you think about it, direction of awakening and empower human beings exactly who they were intended to be. And the law, it seems, in the Old Testament was controlling people, and they weren’t yet able to understand the reasons. Perhaps that they had to follow these regulations. But the New Testament is all about somebody now who realizes these regulations are nothing other than who I really am and who I want to be to the people I love and what I want other people to be to me. And all of a sudden, the healings don’t sound so like they’re magic and out of the realm of what happens naturally. No, to me, the miracles that Jesus performed are the natural ways in which grace works in your life and in mine.

And that’s what we trust in. We trust in that. And if we live in that kind of life with all of those senses active and alive, we’re going to have the capacity to surrender our anxiety and our fear and be free of our addiction to whatever we have. Another glass of wine, another big deposit in our bank, another absolute, certain sign from a friend that they’re not going to leave you. All of that kind of melts away into the fact that if this is the God who I believe in, if this is the God who I believe is real, he’s doing all this for me, giving me all these, this capacity to handle it, why wouldn’t he be able, in doing that, to give you everything you need to deal with whatever loss or whatever struggle you’ve got in your future? God doesn’t promise to not have difficulty, not have us go through difficulties.

But if you understand how he’s always about empowering people to handle whatever comes their way with a kind of not without pain and the need for grief and all that and loss. But never are we going to have that experience, that fear sets up for us, that we’re going to be in a situation where we will not survive, that’s impossible to believe. If you know who God is and you trust him and you allow him to be exactly who he is for you, that’s peace. Closing PRAYER Father, you tell us over and over again not to be afraid, but it’s. It seems to be something that we tend to fall into more quickly and more often than we wish. So bless us with this confidence that comes not so much from how the world is going or how our situation is unfolding, but rather in a deep conviction that you are there with us in everything and empower us to be able to cope with whatever comes our way.

So bless us with confidence. Take away our fear. 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, Pastoral Reflections Institute 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. Copyright2024.