Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 02/16/25 How Do I Know if I Have Faith?

Episode Date: February 15, 2025

Homily from the Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. We live in this life, but we live for the next life. Jesus turns our fears and our hopes upside down...because through the Resurrection, Jesus has turned the world upside down. Mass Readings from February 16, 2025: Jeremiah 17:5-8 Psalms 1:1-4 & 61 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20 Luke 6:17, 20-26

Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this in other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you.

Are you reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke? Chapter 6, verses 17, and verses 20 through 26. Jesus came down with the 12 and stood on a stretch of level ground with the great crowd of his disciples and a large number of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyrant Sidon. In raising his eyes towards his disciples, he said, Blessed are you who are poor? For the kingdom of God is yours.

Blessed are you who are now hungry for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and insult you and denounce your name as evil on the count of the son of man.

Rejoice and leap for joy on that day. For their ancestors treated the prophets in the same way. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. woe to you who are filled now for you will be hungry woe to you who laugh now for you will grieve and weep woe to you and all speak well of you for their ancestors treated the false prophets in the same way

the gospel of the Lord invite you to have a seat so again since it is Valentine's Day weekend I don't know if you've ever had this case where if you've ever told anyone that you love them and they said, why? If you've ever had anyone, if anyone's ever asked you, you've ever told me we love them,

and they've said, why do you love me? There's no good answer to that question. There's no right answer. Every answer is just, we know, it's going to be shallow. It's not enough. You could say, like, oh, because, like, you're really funny.

Like, okay, really? That's the reason why you love me? Like, no, because you're so charming. Okay, that's the reason. Or even just like, I mean, because you're handsome, because you're pretty. And you could say,

you can respond. well, you know, there's other people more attractive. Yeah, but you're the best I could get. I mean, because that's really, in some ways, like there's no good answer. Or people answer like this. Or people say, well, you make me feel a certain way. Like, because you make me better,

or because you make me more generous, or because I love how I am without you. You make me laugh, like all those things. It's like, why do you love me? Because I get stuff from you. So it's either like shallow answer, or it's because you, I get stuff from you. And we know that those,

none of those answers are good enough. That's why we always kind of default to because you're you, which is the real answer, of course. But how do you try to capture that? You can't capture that. And let's go when it comes to God. Like when it comes to a relationship with the Lord, you can ask the questions.

Like, okay, the responsorial Psalm was, blessed are those who hope in the Lord? How do I know if I hope in God? The first reading said, curse are those who put their trust in human beings, but blessed are the ones who trust in God. How do I know I'm trusting God? it's important to have faith in Jesus, right?

Question, how do I know I have faith in Jesus? And not only how do I know if I trust God or hope in Him or have faith in Him, why? Why would I hope in God? Why would I trust in God? Why would I have faith in God? Is it because I get something? I think on a certain sense, the answer could be yes. Like I think legitimately, the answer could be, yeah.

So here's a question. What do you and I get? by hoping in Jesus? What do we get by having faith in Jesus? What do we get by trusting of God? I think in this life we get at least four. We get a ton of stuff, but here's four things. One is we get perspective.

Here's what I mean. In the gospel today, right, here's Jesus who gives the beatitudes. Jesus in the beatitudes, in particular in Luke's gospel, he lists a bunch of things that we fear, and he lists a bunch of things that we trust. He lists all these things we fear. He says, okay, poverty, bless you who are hungry or weeping, those who have scarcity,

blessed are you who are hated and excluded and insulted. These are things, you guys, we fear those things. We hate those things. Then you list a bunch of things that we typically trust in. Wealth, abundance, pleasure, reputation. And I just love this because Jesus is listing out these. One group of these, they're the source of my anxiety. And the others are the source of my security.

So my anxiety are things like poverty and hunger and in lack and weeping and being hated or being excluded or being insulted. And the thing I put my trust in, right, is wealth and abundance and pleasure and reputation. You know, when it comes to wealth, especially, I remember hearing someone talk about this. They said, why do we put our trust in, or not why, how do we put our trust in wealth? And this man, he deals with money a lot. And he said that he finds, in his experience, people get one of two things from wealth or from their stuff. He says a lot of times some people look at their stuff as a source of their status. So I look at my bank account, like, okay, that's what I'm winning or losing?

He pulled into the parking lot, whatever car I'm pulling into, like here's what I drive. Okay, look around, I'm winning. Or again, some of us look around, I'm losing. So for many of us, our stuff is the source of our status. It tells me my worth. For others, I don't care about that. I don't care about my status. doesn't money doesn't give me my worth money gives me security as long as i pull up that wills fargo app

and like okay it's in the plus column i can be at peace and yet here's jesus and he gives us this perspective and he says this he says you know we'll do this we'll put our trust in wealth and abundance and pleasure and reputation and here's what i need you to know it's going to go away i mean how often have this ever i don't know this ever happened to you how often have have you or i ever remain silent or not said something we absolutely know is true because we were afraid that it would mean that we would be excluded. How often has it ever happened, we're like, no, this is something I actually believe in. I'm not going to say it, though.

And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to trade in my current integrity for fear of losing future reputation. Jesus lists all these things that we fear. He lists all these things that we trust. And one of the things he offers is perspective. Basically, Jesus saying, hey, those things you fear, poverty and hunger and weeping and being hated, they're going to come, but they're not the end. These things that you want to avoid more than anything else, they're going to come, but it won't be

the end. And all those things you trust, like wealth and abundance and pleasure and reputation, they might come into your life, but also they're not the end. This is a crazy thing. If you ever meet someone with this kind of perspective, who has the Jesus perspective, their lives make no sense. I heard about this family in the L.A. fires. They lost everything. I don't know. Maybe you saw this. There's this Catholic family. The L.A. fires completely destroyed their home. They were standing on the property. The only thing that was standing, it was just this lot of land.

The only thing was standing was this image of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It was the only thing that they kept. Everything else just burned completely to the ground. And there's this kind of viral video of the family, grown children and the parents. And they're gathered in this empty lot with this small statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. And they're singing the Regina Chaley, basically this song for praising Jesus for his mom, the queen of heaven.

You look at that and think like, how? That's the last thing that I would do. If I lost all of my earthly possessions, would I praise God or would I say, why God? It reminds me of something, Lou Holtz, you know, Lou Holtz used to coach for Notre Dame. At one point later on in his life, he and his wife, they lost everything, their house burned down as well. It was one of the situations where he described the things he lost. The things he lost were irreplaceable in the sense that some photos of him and like presidents, him and a couple of popes, this whole thing, like some memorabilia that he got in his years of the years of.

of coaching college and also professionally, I think. And as his wife was weeping at losing all their things and he was weeping, and he loves his wife, he said this, he said, we said, we didn't lose anything in the fire that we were going to take with us to heaven anyways. We didn't lose anything in the fire that we were going to take with us to heaven. We had to let go of it. We just had to let go of it earlier than we thought. Because one of the things that Jesus gives us, one of the things we get, if we place our

trust in Jesus, is we get perspective. which means we get freedom from fear. And we're able to put our trust in the right place. So that's first thing. What else could faith give us? What else faith can give us in this life? What else we get by placing our hope in Jesus? We get joy.

Now, years ago, I came across this quote by G.K. Chesterton was an atheist. He became a Catholic like 100 years ago. And at one point, Chesterton said this quote, and just stuck with me. He said, joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian. So joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And I was like, yeah, we're keeping it secret pretty well. We're doing a really good job of keeping that joy secret. Because, I mean, think about this.

Does anyone ever say, oh, Catholic joy? They see you having a great time. Like, are you Catholic with all that joy? No, it's not Catholic joy. It's Catholic guilt. Exactly. And yet, G.K. Chesterton says, no, no, no. Joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian.

Why? Because Chesterton studied history. And he knew that until Christianity came on the scene, there was pleasure, there were smiles, there were moments of relief. But there was no joy. Why? Because before Jesus, before Judeo-Christianity came on the scene, if you believed in the gods or goddesses, you know this about the gods.

You guys read Percy Jackson. The gods and goddesses, they're not good. They're not just. They're not fair. They don't care about you at all. They definitely don't know your name, and they do not ever love you. your life is just at the whim of fate at the mercy of the gods who don't care about you

and they may ask you to bleed for them but they're not going to give you anything imagine living in that world where your life is just it's less than nothing and if there are beings in charge they're not good and they don't care and then all of a sudden you hear this truth and the truth is there is a God

he is good he is just he not only knows your name but he loves you. And he's not going to ask you to bleed to get his attention. He's willing to, and he has bled to get your attention. And you realize the truth about God,

the truth about God is that he's with you. So no matter what your circumstances, no matter what your seasons, even if everything else was falling apart around you, you can have joy. Why? Because joy is the pervading and abiding sense of well-being. That's what joy is.

Joy is the pervasive and abiding sense of well-being. That even if I'm losing everything, even if my house has burned down, even if everything is lost, I still have this truth that God knows my name and that He loves me. So what do you get by placing your hope in Jesus? You get perspective and you get joy. The third thing you get if you place your trust in the Lord is you get moral guidance. Now, I know this.

For some of us we're like, I know. All that moral guidance coming from the Lord and from the church. Yet, let's be honest for a second. Christianity has reshaped this world, our world before Christ, the world right now is still dark. We know this. The world right now is still broken. We all know this. But can you imagine what the world was like before Christianity came on the scene? We know this. We know that Christianity introduced the reality, the truth, that all human beings are created equal. No civilization, no philosophy, no religion in the history of humanity ever taught,

even remotely taught that all human beings are equal in dignity. Because no religion ever taught that all human beings are made in God's image and likeness until Judaism, which was fulfilled in Christianity, came on the scene and said, this is what you need to know about human beings. Every single one, whether you are incredibly rich or incredibly poor, whether you're young or whether you're old, whether you're male or female, no matter what the difference, every human being is made in God's image and likeness, whether you're sick or you're healthy, whether you're strong or weak,

whether you're the one taking care of people or you're the one who has to be taken care of from the moment you take breath to the moment your last breath. You, every one of you, are made in God's image and likeness, and now live like that. That moral guidance that the church has given to the world, that's the guidance we get so that you get to actually not only look in the mirror every morning and say, hey, God's image and likeness, yes, sir. But you also get every person you meet get to say, you are made of God's image and likeness. To live like that is one of the great things we get from belonging to Jesus.

So we get perspective, we get joy, we get moral guidance. We also get, we talked about it the last four weeks. We get meaning. I mean, what did we talk about? The last four weeks we talked about the fact that God is real. He made you on purpose. He made you for a purpose. And that means that every day you get up matters.

It means that every choice you make matters. That means that even when you try and fail, it still matters. even if you try and fail, it still matters. To be able to walk through life realizing you are not an accident and you're not disposable. And you don't have to always win, but even when you try and fail, your life matters because you're not an accident.

These are four things that you get by placing your hope in Jesus. Perspective and joy and moral guidance and purpose. And yet we realize this, even though all those things are good, every one of those things comes to an end. Because this life ends. And we know this. Everything we fear comes back. And everything we trust in goes away. So what then?

Because that's how life goes. Everything we fear comes back to us and everything we trust in goes away. So what do we do? That's why I love this second reading. It's from 1 Corinthians, St. Paul's Letter, the Corinthians, chapter 15, where he says it all hinges on what? He says it all hinges everything we believe in, everything hinges on the resurrection.

St. Paul essentially says this, okay, we live in this life, but we live for the next life. That yes, in this life you get perspective and joy and moral guidance and purpose. That's awesome, that's great. We live in this life, but we live for the next life. That's why he says,

if Christ has not yet been raised, your faith is in vain. I like the next sentence even more. He says, if for this life only we've hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all. Yes, we get stuff. We get things out of placing our hope in Jesus. But if that's all we're getting, we're pretty pathetic.

You can get the same thing from drugs, alcohol. You get the same thing from just doom scrolling. I'd say you get moral guidance from that. But I'm saying like you get, we get to numb ourselves. But St. Paul says the resurrection is the thing that changes everything. if for this life only we've hoped in Christ even though we get stuff in this life we live in this life but we live for the next life

and so we have to realize this the resurrection is crucial but here's a question do you trust in the resurrection like how can we know that Jesus Christ actually was raised from the dead this isn't a myth this is a true story in fact there's a man his name is Sir Lionel Lucku Sir Lionel Lucku in the last century

he is the most celebrated and decorated criminal defense attorney in the history of modern law. Sir Lionel Luck who actually is in the Guinness Brook of World Records for the most consecutive wins in murder trials. He has, I think, 255 consecutive wins as a defense attorney in murder trials. He's a guy who's able to go through evidence and process evidence and come to a verdict that is absolutely unmistakably clear. At one point, Sir Lionel was asked by a friend, like Sir Lionel, are you a Christian?

He said, no. He said, why not? He says, I don't believe in the resurrection. And the friend asked, he challenged him, he said, have you ever investigated the resurrection? And Sir Lionel, being an honest man, said, well, actually, I haven't. I didn't even think there was any evidence, any proof. And so the man challenged him and said, you are the best criminal defense attorney in the history of modern law. Why don't you investigate this massive claim that Jesus died and rose from the dead? So he did.

It took him a couple years. As he investigated went through all of the evidence of Jesus, not only dying, but also rising from the dead. And at the end of his investigation, here's what he said. He said, I can say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt.

This man investigated the evidence. Came to the conclusion. There's so much evidence. It leaves absolutely no room for doubt. Jesus Christ died, Jesus raised from the dead. So what's some of the proof that he looked at? I'm going to be really brief about this. there's so much proof, there's so much evidence for the resurrection, here's three little points.

And I go, these are small points, but there are small points in a massive mountain of points. The first proof that you could say is, it's a thing called the criterion of embarrassment. What it means is, when you're looking at a document, say you're looking at the Bible story, look at the Gospels. The criterion for embarrassment is if the people who wrote the story are telling embarrassing things about themselves, it's likely that they're telling the truth. So if you think about this, I mean, in the Gospels, are the disciples the heroes pretty much not? Unless you're John. I mean, other than John, the rest of them are kind of a bunch of failures.

And look at this. Who is the chief apostle? Peter. Who's like the worst of them after Judas? Keep in mind, Judas. Who's the worst of them after Jesus? Peter. I mean, he's the one who's always put in his foot in his mouth.

He's the one who's not understanding things. He is the one who when Jesus needed him the most, he denied and betrayed him. the most. They're hearing for embarrassment is like, no, listen, if you're going to write that story, you leave that part out. When it came to the resurrection, who were the first people to see Jesus risen from the dead? They're women. In that culture in the day, a woman's testimony was not worth anything. In fact, to have a woman testify to something like a miracle, people would just happen to be the culture at the time. We'd look at it with suspicion. And yet, every one of the Gospels reports that the first people who saw Jesus rise from the dead

were Murray Magdalene and the other women and they reported to the apostles and then later on the apostles saw Jesus rise from the dead. If that didn't happen, they would have left it out. But they kept it and why? Because it did happen. Your argument for suspicion. Another little piece is where was the resurrection first proclaimed?

Probably know this one. In the city of Jerusalem. I don't know if you know anything about the city of Jerusalem. It's exactly the city where Jesus died as well. Listen, if you're going to make up a story, you go somewhere else. Like if you make up a story, you're not going to make up a long time, I'm going to galaxy far, far away. If you're making up someone,

you're like, you guys, you don't even know her. She goes to a different school. Like, that's what you do. The apostles, when they proclaim Jesus risen from the dead, they proclaim Jesus risen from the dead around the block from where he died and rose from the dead. They don't wait years.

They wait three days. And then 50 days later at Pentecost. There's evidence. They're proclaiming this truth to people who have seen him die, they say, yeah, we also saw him rise. And the third one is, the story that the disciples, in the Gospels, it says that there's a story that the disciples stole the body. That the Roman guards circulated a story,

that the disciples snuck in, or the guards weren't looking, and stole the body of Jesus. Now, why is that proof for the resurrection? That's a good question. Thank you. It's because it admits a couple things. One is it admits that there was an empty tomb. It admits the fact that the tomb was empty.

Why is that important? well because the guards said the tomb was empty and the disciples stole the body the disciples said the tomb was empty because Jesus rose from the dead what did the guards get by saying that the tomb was empty and the disciples sold the body well they got to keep their jobs and stay alive the disciples said the tomb is empty and Jesus rose from the dead what did they get for saying the tomb is empty and Jesus rose from the dead well they got all this power they got to be the first pope the first no

they got persecuted, they got tortured. They literally had all of their property confiscated and taken away. Virtually every one of them were killed. It's been said that someone might die for something they believe is true. No one has ever died for something they knew was a lie. In every one of these apostles, every one of these original disciples, they died because they said, I saw with my own eyes

Jesus die and then I saw him rise from the dead. And it's because of that, that we live in this life, but we live for the next life. So how do I know? Well, we know because there's proof. How do I know that I'm hoping in Jesus? How do I know I'm trusting Jesus? This is big, I think this is the last

question, big question. How do I know whether or not I have faith in Jesus? I heard the story of the resurrection, I come to Mass and stuff. How do I know that I have faith? That's a really great question. There's a man who's named George MacDonald. George McDonald was one of C.S. Lewis's most influential thinkers. George McDonnell was a Presbyterian minister. I think it was from Scotland as George McDonald.

And he wrote a lot of stuff. One of the things George McDonald said, he said this, you ask if you have faith in Jesus. I answer this. Faith in Jesus is nothing more than leaving yourself aside and doing what Christ tells you to do. That's it.

What's faith? He goes on and say, the terrible heresy of the church is that it's always presenting something else other than obedience as faith in Jesus. It says it's better to be an atheist who does the will of God than a so-called Christian who does not. You want to live by faith?

Do you want to know Christ rightly? Do you want to awake and arise and live but don't know how? I'll tell you how. Get up and do something the master tells you. The moment you do, you instantly make yourself a disciple. And we always ask, like, but I don't know if I feel it.

Like, okay, how do I know if I hope in Jesus? I trust Jesus. I don't feel like I have faith. I don't feel like I hope. He says this. Instead of asking yourself whether you believe or not, ask yourself whether you have this day done one single thing because he said, do it.

Or abstain from doing something because he said, do not do it. Goes on to say, of course, you've probably done this or that, good thing that fill into harmony with what Jesus said. But have you done or not done any action? of a conscious decision made because he said to do it or not to do it. It is simply absurd to say that you believe or even want to believe in him if you do not do anything he tells you. If you can think of nothing he ever said as having consciously influenced

your doing or not doing, you have no ground to consider yourself his disciple. So let's look over the last six, seven days. Let's look over the last week. Is there anything that I can look at my past seven days and say, I did this simply because Jesus asked me to or I stopped doing this or tried not to do this simply because Jesus asked me to. If I haven't, George MacDonald would say

I'm not a disciple. I haven't put my hope in Jesus. I haven't put my faith. I haven't trusted God. But he also gets on to say this. He says, but you also can begin at once to be a disciple of him. How?

By obeying him in the first thing you can think of in which you are not obeying him. What's one thing I know God has been asking me to do? I've been avoiding. You and I can become disciples immediately by obeying him and the first thing we can think of where we're not obeying him.

He goes on to give a list of all the things that we sometimes just ignore. But he concludes with this. Tell me something that you have done or are doing or are trying to do because he told you. If you can't, it's no wonder you have difficulty trusting in him. of course no one can do this perfectly

no one can do this perfectly but are you trying obedience is not perfection it's making an effort are you trying obedience is not perfection it's simply making an effort we get so much from following Jesus

in this life we get perspective in this life we get joy in this life we got moral guidance and in this life we get purpose and meaning and mission, but we don't live for this life. We live in this life and for the next life. So hope in God, trust in God, have faith in Jesus, and do what he asks.