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 the second Sunday of Lent the Opening Prayer O God, who have commanded us to listen to your beloved Son, be pleased. We pray to nourish us inwardly by your word that with spiritual sight made pure, we may rejoice to behold your glory 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 the book of Genesis 12:4 the Lord said to Abram, go forth from the land of your kinsfolk and from your Father’s house to a land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you. I will make your name great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who curse you.

All the communities of the earth shall find blessings in you. Abram went as the Lord directed him. The Word of the Lord the Responsorial Psalm Lord, let your mercy be on us as we place our trust in you. Upright is the word of the Lord, and all his works are trustworthy. He loves justice and right of the kindness of the Lord. The earth is full, Lord, yet your mercy be on us as we place our trust in you.

See, the eyes of the Lord are upon those who fear him, upon those who hope for his kindness to deliver them from death and preserve them in spite of famine. Lord, let your mercy be on us as we place our trust in you. Our soul waits for the Lord, who is our help and our shield. May your kindness, O Lord, be upon us. We have put our hope in you, Lord. Let your mercy be on us as we place our trust in you.

A Reading from the New Testament from St. Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy, First Chapter 8:10 Beloved, bear your share of hardships for the Gospel. With the strength that comes from God, he saved us and called us to a holy life, not according to our own works, but according to his own design and the grace bestowed on us in Christ Jesus before time began, but now made manifest through the appearance of our Savior Jesus Christ, who destroyed death and brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. The Word of The Lord, the verse before the Gospel. From the shining cloud, the Father’s voice is heard. This is my beloved Son.

Hear him. The Gospel is taken from St. Matthew, 17th chapter. First through the ninth verse, Jesus took Peter, James and John, his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light.

And behold, Moses and Elijah appeared to them, conversing with him. Then Peter said to Jesus in reply, lord, it is good that we are here. If you wish, I will make three tents here. One, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. While he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud cast a shadow over them. And from the cloud came a voice that said, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.

Listen to him. When the disciples heard this, they fell prostrate and they were very much afraid. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, rise and do not be afraid. And when the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone. As they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus charged them. Do not tell the vision to anyone until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.

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. There’s a connection between the theme of this set of readings and one of the temptations that Jesus endured from the evil one. It’s about trust. And Jesus made it very clear that you should never, ever test God to see if what he promises is really going to be worth being, believing in, having confidence in. So this set of readings is about trust. And the first figure we look at is Abram, which turned into Abraham.

And the fascinating thing about Abraham is that the thing that is happening to Abraham, even the temptations of Jesus, these are all things we experience. So what Abraham is promised is a place that’s better, that’s full, that’s rich, that’s wonderful. The land of milk and honey. And sometimes in the whole Christian tradition and Judeo Christian tradition, the whole thing, the whole story we can get caught up in. Everything in this life is getting us ready for a life somewhere else, in heaven, out of this world. But that’s not really what the scriptures are saying.

They’re talking about something that can happen now. They’re talking about the kingdom of God. And whenever Jesus talks about the kingdom of God, he’s talking about a way of life. And think of it not so much as the way the world is. But what is your world like? What is the world you live in?

Is it a world of abundance or is it a world of scarcity? Is the world growing and becoming? Or is it one that is deteriorating and being destroyed? What do you trust in? So Abraham trusts in something that is in a way beyond imagining. He’s longed for, waited for, a son, Isaac.

And the one thing about having that was proof that God could be trusted. So he had that to rely upon. And then God asked the most unusual thing. He says, I want you to destroy your son. I want you to sacrifice him, kill him. And it’s as if this story is really making clear how deep the trust was that Abraham had in God.

It was unshakable even to do something as horrific as killing this thing that he longed, the person he longed for most in his life. And what’s interesting about it is the fact that when he was getting ready to do it, Scripture says he reasoned that God would bring his son back to life. He didn’t think he was going to destroy his son, which would go against his very nature as a father, as a human being. No, he trusted in a miracle, something he couldn’t understand or figure out how it could be. But he thought God can do anything. And that’s the kind of trust that we’re presented with in this set of readings.

And it’s a gift. That’s what’s most important to understand. You don’t figure this out with your brain. You don’t use logic, you don’t use statistics, you don’t test it. So Lord, please, out of the love you have for us, place your trust in me. Trust me to trust you.

So look at the second reading. Paul is saying to the people, and this could be said to us today, bear your share of the hardship. He’s talking about the hardship for preaching the gospel, but it’s also the hardship of the way the world is. The world is antagonistic to the gospel. It is opposed to it. It does things that the gospel forb.

And so he’s saying, I want you to bear with what is going on, what is evolving, because I want to give you something. I want to give you a light in the midst of all of this that brings life, a light that brings life hope, trust. So we have this moment in the history of the life of the disciples in the gospel, which was really the beginning of the most profound test he could ever put his disciples through. Everything they worked for for three years was going to look like it completely fell apart. And was destroyed. The message of Jesus was stamped out, removed.

So Jesus has just revealed to his disciples that he is going to have to die. And they understood what that would mean. And then he would rise from the dead. They had no idea what that meant. So they were confused. And certainly they were afraid to ask questions about it.

And Peter even said, this is a terrible idea. But then Jesus knew they needed some kind of affirmation, something that would help them trust a light. It’s a way of saying there’s a way of seeing the world in which you, where you can really trust in it. So he takes Peter, James and John to the mountain and he is transfigured before them. He is a light to their life, a light that enables them to deal with darkness. And so as he’s resonating this presence that he is, this, this gift that he’s going to give them, ultimately when he fills them with his spirit and they can see the world as he sees it, he becomes like the sun and like light.

And they’re looking at this. And Peter’s response, who’s always the first one to speak and usually gets it wrong, thinks, let me, let me make some tense so that, so Moses and Elijah can have a place to sleep and you can have a place to sleep and we’ll all be here together. No, no, this isn’t that literal, Peter. Jesus is revealing that he is the, the goal of everything that Moses was trying to teach through the ten Commandments and everything. Every prophet like Elijah that was trying to get people to live that way, to reveal how you should live and to demand that you do it, is certainly something that is important and is important in most people’s lives. And sometimes that’s as far as they can go with their own evolution and their own growth.

But here, Jesus revealing something more. He is greater than Moses and greater than any of the prophets. And what makes him so great. Instead of telling them what to do and holding them to do it by threatening some kind of punishment, he said, I want to give you a way of understanding, a way of seeing. And what he’s doing is revealing to them the very mystery at the heart of everything that is going on in the world. And that is we’re going to be dealing with things that are destructive, things that are negative.

We’ve gone through, through a period of history that is unprecedented in terms of the amount of knowledge we have. And some of that knowledge is very exciting. New ways of understanding how the world works. But there’s also a shadow to all that revelation. Of information. And that is that every single thing we know, every institution, is filled with corruption.

Not only corruption, but corruption is everywhere. It’s in the church, it’s in medicine, it’s in politics, it’s in family life, it’s in individuals, relationships, abusive behavior. All of it’s there. And we see it so clearly. And it’s easy not to trust, to say it’s all going. All going negative.

And what we should simply do is just shut down and let it go and let it be destroyed. And what a shame. If it was that neutral, it wouldn’t be so dangerous. But it’s more than when you don’t trust that the world is moving in a way that is positive. You don’t believe that. To see that which is not what it should be is one of the greatest motives for changing it.

Evil’s always been there, but we didn’t think about changing the system or checking into the system to see what was really going on. We didn’t have any way of doing that. Now we know, now we see. And instead of saying, oh, let it be, no, there’s something inside human beings that then become filled with fear and depression and darkness. Fear and depression. Fear and depression is the result of a lack of trust.

And trust is a light that enables you to deal with everything that is happening. God allows evil in the world so that we will change, so that we will grow, so we’ll see that there’s something that needs to be better. Without an awareness of when things are broken, how can you ever fix them? So we’re looking at the brokenness of everything and what does it leave us with? Fear, depression, or this mysterious thing called trust? Trust that God is serious about leading us as he led Moses to the promised land.

Let us be led into a place of promise, a place of hope. It is God’s will, and I long to trust in it and invite you to do the same. Amen. The closing prayer Father, without you, without your insight, without our knowledge of the plan that you are asking us to surrender to, we, we are lost. We are so often caught in fear and darkness. Bless us as you blessed Abraham and made him a blessing, an example of trust, so that we can find the peace and the oneness of all things.

And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Many of you enjoyed our reflection series last Lent and now we’re beginning a new series on Ash Wednesday. It’s a more contemplative approach. We’ll be doing reflections on the scripture of the day following liturgical calendar. You can find these reflections on our podcast, Finding God in Our Hearts, or on our website, pastoreflectionsinstitute.com 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. Copyright2023.