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 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
The opening Prayer O God, who manifests your almighty power above all by pardoning and showing mercy, bestow, we pray your grace abundantly upon us and make those hastening to attain your promises heirs to the treasures of heaven 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 Numbers 11:25, 29 Lord God came down in the cloud and spoke to Moses, taking some of the spirit that was on Moses, the Lord bestowed it on the 70 elders. As the Spirit came to rest on them, they prophesied. Now two men, one named Eldad and the other Medad, were not in the gathering, but had been left in the camp. They too had been on the list, but had not gone out to the tent yet.
The Spirit came to rest on them also, and they prophesied in the camp. So when a young man quickly told Moses, eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp. Joshua, son of Nun, who from his youth had been Moses. Aid, said Moses, lord, stop them. But Moses answered him, are you jealous for my sake? Would that all people of the Lord were prophets.
Would that the Lord might bestow his Spirit on them all. The Word of the Lord the precepts of the Lord give joy to the heart. A reading from the New Testament from the Book of James, fifth chapter, first through the sixth verse. Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries. Your wealth has rotted away, your clothes have become moth eaten, your gold and silver had corroded, and the corrosion will be a testimony against you. It will devour your flesh like a fire.
You have stored up treasure for the last days. Behold, the wages you withheld from the workers who harvested your fields are crying aloud, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on earth in luxury and pleasure. You have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter. You have condemned. You have murdered the righteous one.
He offers you no resistance. The word of the Lord. Alleluia verse. Your word, O Lord, is truth. Consecrate us in truth. The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from St.
Mark 9th chapter 38th, to the 43rd verse, 45th, and the 47th, 48th verse. At that time, John said to Jesus, teacher, we saw someone driving out demons in your name, and we tried to prevent him because he does not follow us. Jesus replied, do not prevent him. There is no one who performs a mighty deed in my name who can at the same time speak ill of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. Anyone who gives you a cup of water to drink because you belong to Christ, Amen, I say to you, will surely not lose his reward.
And whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life maimed than with two hands to go into Gehenna into the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter into life crippled than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.
Better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna where their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched. The Gospel OF the Lord Sam SA We’ve been listening to Mark’s Gospel these last couple of Sundays, and it’s clear that one of the things that this section is speaking about is the distance between who the disciples were at this time and who they would become after Jesus, death and resurrection, and the Spirit descending upon them, radically changing their understanding of who they are and who God is and why they’re here. If we go back to the very beginning of the story of salvation history, we have this interesting story about a garden called Eden. And the first human beings are there, and they’re in a situation where they’ve been told one thing and they’ve been tempted to do something else. And the way we’ve interpreted that story varies. But I think the thing that I’ve grown to understand about it, it’s not so much about simply saying that the real problem, human beings is that we don’t do what we’re told.
We don’t follow the rules, we break the rules, we disobey. And it’s much more nuanced than just simply saying. Human nature has a resistance to being told what to do, because some of that is really valuable, because we should not be governed by something outside of ourselves, but by our own inner decisions. And that’s the goal of Christianity, to change our hearts so that we’re not being told what to do, but we do what we know we should do. It’s who we are. But the interesting thing about the sin as it’s described by many people, is it sounds like it’s just about breaking the rules.
But basically what it’s about is a deep longing in human beings to work, to become everything that God wants them to be. It was a temptation to follow the ego, to be as good as you possibly can, to be as good as God is. When you think about that, it’s a little bit less attractive in a way. Well, I’d say it’s more attractive than thinking that we just don’t want to be told what to do. What we’re seduced into is a misunderstanding of how it is that we serve the God that has created us. And we tend to want to do it by being the best that we can be, to be like God.
And then if we’re like God, if we’re as good as he is, then he’ll like us. It’s almost like we don’t have a comfort level with the way in which God describes our relationship with him, where the only way we exist in that relationship is because of God’s mercy, his understanding, his compassion. That’s why he had to teach and preach the fullness of his message with the idea and the ideal of forgiveness. His whole focus is not so much to look at whether or not we are who we should be, but rather, can we allow God to enter into us as we are and taking us where we are to the next level? It’s very different. One takes humility, the other is all bound up in pride.
So in this particular part of Mark’s Gospel, we’re watching, in a way, Jesus pointing out the selfishness, in a sense, but it’s the humanity of the disciples. You know, they’ve been arguing about who is the greatest. They’ve been trying to figure out, you know, they know that God, Jesus is going to save the, you know, the Jewish people and he’s going to put them in power and they’re going to run the whole situation and you know, all the ego, ego, ego stuff. And so in these readings, we’re having a kind of refresher course about the way human nature is and what it’s really made for. So you take that first reading. One of the things that we’d love is not only to be the best that we can be or better than other people, but we want to be in the in group, want to be among the chosen.
And so it’s interesting, when God called Abraham, he said, I want you to choose these people. I want you to tell them that they’re my choice and they’re my favorites. They’re the best. And so right away, you have this image in the followers of Abraham, the followers of God under the direction of Abraham, that they’re the special ones. So you can see in this first reading, you know, that when they think that somebody outside of this group is able to do what God asked them to do, it bothers them. It says, wait, this isn’t fair.
God does not favor anybody but us. Well, by saying that I’ve taken you as my chosen people is not to say that I haven’t chosen everyone. In a sense, it’s to say, I’m working with you as a special group so you can understand who I am and what I’m up to and why I’m in your life so you can teach it. I need to form community. And in a way, that’s the way we grow. In anything, education about anything.
You get a community together, a group of students that are studying something. We work together, we feed each other. So that’s why God called this community of the Israelites together. Not because they were better than everybody else, but just because that’s the way it works to be a part of a community. So when, you know, when there’s a complaint, Moses stopped them, stop them. He says, well, if they’re for us, why should we be against them?
Nobody that is working for what God is calling them to is consider to be an outsider. That’s what Moses is basically saying, look, if they’re doing what we’re doing, they’re not against us, so leave them alone. And then the next thing that comes up in the reading from James is the whole idea of wealth and riches. And, you know, in the Old Testament particularly, there’s this. And in the New Testament also, but more in the New Testament, there’s this condemnation of people with wealth. The reason is not because they happen to have money, because wealthy people can be extremely valuable and philanthropic.
And there were wealthy people that took care of Jesus and things like that. But the point is that so often when you look at the way wealth was developed in the time that James was writing this letter is that simply they were always in almost every case, rich because they were stealing from someone who was poor. They didn’t run great companies and end up developing a wealth that they earned and struggled for and then share with other people. That’s not. That’s not the image that is being condemned in this. These words from James.
So what. What basically this is underscoring is that there’s a part of all of us that remains greedy and we want to get, you know, we want the best of everything. So right away we’re looking at images in this set of readings that have to do with our ego. And so. And we get to the gospel and basically we start off with the same theme, exclusivity. The followers of Jesus were special, and they were the ones who were able to do the things that God enabled them to do, and no one else could do them because they were in that special group.
Well, the same thing is in the gospel that says, look, someone’s driving out demons in your name and they’re not part of us. So John’s saying, stop them. Again, no. Anyone that’s out there, whether they belong to our company or not, if they’re loving, if they’re forgiving, if they’re doing anything good, that they’re part of us. And so don’t get caught up in this image of being a part of the exclusive group that God loves in a special way. And that is such a shadow of all religions.
Catholicism. We used to do it in spades when I was growing up. I thought that my Methodist friends, my Baptist friends, my Presbyterian friends, they were all going to hell because they weren’t part of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. And other religions have done the same thing. Isn’t it ironic when you think about it, Believing this generous, loving God is the heart of every Christian religion, and yet we like the idea that he only really loves us. So what are we dealing with here?
A universal problem of what we would call basically undeveloped, unevolved, low level of evolution of human nature. I want to be special. I want to be really, really good in the eyes of others, in the eyes of God. So then we get to the part of this gospel that is the heart of what I want to talk about today. Because I’ve looked this up in commentaries on the Gospel and sometimes they just skip this section. A weird kind of little statement.
It’s not a Little statement, a powerful statement coming from the mouth of Jesus. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. Better to life enter maimed, and with two hands, your foot is your problem, cut it off. Better to be lame than to enter into gehenna. If your eye is your problem, pluck the other. I mean, it’s crazy.
Where does this come from? Why would he make such a dramatic statement to people about self mutilization? And it’s got such a beautiful piece of wisdom in it, if you can just hear it. But he used something so dramatic. And I know in the scriptures when Jesus does this, when he throws out something, he just completely flips your mind. Like, unless you eat my body and drink my blood, you can’t be a part of me.
Things like that. This is one of those kind of statements. And can you imagine the discussion of the disciples after he finished this? What are you talking about? It’s better to be lame, to be half blind, to not be able to do work. Is that the best way to be in life?
Well, maybe what he’s saying is unless you embrace, unless you accept, unless you recognize that our human nature, nature by its very nature, is never going to be enough to accomplish the work that we’re here to accomplish. We’re not capable of any of the work that God is really calling us to do in terms of the real depth that it has as a potential. We have to be guided with and filled with and aware of a spirit dwelling in us, dwelling in us, giving us the wisdom that we need, the insight that we can see so much, we can see so far, but we can’t see the depth of what’s out there. And so we only have one eye. If we can accept the fact that we have only one eye, then we know that we need two eyes to be full and the other eye is not ours, but God’s. Same way, with your hand, how do you do and accomplish all the things that you’re called to do?
The gospel makes it so clear that you and I are called to care for the needs of other people. Do you think that then that’s up to you, to be the one who does everything for someone? Do you realize that when you actually reach out and give someone something, your time, your energy, your love, your advice, do you think that that’s all that’s being given through you to them? Or do you really believe that when you have an intention to give something to someone, you’ll give some things that are valuable, but they’re more than what you can give Though I’m not diminishing, that is what God gives you through the intention that you have when he flows through you. Because when you’re in the flow of life between you and someone else, and God is in that flow, in that trio, he is so powerful and effective. And if you don’t feel that the little you did is not all that’s been given, but so much more has been given, unless you have that, you’re not going to really feel the fullness of what it means to be his follower in the image of a foot.
You know, I mean, we are on a journey. We have to go and move and evolve and change. And all of that seems so beautiful to me that we do stretch our imaginations and try to find the newest insight, but at the same time, if we think we get those insights, they come from us. That’s where we’re limited. So the image of entering life maimed is the image of entering life needy, never expecting you to be enough for the things that you’re called to do, and never using your gifts or your talents as a sign that you are loved by God, or that you’re esteemed by other people, or that you’re part of a special group. Wow, that’s not easy.
Who said it was supposed to be easy? It’s impossible. All the things we’re asked to be are impossible without Him. But with him, everything’s possible. Sa Closing Prayer Father, without you we cannot achieve the goal that you set for us. Yet we struggle and we try to please you by attaining it out of our own energy, our own strength.
Bless us with the humility that is key to being able to engage in a relationship with you, where we can find the peace, knowing that we are the instrument that you’ve called us to be, feeling the effectiveness of us working with 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 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.
