Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 02/24/19 Love Yourself

Episode Date: February 25, 2019

Homily from the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. You are loved most when you deserve it the least. Jesus calls us to love our enemies. But how can we do that when we don’t even love the people we like? When we often don’t effectively love ourselves? Mass Readings from February 24, 2019: 1 Samuel 26:2, 7-9, 12-13, 22-23 Psalms 103:1-2, 3-4, 8, 10, 12-131 Corinthians 15:45-49 Luke 6:27-38 Download the Homily Study

So in high school, one of my, like the key moments of my high school career was someone left the microphone on in the dining hall or the cafeteria. And man, that mic was mine. I stayed there for, I mean, I didn't just have like my one home room or my one, you know, lunchtime. I stayed there for all, I think my high school had four lunch periods. I stayed, I got there at the first one. I'm like, I'm just going to skip class and stay here. I stood behind the podium. I just sang songs to everybody as I came in and I'd like make up songs.

we'd sing like carols and stuff and I was like this is the best I'm a super good entertainer I'm a really good singer so when I got to college I got a guitar and I did the whole like coffee house see okay back in the 90s there was this thing where you wore corduroy pants flannel shirts and boots and if you're really cool you played guitar in a coffee shop and sang along with it and I'm like that's what I'm gonna do and that was like my like my plan for life I'm gonna go out to Vail Colorado and I was gonna during the day I was gonna be a cross-country ski instructor at night I was was going to play in the bars.

And like, this is it. This is my dream. And not only that, I remember a number of times, my siblings, my own siblings, invited me to do a solo at their weddings. So my first sister got married, she's like, hey, would you do a solo? Like, absolutely I'll do a solo. Get me up there. I'll play a guitar and sing you a song on your wedding day.

And my brother, hey, would you, I'm getting married. Would you sing me this? Absolutely, I'll sing you a song. And then I took this class where at one point we recorded ourselves in our record. recording studio was like super swanky, it was awesome, and it was super fun. I'm like, great. I recorded my single, this is my, it's gonna break through the charts, and listen to it going, this is pretty good, I like the song. And then they did this thing. Have you heard of the phrase or the ability to isolate the vocals? They isolated the vocals. And I'm like,

oh my gosh, now I know how people get to American Idol and they're shocked when Simon tells them, you have no talent. I was like, what the heck? That's my voice. That's what I sound like when I sing. I was devastated. I was like, and then I'm thinking of my siblings. My brother Mark, you heard me sing at Amy's wedding.

Why would you ask me to sing at your wedding? This is pity they had for me. I realized in that moment, like, okay, I thought I was good at singing. I am not a good singer, Jenny. Like, I am terrible. I thought it was so good. And I am, I am not so good. I'm what they call so, so bad.

And when people say, like, oh, it's okay, everyone has a nice, everyone can sing. No, that is not true. Everyone cannot sing. No, just sing anyways. No one will no mind. Yes, they will. They only tell you if they have a British accent, though, and sitting behind a little booth. You know, it's so interesting.

We can think we're good at something and to find out later. Like, I was not good at that at all. In fact, we have this reality that last week we talked about how the whole point of Christianity is to end up looking like God. The whole point of following Jesus is it end up looking like Jesus. And today, here's Jesus telling us like, okay, here's how I love. So today's the call tonight that Jesus is extending to us is love like I love. Have a heart like my heart.

And here's a crazy thing. We're made to do this. We're actually made in God's image like this. God is love. We're made to love. We're called by Jesus to love. and we all suck at loving. I should not say suck.

I'm sorry. We are all so bad. You guys, I have to tell you this about yourself. You are really bad when it comes to loving. And I'm really bad when it comes to loving. Because here's how bad it goes. Because not only are we bad at loving our enemies. There's Jesus, there's great call, right?

Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. We not only do not love our enemies. We don't even love the people we like very well. I mean, think about probably the person you've had the, bitterest arguments, the bitterest fights, the bitterest disagreements with in the last month is the person that a year ago you were like, hey, would it be great if we live together? We're such good friends.

Let's live together and now they're your enemy. You won't call them your enemy because no, we started out friends. We don't even love the people we're related to. Think about married couples sometimes. Not every married couple, but think about when husbands and wives end up at each other's throats. Like, no, wait, this is the person you covenated your entire life to. They're not your enemy, and you don't even love them well. We are so bad at loving.

Why? Well, a bunch of reasons, one of the reasons is because we're hard to love. Your friends, your family, they're hard to love. Our enemies are very hard to love. And we're hard to love because of this. Because love always costs something. Love always demands something of us. Love always requires something out of us every single time.

might say, no, no, no, no, father, loving should be easy. Like, okay, you're talking about falling in love. Falling in love is super easy. You don't have to work at it at all. Like, having affectionate feelings for someone, that is absolutely easy. That's not what we're talking about. There is a kind of love that's just having good feelings. That's affection.

That's what they call affective love. There's a different kind of love. The kind of love Jesus is talking about tonight is effective love. You hear the difference? Affected with an A, effected with an E. Affected of love is simply having good feelings for someone else. effective love is making good decisions for someone else on their behalf. Because we recognize this, that real love, the kind of love Jesus is talking about tonight,

is not just having an affectionate feeling. But it's the kind of love that actually does something. It's the kind of love that moves. And the kind of love that moves is always going to cost us something. Because there's a difference between desiring the good of another and making the decision for the good of another. It's one of the reasons we're so bad at this. Because the really love is hard, and it costs us something.

And again, here's how bad it gets even worse, you guys. We don't not only love our enemies poorly. We also love the people we like poorly, even more deeply. We don't even love ourselves very well. We don't. How can I love my enemies or my friends? I don't even love myself. And this is where you might, like, some of the, like, exceptionally holy people, like really pious people, like, no, father.

This is about loving like Jesus loves. It's not about, like, it seems selfish to love yourself. Well, doesn't that kind of seem like some of the people would say, like, well, it seems not really Christian to love yourself. It seems selfish to love yourself. And I'd say, yes, it is selfish to love yourself if that's where it stops. But that's where it has to start. That your, here's Christ's call, right? Your effective love has to reach your enemies.

And Jesus then says the great commandment is love your neighbor. But how does he end that with? Love your neighbor as yourself. Which means part of the commandment is you must first love yourself. That's not absolutely selfish. That's where it has to start. And we don't do that. I was reading a book last May.

The psychologist was talking about this fascinating phenomena. A people when they know they're sick and they know this medication will help them in their sickness and they have the medication and they don't take their own medicine. Like, huge percentage of people who they know they're sick, they know this medicine will work, and they have the medicine, and they don't give themselves meds, it's massively high. You think, well, there's maybe a number of reasons for that. Maybe it's because they're forgetful. Maybe because they're not very conscientious.

Maybe because all these things. Those same people, when their pets are sick, they give their pets their medication at, like, almost 100% rate. Like, why would that be the case? If here I am, and I know I'm sick, I know this medicine is good for me, and I have the medicine, and I don't give it to myself, but I'll give it to my dog. It's not because it's easier to give it to the dog. Have you tried to give medicine to a dog? Take a couple of pills for yourself, pill.

A sip of water. Done. On to the next thing. You've got to get that dog to swallow those pills that's like, okay, what are we going to do? Put him in a hot dog. He ate around him. We're going to crush him up and put him in the bowl. He didn't drink the bowl. Like, how hard is it?

Why do we do this? Because we don't love ourselves as much as we love our dogs. that we don't truly believe we're worth taking care of, like our pets are worth taking care of. We're thinking about how many times in the course of a day when you're talking to yourself, I mean, you talk to yourself, everyone talks to themselves, you're not crazy. Well, you might be crazy, but you're not crazy for that. We all talk to ourselves. In fact, they have a number of studies that have come back and said,

the majority of words we say to ourselves are what you're going to. would classify as negative self-talk. Just generally speaking, almost all of us, the majority of the words we say to ourselves is negative self-talk. We talk to ourselves in a way that if we heard ourselves talk to a fourth grader, the way we talk to ourselves, we would arrest, we'd call the police. And that's just the normal voice in your head. That's just the normal way we talk to each other.

We don't even love ourselves with our thoughts. Or our prayers. you know even for Christians who are like serious prayers you know the group that serious Christians

who seriously pray on a regular basis the group they pray for the least themselves because they're like well no I don't I don't need to pray for myself

I need to pray for other people I need to not be so selfish listen yes our enemies need our prayers and yes our friends need our prayers but we need our own prayers we need prayers

but what's wrong with us where we don't love ourselves enough to say that I'm worth praying for right now. Again, it's not a selfish thing. There's a psychologist. Somebody of you know her, her name's Brunay Brown. And Bray Brown talks about what happens, the cost of what you might say is unresolved unlove. What's the cost of being kind of a person who's living in this world as someone who doesn't actually let themselves be loved and doesn't actually love themselves? She gives a great example. she says say your 13-year-old daughter comes home she's talking to a group of women

says your 13-year-old daughter comes home and she's crying she says no one sat with her at lunch today she's talking to these women she says if if you haven't learned how to love yourself when your daughter 13-year-old comes home and she says no one sat with me at the lunch today you're going to immediately zip back to when you were 13 and you're not going to be able to give her love you're going to give a bunch of answers you're able to say well I told you I told you you should brush your hair I told you you need to be nicer I told you, you need to be more friendly. I told you you need to do this, this, this, this, this, because your unresolved, unlove will not be able to give your daughter love.

It'll only be able to give her answers. And in that moment, she doesn't need answers. She just needs empathy. In that moment, she doesn't need your solution. She just needs your love. And that's why we have to resolve this, because until we're loved, until we learn how to love ourselves, we're not free to really love anyone else. We're powerless. I don't know if you ever feel like that. I wonder if sometimes we, how powerless we feel

when it comes to loving anyone outside of ourselves. You ever get in that frustrating sense of like, I just, I can't do it. I'm stuck. We can feel powerless in this. And that's why I think of the context of the gospel today. You know, when Jesus is telling his disciples to love their enemies, it's not like,

hey, you may be someday you'll get some enemies. The context is, he's talking to Jews. who live in Roman-occupied Israel. Wonder who your enemies are. They're right there, and they're wearing Roman garb. Like the people who were occupying Israel at the time, they could take your tunic

and you'd have to let them. There's no recourse. You couldn't protest. You couldn't take them to court. If they wanted to make you carry something for them, you had to carry it for at least one mile. There's no one you could complain to. Talk about being powerless. But it's into that place of powerless.

that Jesus gives his disciples and he gives us these three what you might call power words. It's into our experience of powerlessness of like, I don't, how do I even start? How do I even, how do I even love? Jesus stands up and he says, here's three power words. You want to love three things. Do good, bless and pray. That if you're wondering like, how do I, how do I rise from being a victim? Three things.

Do good, bless and pray. There's a guy. guy's name is Father Jacques Philippe. Some of you might have read a book by Father Jacques Philippe. So powerful. He has this one great quote. He says, people who haven't learned how to love will always feel like victims. People who haven't learned how to love will always feel like victims. They will feel restricted wherever they are.

But people who love never feel restricted. Why? Because of these three power words. They know that in any situation, in any kind of context, they can always love, meaning they can do good, they can bless, and they can pray. another way to say it is they can love with their actions, they can love with their words, and they can love with their soul or with their prayers. At any moment, you and I can do this. We can love with our actions,

we can love with our words, and we can love with our prayers. The question I would say is, how would your life be different? How would we be different if today, we started this? If today you actually, we started loving ourselves with our prayers. That as you're praying here at this mass, actually, God, I, I, I, I, it needs, need help.

So, Lord, I'm going to offer this mass up for me and my heart, my healing. How different would our lives look like if we actually stop that negative self-talk and instead tried to tell the truth to ourselves and built ourselves up? Like, what would your life actually look like? How would you be different if you actually treated yourself well? And I don't mean like, treat yourself 2019. I mean, like, treat yourself as someone who deserves to be loved. What if you treated yourself like someone who deserve to be loved?

How different would your life, would my life, or our life? But this is the problem, though. We're desperate. Most of us operate out of a place of scarcity that we're not enough. That, like, I'm not enough. I don't deserve to be loved. I don't know if you've ever had that voice in your head. I'm not enough.

I don't deserve to be loved. So treat yourself as someone who deserves to be loved. to be loved? Like, no, I bet I'm disqualified, because I don't deserve to be loved. And this is what I just want to talk about this thing that I love calling the great lie. The great lie is this. The great lie that many of us believe, even as Christians we believe this, it's so crazy that we're loved to the depth and to the degree that we deserve to be loved. So many of us operate with that mindset, that we're loved to the depth or to the degree that we deserve it. That those who are loved the most are the ones who deserve it the most.

And because of that, we exclude ourselves. Because we know ourselves. I'm like, I don't deserve that. To love is to be vulnerable. And to let yourself be loved is to be vulnerable. It's to risk. It costs something. It costs something to love those who don't deserve to be loved.

Our friends, our family, our enemies. It costs something to love those who don't deserve it. You know, Jesus, He says, he says, if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? I want to do a little paraphrase. What Jesus is, I think what he's saying really at the heart when he says, if you love those who love you, what credit is that? I think what he's saying is, if you love those who deserve it, what credit is that?

Why? Because he's saying, that's not how I love. Here's Jesus saying, I don't love those who deserve it. If you heard the gospel today, he says, my father, God himself, is kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked. those who do not deserve it. Here's how God loves. He loves those who don't deserve it.

Here's how God loves. I'm kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked. And when I read those words, it hit me because I realized that when Jesus said those words, He's kind, God's kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked. I realized that Jesus wasn't just talking about generally and people. He had someone in mind when he described that person as ungrateful and wicked. And I read those words, I'm like, he's talking about me.

What the heck? I read the Bible and God's talking about you. I said, I'm like, man, God, you've given me so many gifts. ungrateful and I am wicked and I don't deserve it because of that we have to realize that the gospel switches the switch it flips the script God doesn't love most those who deserve it the most he loves the most those who need it the most this is the message of Christ God doesn't love most those who deserve it the most he loves most those who need it the most when we deserve it the least

the least is when he loves us the most. So to make your question, does that mean that God loves some people more than others? Absolutely it does. Does that mean God love some people more than others? Yes, it does. God does love some people more than he loves others. Now I'm not saying God is more affection for some people more than others, because he is infinite, right?

And his love, you can't have more infinite or less infinite. But we're talking about effective love. Yes, God loves some people more than others. Who does he love more than others? Those who need him to love them more than others. Here's an example. So my parents have six kids. I'm one of those six.

Family works. And my parents have a lot of affection for all six of us. I would even say that they kind of quote unquote love us all equally. But I know this is a fact that my parents effectively love my siblings more than they love me. And I'm totally okay with that. Why? Because I come home and I'm like, hey, mom and dad, how you doing? They're like, great.

And they say, Father Mike, sometimes they say that. They say, how are you doing? I'm like, great, you need anything from us? Nope. Great. Another sibling could come home. How are you doing? Like, oh, man, I'm struggling.

I need this. I need this. I need this. My parents are like, okay, we'll give, we'll give, we'll give. In that moment, my parents love my sibling more than they love me. Why? Because that sibling needs them to more than I need them to. God loves us the most when we deserve it the least,

but when we need it the most. So right now, in your life, right now tonight, that might be you. You've shown up to Mass tonight, and it might be like you're like walking and going, am I going to, can I touch the water in there? Is it going to sting a little bit? Like, you know, sizzle, at least a crackle.

You know, I think sometimes we come to the Lord and we try to pull out all like the good things, all the reasons why he needs to love us. I don't know if you ever do that. When you come to prayer, we kind of pull out, God, here's what I've been doing. I did this good thing and this good thing, and here's all the reasons why I deserve you to love me.

And we realize that the mystery, the amazing truth, Christianity is the exact opposite. Think about the moments. Where do you and I go when we deserve his love the least, but we need it the most? There's this amazing thing called the sacrament of confession. This is the last thing. That's that sacrament of God, I deserve your love the least, but I need you the most. That's why I'm so, you know, I don't know if I could say this enough, how proud I am of people who go to confession. How move and by people who go to confession.

Especially as a priest, like, I never, ever am like, if someone comes in, I'm like, well, what do you here for? Go ahead. Start, you know. It's like, oh, my gosh, here is someone who's learned the truth of Jesus, who's learned the truth of the gospel. And that truth is, I have to come to him. Why? Because I need him the most. But also I'm here because I deserve him the least.

Like, yes, yes, that. That's when he gets to love us the best. and if you let him do that then if you let him love you the most when you deserve it the least but need it the most then what happens when you talk to your roommate who's being a total jerk

and doesn't deserve it I've been there I know what it's like to be loved the most when I deserved it the least what happens when you're looking at your spouse and like man why are you so infuriating I've been there I've been that person I've been loved the most when I deserve it the least.

You can love them. And when you see that person who might even actually be your enemy, who may in fact hate you, who may in fact curse you, who may in fact hurt you, you can see them as someone who's just like you, who deserves your love the least. But this is the moment when they need your love the most. That's what it's like to have the heart of Jesus.

And that's what it is to love like God loves. To be loved the most when we need it the most. So we can love others the most when they need it the most.