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 we’re celebrating the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time. The Opening Prayer look upon us, O God, creator and ruler of all things, and that we may feel the working of your mercy.

Grant that we may serve you with all our heart 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 the Book of Sirach the 27th chapter, 30th verse to the 28th chapter, 7th verse wrath and anger are hateful things, yet the sinner hugs them tight. The vengeful will suffer the Lord’s vengeance, for he remembers their sins in detail. Forgive your neighbor’s injustice, then when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven. Could anyone nourish anger against another and expect healing from the Lord?

Could anyone refuse mercy to another like himself? Can he seek pardon for his own sins? If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath, who will forgive his sins? Remember your last days. Set enmity aside, remember death and decay, and cease from sin. Think of the commandments.

Hate not your neighbor. Remember the most highest covenant and overlook faults. The Word of the Lord The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger and rich in compassion. Bless the Lord, O my soul and all my being. Bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not his benefits.

The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger and rich in compassion. He pardons all our iniquities, heals all our ills. He redeems your life from destruction, crowns you with kindness and compassion. The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger and rich in compassion. He will not always chide, nor does he keep his wrath forever. Not according to our sins does he deal with us, nor does he requite us according to our crimes.

The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, and rich in compassion. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is his kindness toward those who fear Him. As far as the east is from the west, so far as he put our transgressions from us. The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger and rich in compassion A reading from the New Testament is taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. 14th chapter, seventh, ninth verse.

Brothers and sisters, none of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself. For if we live, we live for the Lord. If we die, we die for the Lord. So then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For this is why Christ died and came to life, that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. The Word of the Lord The Alleluia verse I give you a new commandment, says the Lord, Love one another as I have loved you.

Hallelujah. The gospel for this Sunday is taken from St. Matthew 18:21, 35th verse. Peter approached Jesus and asked him, lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times, Jesus answered, I say to you, not seven times, but 77 times. That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants.

When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold along with his wife, his children and his property in payment of the debt. At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said, be patient with me and I will pay him back in full. Moved with compassion, the master of the servant let him go and forgave him the loan. When the servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him, started to choke him, demanding, pay back what you owe.

Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, be patient with me and I will pay you back. But he refused. Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison until he paid back the debt. Now, when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed and went to their master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, you wicked servant, I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant as I had pity on you?

Then, in anger, his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my heavenly Father do to you unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart. The Gospel of the Lord Take a few moments as we listen to the music to ponder the wisdom and the truth found in these readings. Sa People have asked me if. If God created evil. It’s an interesting question.

Evil is a real part of who create. We are in this world and how we are to live in this world. We have rules and laws and there’s a part of us that resists doing that. And so the only way that I could answer that question of did God create it? He allowed it for sure. But when you look at what he gave to us, something unique that he didn’t give to any other thing that he created is this amazing capacity to make our own decisions, to be free, to be free of the yoke of the law.

So when I grew up as a child, I learned the lesson early that if a child, if I became a bad little boy and I did something wrong and I didn’t go to confession, that because of that one thing I didn’t do correctly, I would be sent to hell. So I grew up as a young Catholic boy learning about my faith that God had in way a short memory. If I did one thing that was against his rule, against his law, I severed the relationship. The only thing in that, that is the truth, is that when we fail, we fail. What we believe is what we should be or what we should do. When that happens, we do feel somehow we’ve severed something.

We could say we severed our own sense of well being about ourselves. We’ve put ourselves almost at odds with who we just were when we did that. And we feel shame and we feel confusion and we get angry at ourselves or we really do feel that when we’ve done something wrong, God does pull away. It’s the opposite. When you sin, you do something that is against your very nature, who you are, who you are meant to be. Sin is in the world not as a test to see where we are and then be accepted or rejected.

No, we’re always accepted as a sinner, as a saint, whatever you want to say. God’s love is never diminished. In fact, I would say if I use an image of parents and children, when a parent sees their child in trouble, they give them more attention and more care than a child that seems to not have any problems. God is deeply affected by our sin. And his instinct is not to punish, not to condemn, but to somehow heal, embrace. And the way he does that healing when it comes to our sins is the way he planned it all.

And it’s, let me say this about the Old Testament is much more focused on sin. And the Old Testaments, you see a God who is, when sin is there and people don’t respond to the prophets, he will destroy all the sinners. I mean, it’s a real clear indication that God wants obedience to his way of life, which we learn in the New Testament is simply our human nature. Laws were established to help us get a sense of who we are and what makes us fulfill or what robs us of our inner connection with ourselves and others. It is sin is the problem. Yes, we got it.

But if you look at the way God responds to sin, it is the most beautiful model of how you and I are supposed to deal with our own sins and the sins of those who sin against us. And the answer is not, stop it. Don’t ever do that again. No, it’s forgiveness. Forgiveness. 90% of what Jesus teaches in the New Testament is on one theme, forgiveness.

And why would he at that point in his revelation of who God is, why at that point was he able to say to us, don’t try to destroy every part of you that might lead you into sin. Don’t think sin is the end of your relationship with me. No, he wants something radically different. He wants you to know that his response to your sin is not revenge, get back at you, or any kind of major punishment. He wants you to learn. He wants you to experience sin for what it is.

And that means that we are in the act of forgiveness, saying we allow sin to be part of this process. Don’t expect yourself not to sin. Don’t work to not sin. Work to learn from every sin you commit. Something about who you are, your own consciousness is the reason we’re here. To grow into a greater union with who we are, to become fully ourselves.

That’s essence. And you don’t get there by being told what to do. You get there by experiencing what actions produce. When you realize that the thing that you might think is going to be good for you at the cost of someone else, you think that’s going to work for you? Okay, that’s the wrong way to see it. But who’s going to change you?

What’s going to change you? The experience of doing it is what changes you. The experience of seeing how you feel, the shame you might feel, the disappointment you may feel, to see the separation that happens between you and other people when things are done in a way that is totally self centered. One person I love saying this, that we never do get past a sin by willing it and forcing ourselves to have a resolve that we’ll never do it again. He said no. We outgrow our sins.

They just become stupid. They become what they are, non productive promises that can never be fulfilled. That’s the reason forgiveness is so essential. It’s so that we can sin and learn and change and Grow. It’s not the way I learned about sin. It’s not the way I began my spiritual life.

And maybe in a way, you know that when we’re children, we have to be told what to do. But the beautiful thing about the way I believe God works with us on this planet while we’re here is to slowly reveal to us the fullness of who he is and what he is here to do. He is in our life to help us to be transformed into who he made us. Beautiful, beautiful process. Is he worried that at times we’ll be far from that and we’ll be doing things that are horrendously awful? And is that going to mean that he’s going to say, I’m not having anything to do with you anymore.

I’m cutting you out of my life. You’re not going to be with me after this life? Those were all the things that I was taught that were motives for me not sinning, but to know when I sin. He feels for me the reality of what I’ve chosen. And he reveals to me what that really is. That’s the work of the Spirit to open me to the fullness of my potential for consciousness at this moment in my life.

And, you know, I can see and know in my own life things I thought were absolutely not a problem to do at all. I know now were so potentially destructive to me and to the people I love. I didn’t decide that I will not do that anymore because I will not to do it. I don’t do it because I don’t want to do it. I don’t find anything in it that makes any sense to me. We turn away from sin because we see it for what it is.

You can’t see it for what it is unless you forgive yourself for having done it and you pay attention to what your actions produce. Sin is based on a lie that what it wants you to do is definitely never going to produce what it promises. God, on the other hand, says, I want you to experience and grow through your weaknesses. I’m there with you the whole time. I feel the pain that you’re in. I want you to feel it so that it is the training tool that God has given you.

Sin is necessary because it is the greatest teacher. And without that teacher, or without responding to sin as a teacher, we end up wallowing in shame and anger, bitterness toward ourself or towards others. The secret is to embrace it for what it was created to do. Draw us closer to God, to each other, to seeing and feeling the beauty that each of us are men foreign the Closing Prayer Father, our weaknesses, our bad choices are so often the burden that we carry. Even though we believe you forgive us, we still carry the shame. Free us from that so that we can see the value of our mistakes as tools that draw us closer and closer to who you call us to be.

Give us patience and radical forgiveness. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen. I’m really excited about inviting you to my Fall Reflection Lecture. It’s entitled the Eye of the Heart. The date is October 14th. The place is the Fort Worth Botanic Garden Lecture Hall.

There is no charge for the event, but due to limited seating, it’s important that you register on our website pastoralreflectionsinstitute.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 and Institute Studios.

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