Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 01/02/22 It's Not About You

Episode Date: January 2, 2022

Homily from the Epiphany of the Lord. Worship can help us escape the trap that life is about us. When life is about us, it is not food for the human heart. When we realize that life is about Someone other than us, we are allowed to have a heart that is larger…a heart that is large enough to give. Mass Readings from January 2, 2022: Isaiah 60:1-6 Psalms 72:1-2, 7-8, 10-13Ephesians 3:2-3, 5-6 Matthew 2:1-12

So one thing I noticed growing up, see, there's these things that you lose as time goes on. Like, I think modern people will never know the joy. I don't know if this is joy. Here's what happened. When you're a kid, you notice that all the commercials, everything, it's like all about you. I don't know if you notice this, like everything you're advertised to as a kid, especially like if you watch cartoons on Saturday morning. Like all the cartoons, all the commercials are for the kids who are watching the cartoons.

Makes sense. Complete sense. But there was like a time in your life, or at least there was a time in your life, when you would recognize that as you keep growing, commercials are getting less and less about you. Like they're less and less focused on you. I don't know if you've ever noticed this. Because things change now, right?

Now there's the algorithm that's listening to everything you talk about. And you mentioned cat food yesterday. And all of a sudden, there's advertisements for cat food. So, but what used to be the case was that you would, again, everything is about you. And then as you grew, people are like, oh, we don't need to market to them anymore. We need to market to the new kids. And you got a break, a little bit of a break. I mean, still there's some commercials that are, um,

Aimed, you feel like they're kind of targeting at you. Like, you know, I remember there was a commercial for head and shoulders that was like, I wear a lot of black, so I need some head and shoulders. Like, I was like, you're at me, right? No. But there's a sense now where commercials are still about you because they hear what you're saying. They listen to, they see what you're searching for on Google and they basically are still, everything gets to be all about you still, which is not necessarily good for the human heart.

I don't think it's actually good for the human heart at all. that when life is about us, when we, when life is about us, we begin to believe that life is about us. That when everything, advertisements, what people are playing, music, what they're saying, is catered towards us, then we begin to believe the lie that your life is about you, the lie that my life is about me. What that does to our heart is it keeps our hearts small. It keeps our hearts. It's this.

It's C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite things that he's ever said is he says something along the lines about his own heart. He says, I've never had anything but a mercenary heart that's willing to give it, give myself to the highest bitter, willing to give my love to the highest bitter. And again, when life is all about us, then we have no escape from that mercenary heart. And then we hit today's feast, right? Today's feast of the epiphany. And I love it so good. Because you think about these three wise men, we don't know how many there were. It says that they offered three different gifts. So the tradition is that maybe three different people brought gold, frankincense, murk. However many it was, we'll say three.

because that's what it has in the nativity set here. I'll say three. These three wise men, they leave their homes. They leave their lives. They leave their comfort. They leave their families. And they go on this potentially hazardous, I'm guessing, dangerous journey. What are they looking to get?

Because if I'm going to go on a dangerous journey, I'm looking to get something. Like, if I'm going to leave comfort, I'm looking to get something. If I'm going to leave home, I'm looking to get something. And these wise men, they leave their everything. what are they looking to get? And we realized that when they get to Jerusalem, when they get to Bethlehem, the whole motivation for their leaving home

was not to get anything. It says, when they saw the child with his mother, they prostrated themselves and worshipped him, and they offered him gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh. This is the only thing that can actually free our hearts. This is the only thing that can undo the mercenary aspect of a mercenary heart. and that is they didn't come to get anything. They came to give.

They didn't just come to give him, give the Lord, God, himself. They came to worship. And they came to give him something that was valuable. I mean, they gifts themselves, gold and frankincense and mer. Those are incredible. And over the course of the last 2,000 years, we have teachers and doctors of the church

and saints who have said, we know gold for the king. That represents, here's Jesus. He's the king of gains. Gold for the king. Frankencence for the priest. The offer frankincense and the priesthood. And the mur, mur is how you anointed a body for burial.

So mur for the sacrifice. So even in the midst of here's the few first few days or weeks of Jesus' life on earth outside the womb, he's recognized as being a king, he's recognized as being the high priest. And he's also recognized as being the sacrifice. He's going to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The heart of this, though, is these wise men were escaping the trap. The life's all about them. Because that's what worship does.

I think worship more than anything else. In fact, maybe worship alone has the ability to help us escape the trap that I start to believe that my life is about me. When you start to believe that your life is about you. And this is what we do, right? We come to Mass. And oftentimes our complaint is, I didn't get anything.

Often our complaint when we go to Mass is, well, I stop going to Mass because I don't get anything out of it. And when we say that, We are simultaneously saying the best truth in the world and simultaneously saying the dumbest thing any one of us could ever possibly say. It's true because you didn't come. We never go to Mass to get anything, even though, as we always have to point out, we do get the Word of God proclaimed to us. We do get the body of Christ given to us to feed us.

That's nothing going to get anything. But at the same time, good, it's true. I didn't come to get anything. I just simply came to give because the thing that's supposed to change us more than anything else is worship. But it's also false. to say this. Because at the same time that it's true,

I didn't come to get anything. It came to give. We recognize that something happens to our hearts. I don't know if we've ever been bothered. If you ever take the Lord seriously and you realize, I don't love God for his own sake. I don't know if that's ever come across your mind. I don't know that I love God for his own sake.

Remember, C.S. Lewis, I've never had anything other than a mercenary heart willing to give my love to the highest bitter. I think sometimes, hopefully, if you've ever noticed that about your soul, or I've noticed about myself so much that I never loved the Lord for his own sake. The question is, well, how do I do that? How do I actually love God for himself?

How do I love the Creator more than the creatures he's made? How do I love the giver of the gifts more than I love the gifts? The answer is worship. Not only worship. The answer is worship when I don't get anything, not even the good feelings, not even consolation, not even insight, not even inspiration. The thing that purifies our hearts, the thing that changes us, because I have to understand,

worship is not only giving the Lord what he deserves, it does something to us. It's supposed to change us. What does it say in the gospel today? That these wise men, when they offered their gifts, when they gave worship to the Lord God as an infant, they departed for their homes by another way. It changed them.

They couldn't leave the same way they arrived. In fact, that's the same thing for us when it comes to going to Mass. Like, we should expect that when we go to Mass, we are not going to be the same people at the end of Mass as we were at the beginning of Mass. And not just because we encountered the Lord himself, not only because we encounter like the burning bush of the Lord's presence, not only because we're fed with the atomic bomb that is the Eucharist, but because we've loved God for his own sake.

To give God worship. To give worship. when we don't feel like it is the only thing that can truly change us. Because when we show up, we don't feel like it, or saying, God, I will still choose you when I'd rather not. God, I'll still give you this time, even an hour when I'd rather not. God, I'm going to still give you this worship, not because of the gift you're going to give me,

but because you're you, you're God, and you deserve my heart. Until we do that, until we keep coming back to Mass, when we don't want to, when we don't feel like it, when we don't get anything out of it, if we don't do that, our hearts will remain small. Our hearts will remain mercenary. Our hearts will never truly be able to be the kind of size that is able to love God, capable of loving God. But if at this Mass, even if the online Mass, you're saying,

I'm not getting anything out of this. You're not speaking to me. Good. You're in the right place. For the rest of this Mass, as we are praying here, you're like, I'm not really feeling anything. Good. because that's your heart growing. That's God actually doing something to purify your heart when you show up when you don't feel like it. When you continue to come back and worship

when you're not getting anything out of it. It is the only escape from a mercenary heart. It's the last thing. My life is not about me and your life is not about you. My heart is too small and it is mixed up with so much self-love and so much concern of self that the only thing that could possibly set me free from myself,

the prison of myself, the only thing that could possibly set me free from this is this. It's showing up not only to Mass, but also showing up for prayer. It's saying, I committed to pray a rosary. I'm going to pray that rosary. I committed to a holy hour. I'm going to make the holy hour.

I committed to doing Lexia Devi, I committed to a Bible in the ear, whatever it was. The only thing that can set us free is worship. because I've never had anything other than a mercenary heart willing to give my love to the highest bitter. But I want to have a better heart than that. A heart that actually looks like the heart of God and a kind of heart that actually loves like the heart of God.