Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 02/18/24 He Leadeth Me: Great Expectations

Episode Date: February 17, 2024

Homily from the First Sunday of Lent. When expectation meets reality, we have a choice. All of our lives are marked by a certain degree of expectation. But what do we do when we encounter the reality of life? We can choose to either avoid reality or accept reality. Mass Readings from February 18, 2024: Genesis 9:8-15 Psalms 25:4-91 Peter 3:18-22 Mark 1:12-15

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.

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark. Chapter 1 verses 12 through 15. The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert, and he remained in the desert for 40 days, tempted by Satan. He was among the wild beasts, and the angels ministered to him. After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God. This is the time of fulfillment.

The kingdom of God is at hand. repent, repent, and believe in the gospel, the gospel of the Lord. Wait, you'd have a seat. So as it is the first Sunday of Lent, we're starting a new series of the course of Lent. I mentioned it a couple times as these days are coming. We're basically off this book that you can see at the entrances we're giving away this weekend. This book called He Leadeth Me by a man named Father Walter Chiszek. This book is incredible.

How do I start? So to give away a little bit of Father Walter Chisak's life, he, was born to Polish, his parents were Polish immigrants. He grew up in Allen Diocese of Allentown, Pennsylvania. He at one point discerned a cult of the seminary, became a priest, became a Jesuit priest, became a missionary to Russia. While he was in Russia, he was accused of being a Vatican spy, was arrested, was in solitary confinement for five years, was in the Soviet gulag for 15 years.

He was considered, people thought he was dead. At one point, there was a spy exchange, and the U.S. government got him back, and then he lived until 1984. That's the story. So there you go. There's more to the, obviously more to the story. In fact, when he got back, when Father Walter Chizek got back from Russia, he wrote his first book called With God in Russia.

And that book is kind of fascinating, which is actually really remarkable. Because in that book, he talks all about like the what, what happened to me while I was in Russia, what happened to me while I was in solid drinking confinement, what happened when I was in the gulag. But he said that this was the book he really wanted to write. Because this is the book that talked about, here's what God did in me while I was in prison.

Here's what God did in me while I was just kind of like trying to make my way through life. And that's why I would say that after the Bible, this book is the single most influential book I've ever read in my entire life, which I know is like, so you go read it and be changed as well. But like honestly, why? Why is this book the most single most book after the Bible,

most influential book? Well, one is because I grew up reading stories of the saints. And I also grew up reading, in seminary, reading books about the spiritual life that says, like, okay, here's how God makes saints. You go through this process, you go pray like this, and you have a saint. But here's the problem with those books on saints. A lot of times books on saints just talk about all the amazing things they did.

They walked into town, did that miracle and this miracle. Or they did these incredible, or they went through a lot of suffering. And then you see a statue of a saint, you're like, okay, this bacon expression, but they just look like they're the most boring person ever, like, you know, or you see a holy card of a saint, and it's just a statue. just, like, I don't know. This is the first time I ever saw or heard the story, like the inside, what happened? How did God take an ordinary person and make them into a saint? So that's what you're going to read when you follow this book, because the reality, of course, is we're going to

all throughout Lent, we're going to walk with Jesus, but all throughout Lent, we're going to walk with Father Chizek. And so I've been thinking, you know, I've been preparing for this for a number of months because I knew this was coming. I was trying to think of like, what are we going to call this series? Because that's very important to me. I was like, okay, it's got to have some kind of catchy title, I have some kind of really good thing that's like a hook, you know, and I couldn't think of anything. So I'm like, we're calling it, he leadeth me. I know I failed you all. But I say it's a failure because I don't like the title of this book. I don't know if it's like the old Englishness of the he leadeth, you know, like, thou dost leadeth. I just like, but then I was reflecting on it

and like, actually this is a really good title. Why? Because leadeth is kind of an interesting word. it doesn't just mean leads. It also means he led me and he was leading me. It means he leads me and he is leading me, right? The leadeth word, it actually encompasses both past and present. It encompasses both passive and active. And so Father Chizak's story is the story of like, no, when I was in the gulag, when I was out of the gulag,

right now even in America, he was leading, he has led, he is leading, he leads. So what we're going to do for the next number of weeks is we're going to walk with him. And see how God has led Father Chisak at the same time. The crazy thing, I think this is remarkable. Father Walter's life was led by Jesus, but he was led into a place he did not expect. In fact, Father, you can say this. One thing about his life is that he lived a life he did not expect.

That Father Walter Chizek had, what do you say, great expectations for his life. And almost none of those expectations actually happened. And that's one of the reasons why I think a lot of the life. lot of us, we're in that same place. When it comes to Lent, a lot of us have expectations. Like, okay, on Ash Wednesday, here's what I'm going to do for Lent. Here's what Lent's going to be like, we have these expectations, like I'm going to grow in this way, I'm going to get holier in this way, I'm going to live like this and we have these expectations. And what happens whenever we have expectations, at some point, expectations run up against reality. And that's why one of the

reasons I'll always say, I've said it so many times, I'll say it again, is expectations are a killer of joy. Expectations are a thief of peace and expectations rob us of God's presence. Here's what I mean. Because how many times we had the situation where we're like, okay, I have an expectation. I'm going to do this thing and it's going to be like this and then we get there and it's nothing like that. It's nothing like how we expected. And we're disappointed. Why? Because expectation is a thief of joy. Or we say, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to move to Duluth and it's going to be just like this. And we get here and it's not like this. And we're like, I have no peace. Yeah, because expectations are a thief of peace. And we say, this lent, I'm going to pray like this.

I'm going to give like this. I'm going to live like this. And then all of a sudden, reality is like none of those things. That's why expectation robs us of God's presence. The question we have is like, what happens when our expectation runs up against reality? What do we do then? like even in the gospel today I can imagine Jesus had some extra-exam... No, probably not. Here's the thing. When we read the story

in Mark's gospel of Jesus going into the wilderness, we already know who Jesus is. Like we know everything about Jesus, basically. But do you imagine being Jesus? And you get anointed. And you go into the wilderness. Now, you might know this, that we know that Jesus is the son of God, right?

He's the second person of the Trinity. He's existed from all eternity. He is God himself. and he's come to this earth to save the world. He's come to this earth to redeem mankind. He's come to this earth to do something that we need more than anything else. So how is he going to show up? Like what would you expect? How would you expect Jesus to save the world?

How would you expect him to come? He comes as like a great statesman. He comes as a great politician. He comes as a great warrior. Maybe he comes as a great king, and that's actually how he comes. He comes as a king. That's why the anointing in the Jordan today is a sign of his kingship. That's why he's called the anointed one, the Christ, the Messiah.

Question, what would you expect the first thing the king would do after he's anointed king? Like maybe overthrow the government that's there, right? The Roman Empire. Maybe go to battle. What does he actually do? He's driven by the Holy Spirit into the desert to fast and to pray and to be tempted by the devil. Nothing you would expect. And if we were Jesus, thank the Lord.

we're not Jesus. If we were Jesus, we'd be like, oh my gosh, what am I supposed to do? This is nothing like I expected, because that's life. In the midst of our expecting life to be a certain way, we run up against reality, and then we have a choice. What are we going to do with reality? There's two choices. We can either avoid reality or we can accept reality. That's it. In the midst of our expectations, we run up against reality. We have two choices. We can either avoid reality. or we can accept reality. And this is the same choice that Father Chisak had. So, as I mentioned, Father Chisak, son of Polish immigrants,

grew up in Shenandoah in the Diocese of Allentown. At one point, according to Father Chisak, he described himself as a, he called himself a tough, like a, he basically said he was a bully as a kid, that he just liked getting into fights. In fact, he said that he skipped more school than he was actually in school. He was so bad, like he was kind of a rotten kid.

He was so bad that at one point his dad, his dad, who was a coal miner, like a tough guy from Poland, his dad took him down to the police station and basically brought him to the cops and said do something with this kid. Like he basically said, take him to Juvie.

You have a juvenile detention center? Send him there because I have no idea how to help this kid. He was kind of a bad kid. And then at one point, out of nowhere, a couple years later, out of nowhere, Walter announces that he's going into seminary and he thinks God wants him to be a priest and shocks absolutely everybody.

His friends were like, what in the world? His parents. His mom was a pretty faithful. when both his parents were faithful. But at one point, his mom, when she found out, she was like, you, really? And she said, well, if you're going to be a priest,

then make sure that you're a good one. And he went off to seminary. Now, he had these expectations. Why? Because Father Walter, like me, read about stories of saints. And so he goes off to seminary, and he reads all these stories of saints. And he's like, oh, here's how the saints lived.

The saints prayed a lot. They fasted a lot. They had out of these big things, so that's what I'm going to do. In fact, he, the chapel, they lock the chapel every night. but Father Chizek, he learned how to, like, crack the lock to get into the chapel after hours.

Because he didn't want people to see him praying during the day and think he was like a goody-two-shoes. So he, like, prayed in secret after hours. He read stories about how saints would fast. And so one year, he just decided, this whole year, I'm not going to eat meat. And because why? Because saints do that.

And vegans. At one point, at one lent, Walter decided that all he was going to eat, he was going to go through lent with bread and water. That's it. Didn't tell the spiritual director because the spiritual director probably would have said, don't eat some veggies or something like this. But he did it. Why?

Because he's like, no, God's calling me to be a great saint. I have these great expectations. And so I'm going to do that. At one point, Father Chazak heard that the Jesuits, a kind of group of priests, the Jesuits were like the Marines of the priesthood. And so he said, well, I want to join up. So he got on a train and rode to northeastern United States to like the provincial house or the center of the Jesuits.

And basically knocked on the door. and refused to leave until the provincial, the head of the Jesuits, accepted him as a Jesuit. He went to school, second year of his novitiate, which is second year of preparation for a priesthood, Pope Pius XIth had a letter, and the letter was for all seminarians. I'm talking about the need for the church to go to Russia, for missionaries to go to Russia, because the Communist Party had crushed the faith and eradicated the faith in most of Russia. And so Popeius XIreliant said, what we need is we need priests who are bold enough, courageous enough, holy enough to go serve people who are not served in the communist country of Russia.

So Walter said, as he heard those words, like something burned in his heart and he knew, like, that's me. That's exactly what God wants me to do. And so he applied. And he was accepted. He actually had to go to Rome to study at the Russian seminary. It's called the Rusicum. And he learned Russian there and he learned how to say mass in the eastern right. But it didn't come without cost. Because as he was there in Rome, He found out, well, he was incredibly lonely. He was so incredibly homesick. In fact, he not only missed his siblings, his mom and dad.

While he was there, his dad died. And Father Walter didn't have enough money to get a plane ticket back to his father's funeral. His family was so poor that when he got ordained in the 30s, none of his family could actually be with him at his ordination. But he consoled himself by saying, like, you know, but this is what God wants me to do. I have these expectations. He's going to send me to Russia. So he gets ordained, and then things are so bad in Russia that the Holy Father says,

it's impossible for anyone to go to Russia. And this is one of his big disappointments, right? Because he had these expectations. I'm doing all of this. I'm sacrificing all of this just to go to Russia. And now you're saying it's impossible. So instead he was assigned to Poland, which is close to Russia. And he serves there for like a year or so.

And then the Russians invade Poland. And he was like, oh, it's kind of like I'm in Russia. And so he gets on a train. with another priest, and they go deeper into the heart of Russia. And he said, this is where this appointment set in fully. This is where his expectations ran up directly against reality. Because he went to this lumber camp, and he's just going to work there, and he's just going to serve the people who just are probably longing for the gospel.

But he said he got there, and no one wanted to hear the gospel. He said, the communist machine had done such a good job of eradicating the faith and also making people afraid of talking about God that not only could they not identify themselves as priests, they couldn't work as priests, and no one wanted to talk to them about the Lord. No one. And so at one point he writes this, he says, in the book, he says, as this realization that no one wanted to hear from us grew, our disappointment crew. He goes on.

He says, disappointment gradually gave away to a feeling of disillusionment and depression. He said there were even times I took pity on myself. And I thought harshly about my fellow workers. He said, I had given up so much. I had sacrificed so much. I'd risked so much in order to bring Christ to them and they wouldn't even talk to me about him. At other times he said, at other times I felt humiliated. Because I'd come to serve and I could not serve because no one would listen to me. He goes on to say, he says, we had entered upon what we thought was this great missionary endeavor. We were so full of zeal and enthusiasm only to come smack to the way. up against reality. And this is all us, right? When it comes to life, we have these expectations

and they come up against reality. He said, Wuzandi says, things here were not at all as we had envisioned them. Things here were not at all what we expected. And we were not at all equipped to face things as we found them. So much for our hopes, so much for our expectations and our dreams and our convictions. And he had this moment of realizing, here's the choice. My expectations have armed against reality. What do I do with reality? And it's the choice you and I have. We can either avoid reality

or we can accept reality. What do you want? He wanted to avoid reality. Here's the question. How do you and I avoid reality? We run from it. Right? We ignore it.

We self-medicate. We distract ourselves from reality. So oftentimes what we do is we reject reality. Have you ever had this line go through your head? I just, I wish it was different. I wish it was different. I wish things were different. Sometimes that's the line going through our head.

I just, I don't want it to be like this. Father Walter, that's exactly what he said. In fact, there's a section in the book, in this moment, where he actually writes down what he said to God. He said this, he said, it's the temptation to say, and this temptation we all have. In fact, he says, although our situation might have been somewhat unique, the temptation itself wasn't.

It's a unique situation to be in a Soviet lumber camp in the middle of World War II. Yeah, that's unique. But then temptation is the same. He says, it's the temptation faced by everyone who has followed a call and then found that the realities of life were nothing like his expectations. And in the middle of that reality, he said this. He says, it's the temptation to say,

this life is not what I thought it would be. It is not what I bargained for. This isn't at all what I wanted either. He goes on to say, he's talking to God. He says, if I had known it would be like this, I would never have made this choice. I would never have made this promise. In his prayer, he said, you must forgive me, God, but I want to go back. You cannot hold me to a promise made in ignorance.

You can't expect me to keep a covenant based on faith without any previous knowledge or the true facts of life. And he finally said, it is not fair. I never thought it would be like this. I simply cannot stand it, and I will not stay. I will not serve. That prayer, that honest prayer, is the prayer that he goes on. and say so many of us have prayed. He says, it's the prayer of every priest, where they go through all the training and they get seminary, they get ordained, and they're in the parish and they're like,

whoa, this is not what I expected. He says the prayer of every religious sister. They discern this call to be a bride of Christ and they get to reality and they're like, this is not what I expected. This is the prayer. I mean, gosh, you guys, this is the prayer of every student who shows up at UMD or CSS. It's a prayer of every person who ever makes a decision. You're like, here's what I expect. And you show up and you're like, this is nothing like I thought it would. be, this is the prayer of every married couple. A couple weeks ago, I was part of a marriage conference. There were like 800, 900 people at this marriage conference.

In one point, the couples are sitting next to each other, and I did this kind of exercise where I invited them to look at each other and like just gaze into the, if you're married to them, look at each other, you know, not like look around. Look at your spouse. And a lot of these couples have been married for 20, 30, 50 years. I said, okay, as you're looking each other in the eye, we had this little exercise. at one point I said, just remember as you're looking at the eye of this person that you married so long ago, remember your wedding day.

Just put yourself back in that place on your wedding day. And realize all of the things at that day that you didn't know. Like all the things on that day that you couldn't know. And that day you, all the things you couldn't know what you were saying yes to. Like from that day until this moment, you had no idea the highs you were saying yes to. that when you said yes you had no idea the lows you were saying yes to that on that day you had no idea what in sickness really meant on that day you had no idea what for worse really entailed

because you had expectations and then you had to live reality and what do we do when our expectations meet up against reality we have a choice we can either avoid reality or we can accept reality here's question what is it to accept reality I think it's kind of simple. Accepting reality is nothing more than simply acknowledging the truth. Even if the truth is, this is really difficult. Like that, that's what acceptance is. Acceptance is a willingness to face reality.

And clarification, acceptance is not the same thing as approval. It's not the same thing as saying, this is fine, this is good. But it's a willingness to walk in the truth. Acceptance is, okay, I know what I expected it would be. Here's what it actually is. I need to say yes to reality, even if it's a harsh reality. So going back to those married couples and who realized I had no idea what I was saying yes to. And even married couples here today, you can look back and say, I had no idea what I was saying yes to.

But this is important. I had no idea what I was saying yes to, but I did know who I was saying yes to. For you as an married person, you had no idea what you were saying S to, but you did know one thing. You did know who you were saying S to, and that's the crucial difference. Father Chisack, he says essentially this. He realized in that moment, I have to put aside expectations and I have to embrace reality. And he said, the moment he did this, everything changed. when I had to let go of realizing,

I thought I was saying yes to a what. I didn't say yes to a what. I was saying yes to a who. So Father Chizak says it like this. He says, you know, this is fascinating. In the midst of wanting to leave, he didn't stop. What I mean by that is he kept praying, he kept saying mass, he kept doing exactly what he needed to do.

And that's what we need to be. In the midst of that temptation to run, in the midst of that temptation, it's like, I don't want to be here, I didn't bargain for this, I didn't say yes to this. What he did is what we have to do. he kept showing up. And then he says, this happened.

And then one day, after showing up in the midst of this reality, and one day he said, it dawned on us. God granted us the grace to see the solution to our dilemma, the answer to our temptation. He said it was the grace quite simply to look at our situation from his viewpoint rather than from ours. It was the grace not to judge our efforts by human standards or what we wanted or what we expected to happen,

but rather according to his plan. He was on to say, it was the grace to understand that our dilemma, our temptation, was of our own making and existed only in our minds. It did not and could not coincide with the real world ordained by God

and governed ultimately by his will. We had to realize that life would not be the life we expected, but would have to be the life we were given. And this is the key for all of us to realize that

we're not called to live the life we expected. We're called to live the life that we've been given. So Father Chisak says this. He says, looking at his life, these things, these 24 hours of this day were his will. So we had to recognize his will in the reality of the situation. And that's for every one of us.

This lent, this life, our call is in the midst of great expectations to lay aside expectations and to embrace reality. Because if we don't, if we can't, what do we do? We miss out. His expectations are a killer of joy. And expectations are a thief of peace. And expectations rob us of God's presence.

And this is the last thing. Father Chizek discovered this. And it changed everything for him. But at the same time, it didn't change anything. He was still in Russia. He was still in a lumber camp. In fact, the worst things were still yet to come. He hadn't even been arrested at this point.

He had not been in five years of solitary confinement at this point. He still has to face. the slave labor camps for 15 years at this point. Things haven't even gotten hard, but everything changed because he laid aside expectations and embraced reality. One more time, think about the gospel.

Jesus shows up, he comes out of the wilderness, shows up and he says what, basically the king is here and the kingdom is here. And there are some people, think about the Jewish people in the first century, they all expected the king, they all expected the kingdom, that they all wanted the king, they all wanted the kingdom, but they expected a certain kind of king.

They expected a certain kind of kingdom so what happened. Some people were able to lay aside expectations and embrace reality. God was in their midst. But others did not expect a king like Jesus, and they did not expect a kingdom like the one he came to found and to give. So what happened?

They missed him. God was in their midst, and they missed him. And our lent will be exactly like that. Our lives will be exactly like that until we're willing to lay down our great expectations and embrace reality. To be able to say, yes, I didn't know what I was saying yes to. And I don't know what I'll be asked to say yes to.

But that doesn't matter because when I'm willing to lay down these great expectations and embrace reality, I will never know what I'm asked to say yes to. But in Jesus, I will know who I'm saying yes to.