Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 01/24/21 Hindsight 20/20: The Whole Story

Episode Date: January 25, 2021

Homily from the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time. Editing is the enemy of how we remember the story. We look back so that we can see clearly and learn from our past. But we also have a temptation to edit the story we tell ourselves. We might edit how we tell the story, but we must not edit how we remember the story. Mass Readings from January 24, 2021: Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Psalms 25:4-91 Corinthians 7:29-31 Mark 1:14-20 Download the Homily Study

So a little while back, I came across this talk by a man named Scott Fraser. Scott Fraser is a, he even is talking like eight years ago, but he is someone who studies memory. And specifically, he studies how we remember crime scenes. So this is one of the things he does is that he gets brought before courtrooms to testify basically against, or at least for how faulty eyewitness reports are. In fact, in his talk, one of the things he noted was that with the work of the Innocence Project and the rise of like DNA testing, this movement has been able to overturn the wrongful convictions of over 280 people who were not only accused, but also wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn't commit. In fact, over the 280 people, over three quarters of those people who were wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted,

they were convicted based solely on the evidence of an eyewitness testimony. So they were considered guilty by someone who said, I saw this with my own eyes, I can remember this accurately. And so one of the things that Scott Fraser talks about is how inaccurate our memory can be. In fact, he calls it that oftentimes we can have a reconstructed memory. We can live through a whole thing,

and then we just kind of, he calls it confabulation. We just make up a whole other thing. We make up a whole memory out of an assortment of other kinds of memories. Confabulation, which I think is a confabulous word. But you might have heard the term the Mandela Effect. Have you heard that term Mandela Effect? Because it's that idea.

So the Mandela effect, that term came into kind of common parlance a number of years ago. There's a woman named Fiona Broom. And Fiona Broom, she was convinced that Nelson Mandela had died in the 1980s while in prison. And she was not only convinced of this, she had, quote-to-quote, memories of listening to news broadcasts about Nelson Mandela dying in prison in 1980s. She remembers reading articles about Nelson Mandela, dying in prison in 1980s. And Nelson Mandela didn't die in prison. he died in 2013. But that would be one thing, just like one random woman, Fiona Broom, with a weird memory.

But she found that more people she talked with, the friends of hers, they also had this false memory, that they also remembered, quote unquote, Nelson Mandela had died in prison in the 1980s. So I went online and we looked at a bunch of other like Nelson Mandela effect kind of examples. And they gave me a number, here's three. One is they showed like a couple jars of peanut butter. And here's your classic red and green and blue. I think. And one jar said jiff, the other said jiffy. Which one is it? Well, we all know because we're

smart. It's jiff, right? But so many people were confused because they're like, I don't know, Jiff and Skippy, Jiffy, that makes sense. Also, you do things in a jiffy, so maybe people get confused. One thing that was such a, it was like a revelation to me, I had no idea until like maybe less than two years ago, I had read the children's books, the Berenstein Bears. And so in my mind, it was Berenstein. S-T-E-I-N. It's actually Berenstain-Bares. It's S-T-A-I-N, and I was like, no, that's not true.

I went back to my parents' house. I had to look at the books. Like, what the heck? My entire childhood is a lie. Not only that. If you were asked, is it Looney T-O-O-N-S like cartoons? Or is it Looney T-U-N-E-S like a music? What would you say?

A lot of us would say, Looney T-O-N-S. It's not. It's Loon-E-N-E-S. It's the music. And I just think, that's crazy. How easily our memories are faulty. Fabulous, indeed. It is just, so we have this.

I would bring all this up because we just started this series last weekend, where we talked about vision, looking forward, and how difficult it is to predict the future, almost impossible it is to predict the future, because our vision isn't very perfect. but when we have hindsight, hindsight is 2020, that we can actually learn more about the present and learn more about where we're going

by looking back and having that correct, accurate vision. And we asked the question, looking back over this past year, or even over the events of your life, what if you knew then, what you know now? Going back to the beginning of the month of February, what if you knew then in 2020, what you know now? But this whole idea of confabulation, the whole idea of reconstructed memories, this whole idea of the Mandela Effect makes us ask another question.

And the other question is, what do I know now? Like, what do I remember? Like, is my memory accurate? Now, caveat, yes, the Mandela Effect is a real thing. But it doesn't control us. There might be some things we remember inaccurately. We're not helpless, though, when it comes to memories. I think one of the things that selective memory or Mandela Effect type thing,

does is it reminds us that we have to be conscious and how we remember the story. Not only that, we have to be conscious of how we tell the story. And I've been thinking about this because of our first reading and because of the gospel today. So first reading today, Book of Jonah. I might not know this, but the book of Jonah has four chapters. What we heard today was chapter three.

And what's the story that gets told to us? Well, the word of the Lord came to Jonah and said, go to Nineveh and preach repentance to them. Jonah says, okay, he goes there, he preaches, they repent, end of story. But if you ever watch Veggie Tales, you know that's not the end of the... That's not the whole story. You know there's far more to the story than this. You've went to Sunday school, you know, wait a second, there's a fish involved.

I know that right now. This is not the whole story. You know there's more to the story. And more to the story is... Like, here's the thing. If we paused there, and that's the whole story we told. Word of the Lord came to Jonah. Go to Nineveh.

He went to Nineveh. He preached. They repented. End of story. You'd think, Jonah is a stud. Jonah's amazing. What an incredible prophet. He's up there with Isaiah.

He's up there with Jeremiah. He's up there with John the Baptist. No, we know the whole story. We know there's more to the story. Chapter 1 and 2 is what? The Word of the Lord came to Jonah, says, go to Nineveh. And he's like, I know why don't go to Nineveh? He needs he do. Instead, he goes, gets on a ship, goes to Tarshish. He goes to the exact opposite direction of Nineveh. So God does what? God kicks up a storm and they have to throw someone overboard because they know it's someone's fault. Who it is, it's Jonah. Big fish swallows him. Three days, three nights in the belly of this big fish, spits him up. And then that's chapter three. It gets even worse because chapter four,

let's go back to this. Jonah goes through Nineveh. Three days journey, right, to get through the whole thing. He says eight words. The great prophet Jonah says eight words. Forty days more, Nineveh shall be destroyed. Like you hear that? You're like, okay, crazy guy on the street, whatever. Like he's not even working hard. He's the laziest prophet I've ever seen. Because he doesn't want the Ninevites to repent. So chapter four, he goes, he preaches, he goes out over the city, a hill overlooking the city, and just watches because he wants to see God destroy the city. Because the Ninevites were not good people. The Ninevites

had treated the Israelites horribly, and so Jonah's like, okay, Lord, get him. And God doesn't get him. And Jonah is ticked. He's like, God, you might as well just kill me now. The story gets even worse. As Jonah is sitting there, waiting for God to destroy the city, God sends a gourd plant to grow up over him and give him shade, and Jonah's happy. Then God sends a worm the next day. to destroy the gourd plant and the sun beats down on Jonah and he's mad and God says are you mad and Jonah says yes I am mad I'm mad enough to die not only is he a bad prophet he's a little baby what the heck but that's we realize this if it was just the word of the Lord came to Jonah be a prophet he is a prophet end of story we're not telling the whole story we're not remembering

the whole story I think for us it's so important for us we have to be a of how we remember our story because we can look back over the last year and we can see the saint and forget the sinner. We can look back over the course of our life and we can see the strength and we can forget the struggle. If we edit too much, we can forget the true story of your life and of my life. So in the gospel, we have more editing. So this is Mark's gospel.

We'll be walking with Mark through his gospel for the next, I mean, this whole year, basically. But Mark's gospel, if you don't know this, Mark's gospel is actually Peter's gospel. Mark wasn't one of the apostles. What Mark wrote down, he got from Peter. Peter was the apostle. Peter was the one who was with Jesus. Peter was the one who preached, and Mark was his companion during this time. So when Mark wrote down his gospel, basically what we're hearing is what Peter must have proclaimed everywhere Peter went.

And what we heard today is Peter's encounter with Jesus. Peter's call from his personal account to become an apostle, a disciple of Jesus. Like last week, we heard John's perspective on his being called. his encounter with Jesus. Today is Peter and his encounter. And what do we get? He's like, hey, I'm my name's Peter. I was a fisherman. Jesus showed up, said, come follow me, make your fish as the man, drop my net. Followed him. End of story. Like, no, I'm sure there was more to the story than that, Peter. But the reality, of course, is that Peter isn't lying here. Peter's editing. Like, okay, is there a difference between lying and editing? Well, maybe not when you and I do it.

But when Peter is doing it, there's a big difference between lying and editing. Because what he's doing is he's, his point is not. Jesus came along and he said, come follow me. I make he fishers of the men. And I had this internal struggle because I was like, I just got a boat, Jesus. It's my fancy boat. And I had this big battle over whether I should follow him or not. That wasn't the point.

The point was Jesus showed up announcing the kingdom and he called some disciples to him. Basically, Peter's point in telling the story is not but what he went through. The point of telling the story was Jesus is here and he's on the move. Because we realize this, there's almost always more to the story. But we're editing it. In fact, that's not, again, keeping this in mind, keep this in mind, that's not always bad. In fact, if you're going to be a good storyteller, you need to know how to edit. We all know those people, right, who seem to not know how to edit their stories.

Like, my dad, my dad is a great storyteller. But he doesn't tell short stories. My dad tells epic tales. Like, he's good at it, but, man, we have people come to visit and it's like, okay, settle in. my dad's starting to talk. In fact, my dad is a hunter, and so every fall, when he gets some kind of animal, this happened this last year, he got a deer,

and so it comes up in the text message, he got a deer, so I call him up, Dad, how'd it go? My dad telling a story, he's like, okay, well, when I was a kid, we don't need to go back that far. He's like, no, no, no, it's important to the story. It matters. If we're going to be able to tell a story, again,

editing is going to be important. editing is necessary when we're telling the story, like Jonah or like Simon or like my dad. But editing is the enemy when we're remembering the story. Editing is necessary when we tell the story, but editing is the enemy when we try to remember the story. Because there's certain things in our lives that we don't want to remember, right? There's certain things that have happened to us that we've gone through,

that we've chosen that I don't want to remember. There's this condition. It's called hyperthermesia. Hyperthermia is also known as highly superior autobiographical memory in case you're taking notes. So there's only 10 people in the world who have this condition. But what this condition is, is that if you mention a date in this person's life, they can tell you absolutely everything they experienced on that date.

So if you're just say July 18, 1983, that person could tell you what they wore that day, they could tell you exactly what they ate that day, they could tell you what, if you saw them that day, they would tell you what you saw them that day. It's not like even like a trick. It's not like a mnemonic device where they're trying to remember this. They're like automatically, involuntarily transported to that event, to that day, to that moment. Which in some ways would be like, that's so cool. And in other ways, I can imagine that would be so difficult.

Because someone mentions a date and you be automatically transported to the greatest day of your life. But if someone mentions a date, you could be automatically transported to a horrible moment of your life. and you'd remember all of it accurately. Your hindsight would actually be 2020. And that can be really difficult to be reminded of a broken experience, a broken self. I recently kind of had an experience like this, being reminded. So I was going through the house,

and I was just cleaning up a bunch of stuff, getting rid of a bunch of stuff. And I came across some old like three-ring binders from my seminary days, a little trapper-keeper action, and opened it up, wanted to go through this. I'd printed out some emails, read those, like, that's kind of cool. And some papers I had written, saw the grade I got. That was less cool.

But a couple sheets of paper in there were from my seminary evaluations. So in seminary, they evaluate you every year. Basically, all the faculty, all the staff, they get behind closed doors, and they spend days going through every guy's file, going through every guy's their experience with every person in the seminary. And they are pretty honest. and they type up what they've said and they give it to you and they let you know whether you go forward

or whether you have to leave. I was moved forward. It was good. But my memory of my time in seminary was like, oh, I was a good guy, you know. I think I got along with everybody. Pretty amiable, pretty friendly guy. I mean, maybe I have a tendency to argue sometimes, but other than that, I think I'm fine.

I remember coming across, I flipped the page, and I was reading statement after statement about me I remember one of them just stuck out. It was, Michael tends to be caustic and abrasive towards those with whom he disagrees. It got worse after that, but I'm like, no, no, no, I'm really friendly.

Like, no, I am, like, no, that's the truth. And I'd rather forget that. But the truth also is that that's something I must not forget. That's actually something that I can't afford to edit out of my story. I don't know. I don't know if you've ever had this experience where maybe you're in prayer or maybe you're

drifting off to sleep and you just have that memory of that thing you did. Like that person you hurt. That thing you said. I'll have this happen so often where I'm in prayer and I just remember like that sin. I'm drifting off to sleep and I just remember like, oh man, I can't believe I did that to that prayer. It's like a gut punch. It just, it hurts so bad.

But here's the thing. I think we need those. Like we need to be reminded like that. because if hindsight is going to be helpful, if our hindsight is going to be accurate, if hindsight is going to be 2020, then I can't afford to edit those out. Because that's part of the whole story. And I think you and I can't afford to forget. So this is the last thing. Looking back, 2020, hindsight, looking back in this last year, the question is this, what can you not afford to forget? What did you live through in this last year that you have to remember, that you can't edit out?

It could be something good. It could be that you discovered you had more resilience than you thought. It could be that you discovered you were more courageous in the face of fear than you thought. It could be that you were more faithful in the face of faithfulness than you thought. It could also be a grief that you endured that might have broken you. It could be a loneliness that you lived through that was unlike any other. you've experienced. It could be various times of jumping to conclusions and realizing later on, like I shouldn't have just assumed things. It could have been that over the last year, I can't

forget that when everything was taken away, I consoled myself in ways that were destructive to myself. You know, it's interesting. Launching into that whole quarantine and lockdown stuff, talking with so many couples who are planning on getting married. And they had that. their wedding, they had their date, they had the venue, they had everything, all these people coming, they had their dream wedding on its way, and had to experience the heartbreak of the one wedding of my life, I'm not going to experience the thing that I've always dreamed of. I don't want to forget that. Because I also have to say that of the weddings that I got to be part of, the weddings were

that was like, it was just me, the couple, their wedding party, their parents, and like three other friends, those are some of the most fun weddings I'd ever been part of. And some of the most deep weddings I've been part of, and so many of the couples that I've done their wedding or did the prep, they said, actually, we didn't get our dream wedding, but it turned out to be incredible, an incredible blessing. I can't forget that. A lot of us can say I remember how hard it was to be locked up. But also I remember how beautiful it was to look out the window and just see families walk by. A lot of us can say, I remember how tough it was not to be able to go to Mass. But I also don't want to forget how incredible it was when I finally get to,

got to show up again and receive the Eucharist after fasting from the Eucharist for months. If hindsight is going to be 2020, we can't afford to edit out the strength. We can't afford to edit out the struggle. If it's going to be 2020, we can't afford to edit out the sin or to edit out the sanctity. Because we might not be called to tell the whole story to everyone. But we have to, have to be willing to remember the whole story. We have to be willing to tell the whole story to God and to ourselves.