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 Good morning.

Today we celebrate the fifth Sunday of Lent, the opening prayer. By your help, we beseech you, Lord our God, may we walk eagerly in that same charity with which, out of love for the world, your son handed himself over to death to 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 Isaiah 43, 16:21 Thus says the Lord God, who opens a way in the sea and a path in the mighty waters, who leads out chariots and horsemen, a powerful army, till they lie prostrate together, never to rise, snuffed out and quenched like a wicked. Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago, consider not see, I am doing something new now it springs forth. Do you not perceive it?

In the desert I make a way in the wasteland rivers, wild beasts honor me, jackals and ostriches, for I put water in the desert, and rivers in the wasteland for my chosen people to drink, people whom I formed for myself, that they may announce my praise, the word of the Lord. The Lord has done great things for us. We are filled with joy. A reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, third chapter eight through the 14th verse brothers and sisters, I consider everything as loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord. For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things, and I consider them so much rubbish that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law, but that which comes from faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, depending on faith to know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death.

If somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead, it is not that I have already taken hold of it, or have already attained perfect maturity, but I continue my pursuit in hope that I may Possess it. Since I have indeed been taken possession of by Christ Jesus, brothers and sisters, I for my part do not consider myself to have taken possession. Just one thing. Forgetting what lies behind, but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling in Christ Jesus. The Word of the Lord. The verse before the Gospel, even now says, the Lord, return to me with your whole heart, for I am gracious and merciful.

Gospel is taken from St. John, eighth chapter, first through the 11th verse. Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. But early in the morning he arrived again in the temple area. And all the people started coming to him, and he sat down and taught them. And the scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery and made her stand in the middle.

They said to him, teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery. Now, in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say? They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. When they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.

And again he bent down and wrote on the ground. In response. They went away one by one, beginning with the elders. So he was left alone with the woman before him. Then Jesus straightened up and said to her, woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?

She replied, no one, sir. And Jesus said, neither do I condemn you. Go, and from now on, do not sin anymore. The Gospel of the Lord We’ve come to the fifth Sunday of Lent and I’ve said to you over and over again. These five Sundays carry five themes that the Church fathers who gave us this Liturgy of the Word, the way we turn to scripture and offer reading after reading that builds on the one previous and prepares us for the next. They’ve chosen these five themes to be, in a sense, the heart of the message of Jesus.

The heart of the message. It’s why it’s given to those who are about ready to be baptized. In a simple overview of these five Sundays, the first is the temptation where we find out who Jesus really is. He is like us, we are like him. God is in him because we are like God. So we see this humanity and divinity in this figure.

And what it’s struggling for is the truth. It wants to know what’s true. It wants to simply trust. And not once but if it finds the truth. It knows it will be safe, and somehow it won’t buy into the lies of the world. That’s who we are.

That’s what we come into the world as. And we are moving in that direction. And then. And then he shows us that he has this wisdom, this enlightenment, and he shows it to his disciples in the transfiguration. And he says, what I’m doing for you is not giving you a knowledge. I’m not telling you what to do anymore.

I’m opening your heart, your essence, to what is real. I want you to be alive, you know, see what’s real. Then we see that the next one is basically the woman at the well, and it’s the fertilizing the fig tree. But it’s always that there’s this thing that we have to be given. It’s called grace. It’s called God’s presence.

But it works inside of us, and it nurtures that thing that we need to become who we are. And then last Sunday, it was all about seeing. I want to see the blind man. That’s the one on cycle A. But in that story, it’s the church that can’t see what Jesus is really doing. Refuses to see it, denies it.

And it’s the older brother in the one we read for this cycle who refuses to see the message of God in this beautiful image of a son returning to his father after he sinned. He’s forgiven. And now this last Sunday is always the raising of Lazarus, the ability to live. And what I think is interesting, in the cycle C that we choose, we have the gospel today, which is all about somehow receiving the primary, most transformative gift we can receive from God in terms of our developing all these areas that I just talked about. Forgiveness. Forgiveness.

It is life. Let’s go to this set of readings and see what I can draw from it to help us understand all this more and take it in and make it a part of us. But the first one is the book of Isaiah. And it’s important to know Isaiah is one of those passage, one of those books of the Bible that is unique in one very single thing. It talks more about the ministry of Jesus than any other book of the Old Testament. And when you look at it, it’s like it’s describing the whole thing.

The whole thing. And it’s beautiful. And one of the things we listen to in this particular passage of the Old Testament is something that I think is at the heart of what I would call the conversion process that we’re involved in as followers of this figure, Christ, the conversion. It’s from a lower level of consciousness where we are the center of our universe and everything is about us, to another level of our ability to become who we are. A level of consciousness where we are dedicated to and living for the work of service, wanting to care for people, from selfishness to other centeredness. That’s the movement.

And so what he’s saying is, don’t look at the past in this particular past. Don’t look at the things of the past. I’m doing something new. And the images he talks about, Isaiah talks about when he’s talking about doing something new. It’s the work of Jesus. And it’s not about judgment, it’s not about condemnation anymore, but it’s about creating a place for people where, where there’s water and life and they can grow and become who they are and they’ll be sustained by the very life that they’re leading.

Which is a great image. Land, promised land. It’s a way of life that nurtures and feeds you with the things that you are made for, not the things that the world promises that don’t really fulfill you. So we have this beautiful reminder. We have to shift from one world to another, the Old Testament to the New Testament. And that’s not something that happened in the past.

That’s not something we all went through as a religion and now we’re all living in the present. No, the reason why that Old Testament, New Testament is so essential is because every single person that’s coming into this world is going to make that, that crossover from the old to the new, from self centeredness to other centeredness. Why would I say that? How did God work with people in the Old Testament? Mostly. How did he reach them?

He reached them primarily by telling them that there was a nature that he made them to be. They have a nature that they should follow. And that was the Ten Commandments. And so I want you to be careful not to do the things that are against your nature. So he gave that, told them that’s all you really need. They made more laws out of it, as you know.

But nevertheless, what it was doing is saying, you do this and if you don’t, I’ll punish you or destroy you. Now, when someone tells you that, what are they convinced you probably will do? Or at least they’re doing? If they want you to follow the. This new way, this law, rather the old law, then they’re going to say, all right, please, whatever you do, think about when you do it that you might be destroying yourself. So he’s playing off of a self centered human nature.

The part of human nature that’s self centered. And that’s how he worked for the first whole section, the first, I mean, you think perhaps the Old Testament is 2500, 3000 years. So all that time, basically, even though he was preparing them for something else, he was working on their self centeredness. And then Paul talks about it in the second reading and he goes, you know, I remember the old way and I don’t want to have anything to do with it. Isaiah said, don’t think about the past, think about what’s now. He’s saying, Paul’s saying, you know, all that stuff, all my following, all those rules and laws, I see that all as rubbish compared to what I see now.

What does he see? A forgiving, loving God who is on our side, who wants nothing more than for you and for me to grow and evolve into our higher level of consciousness, which is our goal, to be lovers, servants. That’s what we’re here for. He counts on people understanding that, seeing that. And it’s interesting, I don’t think it’s necessary that every human being go through this transition perfectly. And no, that would be based on the fact that all of us are individuals separate from each other.

We’re not, we’re all one. So it only takes a few people don’t begin this work and then it begins to sort of be a part of who we all are as a people. And it becomes more and more accepted. And then all of a sudden it reaches a sort of critical mass and then everybody gets it. The difference between living for self or living for others. It’s there in our DNA to make this change.

And Paul said, I made it and I can’t believe how wonderful it is. And I’m again, I just think all that other stuff was wasted time. Because I have been given something inside of me that I live now with that enables me not to follow the law out of some great new selflessness, discipline, but out of my heart. I just know this is what I need to be. I just want to be this. So let’s look at this image then let’s look at the woman as the part of all of us.

It comes to some moment in their life when they realize the difference between the old and the new. What’s the old? You are asked to surrender your will to a God and you are to perform as he calls you to do it. And if you pass that test, you will be acceptable. That’s pretty much the Old Testament. It’s what a lot of people think religion is still today.

An organization that tells you what to believe and what to do. And if you do it, they will save you. If you don’t, they’ll kick you out. Old way. So the new way is different. Instead of condemning us for those things that we do that are not right, instead of telling us that we’ve made a mistake and we’re going to pay for it and whatever pleasure we got out of it, you might think again about doing that because it’s created all this pain in your life.

This separation, this isolation, this emptiness. He just wants us to feel that. So here is the Old Testament at its best or worst, I might say Jesus teaching. He’s the new teacher, he’s the enlightened one who’s going to open our hearts and put some kind of living water inside of us. And we’re going to see and then we’re going to live. So here’s the beautiful, beautiful story.

Woman caught in adultery. Adultery. What is adultery? To adulterate something means to, to choose something less when you have something more. But there’s something about religion at the time that seemed unfaithful to the God who created it because they were so resisting this gift of God’s wisdom in this person, Jesus, it’s like they were unfaithful to God. So we’re talking about their sin here in this woman.

Because while his teaching is his incredible life giving teaching of forgiveness, which is 99% of everything he taught, you no longer will be condemned for what you do. You will be loved and forgiven. It made no sense to those who were working out of a self centered model because they’ll say, well everybody will take advantage of that. Couldn’t feel it or see what it was doing for them. But the woman in the story is a perfect example of that old system. And so it turns out that what she’s brought to Jesus not because of if the crowd had brought Jesus, Jesus, this woman, I wonder what the story would have been.

I’m sure he would have forgiven her. But he made a major point of seemingly disinterested as he traced his finger on the ground. I think that’s such an interesting part of this story. Like he’s not going to, he’s not going to fight this fight with him. He’s tried that before and it didn’t work. He called them all kinds of hypocrites, but he didn’t do it this day he was much more subtle.

He said, okay, if you. If this is the law and you all want to do this, obviously that’s what most of the people thought they were supposed to do. Well, go ahead and do it. Go ahead. But by the way, I’d like. I like.

I’d like you Pharisees to. To throw the stones. Would you do that? And go ahead. They knew deep in their heart they were not attached to the true God. In some way.

They knew something. That’s why Jesus was so threatening to them. And so the beauty of this is, here’s the presence of a forgiving God in the minds of these men who taught there was no such thing as a forgiving God, only a punishing God. And they’re somehow caught in a few seconds of saying, oh, my God, I’ve been guilty. If I forgave her, if this is true, there must have been something in them that must have thought, oh, my God, this would be wonderful. I mean, it seems that one of the things that’s going on in their head is they’re saying, okay, I know I’ve done some bad things, but it had to be deeper than that.

Maybe they saw the crowd, maybe they saw their eyes and went, oh, my God, this guy. This is so different than the religion we’re used to do. We always kill people that don’t do what the law requires. That’s who we are. But when you’re doing that, what are you doing? You’re not only condemning an act, but you’re condemning the human being along with the act.

There’s no separation between what they’re doing and who they are. And Jesus bypasses what they’re doing and looks at who they are. And he said, oh, my God, I love you so much, and you have so much more potential than this. And I want you to know I believe in it and I trust in it. I’ll be there. I’ll enter into you, and I’ll give it to you.

My God, what? A different religion. A God who’s on our side not judging us and condemning us, but who enters into us. And what he’s saying is, you’re like me. I made you in my image. So you are basically wonderful, beautiful beings.

And I want to affirm that. I don’t want to tell you you’re worthless when you fail as a human because that’s part of humanity. I want to tell you that that failure doesn’t disturb or bother me in terms of my love for you, because I know what you need more than anything else is to believe in your own goodness. Which I will awaken in you through grace, through redemption, I will let you feel it. And when you feel it and you know you’re loved, something shifts inside of you. I don’t know how to describe it, it’s called redemption.

But you become some kind of new creature that forgets about the past and the old system and enters into a system that is so life giving and so fulfilling and so natural. Sam Sa Closing Prayer Father, you promised us abundant grace during this holy season. We long for that grace that frees us to see the truth, who we are, what you ask of us. We thank you and praise you for this gift. But we ask most especially that through this end of this great season, as we reenact the death and resurrection of Jesus, we will not only be thinking about what it is, but we will experience it. We’ll go through a death ourselves and a resurrection.

That’s your promise. We welcome this great gift rooted in your love and forgiveness and your deep desire for the fullness of life, for everything you’ve created. 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.