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 Baptism of the Lord. The Opening Prayer Almighty Ever Living God, who, when Christ had been baptized in the River Jordan and as the Holy Spirit descended upon him, solemnly declared him your beloved Son. Grant that your children, by adoption, reborn of water and the Holy Spirit may always be well pleasing to you 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 prophet Isaiah 42 first through the fourth verse and sixth and seventh verse. Thus says the Here is my servant whom I uphold, my Chosen One, with whom I am well pleased, upon whom I have put my Spirit.

He shall bring forth justice to the nations, not crying out, not shouting, not making his voice heard in the street. A bruised reed he shall not break, a smoldering wick he shall not quench. Until he establishes justice on the earth, the coastlands will wait for his teaching. I the Lord have called you for the victory of justice. I have grasped you by the hand, I formed you and set you as a covenant of the people, a light for the nations, to open the eyes of the blind, to bring out prisoners from confinement and from the dungeon those who live in darkness. The Word of the Lord the Lord will bless his people with peace.

A reading from the Acts of the Apostles, 10th chapter 34, 38th verse. Peter proceeded to speak to those gathered in the house of Cornelius, saying, in truth I see that God shows no partiality. Rather in every nation, whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him. You know the Word that he sent to the Israelites as he proclaimed peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. What has happened all over Judea? Beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John preached, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power.

He went about doing good and healing all those oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. The Word of the Lord Hallelujah. Verse the heavens were open and the voice of the Father thundered, this is my beloved Son. Listen to him. The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from Matthew 3:13, 17. Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan to be baptized by him.

John tried to prevent him, saying, I need to be baptized by you, and yet you’re coming to me. Jesus said to him in reply, allow it now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he allowed him. After Jesus was baptized, he came up from the water and behold, the heavens were opened for him. And he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens saying, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.

The Gospel of the Lord. Sa. We are about to begin the ordinary time. The ordinary time is the time we reflect, focusing on one of the synoptic gospels to look more thoroughly into the biography of this God man, Jesus. He has within himself and within the experience he had, the experience that all of us are destined to have. We have to pay attention to him.

He is the model, he is the example. He is who we are to become. When I grew up, I think I was told that. But one of the things I misunderstood was I felt that Jesus was unique. He wasn’t like me exactly. Well, he is human.

But he had one thing that I never had, and that was he was sinless. Sinless. And I have to say that when I grew up in my Catholic church and I felt that sin was. Well, it was obviously the most important thing that I was taught that I must avoid. But it seemed that the descriptions of the sins that I was told that would separate me from God were mostly my human weaknesses. I would tell a lie, I would steal a cookie, I would get angry.

But when you look at sin, the essence of sin, the real mortal, deadly sin, is the only one that is really dangerous. The others are signs that we need help and we need support. But the basic core thing that we are, Where it’s so important for us to avoid, is an out and out rejection of God. And generally, people don’t necessarily make that decision. I reject God. But they rather say, I am the best source of what I need for my life.

I am my own Savior, my best chance to be who I want to be. I have to do it. I have to do it. And you add to that kind of egocentric focus. You add that you have to be sinless at the same time. And it seems that the majority of my religion in my early years was primarily how to avoid sin, which I mean by that?

How not to make mistakes and basically how to try in my best to be the person that I knew God wanted me to be. And I thought that was to imitate him. And I thought it was perfection. But I don’t think that anymore. I don’t want you to think that anymore. Today we celebrate the baptism of Jesus.

And the interesting thing about Jesus is he is 100% human. 100% human. I don’t know how you can be 100% human and not struggle with weaknesses and make mistakes. And those are not necessarily sins like I was taught. The one thing I can say about Jesus, I know that he never, ever gave up on his father. He didn’t always want to do what his father asked him to do, but he never, ever doubted his Father’s love for him or his Father’s call for him to be someone in the world that would be essential to the world’s well being.

He knew he had a purpose. He knew he was loved. And he was promised that he would be safe. Nothing will harm you, son. Nothing. And Jesus believed that.

He showed. He believed that in the temptations in the desert when he was asked to test and see if God’s really going to take care of you, jump off of the parapet and see if an angel catches you. Well, that was just a way of saying, if you want to prove it, that means you must doubt it. He said, no, I know I’m going to be safe. So what is it that Jesus had that we don’t have naturally? What is it about him that is so different than we are, in a sense, in terms of his humanity, and that was his capacity to receive 100% of divinity.

That he was free by some mysterious way as a full human being, to surrender 1000% to a being living inside of him, guiding him, being his mentor, not explaining everything to him, not making him successful at everything he did? I’ve always thought if I trusted in God and turned to him and said, God, you do this through me, it would be spectacular. It would be wonderful. I’d be a miracle man. Why wasn’t Jesus more successful with his disciples while he lived on this earth? Why wasn’t he more successful with the temple?

And why did he get so crossways with them? Why didn’t he take his time and maybe take 20, 30, 40 years to slowly teach and make people aware of who he was and what he’s here to teach? It worked out the way it worked out. And it wasn’t in any way, shape or form, one might say Perfect God, perfection. It’s such a. Every time I say the word, I get a little chill because it’s just the word that I used to use all the time for my goal.

And now I don’t want to be perfect. I want to be perfectly myself. I want to be who I am and I want to grow. I know I can’t grow without mistakes and faults. And I know if I’m going to do what Jesus did, if I’m going to allow God to enter into me. And I think it’s so interesting that he begins his public ministry by making a very dramatic, dramatic statement that I am not doing this work on my own.

That’s why I think he asked John to baptize him. Because he said, baptism is the symbol, it is the celebration, it is the thing we need to know and be aware of, that we have a God who at some moment will enter into our lives and be present to us in a way that is absolutely beyond our imagining. Nothing is more important to me than teaching that one single doctrine of faith. God dwells in his people. He loves them. He’s on their side.

He wants nothing other for them, to save them. That’s what he wants. Yet if you’re living in a world of perfection like I was, and you keep thinking, well, the minute I fail what I was taught, and I don’t think it was intended this way, but it’s what I received, that God was upset and disgusted even, and turned against me instantly just because I did something that the law told me I shouldn’t do. And often I felt like I really wasn’t free not to do it, but I did it anyway. But that didn’t seem to change the teaching that they had given me, that it isn’t always my fault. The actions I do are not always my fault.

Sometimes they’re just things that I’ve inherited from my ancestors. Sometimes it’s the family of origin I entered into and taught me all kinds of half truths and lies. Sometimes it’s the culture that just overwhelms me. But the point that I’m trying to make is that this wonderful experience of God in us is never in any way, shape or form conditioned on our actions. I wish somebody had taught me that he is the God of mercy. We know he is also the God of justice.

And I don’t know that we have been able to put those two things together, justice and mercy. I sometimes think that I teach a God that is so sweet and so loving and so kind that he doesn’t give A darn about we do anything bad. He’s just crazy about us. Well, that’s not anything like I want to teach. No, he has a burning, burning desire to do something for you and for me. That’s why he dwells inside of us.

He said it over and over and over again. Want to open your eyes so you see what’s true? Get out of lies and half truths. I’ll show you what’s true. I promise I will, if you trust in me and go with me. And the other thing he said, I want you to free you from this thing that imprisons you, that keeps you from being the person I intended you to be.

The pressures on you are incredible. He knows that. He knows how hard it is to be living an authentic intentional life. It is not easy. And it has to stand in the face of so many other people who we respect, perhaps, and who want things from us. And they ask us to live a certain way because that’s what they think is best for us.

And we have to say no, even though we deeply respect and love them. Not easy. And then he promises us, look, I’ve created a world for you that is peaceful. It is not a world of darkness. Darkness is in the world. There’s darkness everywhere.

We just don’t have to look very far to find pain and suffering and violence and abuse. Yeah, there’s pain and there’s suffering and abuse and there’s dark. It makes people dark. But then there’s a way to be engaged in a world that is dark, where you have within you this light that frees you from the burdens of excessive shame or fear or anger. There’s a way to be at peace when your world is just falling apart. How do you do all that?

How does anybody do these things that go way beyond the basic human nature that we have? Human nature was never meant to. To be alone and work out of its own stuff. That was the sin of Adam and Eve. Tell us what’s right and wrong, we’ll take it from here and give us what we need and we’ll be fine. Autonomy, that’s the great sin.

I don’t need God. I don’t want Him. What’s the use of turning to somebody who doesn’t necessarily make himself that clearly known to me? He doesn’t answer my questions directly. And he’s telling me I need to trust in him, living in me, guiding me. And I need to be watching for the signs that he’s giving me dreams, situation after situation.

Problems in relationship. Are they just Accidental problems that just creep in and mess our life up? Or are they the signs? Are they the work of the God that is living in us? If you don’t believe that you have that kind of resonance inside of you of truth and light and peace, you can’t try to achieve these goals because human beings aren’t going to get there. Because about the only way you can do it, at least the way I was taught, you have to do everything perfectly, perfectly, and then God’s pleased and then everything starts working out for you.

I mean, it’s a really nice kind of justice system. And that’s where we started with justice. And what is justice? We’ve turned justice into something it isn’t. At least it was turned into something different for me. And it was.

I felt that when justice was called for, it was if somebody caused me pain, I had a right and even sometimes an obligation to cause them pain. Justice is, you hurt me, I’ll hurt you back. You take life, I’ll take your life. And that’s not the justice of God. Justice of God is more that things have ramifications and your actions have ramifications. And you need to face them, you need to look at them, you need to own them, you need to know what you’re doing.

And then you need to change, struggle to change, ask for forgiveness and reconcile. That’s justice. I know. It happens to me all the time. You’ll have somebody do something really lousy to you and treat you really rotten, and you don’t really. I always think that when people do things, we think they’re absolutely free not to.

And it’s all about us. At least that’s what happens to me. But no, people do things they don’t mean to do. Their actions are not necessarily who they really are. Why do we say that a person acts in a certain way, he is that person who lies is a liar. A person who murders is a murderer.

A person who has abused someone is an abuser. Like that becomes their identity. What is our identity? What is it about us that God is so pleased with? As he said to his son, you know, you’re my son. I think you’re wonderful.

Isn’t he saying that to every single person? Every time I baptize a child or an adult, I say something like that very clearly in the ritual, you know, you are God’s beloved son. He lives inside of you. He is your light, he is your wisdom. He is your direction. He is all that.

Yet when I was growing up, I always felt like I lost that presence of God, whenever my actions were against what the church or he or the law or whatever said, so I was doomed. How can you grow without making mistakes? And if a mistake makes you unacceptable to God, then you don’t have him inside of you. And the vicious cycle just goes round and round and round. How can we possibly conceive of a God who’s created us, knows us inside and out, knows our ancestors, knows everything in us that would make us capable of doing the things that we need to do? There’s some people who just can’t do certain things that’s just not in their ability.

People that can’t see or can’t walk or can’t talk, we don’t call that evil because it’s not something they’re responsible for. Well, can you say that same thing about certain things that people do instinctively or without thinking? I think you can. I think there’s a way for when justice is seen as something that needs to be fair and equal and should be resolved. You can also add to that a tremendous thing that God has also added to justice, and that’s mercy. Mercy.

What is mercy? The best way words I can say to you about mercy is there. It’s a form of compassion and empathy. Compassion and empathy. What is compassion? It’s being able to feel something that the person’s going through.

It kind of understands another person’s pain. And if justice has to do with inflicting pain, then we’ll be probably caught up in a lot of creating pain for people thinking this is the right thing to do. But mercy says no. Understand who they are, understand their weaknesses. Know they’re like. You know how many times you would need someone to say to you because that you’ve done something intuitively or instinctively without thinking and hurting them?

And would you want them to turn around and say, I know that wasn’t you. I’m there for you. I’m there with you. I’m connected to you. I love you. That’s compassion.

Empathy, same thing, only it goes a little deeper. Empathy is knowing someone’s pain because you have directly experienced it and you’re somehow experiencing it with them. Experiencing pain with someone is a creative force that brings life into this world. It’s called grace, called forgiveness, understanding. But how do we do this work without a conviction that there’s a divine force in us that is doing the work with us? If you’re counting on your human nature to be perfect, you’re going to fail or become a really dangerous egocentric person.

But if you know somehow that there’s a force, and the force is going to combat every negative feeling you have because of perhaps the way you’ve been treated or the way you see the world unfolding in front of you. It’s going to say a contradictory message. No, this is all for you. I love you. I’m inside of you. I’m not going to let anything harm you.

You’re safe, you’re loved. You have a purpose. There’s no way someone can sit down with a chart and show you everything that’s happening in your life to say, can’t you see it? It’s so obvious. No, it may never be obvious to you. That’s the mystery of faith, believing in something.

And the belief is so real and so strong that you are affected by it even though you can’t understand it. That’s the life that God has called us to live. It’s called a spiritual life. Sa. Closing prayer. Father Simplicity of your message, your love for us, your desire to be a part of us, your willingness to share your life and your wisdom with us slips through our fingers, I think, because people are trying too hard to make us into something that we’re not necessarily ready to be yet.

So give all those who lead others in their spiritual journey for patience and for wisdom and to be sure that the goals that they set do not simply create a world of oppression and depression, but lead one into a life of great light. And we ask this through Christ our Lord. 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 pastoralrefleflectionsinstitute.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.