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 celebrate the sixth Sunday of Easter. The opening prayer Grant Almighty God that we may celebrate with heartfelt devotion these days of joy which we keep in honor of the risen Lord, and that what we relive in remembrance we may always hold to in what we do 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 Acts of the apostles 8th chapter, 5th through the 8th verse, and 14th through the 17th verse. Philip went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Christ to them with one accord. The crowds paid attention to what was said by Philip, and when they heard it, they saw the signs he was doing for unclean spirits. Crying out in a loud voice came out of many possessed people and many paralyzed or crippled people were cured. There was great joy in that city. Now when the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent them Peter and John, who went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for it had not yet fallen upon any of them.

They had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid hands on him, and they received the Holy Spirit. The Word of the Lord. Responsorial Psalm that all the earth cry out with joy Shout joyfully to God all the earth sing praise to the glory of his name Proclaim his glorious praise. Say to God how tremendous are your deeds. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.

Let all the earth worship and sing praise to you, Sing praise to your name. Come and see the works of God, his tremendous deeds among the children of Adam. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy. He has changed the sea into dry land through the rivers they passed on foot. Therefore let us rejoice in him he rules by his might forever. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy.

Hear now all who fear God will I declare that he has done for me. Blessed be God who refused me, not my prayer in kindness. Let all the earth cry out to God with joy. A reading from 1st Peter 3:15 18 Beloved, sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts. Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope. But do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear, so that when you are maligned, those who defame your good conduct in Christ may themselves be put to shame.

For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that be the will of God, than for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once the righteous for the sake of the unrighteous, that he might lead you to God. Put to death in the flesh. He was brought to life in the Spirit, the Word of the Lord. Hallelujah. Verse Whoever loves me will keep my word, says the Lord, and my Father will love him and we will come to him.

Hallelujah. The gospel for this Sunday is taken from St. John, 14th chapter 15, 21st verse. Jesus said to his disciples, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father and he will give you another advocate to be with you always. The Spirit of truth whom the world cannot accept because it neither sees nor knows him.

But you know him because he remains with you. And I will be in you. I will not leave you orphans. I will come to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me because I live and you live. On that day you will realize that I am in the Father and you are in me, and I in you.

Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to Him. 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. SAM SA this 6th Sunday of Easter is. Is in a way, the end of the teachings. For that started in the beginning of Lent when we saw Jesus entering the world and getting ready to deal with the task that he had been asked to achieve by God.

He was tempted and tested, and he proved that he had something in him that was going to enable him to be focused and to do what he was called to do. Next Sunday we celebrate his return ascension to His Father. So what I love about the opening prayer of this liturgy is the beautiful way in which it describes what the Scriptures are. I don’t know what life would be like without Scripture. How would we know who we are or what we’re here for? And that beautiful image of we are reliving it as we remember it.

So what does that mean if you remember a story and you’re reliving it, then it must mean the story that you’re talking about is your life, is who you are, why you’re here. People ask all the time, what’s the truth? What’s true? Well, the truth is this story. I don’t know what we do without the Bible, without scripture. I mean, religion is obviously grounded in it.

And Christianity and Islam and Judaism all basically are founded on the story of Abraham, the beginning of this incredible revelation of God to his people. So it’s so important that you and I, if we’re going to be people of the truth, know the story, because whatever story is in us is the story we’re going to live. And I want to go back to sort of the essence of this story with you. The basic story begins with the whole notion, or let’s just say it begins with a very strong theme of evolution. Human beings are engaged in a work, a life, and if it’s true, they will be. On what I see so much when Jesus describes himself, since he is the truth, it is a way of life.

Jesus says, I am the truth, the way and the life. I think what he’s saying is there’s a truthful, there’s a truth, a way to live life here on this earth, so that it is what is intended to be for you, for you, and for your continual life after this life. And to turn that into a test of whether or not we obey each the commandments of God, it just is to ruin the whole thing. Now you have to look at the whole story, the big story and what it really does reveal is that we have been created, this earth has been created by God. Maybe three and a half billion years ago, a bacteria started forming in some warm water. And the genius of God is that that very thing that happened at that moment slowly evolved into the world as we know it.

To believe that that’s the way God works is not to fly in the face of a denial of his. His power by saying he didn’t make people, you know, out of clay and then breathe life into them. That. That is another. It’s the same story. He created this.

But I love the evolutionary theory because it underscores who we are in this world and why we’re here. We’re here to evolve, to change, to grow. So it’s interesting that when God created the world, he also created angels. And that’s a big part of the story that often is not really paid attention to. Why is it important to talk about angels? Because they are beings with power, and God created them.

And the story is that he explained to them one day that his plan was to create out of this little bacteria this thing that would grow and change and develop over, you know, millions of years. And it would become like the angels, the animal would become like them. And God would take that beautiful evolution of animals into humans. He would take it and guide it and lift it up to where it would be just a little less than the angels and join the angels forever. And Lucifer, the greatest of the angels. The thought of people less than him being a part of his life, he just couldn’t handle it.

He said, I don’t like this plan. I’m opposed to it. And if you don’t believe that, then you don’t believe in evil. You don’t believe that there’s a power out there that doesn’t want God to accomplish the task of inviting us into a process where together we complete our evolutionary cycle. That’s what this world is about, completing the work of our own particular path of growth and evolution to a higher level, of likeness to God. And isn’t it interesting?

Jesus created us, but then he did something that really is very special. I mean, he didn’t ask trees if they wanted to be created. He didn’t ask angels. I don’t think if they wanted to be created. They didn’t exist. But he’s asking us to participate in the way in which he has planned for us to grow.

And we’re against another force. Don’t grow. Stay in a lower level of consciousness. Stay in that more animalistic form of wanting nothing but the world to serve you. And God is going to bring us out of that. But I think, and this makes sense, he said, I want you to be a part of your own evolution.

I want you to feel that you have had a hand in what you end up being. It’s an amazing gift and a responsibility, but what dignity that is to give us that. And that’s one of the ways to experience this time on this planet. The average age right now in this country is about 79 years you’ve got on this planet. And what are we here for? To evolve.

Just like the entire New Testament, Old Testament story watches God slowly evolve who he is in our life so that when we get to the fullness, which is where we are now, that he’s telling us the most mystical, wonderful things, he’s saying, look, I’ve come into the world to tell you something about your humanity. It is so potentially close to who you should be And I will enter into you. I’m not going to tell you how to do it. I’m going to partner with you. When Jesus is leaving his disciples, it’s like he’s leaving a time when we saw and experienced something that made it clear, God’s plan. And he’s saying to them, look, I’m not leaving you.

I’ve come to establish a relationship with you. And I’m going to continue with every single human being that comes into the world. I’ll be with them, and we’ll slowly together work on their own evolution. And as we grow and change you, at the end, you will know that you too were part of what you are. I mean, that’s what human beings want. When you look at the story of Adam and Eve, you know, they were given a garden and say, just tend it.

And, you know, Adam and Eve said, well, I mean, I want my own garden. And that’s what they did. They said, I want. I want to be more like God and I want to create. I’ve got a creative spirit. I’ve got a desire to figure things out.

I want to build things. And so God said, okay, you know, but the interesting thing about that moment of in Genesis, it’s really about the moment when human beings were at a point where they were able to become their own guide. And what was it that they discovered at that moment? Well, they were told not to do something. They did it anyway, which is not something that would be a big deal to somebody with a low, low level of consciousness. No, they felt something.

They felt shame. That’s the issue. At that moment, when God entered into them, they had evolved enough. Their brain was enough developed that they could feel something, that there was something inside of them that was destined for truth and obedience to the way things really are. And they chose not to do it. And somehow they knew that when they didn’t submit to the plan, to the will of God, they felt separated from him.

That’s sin. That’s the work of the dark angels. That’s the work of evil to keep us out of the real work we’re here to accomplish. And we don’t have to do it alone. And we do live in a world, in the words of Peter, that it’s going to be not welcoming the truth. And it’s interesting that all the men that Jesus worked with and taught, they all were executed by the world who said, we don’t want this truth at all, except for one John.

So what is our story? How do we relive this? We Relive it in a world that is antagonistic toward truth, the way of life. And what is the difference? What’s the resistance? One is the world is here for me and I use it and I abuse it.

I take from it and it feels great. It’s a low, almost animalistic way of living. Yet we evolve and we change into beings that are not on our own figuring this out. But we’ve allowed a spirit to enter into us. It has spoken to us, it has told us that it’s in us. And.

And then when it’s in us, with humanity and divinity together, we evolve to the highest level of a human being and our entire life is there for service. Another core thing to believe that is often hidden by the evil of the world is that God is not here. God is not in your life to be served, but to allow him to serve us, so important unless we allow him to love us, to serve us, to be the source for us. And we know that without him we can’t do this work. That’s the work that we have with God. And when we surrender our egos to that power in us that is beyond us, but part of us so mysteriously connected that Jesus has taught us that God the Father is in us.

Jesus is in us, the Holy Spirit is in us. That’s the fullness of God. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. And when we’re in touch with that, we grow, we evolve, but not without tension, not without struggle, not without suffering. And what is suffering? It’s accepting the fact that there’s a force against the good that we long to create with God.

Once you lose that story, once you don’t see that story unfolding in you, then there’s no hope. No hope. And I love. You know when Peter’s saying, look, when people look at you and you have God in you and they’re looking at you and saying, what do you got? I mean, you have something I want. You seem to have a hopeful spirit about this corrupt system where we’re caught in.

And he said, be gentle. Don’t say you don’t have it. You’re stupid, you’re not worth anything. No, just be gentle because they’re going to attack you and let them attack you for being a source of life for them. That’s fine. Then it’s going to be tough on you.

But don’t ever lose hope that you are reliving the story that began million years ago when animals that were walking on all fours started walking, bipeds started and they evolved and developed into this whole wonderful event called salvation history. And you are never alone. That’s the story. And you have work to do. What it has to do is erase the image of heaven and hell though, that there’s a reality there, that there’s a price if you don’t do this work, but just think of it not as something that you’re doing to earn a place with God. You’re doing something that you’re always going to know and feel was partly your work.

You helped create the being that you are by listening, surrendering, accepting. It’s a wonderful story and it has a beautiful ending of being so in God and God in you, that actually when you let go of your body, there is only one you and God face to face. That’s the end of the story. That’s the hopeful, wonderful end. Amen. The Closing Prayer Father, teach us the story.

Help us to integrate it into who we are and how we live. Your promise is beyond our expectations and help us to trust more in what you have shared with us and who you are in us than who we are in our own humanity. And we ask this in Jesus name, Amen. This is a time of year when people make a decision to come on a pilgrimage to Tuscany with me. It’s been something I’ve been doing for years and it is by far the most exciting and enjoyable thing I do. So if you’re interested in it, it’s all the details are on our website pastorreflectionsinsinsinsinstitute.com it’s in the first week of November and we already have a number signed up and so there’s limited to how many we can have.

But if you’re interested, please let us know soon so we can save you a place. Thank you. 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 pastoralreflectionsinsinsinsinstitute.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 non profit in Dallas, Texas dedicated to enriching your spiritual journey. Executive Producer Monsignor Don Fisher produced by Kyle Cross and recorded in Pastoral Reflections Institute studio Studios. Copyright 2020.