My name is Don, and I’ve been a Catholic priest for over 50 years. During that time, I’ve pondered these readings over and over again and have discovered something that I never saw there before. It’s given me new hope, new energy, new image of what I do and how I do it. I pray the message that I’m sending you will be equally valuable to you if you find it. So please share these podcasts with your friends. Thank you.

Good morning. I’d like to say a few words to you before we begin our program, the Reflections on the homily. And one of the things, I want to thank one of my listeners, Beth, in Lexington, Kentucky. She sent me a very sweet note. Thank you, Beth, for that. And I appreciate so much hearing from you all that are new listeners, because it gives me a sense of knowing that this work that I do that I love so much is reaching a lot of people in different places in the country.

So I thank you for all that. And I want to say another thing, that when I was in the seminary, there was an amazing event taking place called the Vatican Council, Second Vatican Council. And one of the things about it that was so fascinating to me is it gave me a tremendous focus because I picked up the focus that was there in the council on the dignity and the beauty of each individual person. And that the church is not so much to be seen as an institution, a hierarchy of people that are very much in charge and making decisions for people about what we need to believe and what we need to do. And all of that has value. But somehow they flipped it and said, no.

The real church, the core of it, is the believer, and the hierarchy are the servants. And so I’ve had this sensitivity my whole life. And in my preaching, it shows up a lot that rather than talk a lot about the church as an institution, I love talking about the individual who is the recipient of this incredible promise from God that he wants to dwell in their hearts. And somehow that focus is what you’re going to hear in so many of my homilies. So I hope you enjoy these, these reflections. They’re intended, as you can imagine, to reach your heart, not so much your intellect, but just to talk to your heart and awaken things that you already know.

I’m not going to tell you anything you don’t know. I’m going to just try to stimulate the things that God has placed deep in your heart and awaken those things. And that’s my task. And this morning is the sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, the opening prayer. O God, who teach us that you abide in hearts that are just and true, grant that we may be so fashioned by your grace as to become a dwelling 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 Old Testament from the book of Jeremiah, 17th chapter, fifth through the eighth verse. Thus says the Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, who seeks his strength in flesh, whose heart turns away from the Lord. He is like a barren bush in the desert that enjoys no change of season, but stands in a lava waste, a salt and empty earth. Bless is the one who trusts in the Lord, whose hope is the Lord. He is like a tree planted beside the waters, it stretches out its roots to the stream it fears not the heat when it comes, its leaves stay green. In the year of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit.

The Word of the Lord Responsorial Psalm Blessed are they who hope in the Lord. Bless the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked, nor walks in the ways of sinners, nor sits in the company of the insolent, but delights in the law of the Lord, and meditates on his law night and day. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord. He is like a tree planted near running water, that yields its fruit in due season, and whose leaves never fade whatever he does prospers. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord. Not so the wicked not so they are like chaff which the wind drives away.

For the Lord watches over the way of the just, but the way of the wicked vanishes. Blessed are they who hope in the Lord. A Reading from the New Testament from St. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, 15th chapter, 12th verse, and the 16th and 20th verse. Brothers and sisters, if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If the dead are not raised, neither was Christ been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is in vain. You are still in your sins. Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. The Word of the Lord Alleluia Verse Rejoice and be glad your reward will be great in heaven.

Hallelujah. The Gospel for this Sunday is taken from St. Luke, 6th chapter, 17th verse, and the 20th to the 26th verse, Jesus came down with the 12 and stood on a stretch of level ground with a great crowd of his disciples and a large number of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal regions of Tyre and Sidon. And raising his eyes toward his disciples, he said, blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day. Behold, your reward will be great in heaven for their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep.

Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in the same way. The Gospel of the Lord Sa this is a fascinating gospel to me because of the way in which I feel Jesus was talking to two groups of people, one the disciples and the other the crowd. So I want to talk first about what I think he was doing with the crowd that he had in front of him. I’m always fascinated by the fact that Jesus could talk to so many people, like, you know, 500 or something like that, without a microphone and all that stuff. But anyway, he must have had a very, very wonderful voice that carried. That’s a wonderful way of thinking of him, with his beautiful voice and a beautiful message.

But back to the audience. One of the things that’s clear in the Old Testament, that’s different than the New Testament is the Old Testament. There is a strong theme that human beings are earning salvation. They’re earning the love of God. It shows up over and over and over again because God first revealed himself to the Israelites by saying, you know, I am. I want you to understand that I am the only God.

And I have a burning desire to connect with you, to lead you, to guide you to a place that you cannot get to on your own. A place you don’t even know fully what it is. But I want you to trust me. Go with me to a land that you have never been there before. And that’s a good image of the way in which God comes into human nature and changes the way we imagine things, the way we see things. But again, back to the Image in the Old Testament, it’s basically that when God was working with them, he would do this.

He would say, I will show you how much I love you by helping you with your enemies. Now, you have to understand, back at the time that this was written, that’s almost 4,000 years ago, life was very different. And enemies were something that was real. You just had to. That’s why the cities were all walled. And there was always some group that might come in and destroy you.

And so there was a sense of war and battle throughout the whole thing. So that’s why you see God working with the Israelites. I will be the source of your success in battle, and I will crush the enemy for you. Which must have sounded wonderful. But then that same God revealed himself as the source of everything. He was a source of that kind of goodness to his people, but he was also the source of evil, which is hard for us to imagine.

But they saw gods as in charge. Anything bad that happened, it was the God that was angry. And so God acted like the rest of the gods so they could begin to understand, all right, well, he’s credible, he’s like the other gods, but they’re going to learn, learn slowly how different he is. And that’s not fully revealed until Jesus. But basically what I’m trying to say is that there is this pattern in the Old Testament of God being the source of all good and all evil. And one of the things in which that left people with was a sense that God could turn on them and he could crush their enemies.

But if they didn’t do what they were told, he could crush them. So in that system of God’s favor, if you follow the rules and the laws, that was something that pleased God very much. So there are many people who just follow the letter of the law. And the sign that they followed the letter of the law was wealth, abundance, well, being a wonderful, glorious life, almost like a prosperity gospel. Turn to God and believe in him, and your world becomes rich and full of all that the world offers. That’s what basically was being presented to these people.

And so the opposite would be if you were sick, if you had leprosy, if you had a problem that was really terrible, then that was always God punishing you. And if you didn’t do anything wrong, then you were told, well, it was your parents sin and you’re being punished for their sins. So we have an image that God’s favor is a result of their obedience. And God’s favor would be that they would not have disease Or a difficult life situation. So the sign of God’s favor was prosperity. So Jesus in this thing flips it.

He said, no. The rich, those that are satisfied, those that are accepted, those that are looked up and honored, they’re in trouble. Woe to them. A warning. You’re not going to be who I call you to be. Living in a life of, I will just stress it a little bit, luxury and prosperity.

But there’s something else. There’s another way of living and of being in union with God. God’s not interested in taking care of all of your needs so that life is easy. But you know what? If you’re like me, I don’t know if you have something horrible that happens. I know hear this from many people, you know, something bad happens, they say, oh, God is upset with me or what did I do to deserve this?

And those are still remnants of that way. Human nature is wired together naturally that we think, you know, pleasing someone gains some kind of access to their generosity and their goodness. And that’s normal, you know, but it’s not who God is. God is the one who longs to dwell within you and within me. Jesus reveals him in his fullness. He’s a lover.

He’s someone that’s come into your world not to judge you, but to forgive you. He wants to offer you the fullness of life. And the fullness of life is such a beautiful image. And there’s a way in which scripture captures that gift of life so beautifully in the image of water. Water, life giving water. Remember the woman at the well when Jesus met her and he broke all the rules by talking to her.

Because no rabbi or Jew would talk to a gentile. And he just disregarded those laws and had a conversation with her and said, if you knew who I was, you would ask me for a drink. And that drink would be a life giving fountain inside of you. So listen to the image in the first reading because it’s really beautiful. It’s also in the responsorial psalm. We in this life are like a plant that God has placed here set on the earth.

And we see two images of plants. One is a barren bush in a lava waste. I went to Iceland a couple years ago and I know what a lava waste looks like. It’s devastatingly empty of any life. And here’s a bush with no leaves sitting in it. That’s the human being who trusts only in himself and needs nothing from God, is not interested in God and maybe he doesn’t reject him so much.

We don’t necessarily go around rejecting God, but we ignore Him. It’s a really hard thing to imagine that we do, but we ignore his help, his presence. And our life becomes empty. And that’s an image to me of darkness and depression. And then the other image is a beautiful tree, tall and strong, filled with beautiful leaves and fruit to nurture other people. It’s right next to a river, a stream, so it can endure the extremes of weather because the water is always there.

What a beautiful image to hold in our hearts that that’s who God wants to be in your life and in mine. Life giving water a source of life. So I said the. The last of these. Well, let me put it this way. What God was doing to the audience in general was shocking them with a.

With a. Almost a scandalous way of describing God by saying, you know, he is not showing favor to people, or people are not receiving this favor from God as a reward for their. For their perfection. And the ones that are in serious struggle and striving and working and struggling, those are the ones that have received God’s favor. So they flip the image. So it’s wonderful.

And it’s also. When he flips the image, he’s also directing the words, now not so much to the. To the crowd, but he’s directing them to his disciples. And let’s look at why this reading fits so well to what the disciples were getting ready for and what Jesus was getting them ready for. And it’s this. I’m asking you to give up everything.

Not so much. You’re fishing with your family and giving up family and coming and following me. But I’m like God in the Old Testament. I’m going to take you to a brand new place. And you are not going to be able to endure it and understand it without My presence in you. So I am going to put you in a place of great emptiness.

I guess you could say poverty. He’s saying you are going to experience something that is essential to you. Being a person who depicts, depends upon me for everything that you really need. You will receive a sense in yourself that you are not enough for what I’m asking from you. Because he’s going to ask for their life. They were all martyred.

So he’s saying, what I want you to do is to understand that I am going to be in your life. I’m entering into your life to change you. But I need your poverty to enter in. Because if you don’t have a need for something more than you can handle on your own, you probably won’t turn to me. Isn’t that interesting? The blessing of poverty is not necessarily being without money.

The blessing of poverty is I am not self sufficient. And that’s like an opening to the rich, wonderful waters of life. And he says, you’re going to thirst for things. And I think what that thirst is all about is longing. You know, if we have a longing to do something that we really long to see happen, we want it very much. And it’s something that’s hard to achieve without wisdom or without a lot of discipline.

And when you’re in that disposition of deep thirst and longing for something more than you are, you also have another way of inviting God into your life. Because he’s going to come in because you’re going to instinctively cry out for help, oh God, what am I going to do? So the person who is not enough, the person who longs to make the world better, but can’t figure out how, and perhaps doesn’t have the energy to do what is necessary. God is there to help them and they’re open to it. He’s also saying blessed are the sad, which is interesting. And the disciples, I don’t know if you could say that the life that they led was sad, but the sadness that I think he’s talking about is the awareness, the being awake to what is happening in the world.

And one of the things that Jesus wanted His disciples to see so clearly was the, the abuse that was happening through the temple and the extreme demand of laws and rules and condemnation and judgment and expensive rituals for forgiveness. He saw the temple as a horrible place. And so he wanted them to realize how many people were suffering deeply so that they would be, I would say, blessed with an awareness of the pain in the world that doesn’t necessarily have to be there and certainly should not be attached to God and His divinity. And so they were very conscious, compassionate, had empathy for the people that were suffering. And the last is, you know, Blessed Are youe when they reject you. And I don’t know if you think about this much, but I’ve often thought that when you are like the rest of the culture, let’s just say, you know, whatever the culture honors, you have got it.

If it’s height, you’re tall, if it’s handsome or beautiful, it’s that if you’ve got a great education, if you all these things, you know, if you fit in this category of being what the culture and society expects to be, to that you should be, then you’re going to be acceptable. Everybody looks up to you and put you as a model or something like that. But all of that is the. The subtlety of the way human beings, in order to belong, in order to feel acceptable, will become whatever they need to be. If there’s one thing the disciples are going to have to have is this strength inside of them that is so convincing that they know that, that when they start preaching and they are rejected and they’re trying to destroy them and they ultimately will destroy them and take their life. All but John was martyred.

It’s because they have confidence, confidence in who they are, confidence in their message. You know, it’s interesting that when you think of these gifts of being confident, of being compassionate, of being wanting the world to be better, of realizing that we humbly are not enough, all those are such blessings. And that’s why he could say, blessed are the poor, the thirsty, the sad and the rejected. What a beautiful way in which he’s beginning to form the disciples. And this is even before he called them. They were listening, but they were there.

So I wonder what their conversations were afterwards. Who is this guy? What’s he talking about? But then living with him, working with him, he in their presence made all the difference. And what God was saying to them is, I am in my son. And when my son was your life giving source, it was a sign that that’s who I am and that’s who I want to be.

So anything that moves you or me to realize any of these weaknesses that we have and see them and feel them, then we know that we will be more open and receptive to this incredibly complicated but simple, but wonderful, indwelling presence of God. It’s what I long for everyone to feel. It’s what I long to feel over and over again. And there are moments when I feel it and slips away and I feel insufficient. But the key is to trust that he will be there when he needs to be there. The closing prayer Father, your longing for intimacy with us is beyond our imagining.

And so bless us with the kind of imagination that can be excited by the fact that if this is true, imagine the things we can accomplish so that I can accomplish. Imagine the anxiety that will go away. That’s our inheritance. That’s the challenge to believe in who God really is. So bless us with openness to him. Amen.

The piece of music entitled Humble was composed and produced by Ryan Harner for our program. And I’d like to remind you that the program you just listened to is available on our website pastoralreflectionsinstitute.com as well as on our podcast. Go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe to Finding God in Ourselves. It’s free to listen to anywhere, anytime. This ministry also needs your support, so make a one time a recurring tax deductible donation on our website. Thank you so much for your listenership and your continued support.

Without it, this program would never be possible. Pastoral Reflections with Father Don Fisher, Catholic Priest of the Diocese of Dallas, is a production of the Pastoral reflections institute. Copyright 2022 SAM.