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 Good morning. Today we celebrate the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time.

The opening Prayer Almighty ever living God, who in the abundance of your kindness surpass the merits and desires of those who entreat you, pour out your mercy upon us to pardon what conscience dreads and to give what prayer does not dare to ask. And we ask this 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 from the Book of Habakkuk first chapter, second and third verse Second chapter, second and fourth verse. How long, O Lord? I cry for help, but you do not listen.

I cry to you violence, but you do not intervene. Why do you let me see ruin? Why must I look at misery, destruction, violence are before me? There’s strife, clamorous discord. Then the Lord answered me and said, write down the vision clearly upon the tablets so that one can read it readily. This vision still has its time, presses on to fulfillment and will not disappoint.

If it delays, wait for it. It will surely come, it will not be late. The rash one has no integrity, but the just one, because of his faith shall live the word of the Lord. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord. Let us acclaim the rock of our salvation.

Let us come into his presence with thanksgiving. Let us joyfully sing psalms to him. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. Come, let us bow down in worship. Let us kneel before the Lord who made us, for he is our God, we are the people, he shepherds, the flock he guides. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.

Oh, that today you would hear his voice, harden not your hearts. As in Meribah, as in the day of Massa. In the desert where your fathers tempted me, they tested me, they had seen my works. If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts. A reading from the New Testament from the second letter of Timothy to first chapter 6 through the eighth verse 13 Beloved, I remind you, stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of hands. For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather of power, love and self control.

So do not be ashamed of your testimony to our Lord, nor of me a prisoner for this his sake, but bear your share of hardships for the Gospel with the strength that comes from God. Take as your norm the sound words that you heard from me in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. Guard this rich treasure with trust, with the help of the Holy Spirit that dwells within us. The Word of the Lord A Louis Verse the word of the Lord remains forever. This is the word that has been proclaimed to you. Who among you would say to your servant, the gospel is from St.

Luke, 17th chapter, 5th through the 10th verse. The apostles said to the Lord, increase our faith. And the Lord replied, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, be uprooted and planted in the sea, and it would obey you. Who among you would say to your servant, who has just come in from ploughing or tending sheep in the field, come here immediately and take your place at table? Would he not rather say to him, prepare something for me to eat, put on your apron and wait on me while I eat and drink? You may eat and drink when I am finished.

Is he grateful to the servant because he did what he was commanded? So should it be with you when you have done all that you have been commanded. Say, we are unprofitable servants. You have done what we are obliged to do. The Gospel of the Lord the music by Ryan Harner is just always so interesting to me because it seems to lead me into a deeper understanding of what I want to say, and I pray that it does the same for you. We used to have a lot of songs on this program, but now we have this more meditative thing, and I like it.

I think it’s really helpful because I have an intention when I’m sitting at this microphone and I want to talk about that for a few minutes because I’ve been going through some things that have been really interesting, questioning my authority to speak the way I do, and you can maybe even hear it in my voice. It seems like I’m not as comfortable as I usually am with who I am, which is not a bad thing at all. It seems to fit the readings. But I’d like to say something about our relationship. I was with some friends that are going on retreat the other night, and one of them came up to me afterwards and said that he had been listening to me for 20 years and immediately felt this connection with him. And I thought to myself, I don’t know how many of you out there have been listening for a long time, but it just strikes me that in many ways, some of you, there are a lot of those people.

And I just feel like you’ve been listening and responding positively to what I offer. And it just makes me feel so valuable and loved and safe, which are three things that I think every human being needs. I thank you for that kind of affirmation that I feel. I don’t need to talk to you so much. It’s just. I know it’s there.

And I was also struck by the fact that when I get up to preach and everybody gets up to preach, you know, the scriptures are so interestingly wide open to all kinds of interpretations. And now that we read from the Old Testament on a regular basis, you know, I realize that there’s a side of God in the Old Testament that’s a little bit terrifying. It seems that he’s really disappointed in human beings that he’s not happy with the way they turned out. When at the time of Noah, he was ready to kill everyone until an angel pointed out, wait, there’s Noah, and he’s got this little ember inside of him. There’s something good in him. Because God had said their hearts are filled with darkness and hate and evil.

Terrible thought. And so what I’m looking at then is this whole idea of when I get up to preach or anybody does, there’s almost any way we want to take the scriptures and use it. We can talk about an angry, judgmental, condemning God. We can also talk about a loving, inviting, forgiving God, which is He. Well, obviously, if you follow the story completely to the New Testament, he is the former. He is a lover.

He is a servant. He wants nothing more than for you and me to grow into the unique person that God has created us to be. That’s the goal. That’s our vision. Vision. So I know that each of us who get up on Sunday mornings or wherever we are every day when we’re preaching having as an intention to give to the people what they need.

And I pray we’re open and God uses us. Sometimes we need to be harsher, Sometimes we need to be kinder. But what I feel my ministry’s called me to at a time that is seemingly perfectly depicted in this set of readings, we need comfort. God came to give us comfort. So we look at the world as it is today. And I’ve been having trouble sleeping.

I think a lot of people are having trouble sleeping. Whenever I mention to somebody that I’m having trouble sleeping, they’ll say, so am I, you know, and they give me their tip. I have more tips than I can use. But the interesting thing is that there is a time like the one we read in Habakkuk that we’re experiencing right now. I mean, there’s a lot of misery that we see, a lot of destruction, a lot of violence, strife, discord. So what do we do with all of that?

I mean, it’s easy to see that the world is not in a healthy place. But what I want to say so clearly to you is it’s always been the way it is. It’s just that it’s not been so clearly seen before. Everything that is hidden is being revealed, and that’s positive. That’s amazing that we are in a period of time where the things have been going on in secret, in the dark. The way people have been treated by other people, the abuse, all of that keeps coming out and out.

And we might say the world is worse than it’s ever been. It’s never happened before. I’ve never been afraid to go to a mall and think that I might be harmed by someone who is confused and deranged. But that’s the way we live right now, and that’s what we have to accept. And one of the things that I love about this particular passage from this rather obscure prophet, Habakkuk, we don’t know much about him, but he does say the most beautiful thing. Write down clearly when you’re in this world that you look at and it doesn’t seem to be a healthy place, write down a vision.

And the vision is so beautiful. It’s the one I just mentioned. Our God is a God who, if I listen attentively to the opening prayer, and that’s one way to really set a homily in the right direction. We prayed as a church, and there are millions and millions of people listening to these readings today. And there is God saying, look, I came. I’m in Father Don, and I have a desire.

And my desire is that he pour out my mercy upon you, pardon what you think is awful about you and give to prayer the power of taking care of you in the midst of your not being able to care for yourself. I mean, you’d hardly can dare to ask for that if you’re feeling full of shame and unworthiness. So it’s time to focus on the vision. And here’s the key. It’s exactly what it’s supposed to be exactly this vision of you becoming fully who you are and living a life of giving, loving, and having the Holy Spirit, Jesus himself, God the Father, living inside of you is such a beautiful, powerful vision of how our way of waiting for the vision, because he’s saying it will be fulfilled, it will never disappoint. And you think it’s delaying.

Wait for it. It’s not going to be late. And if you have real integrity, meaning if you have the truth living inside of you, you’ll know that you are called to believe that to believe. So interesting, this thing called faith. I always wonder, where did it come from? Where do I get my faith?

I feel like at times like now, maybe I don’t believe in myself as much as I did, or maybe I don’t believe that the world is going to be saved like I always did, or something like that. And that’s, I think, a really healthy place to be so they can make it clearer to you what you really do believe. So listen to Timothy’s words. You know, all right, this faith that you have, it’s in you. It’s this ember. It’s this.

This thing inside of you that God saw in the people when he said, I won’t destroy these people. And so God has given us this gift through the redemption of the work of Jesus on the cross. And we have this gift given to us. And what it is, it’s a spirit that’s powerful, loving, and able to control our thoughts and our feelings so that we don’t get caught up in something that is just a normal emotional response to things that aren’t the way they should be. It’s a normal response to be nervous or afraid or want to do something that’s all healthy. But when those things are out of our control, when they are just things that seem to be in the world, and we see the division and the discord that’s being caused and we want it to stop.

We can’t go into their lives and stop them, but we can stop it in ourselves. That’s the wisdom that comes from a time like we’re in. Look at the effects of division. Look at the effects of people having ideas that are not opinions, but truths and are threatened by someone who doesn’t have the same truth or doesn’t believe the same truth. It’s a time to reflect. It’s a time to think about all that and to recognize that we are sometimes ashamed of.

Ashamed of our testimony, as Timothy says. And that doesn’t mean I Mean, I think that what that means is that he’s saying, don’t be afraid of looking at yourself and saying, I have these doubts, I have these fears. I have these worries. It’s okay. Don’t be ashamed. Look at him.

I mean, look at Timothy. He’s in prison. What did he do to get in prison? Maybe he shouldn’t be in prison. Maybe it was his fault. Who knows?

Maybe he felt it was his fault. But bear it all. Share in the hardship. And you know that when you share in that hardship, you are receiving in a mysterious way, the strength that only comes from God. So I love the image of this reading which stir up. Use the Holy Spirit.

You use God inside of you to help you to stir this flame of faith inside of you. And the flame of faith is your capacity to be a loving, forgiving, inviting person into a world of truth, oneness, wholeness. And when it’s the darkest, it’s the most important that you be that and trust in that. And then we look at the. The wonderful gospel, and this is just. I love this gospel because it’s like the apostles, you know, are looking at this plan that God has for them, and it does include a dying to the self, a dying to the ego that likes to control and like to force people to do certain things, likes to force you to be somebody.

Not for the. Not because of grace, not because of. Of whatever gift God is going to give you and let you use it for the good. No, it comes from a kind of negative spirit of demanding judging. Demanding judging. That’s not the spirit of God, even though we see it in the Old Testament.

But that was another time, and we have to be so careful of what it is that we listen to from this incredibly complex and wonderful story. This story is our story, every man’s story. Have you ever wondered what it’d be like without the gospel, without the Old Testament, New Testament, all of it? Where would we go to find truth? And yet it’s not a kind of truth where you can sit down and say, okay, this is what everybody needs right now. It’s a truth that’s dynamic, living and active inside of each person, and each person is going to get what they need.

And what I love about my relationship with you, these conversations we have every Sunday or whenever you listen to the podcast. You know, it’s really a beautiful thing that I feel that I am being chosen by you. And you listen to me because perhaps you really do need what I’m saying and what I’m saying. I want you to believe in a gentler God than sometimes it’s presented something so beautiful when you’re in stress or in doubt that there’s a God who wants to comfort you and say, there’s a thing I’m going to give you, and you’re not going to feel it all the time. You’re not going to be assured of it all the time. But it’s called faith.

And so the disciples are looking at it and saying, okay, I know I’m supposed to believe in the way that you’re describing your life, Jesus, but can you imagine what it was like to be a disciple? And I guess the disciples were close enough to the. To the theology, let’s say, of the temple. And Jesus was doing crazy things. I mean, he was disregarding rules and laws that were considered to be absolutely necessary to do these things if you wanted God’s favor. And he would.

He would flaunt those in some ways. And then he would talk about a dying that was different than anything they could have imagined. And they may have just thought it was all about a physical death, but it’s not about a physical death. It’s about the death to a part of you that is more reflective of a God. In the Old Testament, working with people with much less consciousness than we have today, and somehow demanding that they change. And if they don’t, fear is used as the means of getting them to not do what they’re doing.

And it’s not a changing of heart or it’s not a transformation of who they are, but it’s more of a. A power over them. And maybe people need that at some times. I’m sure they do. But not you, not me, not now. Not so many people, in my estimation.

So here we have this beautiful image of increase our faith. So how do you do that? It’s so beautiful. The Lord says, look, it’s a gift. I gave it to you. It’s sometimes like a little ember inside of you that isn’t really raging fire yet, purifying you of your doubts and your insecurities.

Sometimes it’s just this little thing, but when it’s in you, you still have this power. You can do the things that human beings can’t do. No human being can tell a tree to, hey, get up and move. So it’s. It’s this faith that gives you the ability to do the impossible. So he says, here’s the deal.

Faith is in you. When you don’t feel it, you’re going to be feeling, you know, like you need to be cared for. But here’s the thing. This work of working with faith and helping you to deepen it by doubts and by insecurities and all that sort of stuff, that’s what you’re here to do. It’s your role. It’s your service to yourself and to the rest of those that love you.

And when you do that work, when you’re serving the process of transformation that brings you into the fullness of who you are, you’re doing your work and you’re not going to be given some great award. You just have God looking at you, looking in your eyes and saying, yes, you got it. You’re doing it. I’m with you. I’m comforting you. I’ll send people to you to comfort you, as he’s done to me.

And you’ll find life. It’s all about trust and hope. And hope isn’t saying I hope it works. No, it’s I know it will work. I know there’s new life through suffering. God bless you.

The Closing Prayer Father, we pray for wisdom, a mysterious gift of the Holy Spirit. Stir within us an understanding of the mysteries that we’re asked to live, to surrender to the processes you placed just perfectly for us. And with that we’ll find the trust that we need. Your faith, our faith in you. Thank you for that gift. 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.

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