Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 02/14/21 Hindsight 20/20: The Cost

Episode Date: February 15, 2021

Homily from the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Every choice comes at a cost. Looking back, there are some things we could have known. And looking back, there are some things we could never have known. But one thing is unfailingly true when seen through hindsight: every decision comes at a price and every choice has a cost. Making the decision is risky, but there are things that are more important than staying safe. Mass Readings from February 14, 2021: Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46 Psalms 32:1-2, 5, 111 Corinthians 10:31—11:1 Mark 1:40-45 Download the Homily Study

So not too long ago, in the country of Belgium, there was a young man, his name is Joseph. And Joseph grew up on a farm, and his dad really wanted him to take over the farm when he got older, but Joseph wanted to be a priest, and his dad was having none of it. He said, absolutely not. His older brother had already gone off to the seminary, and Joseph's dad was like, no, I need you here, and you need to be here. So it was very strange when Joseph turned 20 years old, and his dad took him to the city of Louvain, and basically brought him to the seminary, and to Joseph's surprise,

everyone seemed to be expecting him, and his dad said, okay, I'm leaving. If you want to stay here, you can, and if you want to come home, you can. Choose right now. Which I think, I'm not like a parent, so I don't know, like proper parenting things. That seems kind of like a jerky move for a dad. Nonetheless, Joseph was like, yeah, I'm staying. So he stayed there, stayed in the seminary, and he was there, loved it, kept growing. When he was 24, after being there for four years, his older brother was going to be assigned

to be a missionary to the Pacific Islands. He was super excited, but as the days got closer, he got incredibly sick and came down with an illness that prohibited him from traveling. And so they said, Joseph, well, you're kind of like your brother. Would you go in his place? If you go to the Pacific Islands, you will not be able to come home for a really long time. And Joseph again made the decision. Like, yes, absolutely, I'm going to go to Pacific Island. So we went to Hawaii and became a missionary to the islanders there in Hawaii.

In Honolulu, he was ordained. And he became a priest named Father Damien. And when Father Damien was on the island of Hawaii, he also would take these trips to the island of Molokai. If you know anything about Molokai, that the government of Hawaii would take all their lepers, those with skin diseases, and send them to this colony on Molokai, that you had to be a leper in order to go to that island,

and that's where Father Damien would do a lot of his work until his bishop and his superiors gave him another choice. You know, when it comes to choices, it's so interesting because I think looking back, you know, we've been doing the series for the last five Sundays, looking back, we have this thing called hindsight, right? Hindsight 2020. And one of the things we kept asking was, you know, over the last year, what if you knew then what you know now? Like looking back on our decisions, looking back on our lives, there are things like we look

back and you can say, I could have known that. Right? That's what it is to make an intelligent informed decision is to be able to gather data and to ask people good questions and to bring, you know, pray before the Lord. Or even to like to know your own history, you know your own self, well, enough to know that a year ago, here are the things I could have known. But looking back, hindsight being 2020, we also can look back and assert pretty confidently that there are some things we could never have known. Looking back on our lives, there are some things when we have a moment of a decision, we have a crossroads, and there are some things we could never have known. I talk to married couples all the time who will say, looking back on our wedding day, like we had no idea. Like, we had no

idea. I knew I loved this person. I had no idea what I was saying yes to. I thought I knew them. I got to know them more. In fact, even ordination, back at this cathedral a bunch of years ago, we had one of these ordinations where we had a number of, it was the biggest class ever, maybe six or seven guys.

I remember going back into this space back here and they're all getting ready, they're all excited, and they went back, just be like, hey, guys, you're ready to go? And at one point, went up to one of the men, and I asked the question, and said, hey, you ready, you're prepared?

And he looked at me, and he said, well, I'm sufficiently prepared, which is such a seminarian answer to give, like, nerd. But it's completely accurate. It's completely accurate. He could have said, no, listen, I've spent the last nine years training, being formed, studying, I'm ready.

But he knew the truth. Like, yeah, I've spent the last nine years training and being formed and getting prepared, but I know I am merely sufficiently prepared. There is so much coming that I could never have known. Because, again, in hindsight, there are so many things that we could never have known, even looking over this past year. I think about this time last year, one year ago,

I and a bunch of y'all were preparing to go on a pilgrimage to Israel, going to the Holy Land. And as the date came closer and closer, I remember having friends who called me up and were so mad at me, like, how dare you take a bunch of students to the Holy Land when there's this virus out there? And they were so mad. They have so many calls with parents,

like, are you going to bring my child into the danger zone? Meanwhile, I remember watching a doctor, a number of doctors on CNN or MSNBC saying, no big deal, it's just the flu, everyone's being overreactive about this, and so all these decisions had to be made, things that we could never have known. Do we lock down, maybe save some lives? Or do we lock down and maybe destroy the economy? Do we lock down and curtail the spread of this? Or do we lock down and lead so many people into isolation and into depression and into incredible alcohol consumption. Do we lock down and save lives? Do we lock down and cost people their livelihood?

Now again, I'm not saying that people made the wrong decision. I'm so grateful, like even when they closed the churches, people are like, Father Mike, what do you think about that? And I'm like, listen, I'm not a bishop. I don't have to think about that. I'm glad that someone, I mean, that's the thing, that's the cost of responsibility, right? You have to make those really hard decisions. And there's some things, those decisions, some things we could have known, and there's some things we could never have known. But there's one thing that I think that hindsight unfailingly teaches us, and that is every decision comes at a price. There's one thing that hindsight teaches us is that every choice has a cost. To act or not to act. Like in a situation,

to say something or to not say something. Comes at a price. To love or not to love. Comes at a cost. Even on a low scale, on a small scale, to say yes to someone comes up a price, and to say no to someone comes at a price. Every choice has a cost. Even here's verse reading today, Leviticus chapter 13. If you've been doing the Bible in a year, you're like, oh, I totally know all about postules and eruptions and boils and skin diseases. But one of the things that you know that was happening is that there are these skin diseases that, like Hanson's disease or like leprosy, that is highly contagious. That if you get it, it is always dead. it is always fatal.

And so what's the decision? The decision is, okay, if you've got this disease, if you have this skin disease, you have to go around like this. And scripture says you have to have your garments rent, which doesn't mean you couldn't own them. It means that... Okay, thank you.

It means you have to have your garments torn, right? You have your head uncovered, and your beard is muffled, and you have to cry out unclean, unclean. And then it says this line, it says, and if you have this, you're to dwell apart making your abode outside the camp that for the safety of others,

the lepers are quarantined, and it comes at a price. Because there are some things you can't know. We don't know if you're going to get this disease. We don't know who's going to get it. We don't know who won't get it. But what is clear is that every decision comes at a price and every choice has a cost.

And that is so painful. We all know this, right? We all know that that reality is so painful, not just over this last year, but this reality that every choice, comes with a cost. And every decision has a price, that is painful. I think maybe that's one of the reasons

why so many of us spend so much of our time and energy trying so hard to avoid the cost. We try to avoid the risk. And we try to avoid the danger. And so what do we do? We're tempted to bubble wrap our lives. We're tempted to bubble wrap the world. We say things like safety first.

No, obviously we want to minimize risk. risk. No one, I'm not encouraging people to take unnecessary risks. We can minimize risk, but you know what we can never do? We can never eliminate risk. So when I was fourth grade, my parents took us on this trip to Disney World and it was one of those things that never happened before. It hasn't happened since, but it was, we were looking forward to it so much. We got down to Florida, Disney World, and it was awesome. And there were lines that went on forever. It was not what I expected. But on the last day, we were driving from the hotel to the airport and we passed this amusement park, this kind of rinky dink amusement park off the side of the road,

and I don't know who it was, but one of my siblings said, hey, let's stop there. And this has never happened before and never happened since. My dad was, my dad said, great, let's stop. What? Well, we pulled into the parking lot of this place and it turns out it had just reopened after having been closed for safety issues. Now, we weren't, as kids, we were not concerned about that at all. We just knew there were no lines. And so we ran quickly to the roller coaster that had just been reopened because of safety issues. We got into the car. Now, this was not a car where you sit down and have like a seat belt or like the bar across your lap or over your shoulders. There were no chairs.

There were no seats in this car. It was like getting into a bucket. Have you ever seen Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom? Right. That's no lie. That is exactly what it was. We just hunkered down, grabbed onto the sides of the bucket. Four of us, my brother and my two sisters at the time.

And then they went off. Cross my heart. Every corner, this bucket went up on one rail. So much so that every corner, my sister, Amy, was saying, lean, lean, we feared for our lives and the workers there could not have cared less for our safety. And I know this is the case, I'm not exaggerating, it's not my fourth grade fevered mind, this is true memory because they also had a go-cart track there, which had the fastest go-carts

I've ever been on in my life. And here's what they did. On the track, they actually greased the corners. So you would intentionally spin out. And the workers, they didn't care, people would spin out all over the place and they'd run out, put you straight, go. this place. It was such a contrast from Disney World.

At Disney World, there's a sense of safety at Disney. I mean, at Disney, they think safety first. You don't have to think about it at all. They think safety first, so you don't even have to think. Which is interesting. You know, Mike Roe, you know Mike Roe. He was on dirty jobs, and he's been hosted a bunch of other things. At one point, he talked about this idea of a safety first mentality,

and he said one of the things that happens to us is we develop this thing called risk equilibrium. What risk equilibrium is, is that when you introduce safety protocols, when you introduce safety measures, people's behavior changes. So there are studies that have demonstrated that people wear seatbelts, they drive faster. They have a sense of safety, and so they take more risks. That in motorcycles, people who have a motorcycle helmet, they'll corner faster because they have the safety measure, so they'll take more risks.

In fact, some of the most dangerous intersections in the world are the ones with the most safety measures. Think about what do we do when we come up to a intersection that has crosswalk or it has lights? You don't look for cars, you look to see if that little man on the sign tells you when it's safe to walk, instead of looking to see if there's cars, to know if it's safe to walk. And so often we relinquish our personal responsibility and just trust in the safety that other people have built into the world. In fact, he tells this story about being on dirty jobs. and being on a fishing vessel 100 miles off the coast of Russia in the Bering Sea. He said the swells were over 50 feet tall and he was above the deck, like hanging above the deck,

40 feet above the deck, so 40 feet plus 50 feet above the water. And at one point he recognized that things were kind of dangerous and so he climbed down and went up to the captain's, you know, captain's area. What do they call it? Yeah, up there. Anyways, he says to the captain and he says, captain, OSHA? And the captain looks out and says, ocean. He's like, no, OSHA. He says, is this even safe? And the captain looked at him and said, my job here on this vessel is not to make these men safe.

It's to make them rich. They didn't get down to this fishing boat in the Bering Sea, 100 miles off of the coast of Russia, to be safe. They went out there to be rich. He says, it's my job to take them out here and make them rich. It's their job to keep themselves safe. Mike Rose said for the rest of the day, he grabbed onto every railing he had, knowing that like, oh, this is now my responsibility. Because why? Because we can minimize risk, but we cannot eliminate risk.

And we sometimes forget, we sometimes forget that the point of life is not merely to stay alive. Even in the midst of a pandemic, the point of life is not merely to stay alive. And too often we can bring this sense of self-protection and this safety-first mentality and this aversion to risk into areas where it doesn't belong. Because, yes, maybe it belongs in the COVID world, sure.

But there are some areas of life where it's self-protection and safety first and aversion to risk doesn't belong. In the places like love, now caveat, I'm all about couples being wise when it comes to relationships. Like there are things you can know. Like, pay attention, right? There are red flags. There are such things as deal breakers, and please pay attention to those things.

But to love at all is to risk. To love anything is to risk. In fact, my pal, C.S. Lewis, he wrote about this. In fact, here's this quote that I just absolutely touch my heart. He says this. He says, to love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will be wrong and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to be.

to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries. Avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable,

irredeemable. to love is to be vulnerable. Because there's one thing hindsight teaches us. And the one thing hindsight teaches us is that every decision has a price and every choice has a cost and the decision to love has a price. Look at the gospel today.

I think some of us we read the gospel, we just think, that's incredible. Here's Jesus healing a leper. And it is incredible. I've never done that. But there's more that's happening here. The leper comes up to Jesus and he says what? He says, if you want to, you can heal me. And we, again, we just think that means Jesus is going to wave his hand over it and be like, poof.

But that's not how the story goes. Jesus says, I do will it. Basically, he makes this decision out of love, and he heals him. But have you ever noticed what happens after this healing? At the beginning of the story, Jesus is in the city. In the beginning of the story, Jesus is in the community. At the beginning of the story, Jesus is part of the family. and the beginning of the story, the leper is what?

He dwells apart. He has to live outside the city, outside the camp. At the end of the story, the leper is brought back to the family. At the end of the story, the leper is reconciled with the community. At the end of the story, the leper once again has people, and where is Jesus? It is because of this, Jesus had to stay out in the wilderness.

He had to stay outside. He had to dwell apart. He had to make his abode outside the camp. he switched places with the one he loved. And in so many ways, this is the risky logic of love. In fact, it's not the first time Jesus says to the man, he says, do what Moses prescribed. He says, show yourself to the priest and do what Moses prescribed.

Well, if you've read Liberty's chapter 14, you know what Moses prescribed. You take two birds, two turtle doves, two young pigeons, and you bring them to the priest, and what's the priest do? He sacrifices one, and he sets the other one free. I don't know if you see what happened there. One is sacrificed so the other can go free. What happened in the gospel?

The leper can go free because Jesus has said, I'll be the sacrifice. You know, this is in so many ways. This is the mission of Jesus' life. One is sacrificed, and one goes free. not only in this gospel, but even on the cross. And we know this as Christians, it's his death and your life. He takes that on him, and he takes it off of us.

That he lets himself be condemned and we get to be declared not guilty. It's the cost of love. And so we have this question, this crossroads, this place we have to choose, and that choice is, can that Jesus, can that God, can he be the Lord of your life? And saying no means you get to live however you want. Can Jesus be the Lord of your life? You say no, you get to do whatever you want, you get to live however you want. An entire life of license, that means nothing because it has no permanent value.

And if you say yes, that means doing his will. It means living in his love, and it's an entire life of loving obedience that echoes throughout eternity. So every price, every choice has a price. Every decision has a cost. Father Damien, he knew that so clearly. As I said, he would travel from Hawaii to Molokai until his bishop, his superiors, gave him a choice. And the choice was, you can either stay there forever. or you can leave there forever. You can either go to Molokai and stay there forever,

or you can leave Malachi and never return. And Father Damien, he chose to stay. And it cost him. He chose to be like Jesus. And he chose to give away his freedom to be a servant for the lepers who had no one. He chose to never return to his family in order to become a part of theirs. He chose to away his health to take on their illness. And he chose to give away his life so that no one on that island would have to die alone. And this is the choice every one of us faces. That every choice comes at a cost. Every decision has a price. Why? Because living is a risk. Because living is dangerous. Because living is going to cost something for every one of us. And because hindsight insight teaches us that every decision comes with a price and every choice comes at a cost.

And there are some choices, there are some decisions that are absolutely and definitely worth the price.