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 fifth Sunday of Easter.

The Opening Prayer Almighty ever living God, constantly accomplish the paschal mystery within us that those you were pleased to make new in Holy baptism may under your protective care, bear much fruit and come to the joys of life eternal 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 Acts of the Apostles 9:26 31st verse when Saul arrived in Jerusalem, he tried to join the disciples, but they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple. Then Barnabas took charge of him and brought him to the apostles, and he reported to them how he had seen the Lord and that he had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken out boldly in the name of Jesus. He moved about freely with them in Jerusalem and spoke out boldly in the name of the Lord. He also spoke and debated with the Hellenists, but they tried to kill him, and when the brothers learned of this, they took him down to Caesarea and sent him on his way to Tarsus.

The church throughout all of Judea and Galilee and Samaria was at peace. It was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord, and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit it grew in numbers. The Word of the Lord. Responsorial Psalm I will praise you, Lord, in the assembly of the people. A reading from 1st John 3:18 24 children, let us love not in word or speech, but in deed, in truth. Now this is how we shall know that we belong to the truth, and reassure our hearts before him in whatever our hearts condemn.

For God is greater than our hearts, and knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence in God, and receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases to him. His commandment is believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he commanded Us, those who keep his commandments, remain in him, and he in them. And the way we know that he remains in us is the Spirit. He gave us the word of the Lord. Now leave verse.

Remain in me as I remain in you, says the Lord. Whoever remains in me will bear much fruit. The gospel for this fifth Sunday of Easter is taken from St. John, 15th chapter, first through the eighth verse. Jesus said to his disciples, I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit.

You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. Remain in me is I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in Me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither.

People will gather them and throw them into a fire, and they will be burned. If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you want. It will be done for you by this is my Father glorified that you may bear much fruit and become my disciples. The Gospel of the Lord Sam Sa Nothing is clearer to me after I’ve been doing this work of preaching and teaching from this one source, Scripture. That the ultimate goal of this entire story of God working with human beings has the motive, has the intention of moving us to a place where we never would have imagined, that God is calling us into. And that’s intimacy with Him.

That this whole story of God revealing himself throughout history is more than just God showing us who he is in Scripture, but we also learn a great deal about who we are. So imagine that this story that I’ve been working from for 53 years as a priest is so clearly destined for a purpose. It has a focus. And the focus is to bring in into reality a relationship with God that He has planned from the very beginning, but something that human beings have had a hard time accepting, surrendering to. How do you learn to move from simply somebody who is told what to do by an authority greater than them to an experience of a God who says, I want to live inside of you. I want to be a part of you.

It’s not easy, but I want to see, maybe if I can give you an image of this whole story. It’s like we have this incredible gift of wisdom in this recorded story of salvation history started, you know, 4,000 plus years ago. And let’s look at it from a kind of objective perspective, like we’ve never ever heard it before. And here’s a story about this God. And so if you were going to write a review, say, of scripture, what might you say to somebody who has never read it, never heard of it? Well, one way you could do it is to start with focusing on how it began and how it ended.

What’s fascinating about the beginning of this story, it’s a story of creation. God, this mystical figure that exists for all time, decided in some mysterious way to create a world. He existed before the world. And so when he created this, we have a story of seven days when he created all the elements of this universe that we live in. At the special moment that’s so crucial to the whole story, he decided, I am also going to create human beings. So he created the universe, all the animals, everything.

And then finally the crown of his creation as human beings. And you might say, well, why did he create human beings? What strikes me, and this is something that I’ve played with for a long time, and it’s also rooted in St. Bonaventure, who was one of the great doctors of the church that lived in the 13th century. In his mind, Bonaventure was a mystic and a doctor of the church, but he had this sense that in God there was some longing for something more than just the creation that he that he made. He wanted something more like him, something he could connect with and be in love with and have a relationship with.

So he created these beings that were actually part of the whole evolution of creation. And they evolved. And of course you could say, well, isn’t there a story in the scriptures where he just poof, made them out of just, I don’t know, breathing into some mud figure? Yes, there’s that story. But the story is not so much about how it happened, but what happened. And what happened is God created creatures.

They were different than everything else he created. And the most interesting thing about them that was different is that they had freedom to make choices, to choose. He gave them a gift he didn’t give to the rest of creation. Freedom. Freedom to choose. So it’s obvious that he’s going to have a different relationship with these creatures called humans than with the rest of creation.

So the story begins with that relationship. God created human beings. He found them very, very good, and he created a garden for them. And he revealed to human beings for the first time, who he was and who they were. So imagine that if you can follow this, it’s a. In the evolution of human beings, growing naturally through a process that I think is more complex and more amazing than just, poof, if you made them over just in one day.

But no, his plan was everything evolves in a natural way. And so, anyway, human beings are the crown of creation. And they are constantly in a state of evolution, changing, growing, becoming more conscious, becoming more who God intended them to be. So imagine the story of Scripture is primarily both theological and anthropological. It’s a story where we learn who God is and how he reveals Himself to us. And we also learn who we are and how we are here to develop and grow.

So we learn about God, we learn about humans. So in this first story, it’s very interesting. The first story reveals the nature of both. God is a lover. He created this beautiful world. He loves these human beings.

He created a garden for them. It’s almost an idyllic life. It was an idyllic life. They didn’t have to work, they didn’t have to do anything. They could just sit back and enjoy the garden as if that’s who human beings are. They’re not creatures that want to be simply cared for in a garden like children for the rest of eternity.

The story of Adam and Eve reveals not only a God who creates these creatures and wants to please them. It’s also about human beings who have their own desires and their own longings. And the thing that’s so fascinating about this story is it’s often been, I think, somewhat limited in its interpretation by focusing it on. As if this action of disobedience on the part of Adam and Eve determines the fact that the human beings that God created are somehow evil. And I don’t know that that’s really the heart of the story. It seems to me the heart of the story is human beings reveal in this story who they are.

And they aren’t people that want to just lay around and be served. Human beings like to do things, to make things, to be engaged in things. It’s almost like if you can imagine the story of Adam and Eve being two children of the richest man in the world. And they say, you don’t have to work, you don’t have to do anything. Just enjoy the house. Here’s the gym, here’s the pool.

Invite your friends over. And they’d say, I want to do more than that. I want to be more than that. I want to create. I want to do Something, make something that’s just a part of human nature. But the scary part of human nature is also what’s revealed in this story.

And that is they do like to do things on their own. So I want you to imagine that the story of Adam and Eve in the garden is a story about human beings revealing to all of us that we have something in us that I would say is a longing for autonomy. We like to do things on our own. We like to achieve things. I’ll do it. Let me make it.

It’s like the people in the world like me, who won’t read instructions when they get something or they won’t go to. When they go to the store, they can’t find something. They’re not going to ask somebody. They’re going to find it on their own. There’s something in us that has that longing for autonomy, and there’s something in God that has a longing for unity. And that’s the way the story starts.

A God who wants a relationship and human beings who want to prove to themselves and maybe indirectly to God in their mind that they can handle things on their own. And that’s the beginning of the relationship. Human beings off on their own, and God longing for a relationship with him. Now, what’s interesting, if you look at the story as it continues from that point on, we see in the story of Adam and Eve that they are wanting autonomy. And then the next story in Scripture is about Cain and Abel. And there’s a story about this figure, Cain, the oldest son, wanting to be the best.

So autonomy, wanting to be the best. There’s a story of the Tower of Babel, where these human beings decided they could do anything they wanted, they could build anything they want. And that hubris in human beings that we can. We can accomplish anything. Those three things set the stage for what God has as an agenda to wean human beings off of that disposition and to get them into a position where they are ready to surrender and open themselves to an extraordinary mystery. And that’s the mystery of the incarnation.

So go back to the story at the beginning. Adam and Eve explain or reveal to us that part of human nature. When God sent them out of the garden, was he punishing them and kicking them out? Or was he saying, okay, I understand you want to make it on your own. Tell you what, you go down, it’s going to be hard. You’re going to have this difficulty.

It’s going to be not an easy life. But if that’s what you want to do, let’s Go do it. You go do it. And I’ll make some clothes for you in the meantime and send you off. So it’s hard for me to imagine in that story that God is condemning Adam and Eve for being human. No, he’s giving them an opportunity to experience humanity and to recognize that humanity was never made to be autonomous.

It was made to be in union, in communion with divinity. And that’s the way the story ends. The story ends with this incredible revelation, finally, after 4,000 years of who God really is, a God who longs for intimacy with his people. And then we see the story of human beings evolving over this long period of time where they finally see something and they’re converted to a new understanding, radically different than what was in Adam and Eve at the beginning. And it’s in a way, summarized in the story of Paul. And in Paul’s experience, what he’s done is he’s moved from an image of religion, let’s say, that is based in law, performance, reward, punishment, the temple, and then the fullness of the revelation of who God is, is in Jesus.

And Jesus is God fully revealed. And who he is, is, is the same God that was in the Garden of Eden. And basically he still wants and now can achieve. The thing he wanted then was union and communion with humans. And so we see then in Paul an image of the conversion that is to happen to the human race. Instead of religion being something that’s an obligation to fulfill, it’s an experience to have.

And what Paul, Paul experienced is the presence of God in the form of Jesus coming to him and saying, hey, I need you. I want you. I will enable you to be the best preacher in the world. And I don’t have any judgment against you for the fact that you were really trying to destroy my people. I love you as you are. I see gifts in you.

They exist. And I want you to. To allow me to remain in you and you remain in me. And together we’ll do this incredible work. And that’s the end of the story, you know, from isolation and separation from God to complete intimacy and union with God. That’s the goal.

And so what we see then in the life of Jesus is this incredible full unfolding of the plan of God. And then you listen to Jesus talking to his disciples after his resurrection, and he’s saying so clearly the same thing. Look, from the beginning, from the beginning, God has always had this intention that you would realize you were never made to operate on your own. You were always made to create and to do and to accomplish, but never on your own. I have to be in you for you to achieve the goal that I placed in your hearts. But you thought I was placing it there with you, in control of it.

And it’s not that. Human beings in their core nature have this big issue of autonomy and wanting to use and abuse and be in control and all those things. Well, yes, in a way we’re in control, but not fully. And what we need to recognize is this incredible image that Jesus is working with, that we are branches of this incredible core vine that is God. The branch can’t exist without the vine, and so the vine can exist without the branch. But the vine that is God desires not just to be the vine, but to be fruitful in the world.

And the fruitfulness is to transform human beings. And so we connected finally to the core of who we are, knowing we have this longing and this deep connection with God that was won for us in some mysterious way by the new Adam. And that what we’re experiencing is this new potential union that creates the most effective way in which human beings have been destined to live. And we can ask for anything and we get it. That’s a weird, wonderful thing to think about. But what it means is when you have God in you, living in you, your desire is to love, and you believe in love and you believe in the power of that.

So when you’re asking God help me to be a more interesting and powerful way of bringing life to the world, he will do it. And that’s what I count on every time I walk into the station. Closing prayer God, the plan that you’ve had from the very beginning has unfolded. And it’s important that we grasp the fullness of this revelation that is our gift from you. And bless us with readiness to receive the truth and to surrender to the things that we have to let go of so that we can enter into this incredible indwelling presence with you. You remaining in us, we remain in you.

It’s hard for us to do this work without the grace that is our inheritance. So awaken us to the power that’s in us that sometimes lays unawakened and awaken it and bring us to the peace and the joy of a kingdom where we know we are cared for and have the capacity to give life and care for each other. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Hello, my name is Will Richie and I work for Pastoral Reflections Institute. Monsignor Fisher has asked me to offer my reflections on the homily.

Today, what struck me was in the very first lines, when he says that God wants to live inside of us, he wants to be a part of us. It reminded me of a therapist that I had once who gave me the definition of the word intimacy into me. See, she could tell that I could tell stories of others, stories of my siblings, stories of my family. But I had a hard time embracing the I and talking about the story about myself. It kind of mirrors a bit of my upbringing growing up. I could tell you about Catholicism, the rules and regulations, why it was necessary to go to confession, but I don’t know that I ever grasped that the presence of God was dwelling within me and that God wanted to have a relationship with me.

Monsignor says that humans have always wanted to be autonomous, but all God is asking us for is unity, and that’s where the true authenticity of our spirituality lies. 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.