Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 03/03/24 He Leadeth Me: The Greatest Grace

Episode Date: March 2, 2024

Homily from the Third Sunday of Lent. The greatest grace is to know the depth of our brokenness and to know the depth of His love. Father Walter wanted to be like his heroes. We all want to think that we will be strong in the moment of truth. But the actual moment of truth comes after our weakness has been revealed. Mass Readings from March 3, 2024: Exodus 20:1-17 Psalms 19:8-111 Corinthians 1:22-25 John 2:13-25

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 John. Chapter 2, verses 13 through 25. Since the Passover of the Jews was near, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as money changers seated there. He made a whip out of the cords and drove them all out of the temple area with the sheep and the oxen and spilled the coins of the money changers

and overturned their tables. And to those who sold doves, he said, take these out of here and stop making my father's house a marketplace. His disciples recalled the words of Scripture, zeal for your house will consume me. At this, the Jews answered and said to him, what sign can you show us for doing this? Jesus answered and said to them,

destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews said, this temple has been under construction for 46 years, and you'll raise it up in three days. But he was speaking of the temple of his body. Therefore, when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they came to believe the scripture and the word Jesus had spoken. While he was in Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover,

many began to believe in his name when they saw the signs he was doing. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them because he knew them all and did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He himself understood it well. The Gospel of the Lord. Grace to Lord Jesus Christ. Wait you to have a seat. So those last lines, those last words of Scripture, I think, are some of them was haunting.

Haunting lines in the Gospels. I mean, there are hard lines in the Gospels there, but the most haunting, I think, I've ever read. Is that line at the end of John's Gospel. Jesus would not trust himself to them because he knew them. He wouldn't trust himself to them because he knew them. He did not need anyone to testify about human nature. He himself understood it well. And this truth, right, that Jesus, he understands, he understood the human heart that he knew us, that he knows us.

And this is the reality. Here's Jesus. He knows us. Question. How well do we know ourselves? Like really in the depth of our heart. Like, how well do we know ourselves? Recently, I read a story, and I read a story, but it was a priest back in the early 1900s.

He died in 1950. And I remember reading it and going like, oh, man, that's the kind of person I want to be. It was a story of a priest named Father Burns. And Father Burns at one point, he was a Marianol priest, and he was a missionary to Asia. And just remarkable. He got to Korea in 1924, and he got there to establish a Catholic mission in Korea. And just the gospel exploded. It was amazing.

Like, had so many conversions to Jesus Christ. It flourished throughout the whole country. He was so successful that then he went to Kyoto, Japan. And at first, in Kyoto, there was this resistance to the United. gospel, but just can Father Burns, his holiness and his witness, his work, just, again, thousands of conversions. In fact, he was so successful as a missionary to Asia that the Pope named him a bishop, even like without a diocese.

He just was like, you're awesome, be a bishop, and gave him this incredible thing. So because of this, at one point, Father Burns drew the attention of the communist government of North Korea, and he was arrested, and he was imprisoned, he was tortured. At one point, he was forced to denounce the Catholic Church and the U.S. government. And he simply responded, after all this torture, he simply responded, there remains only one course to die. It's just like, incredible. So what they did is they didn't kill him right away. In fact, he was in this forced march with hundreds of other POWs,

through the snow for, I think, four months. And all he had was a T-shirt and a thin pair of pants. It was said that as these hundreds of POWs were marching through the snow, through the mountains in Japan, or in North Korea, that as an upper man would fall down, he would just stop and he prayed with him as long as he could until he was forced to keep on going. Finally, they got to the place of their destination, right? In the middle of sub-zero temperatures, the guards forced Father Burns and others to do like basically exercises out in the snow, sub-zero temperatures until he finally had pneumonia and pretty soon died. before he died though he turned to his fellow prisoners and one of the things he said he said he said after the privilege of my priesthood the greatest privilege of my life is to suffer for christ with all of you and just it's one of these the kind of the story you read about someone you're like oh man i want to be that guy

like i want to be that kind of person and there's all these stories of saints like this i mean they go all the way back to the very beginning of the go to jesus you have saint stephen you have saint felicity and perpetua agatha and lucy all these incredible saints who just you're like, I want to be that person. And the question is, like, but am I? Oh, that's who I want to be. Am I? Because that would be a great grace, right?

That would be a great grace. The grace of being able to be that kind of missionary, the grace to be able to, like Father Burns, be that kind of priest. The grace to be able to be that kind of Christian. An incredible grace to be that kind of witness to Jesus. It would be a great grace, but here's the problem. It would be a great grace,

but it would not be the greatest grace. and we started this series a couple weeks ago during Lent. He called He Leadedeth Me, following the life of Father Walter Chiszek and how Father Walter, he wanted to be that guy. In fact, Father Walter, he read those same stories of saints. At one point, he read the story of a saint named St. Stanislaus, and it's just like he devoured his story. And it's like, okay, that's the kind of guy I'm going to be.

And so we sometimes think that we could be tempted to think that that's the goal. the goal is to be this great saint with this great grace. We could think sometimes that the goal of Lent is that to be this some kind of spiritual superhero, right? Sometimes you can even get discouraged because you might think that this is beyond you. You might look at yourself and say, okay, here's, okay, this priest now, you just mentioned, Father Burns, here's Father Walter Chizek, here are these other saints. This is beyond me.

That this is the kind of thing, as I said, for spiritual superheroes, that this isn't for normal people. That what we're doing right now, this is pursuit of holiness and God's transforming our lives. That's for strong people. That's for holy people. That's for better people. The truth is, no. This whole thing is for ordinary people who are willing to receive the greatest grace.

But the greatest grace comes at a great price. The greatest grace comes at a great price. It is the price of knowing two truths, of knowing the deepest truth about yourself and of knowing the deepest truth about Jesus. Father Walter, he did not get to the greatest grace easily. In fact, it cost him more than he, more than looking back, looking ahead, probably he would have been willing to pay. Because he expected a lot out of himself.

Like Father Walter expected so much. He read these stories, as I said, he read all these stories with these saints, and he expected so much. And so then when he was arrested, right? When he finally got to Russia, remember he was a missionary to Russia? When he finally got to Russia, he was arrested accused of being a Vatican spy. and they moved him to this prison called Lubyanka, which was in Red Square, right, in Moscow. And he describes what this was like.

In fact, even describes what the travel was like. He said the physical conditions, even of traveling there, were inhuman. He said the cells were so badly overcrowded. There were scarcely room to move. There are no running water. Slop buckets served as toilets. The windows were covered with metal shutters, so there was little light and less fresh air.

He said, we were filthy. And I noticed such thing as a change of clothes. We slept on the unwashed floor with insects, trawling over us. The air was always foul and you could not get the reek of that nauseating stench out of your nostrils. You simply had to learn to ignore it as best you could. It was also so degrading, so humiliating that some men just ceased to think of themselves as men. As Father Walter Chiswick was experiencing this, he's like, okay, this is what it is. This is what I've been training for. This is what I've prepared for. This is the kind of person. I'm the kind of person

who can do this kind of thing. And then what happened is as he went to Lubyanka, he was put in a solitary confinement. He was now away from all this, everything they just described, but he was in a six by 10 foot room. And he was given one meal a day, which was essentially a piece of bread, a cup of warm water, and some thin soup. Did that all day. There was no chair.

There's no place to sit. In fact, you weren't allowed to sit on the bed. There was one bed in this room. You weren't allowed to sit on it unless you lied down to sleep at night. And so guys would spend the end, he would spend his entire day, either just leaning against the wall or pacing back and forth. He was allowed 20 minutes a day out of his cell and then also two trips to the bathroom that would take a maximum of two minutes each.

He said the silence was overwhelming. And all he could do was stand, pace, and pray. But the reality, of course, is that he was ready, right? Because he had prepared for this. If you know anything about an early life, even when he got to seminary, growing up, that he had these fasts. We talked about his fasts a couple weeks ago, right? that he would discipline in his body for one year, no meat, for one lent, just bread and water.

So I'm okay, I can do this. I'm ready for this. I'm the kind of person who can handle this kind of fast. It was so cold. But one of the things Father Chusack did is even in seminary when he was in Pennsylvania and then later on in New York, that he would force himself to swim in frozen lakes all throughout the course of the year. Like every single day, he would get in the frozen lake.

Why? So he's preparing himself. He's making himself tough. the kind of person who could be tough enough to face the cold air in Moscow prison. Not only that, but he made himself run five to six miles every single day no matter what, all throughout seminary. Why? Because I'm the kind of person who I can do what I said I was going to do.

And not only that, but he only had nothing to do, but stand there, pace there and pray. Well, he had dedicated his life to prayer. And so he set up this kind of like aurarium, right? This cycle of prayer for himself in this cell. So when the interrogation started, he said he was pretty confident. In fact, he said, I brought down the hallway, sat down in front of the interrogators, and he said, I was calm because I had nothing to worry about. Not only was I not trying to hide anything, I'm not a Vatican spy, but also I can face this

kind of thing. I'm not the kind of person that they'll ever be able to break. He said, at first I was rather untroubled. The interrogations were annoying and sometimes painful, but they didn't disturb me. in the beginning. See, all his disciplines, all his efforts, all his training, that was a great grace, right? It made him strong.

It was a great grace to be the kind of person like Father Walter, but it wasn't the greatest grace. He wasn't troubled because he knew himself, he thought, and he knew the promise he thought. The promise was, of course, Jesus had said that, he said, that when they take you before your adversaries, don't worry about what you're going to say. I'll give you the words in that moment.

So here's father, I'm not worried. Why? Because I think I know myself. He was mistaken. And I think I know what Jesus means by that. He was mistaken. So what happens is these interrogators come in. Sometimes he said they were a good cop and bad cop.

Sometimes they were kind. Sometimes they were kind of brutal. And sometimes they tortured him. But he was calm. He's basically said, I can do this. He's basically, he's kind of like Peter in the Gospels. Right here's St. Peter, Lord, if everyone else denies you, I will never deny you. And what does Jesus say in response to Peter's thinking he knows himself, thinking he knows who Jesus is,

but getting both of those wrong. Jesus looks at Peter, Peter, before the cock crows this day, you'll deny me three times. In fact, in Luke's gospel, what does Jesus say to Peter? He says, Simon, Simon, Satan has desired to sift. all of you like wheat. But Peter, I have prayed for you that after you have returned from falling, after you have returned, you might strengthen your brethren. I always wonder, like, why was it that Jesus focuses on Peter? Why was it that Jesus, I mean, the other disciples, except for John, they all ran away. Why does Jesus focus on Peter? I think, I wonder, maybe if it's because

Peter had a special role, right? Peter was the prime minister. He's the Pope. He's the al-Habayit. That might be true. Also, it might be true because it's because Peter, or Sir Peter, knew the fact that Jesus was the Messiah the most, but he knew what that would actually look like the least. I wonder if it's this. I wonder if it's because Peter ended up knowing himself the least. If Peter ended up not knowing Jesus the least, because Jesus knew the human heart.

Remember, Jesus did not trust himself to them. because he knew human nature. He knows human nature. He knows you and he knows me. And Father Walter was just like Peter. He had received grace, but not the greatest grace. Because over time, what happens? Over time, something happened.

Walter describes it like this. He says, as the months of interrogation passed, now he was supposed to be, by law, interrogated for one month. He was interrogated for 12 months. As the month of the interrogation lengthened, my original naive optimism and self-confidence gave way to resentment and repugnance. It said it became almost unbearable for me to face another session.

When called by the guard to make another trip along the dimly lit corridor to the interrogator's offices, my sense of revulsion would be so strong that a physical tremor would shake my whole body and it was something so beyond my control that no effort on my part could prevent it. Worst of all, perhaps, he said, I began to give up. See, my patience and my self-confidence, even my innate stuff. stubbornness were gradually wearing away. I was tired of the struggle. I was tired of fighting. And above all, I was tired of second-guessing myself.

Because what would happen is, right, he'd go down and be interrogated and they'd question him and they'd nitpick everything he would have to say and in that room and in that room he'd say, what did I do? How did I fail? And it was all be, he'd be so preoccupied with himself, so preoccupied with how did I do that he always second-guess himself and that self-reliance he had would lead to this self-condemation. He said, I was tired of the doubts, I was tired of the fears, I was tired of the constant anxiety and the strain. And so finally they led in the last interrogator. The last interrogator, he said, seemed like a reasonable guy. He actually came across as being kind of somewhat kind. He was soft-smoking, he was humane. But after a long

time of, again, nitpicking what Father Walter would say, he was so tired and so exhausted that he said, just stopped fighting. And when the interrogator would say something about, yeah, so you are a Vatican spy, he's like, sure. And so you do condemn the church, sure. And you do condemn your own country, the United States of America, sure.

He just went along with it. Until finally, the interrogator said, okay, great, I've written all these things after days and days and weeks and weeks in the season. Finally, you've said, sure, to all these things, tomorrow you'll come in, and you'll sit down and you'll sign all these documents, swearing, testifying that, yet you condemn the Catholic Church, that you are a Vatican spy,

that you condemn your own government. And so he's moved, he's brought in to the next day into this interrogator's chamber. And he said that as he's sitting there, because I praying for the Holy Spirit, because God, you promised, right, Jesus, you promised that in the moment, in that moment, when, when, don't worry about what you to say before, as I bring you before your interrogators, right, before kings and governors, I'll give you the words to say. he said, I prayed for the Holy Spirit to move me, and I felt nothing. He is what his words say, feeling abandoned by God.

I knew I must do something. I wanted to throw that volume on the table and tell him right then and there that I would not sign a page of it. But fear stopped me. I struggled within myself. I badly wanted to show him who he was dealing with. He wasn't dealing with a weakling or with an intimidated priest, afraid to stand up for his rights, or an ignoramus who didn't know what was going on.

I wanted to speak out and end the deal right then and there. Indeed, the words I wanted so vehemently to blur it out were on the tip of my tongue. I raised my head slowly and looked at the interrogator who was busy with some papers, but the words, I won't sign, never came. I was afraid, and I was angry at myself for being afraid. I made a strenuous effort to overpower the fear afflicting me, but succeeded only in being overcome by it. I was disgusted with myself.

terribly upset. I lowered my head slowly again in confusion and pretended to be reading and he says, why, Vladimir, he called him Vladimir. Why aren't you signing this? He said at last I was forced to answer. So I said far too weakly, I can't sign this the way it's written. It's not what I said or did. You know I'm not the spy you described so cleverly and so completely in this report. And he said, Father Walter said in that moment, the demeanor of this last interrogator who had seen so kind, so gentle, so humane, completely changed. And basically he threatened him and said, you know this, you realize this, you stupid American, that if you don't sign this,

I will bring you before a firing squad right now. We're in a middle of a war. You are just another flee. We can kill you today. And in that moment, he just picked up a pen and he began signing the pages, denying the truth,

denying his church, denying his country. And he said, as I sign the pages largely without reading them, I began to burn with shame and guilt. I was totally broken, humiliated.

It was a moment of agony. I will never forget as long as I live. And in the midst of this, the most painful truth, Father Chizek said he realized, I was nowhere near the man I thought I'd be. Here's this man who disciplined himself. Here's this man who, like, he read all the stories of the heroes.

all this, read all the stories of these people, and not only read the stories, he trained himself to be that kind of person. But in that moment of truth, he realized the truth. I was nowhere near the man I thought I'd be. Question, have you ever been there? Have you been in that place where you say something like, you know, when I get to that situation, I'll be better, only to be in that situation and realize, oh, I'm not better.

To tell yourself there are some things I will never ever do, only to get into that situation and realize, oh, I did them. The reality, that I mean, we meet some people who say, like, I'll never be like my parents, and then you realize I'm just like my parents. The people who say, like, I'd never be like that kind of person who would and then fill in the blank, and you find the truth about yourself. And when it came to the moment of truth, the truth is, I am nowhere near the person I thought I'd be. God allowed

Father Chiszek to fail. That was, in so many ways, not Father Walter's actual moment of truth. So I think this, I think we often think that the big moment is the moment where we're strong. And maybe that is the case. I think sometimes we think the big moment is the moment and we choose virtue. And that might

be the case. I would say this. That might be the big moment. But the truly great moment is the moment when we're weak. And we realize we're weak. The greatest moment comes when we realize that we are weaker than we ever thought we possibly could be. And this moment came when Father Walter was brought back to his cell. Remember his expectation of himself? He had this expectation place on himself. I'll be better.

I'll be like one of those guys that I read about, one of those saints that I read about. He knew the truth, he knew the promise, but he didn't know himself. So imagine this critical moment. I remember that when I read this book the first time, this is the thing that's the thing that's with me more than anything else, that here he is, he has failed now. And he's brought back to his cell and it's just him. Imagine just sitting there thinking, okay, now what? Can't take it back?

I can't fix it. I can't undo it. Imagine going back to your cell and it's just you and Jesus and the truth. There's no excuses, there's no distractions, there's no more approaches, there's just this truth. I am nowhere near the person I thought I'd be. He said, it was a moment of agony. I will never forget as long as I live. He went on to write.

He said, why had God failed me at this critical juncture? Right, when I was supposed to be the saint, I was supposed to be that person who actually could be like the person I've been training to be, preparing to be, getting myself ready to be. Why had God not sustained me in my strength and my nerve? Why had he not inspired me to speak all boldly? Why had he not shielded me by his grace from the fear of death?

I had trusted him and his spirit to give me voice and wisdom against all adversaries. I had confounded no one, but had myself been totally broken and confounded. Here's Father Walter. He realized the truth. I am not better. This is the depth of the truth that every one of us needs to realize. I'm not better. I'm nowhere near the person I thought I'd be. This is one of the reasons why later on, Mother Walter looking at St. Peter. He said, St. Peter, even after he gets restored as that alhhabite, even after he gets restored to relation with Jesus, he would never again boast. He would never again deny the fact that, no, I have the potential to deny my Lord. This is every one of us. When that, what do we do? When there's no excuses,

what happens when there's no distractions, when there's no more reproaches, there's no strength of our own to rely on? What did Father Walter have left? He had nothing. He had nothing but grace. In that moment, he could have avoided reality. But in that moment, Father Walter chose to accept reality. And the reality is, I am nowhere near the person I thought I'd be. And this is the moment that God gave Father Walter Chizek the greatest grace. When all he had was Jesus and his own shame. And this is the moment that God, the only moment God can give us the greatest grace.

He said this, he said, I realized I had failed. That's true. But why should I feel so ashamed? And he said, slowly, reluctantly, under the gentle proddings of grace, I faced the truth that was at the root of my problem and my shame. And the answer was a single word, I. I was ashamed because I knew in my heart that I had tried to do too much on my own and I had failed. I felt guilty, he said, because I realized finally that I had asked for God's grace.

I had asked for God's help, but I really believed in my own ability to avoid even. and to meet every challenge. I had spent much time in prayer over the years. I'd come to appreciate and thank God for his providence and his care of me and of all men, but I'd never really abandoned myself to him. He said, in a way, I'd been thanking God all the while that I was not like the rest of men. He'd give me a good physique, yes, steady nerves, a strong will. And with these physical traits given by God, I would continue to do his will at all times

and to the best of my ability. In short, he said, I felt guilty and ashamed because in the last analysis, I had relied almost completely on myself and I'd failed. The truth of course is that in those moments, in those moments where we need to be strong, it would have been a great grace to be strong. It'd be a great grace to be courageous. It'd be a great grace to be the man he thought he would be,

for us to be the people we wish we could be. But God gave him a greater grace. He gave him the greatest grace. And Father Walter says it like this. it says, the greatest grace God can give such a man is to send him a trial he cannot bear by his own powers and then sustain him with this grace so that he may endure to the end and be saved.

This is the greatest grace. Again, it'd be a great grace to be strong like you want to be. It'd be a great grace to be holy like you want to be. It'd be a great grace to be good. That'll be great. But the greatest grace, God can give such a man and send him a trial he cannot endure by his own powers and then sustain him with his grace

so then he may endure to the end and be saved. The greatest grace is to be allowed to fail. The greatest grace is to be allowed to see your heart as Jesus sees it, to see yourself as Jesus sees you, and to let yourself be loved at that moment. The greatest grace is to be chosen as you really are and not as you or I would like to be. This is a painful grace.

Again, it costs a lot. Because God doesn't skip on his grace. He doesn't want to give us the least of His grace. He wants us to know the fullness of His grace and the fullness of His grace. The greatest grace is to know these two truths, the truth about ourselves in our need, and the truth about the depth of his love in our lives. And this is the last thing.

Reminder, this Lent and this life is not about being spiritual superheroes. Yes, there is prayer. and fasting and alms giving. Yes, we strive after the Lord in order to love him with our whole heart. But it's also more than this. It's, I expected to be better than this. But when I'm not, I need to admit the truth.

I expected, I wanted to be stronger than this, but when I'm not, to admit the truth. To realize I am nowhere near the person I thought I would be. And in that moment, in that moment where God allows you and me to fall, where God allows you and me to fail, to recognize the greatest grace, to see the truth about yourself and the truth about God and not run from it and not hide from him. This is a stumbling block for those who demand perfection.

And this is foolishness for those who see themselves as strong. But to those of us who know these two truths, that we are broken more than we know, and we are loved more than we could hope, this is the power of Jesus Christ on the cross. And that is the greatest grace.