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Pastoral Reflections
Hosted by Msgr. Don Fischer · EN
Msgr. Don Fischer shares his weekly reflections on Scripture to help awaken listeners to the indwelling presence of God.
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The 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time: A 2026
5d agoTap to summarizePastoral Reflections 6-21-26 - The 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time Msgr. Don Fischer Download Original Airdate: June 25, 2023Jeremiah 20:10-13 | Romans 5:12-15 | Matthew 10:26-33 Grant, oh Lord, that we may always revere and love your holy name, never deprive of your guidance those set firm on the foundation of your love. 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 couple of weeks ago, I was with a friend, and we were talking about life, the way the world is, what we’re afraid of, and somehow the question came up, and it was from him to me. He said, “Do you believe in evil?” And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “Well, I never have believed in evil.” And I said, “What do you mean?” And he said, “Well, there’s evil in the world, but that’s because human beings are weak, and they don’t really do what they’re called to do. And so evil is just a sign that human beings are weak.” I wish that were true, because I really know, as I listen to scripture and watch Jesus in the world, that evil is a power, a strong, negative power that wants us to be destroyed, not harmed, destroyed. And what’s fascinating about that is that we look at the story, as mentioned in Romans today, that when the world was created and God first encountered human beings and spoke to them, it was not God and Adam and Eve, but it was God, Adam and Eve and a representation of evil. It’s not really called the devil, not really called evil, because it’s really not, in its core, evil. It is the part of human nature that is at the core that we are the center of our universe, and the sin of Adam and Eve was not just disobeying a commandment, but I think that’s how most in the Old Testament thought about it, because you look. They had 613 rules and laws to follow. So being a good follower of God was to do what you’re told. No, the truth is there is something in us that evil knows is there and uses to its own ends of destruction, and that is the temptation that the animal that was most cunning said, “You really need to know that you can be gods. What God wants you to be is equal to him. He wants you to be in charge, you to be the one that makes all the decisions.” And that seed of independence, autonomy from God and trying to be who only God can be in our life is the heart of evil, and it always leads to some kind of destruction.So before the law, sin was in the world. It’s very interesting. It says, “Sin was in the world and reigned as the way that people treated each other, in a sinful way, a way that is to destroy and to abuse and to take from.” It was the way human beings were from Adam to Moses, and the Moses event was when God decided, “I will tell human beings who they are, their nature. I’ll explain to them that they are made differently than they seem to feel they are, and the difference is they are not made to be the ones in charge or in control.” But there’s a beautiful plan that God has for human beings that we together unite in a kind of ecology of oneness where each person is there for the needs of another person, and the joy that they have in giving life to other people is what makes the world worthwhile and what makes it important to do. We are here not for ourselves but for those around us, but when we take care of those around us, we have done the most beautiful thing for ourselves. So sin is in the world. Evil is in the world, and it has a face. The face is power over people. The Spirit, the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God has been given to the world through prophets, teachers, God speaking to other people, and they tell them what God said. But then there came a moment when he did something extraordinary. He became one of us, entered into the world and said, “The fullness of the plan of God is that you do not need to be in conflict with a power greater than yourself.” Evil is greater than human nature. It has power over people, and so what Jesus is saying, “There’s a Spirit that can be given to you. It’s God’s presence in you. I’m going to show you what it looks like. I’ll come down.” God himself comes down, becomes a human being and then manifests, through the humanity that he created, what divinity looks like in somebody, not telling them what to do but awakening them, awakening their hearts to a wisdom that Eve wanted and thought maybe she could get by saying, “I’d like to be like God.” But she had no idea it meant not being like him but being in him and he in you. What a difference. The power that we have is never going to be residing in our ego, in our will. It’s always in our heart. So what you see so clearly in Jeremiah is, when anyone is asked to proclaim this truth, they’re going to be in trouble. And Jeremiah was very young when he was called to be a prophet, and he was enthusiastic about it. He loved ⎯ God said, “I will teach you how to tear down and build up.” He knows, “I am given a power to conquer someone.” Now, that’s going to feed his ego big time, and it did feed most of the egos of the prophets. The prophets didn’t always agree with what God wanted them to do, but in this case, you see him realizing that this power that he has to speak a word that is different gets him in deep trouble. And this story is about his first major conflict. It’s the first time he’s revealed as a prophet, and whatever he was teaching, whatever he was saying, the word got to the temple priests, and one of the head priests there went after him and said, “I’m going to kill this guy. I’m going to get him.” And he's saying, “People are believing the temple, and they’re watching me differently, and they’re starting to check me out and report on me.” So this is wonderful to think about. When Jeremiah thinks this way, he’s saying, “I know you’ve given me power, and I’m going to win this thing. So I can’t wait to see you take vengeance on this blank-blank person. Kill him. Destroy him. Please God, I want to watch it. I know you’re going to do it.” And it’s so interesting. Jeremiah is actually saying, “I don’t like this guy wanting to kill me, so we will kill him.” So what Jeremiah doesn’t realize, he’s fallen into the same trap that evil creates in people, that when someone is different than you are, somebody isn’t the way you think they should be, you’re going to do something to demean them or even to destroy them in some sense of ruining their self-worth or whatever you can do. But it’s power over people is the goal of evil, and when evil talks a human being into using its own tactics to destroy evil, it’s laughing its head off, because it’s saying, “See, I’ve created in another person a desire for destruction, and that’s what I’m about.” That’s what evil is about, to destroy that which is here. And what is here? It’s called the kingdom of God. And what’s it for? For everyone to realize that there’s something going on here where we are together being informed and then reformed into a people that understand that the fundamental reason we’re here is not for our own profit but for how we contribute to this enterprise called life. Jesus came to teach us how to find life. Isn’t it interesting? Evil, when you spell it backwards is live. Evil is bent on the opposite of life. So we look at the gospel. So what do we need? Well, if you’re going to be a voice that’s contradicted by another voice, you might be afraid that that voice has more power than you have and it might overcome you. And when you think about today, when we’re asked to speak a truth, there is not an easy reception on the other end that says, “Oh, how interesting. Maybe let me see what you see that I don’t see so we can see something together better.” No, there’s a kind of revenge and anger out there about people that think differently than they do, and they want to destroy them, demean them, give them ⎯ create in the minds of others that they cannot be trusted. So what we’re looking at is the most important, I think, teaching to start this ordinary time, that we are in a battle. The battle is really important, and if we think that there’s something wrong with the world, when we’re in conflict with good and evil or light and darkness, we’re not even really doing the work. There’s nothing more important than chaos in order to change, and that’s where we are. We’re looking at a world that frightens us, because we don’t know who to believe or where to turn for whatever it is we need to do to make the world better. Well, we don’t necessarily need to work to make the world better. Politicians, the church, maybe we think they should do it, but then we’ve lost trust in them. But no, it’s our individual work, and it’s finding a way to reconcile ourselves with those aroun...
Transcribe →The 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time: A 2026
2w agoTap to summarizePastoral Reflections 6-14-26 - The 11th Sunday in Ordinary Time Msgr. Don Fischer Download Original Airdate: June 18, 2023 Exodus 19:2-6a | Romans 5:6-11 | Matthew 9:36—10:8 Oh God, strength of those who hope in you, graciously hear our pleas, and since without you mortal frailty can do nothing, grant us always the help of your grace that, in following your commands, we may please you by our resolve and our deeds. 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. Somehow I’m struck today with the idea that I’ve been looking at these stories over and over and over again, 56 years of preaching and teaching from really a very small part of what the Bible is all about, in terms of the readings that are chosen for the liturgy, but one thing it’s consistently called to my mind is the way in which this story evolves slowly. And that slow evolution that we see in the relationship between God and his people is a very, very good way of understanding our personal relationship with him in our own personal lifespan. In the beginning, it’s clear that God needed to speak to his people. He needed connection, and so he took them out of a place that they’d got themselves into because of their human nature. It’s pretty clear that we, before we kind of figure the world out, we get into a lot of trouble, because we don’t really see the whole picture. And so God is slowly revealing to human beings the relationship that he has with us and begins, first and foremost, by the simple invitation on his part that he wants a relationship with human beings, and he wants it to be personal, and he wants to reveal himself to them. And so you see him doing the thing that is basically an archetype for the whole story of our relationship with God. He takes us from a place of slavery, bondage, not being able to do what we want, not being able to become who we need to be, and says, “I want to tell you that you are special to me. This group of you, I want to start with a small community, and you are special. And I’m going to take care of you. I just want you to come with me, away from where you are into something brand new.” So the story begins, and then as you see it unfold, you realize that, in the process, God took them to a place where they were asked to perform for him. They had to follow his rules and regulations. If they did that, he would stay with them. If not, he would leave them, but then they were still helpless. As the next reading of Romans starts out, in their helplessness of being able to follow what they were supposed to do for fear of punishment was never enough, so they found themselves still struggling. So there had to be something more given to them, and that was called redemption, because the sin that’s in us is always isolating and separating us. And so he said, “I’ve got to do something to break down this separation that people feel with me, because they fail, and they can’t seem to keep my commandments. So I will do something. I will enter into their life and radically change the whole system. They no longer have to earn anything from me. I have a covenant with them I will never ever break.” And then when Jesus comes, the fulness is a message, and he’s looking at the crowds, and he says, “My heart is moved,” because they’re still troubled and abandoned. That’s so much an experience that most of us have even now, today. The world is troubling, and we don’t know that there’s anything there for us that’s going to take care of us and protect us. We feel like we’re abandoned by systems that were there to protect us and keep us safe, and so we’re lost. Then he says something so clearly. He said, “I am going to send people out into your midst, because I’ve discovered that I can’t save you at a distance. I have to come in the form of a human being.” And that’s what he did when he became the Savior of the world, but he did that as a way of saying, “This is what I need you to be for me. I cannot and will not and do not intend to save these people directly just through me but through me in you. And so I have to tell you that I’m giving you the same power that you saw in Jesus.” And when you think about it, you say, “Well, I haven’t felt that power that much. Come on. I still struggle with things, and I can’t make things perfect.” But no, what he’s simply saying is, “Look, I’m sending you these disciples. This is the way I’m going to work from now on. I’m going to send people to you who are different, who have an ability to do things.” When he describes the things that they’re asked to do, it’s amazing when he asks those to pay attention to what he’s going to give to people. It’s too much in a way. He says, “You will open the eyes of the blind. You’ll help people be free of demons. You’ll raise people from the dead. You’ll heal every disease.” Do you know anybody that’s doing that right now? Yeah, I think I do. Maybe not in that direct way and maybe not in that literal way, but raising people from the dead is not necessarily different than lifting someone out of a dark, deep depression. And opening people’s eyes is not anything more, maybe, than being a model for them so they can see who they could be that they might have what we have, because they see it in us as something attractive, less troubled, less abandoned. All kinds of ways he’s doing this work, and that’s the task, to not only be open to the way in which God works through the people around us but also how he works in the circumstances around us, in the direction we see the world going. If you really have a broader sense of history than just right here and now, you’ll realize that every dark, horrible time creates something new and exciting and different. Change is violent, in a sense. It’s difficult and hard on us. When we see people around us giving in to that spirit of abandonment and troubled and anxious and dark, we are crying out, in a sense, for others around us to reach us and speak to us and bring us something that we need. It’s believing in a plan, which is a covenant plan, not a contractual plan. He is saying, “No matter what you do, no matter how far you go, I’m going to work as hard as I can,” and that is a lot to say, when God says as hard as he can, “In the lives of other people to touch you and free you and work with you.” That’s both exciting, when you think about the day-to-day things you’re experiencing, not only from the perspective of what you might be receiving, but from an even more exciting perspective of what you might be giving. And do you think you have that power in you, from you, in you, alone in you? No, that’s where we get bogged down. We’re not used to allowing power to work through us without it being connected to us. Our egos are just too quick to grab hold of that and say, “Wow, I can do anything.” We can’t do anything, but we can do everything we need to do if God is in us. And that’s always the heart of this message of God speaking to his people, from the very beginning of the call of Abraham until this very moment. He’s been working on this relationship with us where we’re co-workers in the vineyard, and we’re making things happen. And if you look at the broader picture, we are better off now than we’ve ever been, even though there’s a lot of division and a lot of problems. Problems are not the problem. Problems are the solution, because in working through them, that’s when God shows himself more powerfully than in any other time. Good times are wonderful. Peaceful times are absolutely essential. Happiness is core need, but struggle is equally essential, equally important, and it’s the meat of this work we have as spiritual creatures in this world. It’s the drink. It’s the food. It’s him in us. That’s the key, and without it, we stay abandoned and hopeless. Amen. Father, help us to remember always that your plan for us is not so much that we grow in a personal perfection but rather we enter more fully into the participation of you saving the world. Bless us with this hope. Bless us with this kind of sense that there is meaning in all that we do, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Transcribe →The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ: A 2026
3w agoTap to summarizePastoral Reflections 6-7-26 - The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Msgr. Don Fischer Download Original Airdate: June 11, 2023 Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9 | 2 Corinthians 13:11-13 | John 3:16-18 Oh God, who in this wonderful sacrament have left us a memorial of your passion, grant, we pray, so to revere the sacred mysteries of your body and blood that we may always experience in ourselves the fruits of your redemption, who lives and reigns with God the Father in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen. I want you to think for a few moments about Jesus the man, like us in everything, weaknesses, doubts, fears, anxieties, and for 30 years he spent time reflecting and studying and wondering about life and about who he was and about what he was here for. And then it came time for him to have this burning desire inside of him, this desire to teach and to preach and to open people to something that he knew now and was convinced of, and that is God dwelling inside of him. He was God, but he never acted as if he was God. He acted as he was, a man filled with divinity, and so we have to suspend some logical, “How does this happen? How does that work?” Suspend all that, and stay with the image. And the image is this presence of God inside Jesus gave him the ability to do everything that he did, teach everything that he taught, perform every miracle that he performed with one intention. “I want people to understand who this God is and what he wants from them and what he wants to give them.” That first reading talks about the early time that God called a people together and took them on a journey. It’s the archetypal journey of going from slavery to freedom. We are called into a world where we are not burdened by a law and rules and regulations that go against what we really want. No, we’re on a journey transforming us so that the things that we’re called to do are not commands we have to follow but the only choice we believe is the right choice. We begin to live in the truth that the law calls us to live in. And so in those early days, what it was about was God had to work with us where we were, and we were pretty low on the scale of consciousness, and so basically it turned out that God was taking them on a journey. They didn’t know where. They had to trust in him, and so the beginning is do you trust in God and the plan that he has for you. He’s going to invite you into that plan, and so what they were experiencing in the plan is that it was not something that was comfortable or easy. What they left seemed to be more comfortable at times, and so they have this resistance consistently through this journey. We don’t like this process. We don’t like evolving and growing and changing, and so what we sense in this is there is this way in which he says, “Look, I want you to trust in me on this journey, but you’ve got to trust. That is, I’m not going to zoom you to the goal and say, ‘Now here it is. Now do you believe in me?’” No, he said, “I want you to trust in the process.” And so one of the things he promises to do in this journey of ours is to feed us and to make sure that we have what is essential for life: food and water. You can see the images in these things as we look at the whole story of salvation history. Water is all about cleansing and about quenching the longings in our heart, and food is about having the strength and the power to do what we’re called to do or to endure what we’re called to endure. So in the very beginning of this journey that we share with God, he revealed to the people that he is there to nurture so that we can do the work, do the work. And what is the work? Well, Paul brings up something interesting. Nothing is more essential to the teaching of Jesus than the whole notion of his body and his blood being offered to us on a regular basis. That is the thing we need. That’s the nurturing we need in order to do the work we’re here to do, and so Paul is very aware of that. And what he’s saying is something that goes beyond just saying, “We are here to receive from God his presence, and it nurtures us and it feeds us.” But then Paul adds, “Know this work of being fed and nourished is something we have to learn to participate in.” And if you’re participating in it, it doesn’t mean that you’re feeding yourself, but then you’re realizing that you’re being fed with that which gives you strength, and this blood that is so clearly an image of being there for other people, forgiveness, having a stance towards the needs of others, these are things that we are fed, but then we have to feed them to others. So the idea of God giving us what is necessary, he then says, “And if I’m doing that with you, and I’m doing it for everyone, but I’m going to do it often through another person. I’m going to be using you to be my body and my blood to other people, because I am in you, and you share what’s in you.” When you think about all of that, it’s hard to grasp what that really is like, and we believe, as Catholics, in the Eucharist. We use it every day in our ministry to communities. We celebrate it, and then yet what we realize is that, according to the statistics that are out there, asking the average Catholic, “Do you believe that this bread is really the body of Christ? Do you believe this wine is really the blood of Christ?” Supposedly only about 30 percent of Catholics believe in transubstantiation. What do they believe in? It’s a beautiful, rich symbol, a symbol. There’s nothing wrong with having symbols that point to a reality, but why was Jesus so insistent in saying, “Unless you believe in this, you can’t have life.” And what does he mean by life? He means that ability to be engaged in the life that God has created for you and for me, to believe that all of it is interconnected, that we’re part of something much bigger than we are, and we’re living out something that is moving toward life and growth and change and something wonderful. That’s hard to believe in sometimes. So what do we have to do in order to be more in touch with this incredibly core issue of our Catholic faith or Christian faith, Jesus living inside of us as Spirit, the Holy Spirit, God the Father Spirit, his Spirit in us, flowing out of us, doing the same thing that Jesus did on this planet? Now, if you’re waiting for signs, that’s a little dangerous, because I don't know how Jesus dealt with his humanity and the ability that he had to make God’s presence felt through him through signs and wonders and miracles and driving out demons. I don’t think any of us could endure that kind of egocentric food without getting caught up in it. So it has to be done in a way that is not so literal, but at the same time, it is absolutely real. It is his body that we take into us. It is his blood that is coursing through our veins. How else can we imagine God in us, that he’s ⎯ we can imagine that he’s in our heart. He stays there, but he’s in our flesh. He’s in the essence of who we are. What a beautiful image to believe in, and the thing that keeps us is our logical mind that says, “Well, if it’s bread, it can’t really be the body of Christ.” Even miracles around the blessed sacraments, the reality of it is the host bleeds, or somehow the host takes on a quality of flesh, as if to say, “If we believed it really was the body of Christ, by experiment, by science, we would believe it.” Well, I don’t think so, because if you look at science now, science is in a very different place than it was, say, 50 years ago. Quantum physics has changed our whole idea and understanding of what matter really is, and we find out that matter is not made up just of atoms but of tiny particles. And these tiny, tiny particles have the ability to do things we never thought was possible, because a particle can be both something that you can measure and see and weigh, and it can also just be energy, just power, just a force. Reality can be both material, and in a sense, we would say non-material to our eyes. That’s not super-unusual, unnatural. It’s the way the world works. If the world works that way, then the idea of this presence of God in the world that is, to us, invisible, has every right to be there in a sense. Science says, “Yeah, there’s a Spirit in the world that is goodness, that is him, that is God, that is truth, and it’s as real as the person you’re looking at or the chair you’re sitting on.” And that probably doesn’t really work to say, “Well then, I believe,” because even the disciples had a hard time believing. In fact, it’s encouraging to me, when you listen to all those stories after Easter, how many times Jesus had to say, “I was with you. You saw this. You saw that. Why do you still not believe. Believe, believe.” That’s the key. Can you believe that this issue tha...
Transcribe →The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity: A 2026
4w agoTap to summarizePastoral Reflections 5-31-26 - The Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity Msgr. Don Fischer Download Original Airdate: June 7, 2020 Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9 | 2 Corinthians 13:11-13 | John 3:16-18 Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we who have come to know the grace of the Lord’s resurrection may, through the love of the Spirit, ourselves rise to newness of life. 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. We’re about to begin what we call the ordinary time of the year, and so during these last many, many weeks, we’ve been focusing on the heart of the message that we find in this mysterious book called scripture, the story of God’s relationship with his people, an invitation for us to enter into that experience in our own life, a relationship with God that is real, powerful, effective and transforming. And so it seems appropriate that, as we end this, we’re looking at, okay, here’s a feast that’s focused on simply who is God. How do you describe him? What’s his name? And the interesting thing about the God that we believe in is that he’s a Trinitarian God. That’s a really interesting thing, and I want to focus on it, because it’s a way for us to understand that the essence of this figure is so far beyond our full understanding that we have to at least approach it from three different sides. Yet we know that somehow the ultimate goal of every human being is to know this God, not just by information but through, first, experience. And then ultimately, the goal is that one day we will be with him, and we will see him face-to-face. We will see his face, which is so interesting to me, because it implies that we’ll see the way that he sees us, and the way he sees us is confusing at times. When you look at the story of salvation history, it is the most amazing compilation of book after book, chapter after chapter that gives experience after experience of this God with his people, and it’s in time, meaning it started close to 4,000 years ago. And who we were 4,000 years ago is not who we are today, so there’s a part of this whole thing that demands a certain way of reading it, a certain way of understanding it. We can’t take it literally, as if every phrase in the scriptures is what God would say to the people today if the situation were somewhat similar. I love this first reading from the book of Exodus, because God is telling us who he is. He’s using words, and he said, “I’m a gracious God. I’m a loving God. I’m a forgiving God. I’m there for you.” And Moses’ response is, “Well, if you are that and you’d like to join us, we can certainly use some help, but we’re pretty stiff-necked, and we’re pretty difficult to deal with. But if you would like to, we would like you to help us. We’d like you to come with us on this journey.” And the book of Exodus has this image of a God joining a people who are longing for something they do not have, and what they don’t have is freedom. They want to be freed from slavery, from that which keeps them from being who they really are, free, open receptive, the gifts that are around them and to use those gifts as a form of developing who they are and then using their evolution of higher consciousness to help other people. That’s the plan, but at the same time, you go back to the book of Exodus — I was reading the same chapter that this is from, and there was a phrase in there, and God was telling them that they needed to do certain things if he was going to walk with them. And one of the things they had to do was keep the Sabbath, and that was not to do things on the Sabbath that would distract them from concentrating on who God is and spending time with him. And he simply said, “Anyone who doesn’t keep the Sabbath, I will kill them.” I thought, “Wait a minute. That doesn’t really sound very gracious or loving or kind.” It’s so easy, in a way, to take anything in this story out of context to give you an image of a God who isn’t really who he is, and I would say that everything in scripture is pointing to who God is and recalling how he’s worked with us over centuries. But it’s not the source, the primary source that we go to to find out who he is. The only way you can really know who God is is to experience him, to have him — allow him to somehow reveal himself to you personally, and he does that. He does that over time, and if you look at salvation history as an image of the way God works with human beings over a long period of time, it’s easy to see that it’s exactly the way God works with every individual over time. In the beginning, he’s the discipline of your parents. He’s the one who tells you, when you’re two years old and you can’t do it, “You’re going to have to do, and if you don’t, you’re going to be punished,” or something like that. You can see the kind of simplicity of people back then. They were like children, in a sense, compared to us today, and then you see them moving away from rules and laws and regulations into something much more intimate, much more personal. Then you see the New Testament. Imagine the Old Testament is God working with people when they’re really, really limited, in terms of their ability to understand much beyond justice. So let’s look at the role of God the Father in the beginning, and the role of God the Father in the beginning was to enter into people’s lives and help guide them on a journey toward freedom. And one of the things that would make them free and enable them to grow was to live in community, and one of the things that was necessary for them to live in community was to be just, to be fair — an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, not an eye for ten eyes or a tooth for ten teeth. No, it made sense in the beginning, as they worked together in a community that, if someone did something wrong, you could do it back to them but only in the same proportion they to you, and that was a real step forward. That was a real movement toward understanding the way in which God intends us to live together — in justice. And he tried to lead us into a place of freedom by finding people who could guide us and show us the way. There were patriarchs. There were prophets. There were priests. There were kings, but whenever God works through the authority of another, the human nature of that other gets in the way, because nothing is harder on people than giving them power, in terms of helping them to really be there for other people. It’s such a temptation. We know it. Anyone with authority can so easily use that authority over another and rob them of their dignity and their worth. We see it everywhere, especially today in race relationships. So that’s a stage we went through, but then you realize there had to be another stage. That was God the Father, and now we’re going to look at God the Son. God the Son enters into the world to do something more than the Father could ever do. He has to model for them something that goes beyond justice, and what he’s modeling is a thing called love. And the word in the New Testament is forgiveness. Another word for forgiveness is full, radical acceptance of what is, what is true, to see goodness for what it can accomplish, to see evil for what it destroys, and the more we see both of those things, the more we’re imbued with an experience of one living in the world, manifesting this thing called mercy, called love, called no judgment. It opens us up to a whole other way of interacting with each other. It’s so interesting when God says, “One thing I want you to do —” he said this through his son. “Stop judging each other,” and I think to myself — I’ve said that to people. “God does not want us to judge.” And then they’ll quote the creed that we say on Sunday. “And God is the judge of the living and the dead.” It’s so interesting. You’ve got to understand judgment in this way. Judgment is not discernment as to whether something is live-giving or death-dealing. That’s called discernment, but judgment has to do with value, people’s value. And to judge someone is not valuable, not worth saving, not worth working with, not worth being saved, that’s what we can’t ever, ever fall into, and yet that’s what justice tends to lead to. Sort of like the people who harm us, they should not only be dealt with justly, if they cause pain, they should be in pain, and the mindset is there’s something ugly and horrible and bad about these people, like bad people don’t deserve love, affec...
Transcribe →Pentecost Sunday: A 2026
May 24Tap to summarizePastoral Reflections 5-24-26 - Pentecost Sunday Msgr. Don Fischer Download Original Airdate: May 28, 2023 Acts 2:1-11 | 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7, 12-13 | John 20:19-23 Almighty, everliving God, who willed the Pascal mystery to be encompassed as a sign in 50 days, granted from out of the scattered nations the confusion of many tongues may be gathered by heavenly grace into one great confession of your name. 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. As a Catholic, I was obviously very much formed by the liturgy, by mass on Sunday, and as a priest, I’ve celebrated mass after mass after mass every day. I’ll be saying this thing that is a celebration of what has happened to the human race because of this figure Jesus, and one of the things that I love about the liturgy in the renewal is that we brought back at the very beginning of the liturgy a more public form of the request from the congregation to God to forgive us of our sins. It’s interesting. We start every liturgy with simply a request. “Please Father, forgive me. Have mercy on me.” The reason that seems so important is because of the effect of sin. Sin is the enemy. Sin is the thing that Jesus came to conquer, to take away its power. He taught us this mysterious thing about giving in to evil, giving in to sin, and that seems so strange when you think about it. But it has an incredible element of wisdom, and it’s this: sin is what separates people. If there’s anything that’s clear about the message of Jesus, it’s we are all called to be one body, one spirit, one reflection, a multitude of different kinds of reflection, but we’re all called to be in some way a reflection of this incredible loving figure that is God the Father made manifest to us through a God/man, Jesus, who implies so clearly in his ministry what he’s doing is empowering us to be who he was, who he is. And what it is that God always wants of his people is that we become one in union, communion. Oneness, that’s the core. Nothing creates more difficulty and problems for the evolution of a human being from the time they’re young till the time they’re old as the relationships they have with people, and if there’s a healthy flow of life between parent and child, between friends, partners, there’s life. So the first thing I want to start with is this image that God has come into the world to effect a change, and the change is to draw people more and more consciously into one unit, one communion of intention. And the intention is always there for the good of the other. We’re called to be one body manifesting the gifts of the Spirit in different ways. So we look at our first reading, and the first line that strikes me so much is it says that everyone — well, the opening prayer says everyone is gathered together in one great confession of who God is. And this oneness is expressed by this experience of the disciples when they were gathered together. They had 50 days since the time that Jesus died, and once Jesus died, as you know, the disciples were terrified, frightened. They were in a locked room. They were filled with confusion and doubt, and I’d say the 11 that were left ran the gamut from John, who understood everything, to doubting Thomas. If there’s anything clear about the work that Jesus did before the Spirit entered into the world in this new way that he enabled through his death to bring to us, you see that the work before that wasn’t that effective, or at least it was very frightening to the disciples when it took the turn it did when Jesus died. And so you have this sense that there was this lack of cohesion and union, and so what happened in 50 days is you had these men that were so diverse in their response to Jesus all one. And they’re in this room, and suddenly there’s this overwhelming presence of divinity, which is in the form of one of the ways in which God, through Jesus and through the Old Testament, has provided us an image of how this God works in our life, and it’s like breath. It’s like wind. It’s like this mysterious thing. You don’t know where it comes from. You don’t know where it goes, but you know it can effect great changes from a gentle breeze to a hurricane or tornado. So they’re in this room. It’s filled with this wind, and all of a sudden, there’s these tongues of fire. And fire is the most interesting element throughout scripture, but it’s a combination of light, which enlightens, wisdom, and a fire that purifies, burns out everything that isn’t really what it’s intended to be. So just imagine what’s happening is, in this union they feel with each other, the presence of God, that presence awakens in them this awareness. Two things: you’re being purified, transformed, and you’re being enlightened to be a source of wisdom and light for other people. And what was happening when this Spirit came is that they wanted — and this is the dynamic that God has created in our hearts. When we’re given a truth and we’re given life, the instinct, the purest instinct of human nature is to share it with other people, to receive it in gratitude and in thanksgiving and then say, “God, this has given me so much. I want to give it to other people. I do. I want to give it to them.” And so you see all these other people from around them. They’re from all over. They’re in Jerusalem. They’re from every country in a sense, and they’re watching this thing happen. And what they’re hearing is a manifestation of the feeling that each of these men had, knowing that they were being touched by a transforming Spirit, an enlightening Spirit, and that gave them the ability to share the wisdom and the life that they had. And they started talking about it in their own language, and all these other people heard it. Now, why would that be the image that we’re asked to ponder about this new thing called the church? It’s about individuals being infused with life and light and having this not just power but this inner desire to share it with other people, to give it to them, and the interesting thing is it isn’t being communicated in the normal way. In other words, if I’m English-speaking and I’ve got a group of Germans and French people and all these other people and they don’t understand at all my language and I start talking about this thing that I know is in me that I want to be in them and it’s life-giving, they get it. So how’s that working? It’s not through words? It’s through this mysterious thing called presence. This presence that’s in them is so vital and alive that, when one has it and intends to give it to another person, they receive it. It says a lot about the organ that we know that’s in the middle of our chest where God says he dwells. We know that that organ has the capacity — the heart we’re talking about — has the capacity to resonate and share whatever its disposition is, its feeling with another person without using words. It’s called an electromagnetic field. It goes out eight, ten feet. So we have within us this capacity to communicate something without words, and that’s the mystery that I think we’re asked to ponder, this Spirit being given to human beings. When they have it and they feel it and they know what it creates within them and they have a desire to share it, it flows between us. And words, yes, can help, but it’s not the words that work. It’s something else, and I want to talk about that something else. It’s the presence of God and your human presence, and they’re together in terms of their intention of wanting to give life, and it flows. It works. It goes out. So let’s look at, then, the image of the gospel. The gospel is that moment when Jesus came to the disciples after his death. It’s interesting. The gospel is the beginning of Jesus working with the disciples, and his post-resurrection disposition, power, presence in the opening reading was the effectiveness of it. But let’s go back to that moment when Jesus appeared to his disciples for the first time, and they’re locked in a place, and they’re full of fear and confusion and doubt. And he’s just there, and he just says, “Peace be with you. Peace be with you.” And he said, “I want you. I want so much for you to be the person that I’ve called you to be, and I want you to have this great gift that I want to give you. It’s an amazing gift. It’s the gift that you can do something for your brothers and sisters tha...
Transcribe →The 7th Sunday of Easter • Ascension: A 2026
May 17Tap to summarizePastoral Reflections 5-17-26 - The 7th Sunday of Easter • Ascension Msgr. Don Fischer Download Original Airdate: May 21, 2023 Acts 1:1-11 | Ephesians 1:17-23 | Matthew 28:16-20 Grant, we pray, almighty God, that we, who believe that your only begotten Son, our Redeemer, ascended this day to the heavens, may in spirit dwell already in heavenly realms. Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen. I’ve been a priest for 56 years, just had an anniversary, and I think about what I’ve been doing those years and what’s the most important thing that I’ve accomplished. And I’m looking at it all and saying the one thing that I have been doing that has been consistent is ⎯ certainly administering sacraments to people as a Catholic priest has been an incredible joy, but the real work is not in doing that. That’s something that God does through me so obviously indirectly. But the work of dealing with scripture, struggling with it, listening to it over and over and over again, that’s where the work has been, and that’s where I think I have spent my time as well as I could possibly spend it, because nothing seems more important to me that you understand this story, because it’s your story. We’re to live it out. And we get to a very important part of the story. The Old Testament and New Testament is often considered two books and two different stories, but they’re actually one story. The testament, the inheritance that we receive from God is his story. It begins with God creating some human beings, two beings. Whether they were created that moment or they evolved over time makes no difference. The evolution of the human species is something that’s really attracted me, and it makes sense that that’s most likely what God had done through the plan that he had from the very beginning, that God planned to create this world. He did it sort of naturally, and as it continues to evolve and grow and each one of us evolve and grow, the direction is always in one direction. It’s always toward truth ⎯ truth. If the fullness of the story is in Jesus and Jesus is depicted by John the evangelist so beautifully when he says Jesus comes into the world and he is, for the first time, the full explanation of what is real. He is truth, and the truth is something that, when we hear it, it ministers to us. It awakens us to see what is true and what is real, and it is filled ⎯ that truth is filled with hope, but we know that there’s an oppositional power, so to speak. There’s something that works against the truth. It’s interesting that the first sin committed in the great story of Old and New Testament, the first sin is the sin of disobedience on the part of the angels that wouldn’t respond to God’s plan, but then when it came to the first sin of humans, again, it wasn’t so much disobedience. It was believing in a lie. The most cunning of animals was there and said, “Oh, no, no, no. What God told you is not true. What is true is that you want to be like gods. You want to be in charge. You want to know what’s real.” Interesting. The real struggle is between truth and lies. We see that all around us today in the world, and people are always saying, “I don't know where the truth is.” And there are people who get caught up in the most amazing lies and conspiracies of what’s going on, and always when you’re dealing with people in a lie, then almost always it seems it has a negative ring to it, a negative feel: the world is awful, we’re all going to hell in a handbasket, nothing’s working, there is no hope. So what is the truth that God wants you to believe in? Well, on one level, it’s believing that Jesus is who he says he is, that God created the world, and he came into it, and he saved us, and then he returned to the Father. Well, to believe that is important. I would agree. But it’s so interesting to me, what we listen to in the gospel, which is not about the ascension but about the resurrection of Jesus, and the ascension in all the scriptures ⎯ well, in the scriptures, other than in Luke, it’s ⎯ well, in all ⎯ the four evangelists, they talk about the resurrection happening the same day that Jesus ascended into heaven. It’s only the continuation of Luke’s gospel where he continues and describes something it’s so crucial to believe in, that Jesus didn’t rise right away and return to the Father. No, he stayed for a long time. Forty days is 40 elements of length. It’s a mystical time, 40 years in the desert, 40 days of Jesus in the desert. The wanderings and the temptation were all under 40 days, but interesting that, in this image, you see that God comes back and wants to make something clear. And this is what I believe he is trying to say because of the line that’s there in the gospel that says, when they watched this event happening, Jesus leaving, they were concerned, and they doubted. What did they doubt? Did they doubt that he was who he said he was? Could the disciples possibly doubt that Jesus was the man who could do things beyond any other man, that he was able to heal and he was able to raise people from the dead? He was a miracle worker, and they also believed that this power over death was amazing, because he could bring a friend back, and he himself didn’t die when he was crucified. He came back. All of that makes total sense. I don’t see how they could doubt that. So what were they doubting? They were doubting what truth is, a path of life, a way of life. They didn’t believe, and it’s still hard to believe, what it is that God is inviting us into when he gives you and me a body and a will and a heart and said, “I want you to spend some time living in this world as it is and do something for me.” And what does he want? He wants us to manifest a truth to everyone, and the truth is really beautiful. It’s something that I could describe like this: God has come into the world to oppose the power of evil. Evil is a lie, and what’s the lie? We’re on our own. The world is negative. It has all kinds of problems. When things aren’t going right, that’s a sign that they’re only going to get worse, and as they get worse, it means it’s all going to end up in darkness and destruction. And there is fear, and there is revenge and anger against those who are perpetrating lies. What he gives us is something that absolutely dissolves that. It’s the awareness that we aren’t simply here to remember what Jesus did back then, but we are to receive something that he is now giving you and me that is often untapped, unknown, unrecognized, hidden. You have God, the same God in Jesus, inside of you, in your heart. Paul says, “Open your hearts, eyes so that you can receive a wisdom that leads to a revelation of everything that you’re engaged in in this world.” The revelation is you are the same truth incarnate that Jesus was and still is in you, and as you live out this life, believing in that power within you, you are like a priest. You are a minister. You are an apostle. You’re a disciple, and you are not teaching something about something. You are being something for them. You are a resonance of life and hope and truth. Truth is we’re here for one reason only, to minister to each other. The lie is no, no, you’re here in this world to take care of your needs and your wants and your desires, and when those are on the lower level of our consciousness, you know what happens? They never work. It never satisfies. You want money? You never have enough. You want pleasure? You never have enough. You want power? You never have enough. That’s a sign that every lie is incapable of fulfilling us, yet the truth is so there, right in front of us that the thing that really works for us is being engaged in this amazing, powerful source within us that invites people out of that lie into the truth that they are cared for and loved.We live in a country that is so Christian in its roots, its constitution. What’s the first thing the constitution says basically? The government has a purpose. It’s to serve the people. In Christianity, the presence of God, what’s its purpose? To serve humanity. Most of us grew up, at least I did, before the Council, before I understood about the priesthood or the faithful, that we all share this mysterious, wonderful presence of God inside of us, and it works through us, and we can feel it. And yet it happens, more often than not, without us even realizing it, but we believe it. Somehow that ⎯ I don't know. Somehow I didn’t ⎯ it was like I was supposed to serve the church. I was supposed to do things for God. I was serving him to get him to love me. What a lie, and yet it seemed to ⎯ it pervaded my upbringin...
Transcribe →The 6th Sunday of Easter: A 2026
May 10Tap to summarizePastoral Reflections 5-10-26 - The 6th Sunday of Easter Msgr. Don Fischer Download Original Airdate: May 14, 2023 Acts 8:5-8, 14-17 | 1 Peter 3:15-18 | John 14:15-21 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. This sixth Sunday of Easter is, in a way, the end of the teachings that started in the beginning of Lent when we saw Jesus entering into 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, 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. It’s 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’d do without the Bible, without scripture. 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.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 is 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 the commandments of God just is to ruin the whole thing. 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 power by saying he didn’t make people out of clay and then breathe life into them. 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 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, and 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’s really very special. 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. Watch as God slowly evolved, 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 it 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, at the end, you will know that you too were part of what you are.” That’s what human beings want.When you look at the story of Adam and Eve, they were given a garden, and he said, “Just tend it.” And Adam and Eve said, “Well, I want my own garden.” And that’s what they did. They said, “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.” But the interesting thing about that moment 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, and they did it anyway, which is not something that would be a big deal to somebody with their 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 is 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’s 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 Spi...
Transcribe →The 5th Sunday of Easter: A 2026
May 3Tap to summarizePastoral Reflections 5-3-26 - The 5th Sunday of Easter Msgr. Don Fischer Download Original Airdate: May 7, 2023 Acts 6:1-7 | 1 Peter 2:4-9 | John 14:1-12 Almighty, everliving God, constantly accomplish the Pascal mystery within us that those you are pleased to make new in holy baptism may, under your protective care, bear much fruit and come to the joys of life eternal 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. These readings seem, to me, to be focused on the role of the church. Church is an interesting word. We tend to think of it as a building, but the best description that I have of what the church really is came from Vatican Council. Basically, it says so clear that, whenever people are gathered and believe in God and are seeking his presence in their life, being aware of it and then sharing it with each other, that’s church. And yes, it needs a building, but the heart of every parish that I’ve ever been a part of or that I think is ever intended of God is that people there would grow into an awareness of very simple things, essential things. Who are they? What are we here for? Who is this God? What does he want? And I think the most interesting thing in this first reading is that basically, we’re looking at the early church, realizing something about the nature of a community of human beings, and that is are they able to do what they’re there for. What are they there for? To bring people out of darkness into light, to minister, to feed people with the word, which is truth. In the very beginning, the church realizes it needs to do reflection on how well they’re doing that. So we see that there’s a group of people not really being nurtured. They’re being neglected. The widows of the Greeks were accusing the Hebrews of not paying attention to them and not caring for them, and that seems to be ⎯ that’s been the situation with the church from the beginning, that we have to continually look at ourselves as a church and say, “Who are we neglecting, or what are we neglecting?” And so I believe, in my own experience of the church, that they neglected to feed me something, and maybe it’s true for you, maybe not. I hope it’s not, but we know from the beginning, the church’s call is to make clear the teaching of Jesus. And what that teaching is is what we’re looking for, what we need to be fed, and I don’t believe I was ever fed the essence of what I now know to be the ministry of Jesus. It wasn’t about inviting me into a community that would require me doing certain things that would then make me pleasing to God. I was really hooked into performance. Maybe that’s my personality. Maybe it’s the way the church came across to me, but I always felt like, if I’d just stop doing stupid, unkind breaking rules of the church, I would find this enormous peace. But there’s something that’s sort of connected to church in this second reading, and that is the church is usually made of a solid building. It’s ⎯ churches are large and very ⎯ we have cathedrals that are ⎯ the one in Milan is just overwhelming, but the image in this reading from Peter is the church is supposed to be something that is rooted in, grounded in, built on the foundation of a teaching. And the teaching isn’t about something to do. It’s about who someone is, and so the image in this is Peter saying, “We believe in a way of life that is based on the life of someone.” He’s a living foundation, not a rock foundation, but he’s living stone. It’s interesting when you think of living stone, because living stone could be a way of comparing the message of Jesus in the New Testament and the way God presents himself in the Old Testament, and what he gave was commandments written on stone. So there’s an image of not living stone but a stone with the requirements to be fulfilled, and this is a wonderful way of imagining how different the New Testament is from the Old Testament, because it’s not about law and justice. It’s about intimacy with God, and that’s a thing that I don’t think they fed me very much.So in John’s gospel, we have the heart of what I think the church is, Jesus talking to his disciples and saying, “I’m leaving you.” This is a discourse from the Last Supper. So he’s telling them not to be troubled, because he knows that they are rooted and grounded in him personally and his teaching and his affection and his criticism at times. But what he’s wanting to say to them is, “There’s something you need to know. I’m going to leave you now, because my role was to do something other than focus on me. I came into this world so that you would see and get to know someone.” And when he starts talking about he’s going to return to this someone, this Father in heaven, this God, he’s saying, “Look, I’m going there. Don’t worry, because I’m going there for a very real purpose. I’m going there so that you can come and join me in my relationship with God.” And they look at him like, “What are you talking about? How can we join with God?” In the Old Testament, there was no way that human beings could even get close to God without being destroyed, so the idea that God is an intimate lover that wants to be in your presence and you in his presence, was just simply not able to be conceived in the Old Testament. But Jesus is saying something. “Look, I came into the world, and if you watched my life, and you did, you know me, everything I went through was something that is a way ⎯ it’s a way of living. And it’s not so much what I said, but you’ve got to look at who I was, who I am and how I grew up just like you, and I was an outcast for most of my life. And then I began to feel that God wanted to speak through me, and then my message was something that most people couldn’t fathom and couldn’t understand, because they didn’t have the capacity yet to imagine something as bizarre and as radical as God falling in love with me and wanting to be with me ultimately in heaven.” So he’s trying to say, “Look, this has been my message. My message has been to introduce to you the fullness of who God is. That’s what I’m here for, and the best way I could do that is to do it as a human filled with divinity,” because that is exactly who you are going to be, asked to believe you are in that relationship with God, not as fully as Jesus. Jesus was ⎯ 430 years after Jesus died, the church finally came together and said, “We think we’ve solved this problem about divinity and humanity in Jesus.” And I love their solution. He was 100 percent both, and that just blows away all logic and the work of the mind to figure all this out. How can somebody be two things at the same time? They can’t be, but the two things at the same time is an invitation to you and to me to believe that there’s a union possible between ourselves and God that is so lifegiving and so wonderful it's almost too much for us to even fathom, that Jesus is returning to the Father to be with him, and he’s saying, “I introduce the Father to you. Father is going to call you from this life into a life with him.” I think about death as being with all the people I’ve known in my life, and that’s wonderful. That will happen, but I haven’t really thought about what it’s like to be loved by God as an intimate friend. That’s more of what heaven is like than renewing old relationships. People in heaven have a work to do to share this incredible wisdom of what it feels like to have that kind of union with God, with those who are still working toward joining them. So we believe the dead have a very important role in our life, and what a gift they are. But what a gift this God/man Jesus is to us. I feel sad that I haven’t been talking about this most of my priesthood, but I’m so aware of the invitation on Jesus’ very life to say you have this capacity because of something that’s been done for you, called redemption. That redemption is anything that would keep you from the fullness of relationship with God has been dissolved and taken away, and all you need to do is trust in it. So Jesus is the way, and the truth is the love of God for you. And that is what we’re here for. That’s what the church is here for, to bring us into that incredible promise. No wonder Jesus starts this conversation with his disciples by saying, “Don’t ever let your hearts be troubled. How can you when you’re loved as I have been loved?” As Jesus has been loved, that’s what he’s saying It’s a beautiful, hopeful, wonderful institution, the church, and often it gets sidetracked, being judgmental and making decisions for us that are our right to make. But at its heart, it is a living message that the heart is made for, and when you hear it and can get past all the logic and all the m...
Transcribe →The 4th Sunday of Easter: A 2026
Apr 26Tap to summarizePastoral Reflections 4-26-26 - The 4th Sunday of Easter Msgr. Don Fischer Download Original Airdate: April 30, 2023 Acts 2:14a, 36-41 | 1 Peter 2:20b-25 | John 10:1-10 Almighty, everliving God, lead us to a share in the joys of heaven so that the humble flock may reach where the brave shepherd has gone before, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen. The words of Peter in this first reading are addressed to a group of people that have just had an experience. The experience they’ve had is the one that, in a sense, ushers in a new age, a new level of awareness on the part of human beings as to the fullness of God’s plan. The reason Jesus came into the world, the reason he died for us and removed the obstacle of sin as a wedge between ourselves and God brought the two of us together and then said the most amazing thing. “I will come and dwell within you. Just as the Father is in me, I am in the Father, and if I enter into you and the Father’s in me, then the Father is in you.” And this whole notion of an in-dwelling presence of God is the heart of my ministry and, I think, the heart of the gospel. And what these people have just experienced is the manifestation of that inner presence. It was a moment. It’s called Pentecost, and in that very moment, there was this overwhelming sense of something entering into them that was like enlightenment, like the purification of fire. And it was wind that’s talked about that obviously led them to think, “There’s something really powerful here.” And then they all began to speak, and the thing they must have been saying was in some response to recognizing that God was truly in us and, what it is to me, a manifestation of what happens when God dwells in human beings. There is a unity of understanding, and there’s an acceptance of a fundamental truth. And so the miracle seemed to be that all these people from different places, all different languages, and yet whatever they were saying, they all understood, because I think the image is what they were saying was the same truth. They were saying, “God is in me. God is in me. God is in me.” They understood it, not because they heard the words and could interpret them but because they felt it, and it underscores the mystery of when God enters into a human being. It isn’t just a relationship with you and God, but it’s you, God and everyone around you. The union is a union with creation, with the whole world, with everyone.And what we long for and what we move for is being in a community of people, called a church, that leads us, through its guidance and direction, to understand this and to be living it, and yet it’s true that you can see ⎯ and in the second reading there’s a line that says, “But you lose your way. You sometimes don’t focus on what’s really important.” You lose sight of the shepherd guiding you, because the shepherd guiding you, in the gospel passage, is important to understand how that all works. Unfortunately for the church, there’s been a sense of the shepherd role is a role to make sure that people all do what they’re told. There is an obligation to follow the shepherd’s rules and regulations, and if you don’t do that, then you’re considered not to be part of the flock. It’s like the flock is determined, in terms of what they do, by the shepherd, and he also is the kind of shepherd that casts you out. And Jesus said, “Be careful. That’s not the authority that I’m giving to my church. The authority that I’m giving to my church is something quite different. I’m inviting those who are called to lead,” and in a way that’s everyone but some in a very formal way, in charge of a community or whatever, overseeing doctrine and making sure it’s clear and it doesn’t get changed by a whim of a particular culture, but having something at its core. And it’s the connection between the leadership of the church and the individual. And what we see in the image that Jesus is giving us is so beautiful. He’s saying, “Look, the only way that you can maybe understand this mystery is for me to give you some images to ponder and to work with.” Now, they all knew about shepherding. They all knew what that was like, so they were asked to ponder this image, that there is such a thing that God has created called the church. It’s a kind of sheepfold. A sheepfold is a place of protection from darkness, the darkness of night in the sense of wolves coming and attacking the sheep. So in a way, the church is a kind of place, a holding place that is safe, but then when it comes to the role of the leadership of the church, it’s very important to look at what the model is. The model is Jesus himself, and there’s a role that God has, and there’s a role about the Spirit living in us has. And I think it’s all in this beautiful image, the story. This thing that Jesus offers his disciples is something to ponder. God is the one in charge of opening and closing the gate. He is the ultimate authority thing. He’s the Father of it all. He’s the force in all of it, this creative, loving, intimate force. And he took the form of a human being, and he’s invited human beings to live, in a way, with him in such intimacy that they will continue to do the work that he intended to be done with his people. And so Jesus is then the opening. God opens it, but Jesus is the opening of human beings’ awareness of what they are, who they are, what they’re here for. So he comes in, and he is the one who is forgiven everything and wants to do something for the sheep that are there. And the interesting thing about the sheep is the sheep will respond. There are all kinds of sheep in there, and they have different shepherds. But when their own shepherd comes, they follow him, because they recognize his voice. Now, that’s such an interesting thing. You know what it’s like to be in a restaurant, and all of a sudden you hear a voice. You say, “I know that. That’s so-and-so.” Our voice is a very unique thing about us. So when they recognize his voice, it means they have some kind of connection. There is something familiar about the way in which they feel at that time that, “This is somebody that’s been with me, that’s there for me, that I trust.” To me, that is the image that inside of every human being there is born the truth, and it is not necessarily always nurtured and developed like to should. And some people, most of us have some kind of damage, and we work through all of that, but still we know that truth. And sometimes we hear it, and we go, “Yes, that’s right. Whatever that person said, that is so right. I recognize it.” And what is it? It’s that thing in you and me that is so like the God that created us but is in a constant struggle to discover it and to be nurtured by a community.And so we need to think very clearly about what the role of any kind of authority is in our life, particularly religious authority, and when I think about what it is, I think about the words then that were spoken to Jesus by Peter, who represents the authority of the church. And he asks a question of Peter. “Do you love me?” Now, why would that be so important, because he asked it three times? And everyone believes, well, the reason he asked it three times is because there were three times that Peter denied him, but three times in the Bible usually just means, “This is really important. Listen to this.” “Do you love me? Do you have a relationship with me? Do you understand my voice? Do you feel me? Do you sense my presence? If you do, then you have the right to do some things for me.” The first, “Feed my lambs.” Second, “Tend to my sheep.” The third time, “Feed my sheep.” What strikes me about this as a command to the church to rule, guide, nurture their people is really significant, because the first and foremost thing is you’ve got to know God if you’re going to lead anyone into a relationship with him. If you don’t do that, it seems like the only thing you can do is use your authority, the position of power, to make them stop doing the things that you think are bad for them, and then that just never becomes church. It becomes kind of a control. So let’s look at these three things. What does it mean to feed lambs? Well, the lambs are different than the sheep, because they’re the children. They’re wide open. They’ll listen to anything that they’re told and believe it. So he said, “Feed them the truth,” and the truth is the food that God asked Jesus to bring to the world. Remember when he was tempted, he said, “What I live for is the truth. That’s my food. Every word that comes from God is my food.” So here we are telling the church, o...
Transcribe →The 3rd Sunday of Easter: A 2026
Apr 19Tap to summarizePastoral Reflections 4-19-26 - The 3rd Sunday of Easter Msgr. Don Fischer Download Original Airdate: April 26, 2020 Acts 2:14, 22-33 | 1 Peter 1:17-21 | Luke 24:13-35 May your people exalt forever, oh God, a renewed youthfulness of spirit so that rejoicing now in the restored glory of our adoption we may look forward in confident hope to the rejoicing of the day of resurrection 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. There’s something consistent about the message that God has placed before the human race, and nothing seems more important than for those of us who call ourselves Christians to follow the story as it is written. And for me as a Catholic priest, the story was in the New Testament, and until recently, I looked to that place for my fullness of understanding of who God is. I learned more about who Christ is than I did learn about who God is in the New Testament, and so it was my beginning, after my retirement, of really studying the Old Testament — not that it wasn’t there in the readings ever since I was ordained. After the council, we added an Old Testament reading, but to really get into it took time and reflection. And what I see now is a much richer, much more beautiful picture of this journey that we’re on with God in Christ and in one another. And so if I look back to the Old Testament, I realize, when Abraham was called, he was told he was going to take on a role with God, and he was going to do something for God. He was going to form a people, and so the first thing he was asked to do was to take a journey. He was going to start this journey with his people, and so he had to leave what he knew. And he had to go on this path, and he would get finally to Jerusalem. And then finally what happened there is — well, before they got to Jerusalem, I should say, they got as far as, let’s say, to the Egyptians, where they got into slavery. So think of it. On the journey people get sidetracked and get caught in things that rob them of continuing on the path, and so then Abraham led them. And then it was time for Moses to lead them, and they also went on a journey, on a long, 40-day journey toward the Promised Land, Jerusalem. And then we have this beautiful, beautiful story of Christ coming into the world, and then he uses the same kind of metaphor. He uses the same kind of thing. He said, “I want you to come with me on the path, the path of life.” That’s the main theme of this third Sunday of Easter. What is this path of life that we’re on that our ancestors have been on? If we look at a path, what is it? It’s different than a road. A road is constructed. It’s perhaps done by engineers and people who have all kinds of technology and ability to know where the destination is and the easiest and most efficient way to build a highway there, and then you just get on it, and you don’t have to think. You just follow the road, but the journey that God is calling on us to engage in is not that kind of a highway. It’s a path, and a path is made by human beings walking. It meanders, and it flows, and it follows the terrain. And the beautiful thing about it is there’s a kind of sense that, when you’re on it, someone has gone on this journey before, and the first ones that went, it must have been very difficult to figure out which way was the right way until more and more people understood it. And the more people walked it, the more it became a distinct path, in a sense, in the forest or wherever they were walking. Beautiful image about the reverence we need to have that’s mentioned in the second reading of today’s liturgy of the word, the reverence we have for those who have gone on this path, our ancestors. They have grown slowly in their understanding of this great, great mystery that God longs to reveal to each and every person, the path in which God invites them to follow him, to find him, and the beautiful thing about this gospel passage, the beautiful thing about this story, the road to Emmaus, is it’s one of the many stories that revealed to the early church the process that they are invited to engage in. It’s new. It’s different. And the difference between the Old Testament journeys is, number one, they weren’t as successful as these people hoped they would be, but now something had shifted, something we call redemption. It’s something that we — think about it this way: the whole story of a God entering into the world to teach you and me how to live in this life with hope and with direction and with success and finding what we ultimately, deeply need — that’s the best description I can give you of what it means that we are a redeemed people. What does redemption mean? What did it earn for us? I should say what did it gift us with. Two things: the promise of enlightenment, of understanding, of knowing, of discovering a truth that we call wisdom, and forgiveness. We are promised, as a redeemed people, that God has done something through Christ that broke a barrier that kept us from the fullness of understanding of who we are and who he is and where we’re supposed to go. And for every misstep, for every time we get off the path, there is nothing, nothing but forgiveness, understanding, compassion. Can you imagine making a journey where, the minute you get off the path, you’re told that you don’t deserve to find what’s at the end of this path. One of the shadows of religion or any religious person is, when somebody deviates, they say, “Well, they’re lost. They’re gone. They’re cut out.” That’s not true religion, but it’s the way religion can sometimes develop, we, the saved, on the path and the others lost and forgotten. No, this path is something much, much more certain. We’re promised that we will find this path, and one of the primary promises is that we’re not making it alone. That’s what I love about these men who represent all of us. The road to Emmaus is the path of life they’re on, and we’re going to be on that — we are on that same path. And they’re like so many of us. They’re sitting there discussing things, things that make sense in one way, that there is this promise of a figure that’s in the world that’s going to change things and that is going to be a vehicle through which we have this new insight and new freedom and promised that we will reach this goal, whatever the path represents for us. It’s a way to find the thing that we’re made for, our destiny, the things that satisfy us. So the promise of redemption is we don’t go on this journey alone, and we don’t go on it with just rules and regulations given by an authority outside of us that, if we don’t do this, we’re going to be left behind. No, that motivation is over, but we are given, in place of that kind of pressure to perform or be excluded, we’re given this mysterious presence of a God who is with us, whose very presence is a manifestation of hope. Believe, trust that this is working, that this is going to produce what I know it has been promised to produce, and so the biggest change in the Old Testament and New Testament is there’s another path, but this path we walk with God. His presence is interesting, because if you think of Jesus as the presence of God, particularly after his resurrection, we see that this image for these men is that there’s this figure, this God in their midst who is there to explain things, to do what Peter said in that first reading, to make it clear to them that — there are over 300 references to the Messiah in the Old Testament, and every one of them is spot-on. They all talk about exactly who he is, where he’s going to be born, what’s going to happen to him, how he’s going to save the world. It’s all there written ahead of time, which is enough to convince a lot of skeptics, but we don’t pay that close attention to what’s in the Old Testament. But what God is saying through the prophets and what he’s saying now in the person of Jesus on this road with these men as they’re putting all the pieces together — they have the story, and you don’t get any sense about their understanding and debating about it that they’ve received it, that they’ve received what it offers. They’re just saying, “Isn’t this interesting? This guy was there, and he died. Then he’s not there anymore.” They say this, and they say that. I love Jesus’ response to it. “Are you just that dense and that slow to understand? Look at this. It’s so clear that everything that was foretold took place, and you see that.”...
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