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. We appreciate your listenership and if you find this program valuable, please subscribe and share with your friends. Share this program is funded with kind donations by listeners just like you. Make your donation@pastoralreflectionsinstitute.com Today we’re celebrating the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The opening Prayer Almighty ever living God, whom taught by the Holy Spirit we dare to call our Father bring, we pray to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption.

As your sons and daughters we may merit to enter into the inheritance which you have promised through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God forever and ever. Amen. A Reading from the Old Testament, First Book of Kings 19 at the mountain of God Horeb Elijah came to a cave where he took shelter. Then the Lord said to him, go outside and stand on the mountain before the Lord. The Lord will be passing by. A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains, crushing rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind.

After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire there was a tiny whispering sound. When he heard this, Elijah hid his face in his cloak and went and stood at the entrance of the cave. The Word of the Lord Responsorial Psalm Lord, let us see your kindness and grant us your salvation. I will hear what God proclaims the Lord, for he proclaims peace.

Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him who glory dwelling in our land. Lord, let us see your kindness and grant us your salvation. Kindness and truth shall meet, justice and peace shall kiss. Truth shall spring out of the earth, and justice shall look down from heaven. Lord, let us see your kindness and grant us your salvation. The Lord himself will give his benefits Our land shall yield its increase.

Justice shall walk before him and prepare the way of his steps. Lord, let us see your kindness and grant us your salvation. A reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans nine brothers and sisters, I speak the truth in Christ. I do not lie. My conscience joins with the Holy Spirit in bearing me witness that I have great sorrow and constant anguish in my heart for I could wish that I myself were accused and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh they are Israelites.

Theirs is the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship and the promises. Theirs, the patriarchs. And from them, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen. The Word of the Lord Ali verse, I am the Lord. My soul waits for the word Alleluia.

The Gospel is taken from St. Matthew 14:22, 23. After he had fed the people, Jesus made the disciples get into a boat and precede him to the other side while he dismissed the crowds. After doing so, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. And when it was evening, he was there alone. Meanwhile, the boat, already a few miles offshore, was being tossed about by the waves, for the wind was against it.

During the fourth watch of the night, he came toward them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. It is a ghost, they said, and they cried out in fear. At once Jesus spoke to them. Take courage. It is I.

Do not be afraid. Peter said to him in reply, lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water. Peter said, come. Peter got out of the boat and began to walk on the water toward Jesus. But when he saw how strong the wind was, he became frightened and beginning to sink, he cried out, lord, save me. Immediately Jesus stretched out his hand and caught Peter and said to him, o you of little faith, why do you doubt?

After they got into the boat, the wind died down. Those who were in the boat did him homage, saying, truly, you are the Son of God. The Gospel of the Lord. Take the next few moments as we listen to this music to ponder the images and the thoughts that come to you as you listen to these readings. I want to begin with the image of St. Paul.

And in this passage he is sad, deeply saddened by the fact that the Israelites, the Jews, were not really understanding fully who God is. And he’s saying he would rather he’d give up his life for them to be able to know that and to see that. And he reminds them in a sense, or reminds us in his passage that, you know, they were adopted in the very beginning as God’s special people. He expressed his glory to them. He made a covenant with them, promised them if they would trust in him, he would take care of all their needs. And then he says, and you were given the law.

The law is the most important piece of wisdom human beings needed on their growth toward a greater consciousness, responsibility. And the most important part of that law was believing and trusting in God. They had the temple to worship in, and they had the promises that were told by patriarchs, by prophets, and yet they were still closed. So what I’d like to do is take that image of how interesting it is in the Old Testament that God is always dealing with people with whom he has a hard time establishing fidelity on their part to him. So it’s interesting. If we go back to the Old Testament reading, we’re looking at something about a person who was one of the great prophets, Elijah.

Elijah is one of those figures in the Old Testament that was very, very strong in terms of his power. He did incredible miracles. He even raised someone from the dead. And he has this strange way in which he ceased living on this earth. The story is that he rode a chariot into heaven and did not die. That’s a lot.

But one of the things that’s so interesting about him is, like so many of the prophets, they had a sort of violent streak in them. They were really, really ready, as ready to take care of people as to crush and destroy them. And there’s a story that happens right before this passage that I think is important. The Israelites have been unfaithful to God. Some of them have now been worshiping another God called baal, and that is something that God forbade. Don’t you ever worship anyone else but me?

The most important thing that God was trying to teach the people throughout the Old Testament is there is only one God. There is no other God. And if you turn to other gods, they will not be there for you. But to make that point, it was rather, I think, hard for us to grasp, but he would destroy them. If you didn’t believe in God, you would be destroyed. And that’s exactly what happened to Elijah.

He had set up a competition between the God of BAAL and the God Yahweh. And they were both asked to do a miraculous event of sending down fire to ignite a fire where a sacrifice was to be offered to them. At the time, there was a terrible drought. And so God of the rain was baal. And so they were praying to baal. And that angered God and angered the prophet.

And so when God proved that he was the real God, he was the only one that answered the call to send down fire to ignite this. This offering to God. You would think they all would have converted, but no. No. Elijah went and slaughtered 850 prophets of false gods on that time. And then he was terrified and he ran away.

Now, think about that. How serious was God in trying to convince human beings that he was the only God. Why is that so important? Well, it’s clear that human beings evolve slowly over time. And one of the things that God was ultimately revealing was going to be the fullness of the mystery of God entering into us and becoming part of our, being part of us, and infusing his spirit into us so that we could continue his ministry that he began when he called Abraham. And what’s so fascinating about that is unless we have absolute, total conviction that this God is real, that he is the one source that we need for us to be able to live the world, live in the world as we’re called to live it.

He’s not an option. And when people turned away from him in the Old Testament, he made it clear that he was furious and he destroyed them. But if you listen carefully to the Old Testament, which you begin to hear, and it’s so beautiful, and I’m so glad that since the Vatican Council, we’ve been able to preach on the Old Testament every Sunday. That was never done before in the Catholic faith. We always listen to simply New Testament readings. But what we’re learning, and what I’m learning is how foundational it is the Old Testament, and how much in it we need to watch and pay attention to.

Because what God is doing is not only asking that we believe that there is only one God. Monotheism was the main topic of the Old Testament, but he also made it clear that when you do not focus on him, it is death. It is death. In the Old Testament, it was. You were slaughtered. In the New Testament, you are kind of lost, blinded, easily following other things that might seem like they will take care of you, when it’s only the relationship you have with God that is essential to everything you long for.

And so we see now in the Gospel, Jesus doing the same thing that God the Father did in the Old Testament. God in the Old Testament promised, I’ll be with you to take care of you. Trust in me. And now Jesus is saying, I’ve come into the world to invite you into something you’ve never, ever dreamt of. It was never clear in the Old Testament who my father really is. He’s more than just the God that is dedicated to you, the Israelites, but he’s dedicated to everyone.

And the dedication is he is then choosing to be infused into your life to be able to continue a ministry that was begun with Abraham that is going to lead to such wonderful, incredible results of what human beings have always longed for. Love, peace, forgiveness. And so there was a miracle Right before this miracle, it was the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. And what’s interesting about that miracle, you know, usually Jesus did miracles by saying the word or somebody just touched him, but they were always kind of instantaneous things. But this particular miracle of the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus did not create enough food all of a sudden for 5,000, which is the way I would have thought he would have done it or just created it in the hands of the people, but then that would have been more than they could handle. But what he did is he blessed the bread and in almost a Eucharistic way, lifting it up to heaven and blessing it.

And it just seems so much like the Eucharist. And so what he’s saying is, what I’m going to do is give you this image of the presence of God in you. I’m going to fill you with that, and you are going to be able do something. You’re going to be able to feed people in a way that’s so beyond your human nature and your ability, but you can do this. And it was like inviting them into what they could only understand after Pentecost, the Spirit within them doing miraculous things. And so you look at Jesus now, the next miracle is the walking on the water.

I want to go back to the fact that when Jesus is in that boat, he is asking Peter to come out and join him. That’s what Peter wanted. I want to do what you do. And the interesting response is not, well, you can’t do that yet, because I haven’t returned to my Father. You don’t have any real power in you yet. No.

He just said, come, come. You can walk on water just like me. And he does walk on the water. It wasn’t that he fell into the water, but it was the wind that frightened him. But the real thing was the fear was like a force wind that all of a sudden overtook him. He was scared and he sank.

And Jesus looks at him and said, how is it, why is it that you doubted? The same intention in the Old Testament that we see proclaimed through so many of the prophets is, you’ve got to believe in me. You’ve got to trust me. If you don’t, something awful is going to happen. You’re going to lose life as I intended it to be. You’ll be slaughtered.

And here is Jesus in an entire different time, and he’s doing something like that. Only instead of any way, shape or form demanding that they have the faith they need and destroying them because they don’t he understands them, forgives them, and just questions them. Why can’t you let go of the way you’ve been thinking and enter into what I’m inviting you into? That’s the mystery of this story. It began with Abraham, in a sense, and it was about a miraculous birth that would happen to Abraham. And then that prepared that whole story after that brought us to the New Testament, where it begins with another miraculous birth, the presence of God in your heart.

Amen. Sa the closing Prayer Father, when you were with his disciples, you wanted so much for them to receive what you knew you could offer them. It was their fear and their doubt. So free us from these things that rob us of the peace of knowing you and feeling your presence within us and inviting others to experience the joy that comes from you. A joy that the world cannot give. 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 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.