Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 03/10/24 He Leadeth Me: Owned By the Past

Episode Date: March 9, 2024

Homily from the Fourth Sunday of Lent. We often feel owned by the past or powerless in the present. Once something is broken, is it really lost forever? Mass Readings from March 10, 2024: 2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23 Psalms 137:1-6Ephesians 2:4-10 John 3:14-21

So those words of that gospel are some of my favorite words in the entire Bible. I mean, just like go back to John 316. And we know that, right? This powerful truth, this good truth, this like good news of that for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that everyone who believed in him might not perish but may have eternal life. It's so good. It's just like, it's, I mean, you can sit with that, you can pray with that, you

can sit in the end zone with that written on a plaque, you know. It's really good news. But the thing is, that's such good news. But right after these words are some really difficult words. of really actually right after these words of grace are these words of grit. Immediately following this incredible news that God so loved the world that he gave us only son

that everyone who believes in them might have eternal life are I think some of the more challenging words of the gospel and that those words we heard them tonight too. Whereas St. John says, or Jesus says, and this is the verdict. Light came into the world, but people prefer darkness to light. and I've been reflecting on those words a lot lately. Light came into the world, but people prefer darkness to light.

And one of the things we have to realize is it's not, what Jesus is talking about is not like bad people, that the evil people chose to stay in the darkness. This is the hard news for all of us. It's not evil people who choose to stay in the darkness. It's ordinary people who choose to stay in the darkness. You know, we've been doing this series in this Lent about Father Walter Chizek,

easy for me to say, Father Walter Chizek, and he leads to me. And part of the point of going through, his life is to point out the reality that God can take ordinary people and make them saints, that God by his grace, right? It's all gifts of grace. By God's grace, he can take ordinary people, not good people, he can take ordinary people and make them into saints. Well, the reality is that not only can ordinary people become saints, but ordinary people can stay in the darkness. It's not bad people who stay in the darkness. It's not evil people who choose the darkness.

It's ordinary people who choose the darkness. And it can be very many numbers. And it can be very number of reasons. But I think one of the many reasons why we choose, this is us, right? Not just bad people, not good people, just normal people. One of the reasons I think we choose to stay in the darkness and don't come into the light of God's love is one of two reasons. Either we feel owned by our past. So we're just qualified. What I've chosen, what's done to me, I can't step into the light. We either feel owned by our past or we feel powerless in our present circumstances. That's so many of us. Again, one of the reasons so many of us choose to not come into the God's light, into the truth, is either because we're owned by our past or because

we feel powerless in our presence, right? We just feel powerless to change things, even though here's God's grace, and he keeps saying, but no, I came into the world that you could come and step into the light. And this is one of the reasons it's so important for us, this lent to walk with Father Walter Chiswick. Because this is his story. If you were with us last weekend, you know the part of his story, like, that one of the worst moments is he goes, right, so Father Walter, American priest goes to Poland, missionary to Russia. He gets into Russia, he's accused of being a Vatican spy, arrested for the first year of his arrest. He's in solitary confinement and they're interrogating him. And last week he talked about this, that here's Father Walter, who had trained

himself to be a great saint. Right, he trained himself to be a hero. He trained himself to be like all those other incredible saints who have ever lived. And yet after one year of interrogation, at one point, his interrogator came in and Father Walter just admitted to whatever he accused. used him of. He disavowed his church. He disavowed Christ. He disavowed his country. And then at one moment, this moment of failure, he signed every document they put in front of him. Saying, nope, basically, I don't belong to Jesus. I don't belong to the church. I'm not an American. Like all these things, these things that defined Father Walter, he was ready to disavow. He failed. And it was the greatest failure of his entire life. And then after that failure, they walked him back to his solitary

environment cell, and it was just Father Walter, Jesus, and the truth. We talked about this last weekend that this truth was the greatest grace God could have given him. And so Father Walter said this last week, he said, the greatest grace God can give any one of us is to bring us to a place where we fail in order to experience the depth of his grace. Because these are the two truths every one of us need to know. That we are more broken than we know. We're more broken than we realize, but we're also more loved than we could possibly ever hope. That's the greatest grace. The greatest grace any of us can ever realize

is what Father Walter we talked about last weekend, which is, I am not the person I thought I would be. I didn't realize how broken I actually am. But I also didn't realize how loved. In the midst of that brokenness, I didn't realize how loved I am. And that was the greatest grace. But here's the rest of the story goes on like this.

Father Walter goes back to his cell for a solitary confinement. He's in solitary for the next four years. So yes, after one year he broke, and then he comes back to his cell and realizes, okay, this is the greatest grace God could ever give me. I am more broken. I am not the man I thought I would be. But God loves me more than I could possibly imagine. And in that year, the four years of solitary, he said, it's one thing to know it. It's another thing to let that truth change me. Because in that solitary confinement, he said this. He said, I felt sick at heart because I kept interrogating him. And he said that in those interrogations, they kept using his one failure as a lever against him. He said, I looked at my own heart and I realized this.

He said, he said, lie once and innocence is lost forever. Fall once and the vessel's broken. Perhaps it can be mended and made serviceable again, but it can never again be good as new. That's how he felt about himself. Lie once, innocence is gone. I don't know if you've ever felt like that. Or it's like, man, I have collapsed to such a degree that I can never come back. Like, again, fall once and the vessel's broken.

and it can never be mended again. Even if you do mend it, it's never going to be as good as new. He said with thoughts like that for four years, plaguing him again and again, day after day. He said, for my part, I felt against myself. This repugnance and foreboding, right? I am owned by my past.

I don't know if you've ever felt owned by your past. If you've ever had someone try to use your past against you, this is what he described. He would say, he said this, having failed once, I was literally terrified that I might completely fall this time, and lose the last thing I still clung to, which was my faith in God. And so I felt trapped, owned by my past, powerless in my present situations.

He said the mistake I'd made in signing was now being used as a lever against me. And I cursed myself for having made such a mistake. But I could find no way back. And the future seemed hopelessly marked by that one moment of failure. I think hopefully, hopefully, hopefully we all know what that's like. I don't know not because I want brokenness be part of your story, but because brokenness is part of our story, but sometimes we ignore it.

My life was marked by that one moment of failure. So we can ask the question, in that moment of failure, what does God expect? Because when we ask ourselves, in that moment of failure, what could God expect? When I'm owned by my past and I'm powerless in the face of the present, what could God possibly expect of myself? And he said, he said, every time they brought me in for the interrogation,

for four years, interrogation, he said, Every time I tried to argue with the interrogator, I tried to reason, he was pretty smart guy, so I tried to out-joust him when it came to verbal sparring. But he realized that the one thing he was being asked to do is the one thing he couldn't do. He said every time I brought myself to the brink of calling a halt to the proceedings, of taking a firm stand basically saying, I'm not going to cooperate with you. He said, I faced again that awful moment of decision and of weakness, and finally of indecision. And I couldn't do it.

And I knew that every time I approached to the decision and failed the means. make it, the harder it would be to ultimately make. That's what indecision does to us, right? When we know, I know that I need to make this decision. I know actually at this point, I need to either say yes or I need to say no. At some point, I need to acknowledge that two truths. I am more broken than I know, and I'm more loved than I possibly could hope, but I'm not willing to make a decision. Not willing to actually take a stand and either say yes or say no. Again, let's pause on this moment and ask the question. Have you ever experienced that? and not even just the decision of like,

I'm going to say no to this sin or I'm going to say yes to this kind of like choice to make. But even like, can I decide that I will no longer be owned by my past? Can we decide that what I will do in the face of feeling powerless of my present circumstances? You know, there's what happens to us when we're in this place of indecision? When we know that God has called us to step into the light, but we don't

what happens is the darkness overcomes us I can picture this like you know I know that God so loved the world that he gave his only son that all those who believe in him have eternal life and I know that lights come into the world and I know that all he wants me to do is take the step forward and I don't do it

what happens the longer I put off that decision the longer I don't actually make that decision the more quickly I'm able to forget about the light and in Father Chazek, I experienced this. He said, I really don't know how to put this into words. He said, I've been afraid before. But now I was afraid of myself.

I knew that I had failed before, but this was the ultimate failure. This was despair. This was a moment of complete darkness. And this is so important for us. He said, I realized that in this moment, I hadn't stepped into the light. I knew I needed to make a decision to say either yes to the Lord or just say, no. What happened was, in that moment, I lost sight of my own. only consolation. He said, in that moment, I lost sight of God. I hadn't moved. He'd been calling

me to stop and just at least say, say, I'm not going to cooperate with you, or to say, Lord, I'm going to step into your presence. Again, this happens to every one of us. We feel owned by our past, are powerless in our present situations if we're not willing to make a decision. What will happen is I'll end up forgetting God that I'll stay in the darkness so long, I'll forget that is even possible to step into the light. Imagine. Imagine staying in the darkness is an indecision for so long

that you forget there's such a thing as light. I think it's one of the reasons if you've read anything in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, God has this one word for the people of Israel and that one word is remember. Again and again, God's word to the people of Israel is, remember, remember the one who set you free from slavery,

remember the one who led you through the wilderness, remember the one who brought you through the Red Sea, remember the one who fed you. He just says, just remember, remember what God has done. do I? Because in this world, we're so quickly tempted to forget. Because if I have this indecision and I'm not willing to step into the light, I will be owned by my past and it will be powerless in the face of my present situation. This overwhelmed happened to Father Chiswick.

In these four years, after five total years of being a solitary confinement, at one moment, he was completely overwhelmed. And he entered into despair, true despair. Here's the crazy thing. when he realized he was stuck in the darkness. He didn't do what I would do. If I was stuck in the darkness, I'd be like, well, this stinks, and I'd just stay right there. Father Chisich said, recognizing this, I recognized, I lost the one thing I knew I needed to cling on to.

I recognized, I lost the sight of God. He said, recognizing this, I immediately turned in prayer to prayer in fear and trembling. He said, I knew I had forgotten. I had to seek the God that I'd forgotten. And I had to ask, This is so important. He said, I had to ask that that moment of despair had not made me unworthy of his help. Because that's how it can feel. When we're owned by our past and feel

powerless in the face of our present circumstances, we can think that this choice I made, this decision I made, this sin I made, the mistake I made, had made us unworthy of his help. He said, goes on to say, I had to pray that he would never again let me fail to remember him and trust him, and I pleaded my helplessness to face the future without him. I told him that with, on my own abilities, they were now bankrupt. He was my only hope. This is basically, this is the moment where Father Chazek said, God, I can't, you can.

That's the summary. Where Father Chisac realized I had wanted, I trained myself to be the hero, I trained myself to be the saint, I trained myself to do the hard thing. I can't. God, you have to. This is grace. And this is the key. When he finally turned to the Lord like this,

that he recognized he was completely bankrupt. and he turned to the Lord, he made a decision. And that's the decision every one of us has to make. He said, suddenly, when I realize this, when I acknowledge this, I came before the Lord, realized, God, I have nothing to offer you. I'm just going to trust you. He said, immediately came to my mind. He didn't have a vision where he saw it with his eyes, but in his mind's eye,

he said, he immediately, he thought of our Lord and his agony in the garden. Because Jesus had even said, Father, if it would be possible, let this cut pass from me. that Father Chiswick said, actually the Lord, in the Garden of Gassimini, he also knew the feeling of fear and weakness in his human nature. He also knew that he was facing suffering and death. See, not once but three times Jesus asked to have his ordeal removed or even somehow modified. Yet each time he concluded with an act of total abandonment and submission to the Father's will. Not as I will, but as you will.

Father Chisick said it was not just conformity to the will of God. It was total self-surrender. The stripping away of all human fears, of all doubts, of every last shred of self, including self-doubt. See, without God's grace, all we have is self. But to try to live without God's grace, that's just self-reliance. And self-reliance will always lead to self-condemnation. And self-condemnation will always lead to self-doubt. And so we have this recognition for this vicious cycle, right?

I'm forgetting God's grace. I'm going to rely on myself. Self-reliance leads to self-condupe. self-condemnation leads to self-doubt. And here's Father Chiswick, who realized that this incredible grace of just, I can no longer trust in myself, I can only trust in God's grace. This is the apex of his whole story. Look, if you haven't read anything other than this about Father Chisak's life,

is this what we need to highlight. It was this moment of trust. He goes on to say, if I moment, because of this, I realized Jesus in the garden, he suffered everything I possibly could suffer. His fear is my fear. His trust can be my trust. everything changed. He said if my moment of despair had been a moment of a complete blackness,

then this was an experience of blinding light. He said, I immediately knew what I must do, what I would do, and somehow I knew that I could do it. I knew that I must abandon myself completely to the will of the Father and live from now on in this spirit of self-abandonment to God, and I did it. And my life has never been the same. If there's any one word, if there's any one term, is there any one thing that can change our lives.

It is this one word, and the word is trust. To be able to actually say, okay, God, not only do I know you exist. God, I not only know that you love me and my strength and my beauty and my goodness, but God, I actually can trust you even in my weakness. I can trust you even in my failure. There's anything that will change a life. It is that one thing. Question, once again, what does God expect of us?

What does God expect of us who find ourselves owned by our past? and powerless in the present. There was another man in a concentration gap, right? Here's Father Walter, who was in a Soviet gulag. There was a Jewish man named Victor Frankel. You probably know who he is. He was in a Nazi concentration gap. And at one point, he, he, Victor Frankl had recognized, like, yeah, they can take away.

Life can take away, other people can take away every one of your freedoms. They can take away your freedom to speak. They can take away your freedom to act. They can take away your freedom to sleep when you want to or to go to the bathroom when you want to or to eat when you want to. He said, but the last of human. He said everything can be taken from a man, but one thing. The last of the human freedoms, to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

The Victor Frankel had said that even in a concentration camp, even in a situation where every other freedom is taken away, the last of the human freedoms, the thing that no one can take away, is how do I respond to this moment? How do I respond when I feel owned by my past? how do I respond when I feel powerless to change my present circumstances? Father Chizek says it like this. He said, God does not ask the impossible of any person.

And he was not asking more of me, really, than he asks every person, every Christian, every day of his life. He was asking only that I learned to see the people around me. So I've seen the circumstances in the prison as sent from his hand and ordained by his providence. He's asking me to trust him. The people in front of me are in front of me because he wants them in front of me. I'm in this prison right now because he wants me in this prison right now. He was on to say, he was asking me to do something as another Christ, to forget about self and forget about feeling sorry for myself.

And to act in the situation after the example of Christ himself, he was asking me to forget about my powerlessness. Essentially, he was asking me to stop feeling owned by my past or powerless in the face of my present circumstances, even after innocence had been lost. lost and the vessel had been broken. Right? Because Father Chizek said it.

Lie once, and innocence is lost. Fall and the vessel is broken. And you can try to repair it, but it'll never be good as new. You know, in Japan, there's many art forms in Japan. In fact, there's one art form. Japanese pottery is known worldwide for its beauty, for its intricacy, it's known for the ability to make these delicate, beautiful objects. But at one point, this, this, this,

Japanese art of pottery, they discovered that you're making these delicate objects that if you fall, they're broken. So lost, irreparable. Until some people decided to do something, they took broken pottery and they took gold, mixed it with resin, or took silver and mixed it with resin. And they found that if they mix this gold with resin, they could put it in the cracks and they could actually reform the pottery. And what they created was something not just as good as the pottery before it was broken. What they created was something even more beautiful than the unbroken pottery. In fact, this became so popular that people would make incredible art work of pottery and then smash it in order to repair it.

Because these veins of gold, these veins of silver going throughout the pot, again, did not make it as good as new, made it better than new. And this is the secret of God's grace. We know this about God's grace. When we fall, when we actually fall into sin and God redeems us, when he brings us back, when we go to confession, God doesn't bring us back and make us good as new. God actually brings us back and then elevates it. That's what grace does. Grace doesn't just,

grace doesn't eradicate nature, doesn't dismiss nature. Grace builds on nature, elevates it and perfects it. So when you go to confession, you're not made good as new. When you and I go to confession and we appeal to God's grace, you're made better than new. There's these veins of gold that go through your life. And so Father Chisach was right in the sense of saying, lie once an innocence is gone,

fall and the vessel's broken and it cannot be made as good as new. He is correct. Because God's grace, does not make you as good as new. God's grace makes you better than new. This art form in Japan is called Kinsugi. And it's a way that God works with us so that we no longer have to feel owned by our past or powerless in the face of our present circumstances. Because Father, Shazak, he got it wrong. You know what else he got wrong? Father Walter knew the promise of God. He just didn't know how God was going to fulfill his promise. If you remember anything about last week,

You know that when Father was brought in before the interrogator, he begged the whole time. He said, God, I know Jesus, you promise. You said when they bring you before guards, when you bring before kings, don't worry about what you're going to say. I will give you the words to say. And so the whole time, he's praying to God. Jesus, give me the words, confound my adversaries. Give me the words to speak to the person who's interrogating me that will leave them speechless.

And then he said, but he didn't. In fact, I confounded no one, but was myself confounded. But looking back, Father Chizek realized, God had given me the words, but they weren't the words I wanted to say. I wanted to say words that would, again, convince my adversary, convince my interrogator of the truth of Christianity or my innocence. But the word God wanted me to say was simply, no, I won't sign, and I just couldn't do it. But everything changed once Father Chiswick trusted God.

This is the last thing. Once Father Chiswick got to that point, right, of he realized he forgot God, and he called out and realized, okay, Lord, you need to help me because I'm more broken than I ever possibly could imagine and also more love than I possibly hope. He said he no longer feared failing. He said, I no longer feared making a mistake. If you remember this last week and once again, that he used to say when he was brought before the interrogator, every time they walked him down the hallway, his body would physically shake because he was just so consumed by anxiety, I don't want to fail. But he said, I would experience this calm, this peace. He said,

they brought me before the interrogator, and I was like, I'm at peace. I no longer fear. making a mistake and no longer fear failing. Why? Because I trust in the Lord. And he said even the interrogator recognized this. He recognized that he was at a place of peace. And so he started saying, okay, well, Father Walter, how about you become a chaplain to the Polish army? Father Walter was like, sure, if God wants it.

How about you become a chaplain to the Russian army? Sure, if God wants it. How about you become a spy of the KGB to the Vatican? Father Walter was like, sure, if God wants it. until they finally got to a place where they said, okay, that's the deal. You're going to be a spy for the KGB, spying on the Vatican. Here's the paper, sign it.

In that moment, Father Walter, he knew that was the moment that God was saying, you need to say no. So he said, when the moment came to sign, I simply said no. And even though the interrogator like blew up and freaked out and said, I realize I can kill you immediately. He said, I had no fear at all. I think I smiled.

He said it was then that I knew I had won. Not because he beat the KGB, not because he beat the Soviet army, not because he beat anybody, but because he realized that even in that moment, I can do exactly what God's asking me. I am not owned by my past. I'm not powerless in the face of my current situation.

And God did not abandon me in this moment. That truth is the truth that every one of us needs to come to. that you are not owned by your past. You are not powerless in the face of your current situation. Why? Because you can actually step out of the darkness and into the light. But it means we have to decide. God so loved the world that he gave his only son

that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life. But we have to decide that I will trust God. I'm not owned by my past. I will trust God. I am not powerless in my, present situation, but he has conquered. It's His grace that sets us free. And my next step is a step into the light.