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.

Before we begin the program, I’d like to share something that’s important to me and that’s today’s my birthday. Today I am 83 years old, and it’s nice to be old, I think, because you have a lot of experience. And I pray that that experience, especially the 50 plus years that I’ve been a Catholic priest and studying and reflecting on these readings, has produced some kind of insight or some kind of way of understanding that I can share with you. So that’s my greatest joy. That’s why I want to ask God to make me live a long time so I can continue to open your hearts and your minds to the beauty of these readings and the wisdom we find in them. So today we’re celebrating the third Sunday in Ordinary time, the opening prayer.

Almighty ever living God, direct our actions according to your good pleasure, that in the name of your beloved Son, we may abound in good works 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 Nehemiah, eighth chapter, second through the fourth verse, fifth and sixth verse, and the eighth through the tenth verse. Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, which consisted of men, women, and those children old enough to understand. Standing at one end of the open place that was before the water gate, he read out of the book from daybreak till midday in the presence of the men, the women, and those children old enough to understand.

And all the people listened attentively to the book of the Law. Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the occasion. He opened the scroll so that all the people might see it, for he was standing higher up than any of the people. And as he opened it, all the people rose. Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people, their hands raised high, answered, Amen. Amen.

Then they bowed down and prostrated themselves before the Lord, their faces to the ground. Ezra read plainly from the book of the Law of God, interpreting it so that all could understand what was read then? Nehemiah, that is his excellency, and Ezra, the priest, scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people, said to the people, today is holy to the Lord your God. Do not be sad, do not weep, for the people were weeping as they heard the words of the law. He said further, go eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks. Allot portions to those who had nothing prepared, for today is holy to our Lord.

Do not be saddened this day, for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength. The word of the Lord. Your words, Lord, are spirit and life. The law of the Lord is perfect. Refreshing the soul. The decree of the Lord is trustworthy, Giving wisdom to the simple.

Your words, Lord, are spirit and life. The precepts of the Lord are right. Rejoicing the heart. The command of the Lord is clear. Enlightening the eye. Your words, Lord, are spirit and life.

The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinance of the Lord are true. All of them just. Your words, Lord, are spirit and life. Let the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart find favor before you, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. Your words, Lord, are spirit and life.

A reading from the New Testament. From St. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, 12th, chapter, 12th to the 30th verse. Brothers and sisters, as a body is one, though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body, so also Christ. For in one spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jew or Greek, slaves or free persons, and we were all given to drink of one spirit. Now the body is not a single part, but many.

If a foot should say, because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body, it does not for that reason belong any less to the body. Or if one ear would say, because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body, it does not for this reason belong any less to the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would what would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God places the parts, each one of them, in the body as he intended. If there were all one part, where would the body be?

But as it is, there are many parts. Yet one body, the eye cannot say to the hand, I do not need you. Nor again, the head to the feet, I do not need you. Indeed, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are all the more necessary. And those parts of the body that we consider less honorable, we surround with greater honor, and our less presentable parts are treated with greater propriety, whereas our more presentable parts do not need this. But God has so constructed the body as to give greater honor to a part that is without it, so that there may be no division in the body, but all the parts may have the same concern for one another.

If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it. If one part is honored, all the parts share in the joy. Now you are Christ’s body, and individually parts of it. Some people God has designed in the church to be first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then mighty deeds, then gifts of healing, assistance, administration, and varieties of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets?

Are all teachers? Do all work mighty deeds? Do all have the gift of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret the word of the Lord? Hallelujah.

Verse the Lord sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor and proclaim liberty to captives. The gospel for this third Sunday in Ordinary Time is taken from St. Luke, first chapter, first of the fourth verse and 4, 1421 since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the Word have handed them down to us, I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to write it down in an orderly sequence for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may realize the certainty of the teachings you have received. Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and the news of him spread throughout the whole region. He taught in their synagogues and was praised by all. He came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue.

On the Sabbath day he stood up to read and was handed the scroll to the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind. Let the oppressed go free and proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing the Gospel of the Lord.

Sam Sa the original piece of music entitled Humble was composed and produced by Ryan Harner for our program. One of the things that has happened to me as a priest is that I was ordained at a time in the church history that was phenomenal, and that was the Vatican Council. And for about every hundred years, as an average, the church has gathered its leadership together to analyze and look at the way, in which, what direction the church is moving and where things were developing. And for the beginning of the. That history of the church, the majority of the time, since the time of Christ, that there’s been councils called to crush a heresy, somebody trying to decide whether God was, you know, Jesus was a God or was he a man. And, you know, that was one of the first major council decisions that were made.

And they decided he was both human and divine, which I love that answer because it sets the tone for everything that is being revealed by God. And that is its mysterious quality. It’s not a simple black and white, right or wrong religion. It’s filled with this mysterious thing called wisdom, which is a. Is a both and kind of way of seeing the world. It is, it takes into account the old and the new of the whole story of salvation history in a beautiful way.

So having grown up at that time, one of the things that happened that changed a lot was that there was a great emphasis placed in the Vatican Council, Second Vatican Council, and that was the emphasis on the individual, the individual’s conscience, the dignity of the individual, and how the church had to look at herself to make sure that the things that she was teaching were there to enhance the life of the individuals in. In their own experiences. And it was a wonderful shift away from a stress on the institution to a stress on the individuals in the institution. How is the church teaching and preaching to the people and how are they responding? And there’s a tension there. There’s always been a tension there between two different focuses.

One we see in the first reading of this set of readings, and it’s where religion becomes an authority, outside authority that is based on their position. And your relationship to them is subservient. And you are listening to everything they tell you. And you follow it not because you understand it or believe it necessarily, but because you’re told to do it. You’re not only told what to do, you’re told how to feel about what you’re doing. And so in this first reading, which is so beautiful, when Ezra the priest is bringing a law before the people, and the law was basically the Torah, the teaching of the core of the Old Testament.

The Torah is the core, I guess, of what it is that Jesus initially came to teach his people. And it’s a law, you know, it is A beautiful, powerful way of describing what’s right and what’s wrong. And the interesting thing about the way it’s described in this. It’s a long process to read this law from early morning till midday. And the other thing I find interesting is that image of the person who’s proclaiming it is elevated and in a position of more importance. And everyone is bowing down to the ground and listening.

And the most interesting thing to me is that then they begin to weep. They’re listening to all the things that they should be doing. And their human nature must be very much racing in their heads, like saying, I don’t do this. I haven’t accomplished this. I’m not that good yet. Or whatever.

And I think it’s interesting when. When Ezra notices that they’re all weeping. They say, no, no, no. This is really wonderful stuff. You’ve got to trust in this. This is giving you knowledge that you need to have.

You should be rejoicing. And I think it’s interesting that if the first reaction one has to being held to a higher code of behavior is sadness, there is something that’s hopeful. If you say, well, you know, if you don’t know what it is you’re called to, that’s even more frightening. But if you know what the core of who you are meant to be is this, and it’s out of your reach, you’re in a better position than if you have no idea what’s right and wrong. So just imagine what we have in the Old Testament is this wonderful tradition of giving people wisdom. And the best way to describe that wisdom, it’s in the Ten Commandments.

But there’s still external rules and laws outside of what we would say. It’s not so much that empowers us to do it, but tells us what it is. But then the New Testament comes along, this beautiful, beautiful way of describing the mystery that is proclaimed in Jeremiah, where it’s clearly stated that there’s coming a time when this law that you’ve listened to that’s outside of you, that you are going to follow because of the authority of the people over you, is going to shift its focus and it’s going to no longer be outside of you, but inside of you. And what God had promised through Jesus, and then Jesus says it himself, is, I’m going to write this on your hearts. Write it in your mind. It will be in you.

It will be part of you. You’ll know these things. That’s the most beautiful thing about the Judeo Christian tradition. You have to understand it as a regulation and rule that is outside of someone, and your obligation is to follow it or be destroyed. The New Testament is. No, it’s not as black and white as that.

No, you can be given this beautiful wisdom, this piece of information that you need, that you know who you are meant to be. But then you’re adding to that the most extraordinary gift of the New Testament. That’s redemption, that every time you fail, every time you mess up, it’s not punishment, but forgiveness, compassion, understanding. It just makes everything so radically different than the Old Testament. But still, there’s this tension in institutional churches that I still find. I mean, the Vatican Council to me, so excited me that now the focus was not so much on what the Church is demanding, but on the response of the people.

And is what the church is demanding corrected? To even have the church ask itself that question back then was phenomenal and hopeful, but it’s always still a tension, a tension in this thing we call our faith, our religion. And there’s two other images in this reading that help in this whole story of what I’m trying to make. In a way, it’s the focus of my ministry. I want people to understand there’s this major shift between authority and power over you and a different kind of authority that empowers you. So power over you is Old Testament empowered, is New Testament.

And it doesn’t mean that some people aren’t in a position where they need power over them. They need to be told what they do. They need to be threatened. They’ll stay always. That’s part of a lower level of human nature. We have to have that.

But that’s not all that’s available. And when I see this beautiful image of Jesus returning to his hometown to tell the people that he knows who he is now and he grew up there. And I consider he was probably thought to be an outcast because of his story. Everybody knew that Mary wasn’t really a virgin. Well, I mean, they thought she wasn’t a virgin, but she had a child outside of wedlock. And that made Jesus be considered one of the lowest forms of human nature, that he was illegitimate.

There’s a lot of teaching about that or a lot of history about that, but nevertheless, the point being that he comes back and he’s the ordinary human being and maybe less than an ordinary human being. And he proclaims the truth in such a beautiful way, saying, look, I’m going to be the one that explains this whole thing to you, not just by words, but by my very Actions. You’re going to see God in me. Do something that changes the entire relationship that the human nature has with divinity. No longer is it about right and wrong, punishment and reward. It’s about this mysterious, mercurial place of wisdom where in the process of our understanding who we really are and who God is and what we’re here for, we are given the right to make personal conscience choices.

And we’ll be held accountable for those choices. Yes, in one sense. But when we make the freedom, we have the freedom to make the choice that we believe in. There’s something radically different about doing that which you believe in versus that which you must are forced to do because you don’t believe in it. One leads to anger, shame, fear. And that’s the shadow of an authoritative religion that isn’t listening to your needs or your situation or your intention.

It’s just laying this sort of imprisoning sort of sense that you have only one option here. Do it this way. Whether you think about it, whether you think it’s right or not, that’s all. You don’t have any rights. And what a tragedy to see that falling. Religion falls back on that as a default.

And I think individually, we fall back on it as a default. Sometimes things are just so complicated, and we go back to the most basic rules and laws, and that’s not all bad at all. Sometimes we need just. When you’re in a difficult moral situation, tell me what to do. I don’t know what to do. But then there’s times where you’re in a situation and you know in your heart what you must do, and the law says you can’t, where are you?

And if people follow too much that old system, if they just say, that’s the only system we have, it’s the only system that. That we will allow you to have, then they’ve done something so violent to your very dignity. And that doesn’t make an authoritarian church evil or bad. It just means that you have to be careful of any institution. And every institution has its shadow. I mean, there’s no doubt about it.

I’m not claiming that any religion is free of an authoritarian override over your conscience, but at the same time, you have to know the fullness of the story and the beauty of the story is the second reading, which is one of my favorites, when it talks about, you know, what, you know, a community of believers are made up of all different kinds of people, and you want all different kinds of people, and you want some people that are very, you know, let’s say like the attractive parts of the body, their beautiful eyes, their beautiful lips, whatever other parts are, no one have to say them but you use sometimes those kind of words to describe them, them and you know, they’re not that attractive and they’re not that beautiful. And you know, I don’t know, maybe we think that in an institution where authority is so powerful that we can, you know, create in a community only where there’s beautiful life giving Christians, you know, you know, that kind of religion, when everybody in that religion sort of begins to talk the same and have the same phrases and the same way of seeing things and you know, that’s a caricature of what is truly a believing, you know, faith filled, God fearing, God loving community. We’re on all different levels of goodness and yet all of us are important, all of us are part of that story. So I guess what I’m really trying to say in the simplest way that the wisdom that I’ve learned for a long time through this period of many years is just so simple and so clear. We have a God who loves, we have a God who forgives, we have a God who trusts in us. He gives us the best directions he can and says, these are the things, the principles you need to follow.

Now you make decisions and you do it. And if you fail and, and you realize later it was the wrong thing to do, you don’t feel bad because you did the best that you could. It’s the idea of living with a compassionate, understanding, loving presence inside of you that has one fundamental reason for being there to enable you to become all that you’re intended to be, all that you’re intended to be. And how can you be that without making mistakes? How can you be that way without going through experience after experience of maybe making the right choice or the wrong choice? Each one has incredible value.

But if you don’t live in a kind of open spirit of that, then you have this authoritarian, demanding, judgmental, punishing situation. And just be careful, be careful of it because it robs you of a dignity. And you know how angry people get when their freedoms are taken away from them. There’s probably nothing more interesting about the pandemic. When we see people being forced to do something they don’t believe in. And you can see this human nature part of us that just says, I am not going to do something I don’t believe in.

And there’s something in that that’s valid, but there’s something in the promise that we’re given the wisdom to make the right decision. That is so hopeful. That’s the reason to rejoice, eat fine foods and drink fine wines. That’s the way to do it. Amen. The Closing Prayer Father, you’ve created community after community of believers and we’ve taken different stands and different issues as different religions have evolved, always have been there.

So guide us with the enthusiasm that you have promised to fill us with. When you say, I will be in you, I will write my laws in your heart and on your mind you will know what is right. That’s our inheritance. That’s such a gift to celebrate. So thank you for the gift of wisdom and we ask this in Jesus name. Amen.

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 or recurring tax deductible donation on our website. Thank you so much for your listenership and your continued support, for without it, this program would not be possible. Thank you.