Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 03/23/25 The Place of the Way: The Valley

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

Homily from the Third Sunday of Lent. We all want peak moments, but growth happens in the Valley. Why do we walk through valleys? What good is life in the valley? Is it only a negative? Is it always a punishment from God? Or could the valley be necessary? Mass Readings from March 23, 2025: Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15 Psalm 103: 1-4, 6-8, 111 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12 Luke 13:1-9

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 Luke, chapter 13 verses 1 through 9. Some people told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood pilot had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. Jesus said to them in reply, do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, that they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means.

But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did. or those 18 people who were killed when the tower at Saloam fell on them, do you think that they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means. But I tell you, if you did not repent, you will all perish as they did. And he told them this parable. There was once a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard,

and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, for three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree, but have found none. So cut it down. why should it exhaust the soil? The gardener said to him in reply, Sir, leave it for this year also,

and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it, that it may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down. The gospel of the Lord. Nice. So what I'm going to share today, I have a sense that many, if not most of us, will find it hard to hear.

And I think that many of us, if not most of us, will find it even more to to understand and probably almost all of us will find it very, very difficult to accept. And I just wanted to get that out right away because this is kind of difficult. Because one of the reasons why is because I think that in our lives, I think we love the peak. What I mean by that is I think we, as human beings, they just think we love peak moments. I think we love the mountaintop experiences.

I think, I mean, just look at this. We love highlight reels. I can be captivated by highlight reels of sports. I don't even, I don't even like. But that's the thing is like I love the peak experiences. the mountain top experiences. I love those highlight rails. I love watching videos of like a guitar virtuoso, right? Someone who can play the guitar so well. I love seeing that. I love, I'm amazed at world record performances. I want to get those clips of that final lap.

I think it's so cool when something like to watch something like men gymnastics when they like do the iron cross or they're up on the high bar and just flip it around. That is in or even the fact that I think it's amazing that Albert Einstein and I don't know if you know this. In one year he published four groundbreaking papers that completely in some ways redefined our understanding of physics. So, I mean, we do. We love peak moments. We love mountaintop experiences. I think we love highlight reels at the same time. I know myself. And I love watching people play the guitar like that, but I'm not willing to practice like that. Like, right, I love seeing the people in their world record moments, but I'm not willing to train like that. And I love reading about people like Albert Einstein

who makes such a huge impact. And I realized that I probably am not someone who's willing to sacrifice my comforts or sacrifice my social life or sacrifice my freedom for that kind of peak moment because you might have heard someone say it like this. It said everyone wants the view,

but no one wants the climb. Everyone wants to see what it looks like at the top of the podium, but no one likes that climb. You know, in the first reading today in the book of Exodus, we have this story of Moses, right? This, talk about a mountaintop experience.

Here's Moses on Mount Horib. And the experience is God himself, the very presence of God in the burning bush. And in that burning bush, God reveals himself. He reveals his name to Moses and sets him on this whole new, whole new path. I think we look at that and say, I would love that.

I would love to have a peak experience where God just reveals himself. He tells me his name that he, he communicates to me in such a way that I know him in a deeper way. That is clearly a peak experience. That is clearly a mountaintop moment. I think we forget the fact that before this moment, Moses has spent 40 years hidden.

Before this moment, Moses has spent 40 years toiling. Before this mountaintop moment, Moses has spent 40 years in the valley. So here we are in Lent. We talked about how Lent is a season of asceticism. And that word asceticism or acesis is Greek not for discipline and not just for self-denial. It's Greek for training. So we realize that every one of us, right now in this Lent, we're called to enter into Assisus. Again, not just self-discipline, not just self-denial.

We're invited into this season for training. And that means we're not training to stand on a podium. and we're training to look more like Jesus. We're training to live like Jesus. We're training to be able to do something at the end of this Lent that we can't currently do. We're training to be a certain way that we don't currently look. We're training to, again, to be like Jesus.

And I think sometimes we can, maybe not you, but we can imagine that, okay, that means Lent is going to be a series of peak moment after peak moment, right? That means that Lent is going to be the series of success after success. Like, okay, I decided I was going to do this. I'm going to train this way. This is my Assesis, right? I'm going to do this thing for Lent.

I'm going to stop doing these other things for Lent. and I'm just going to go from win to win to win, and this whole process of Lent is going to be one massive mountain top experience. And if we think that, hopefully, reality has already woken us up. Because if we know this, we know that the mountaintop experience we're looking for, the mountain top moment, the peak moment we're looking for,

is not from last week. Remember last week the gospel was Jesus on Mount Tabor being transfigured. Like that's glory, shows his glory, shows his goodness, shows his power. That's not the moment that we're working towards. not Mount Tabor, not Transfiguration. The moment we're working towards the kind of Jesus we want to be, little Christ we want to be, is not from last weekend, but it's from a couple weeks from now.

When Jesus is on a different mountain, Mount called Calvary, Mount called Galgatha, and on that mountain, what does Jesus do? On that mountain, Jesus is able to say, Father, forgive them. On that mountain, Jesus is able to say, Father, in the worst moment of my life, I commend my spirit into your hands. Jesus is able to say, on that mountain experience,

and that peak experience, Jesus is able to say, God, I trust in you. And again, I think we can imagine the process from where we are to there can just be a peak experience. We go from win to win to win. Lent is not like that, and life is not like that. Actually, it's very much not like that.

We have to realize that to have moments at the peak, we have to understand that means we're going to live in a place of training right so that series this whole Lent is all about like the dojo right and dojo is Japanese for the place of the way and the place of the way is not the peak

let's just have to understand this the place of the way is the valley that's just the truth the place of the way the place of training to look like Jesus is not the peak the place of training is actually the valley and so we've been following a man named Takashi Nagai

who was raised Shinto in Japan. He became an atheist when he was in high school and college. Ultimately, he became a Catholic, but it's fascinating because if you read the book, a song for Nagasaki, you can see the valley that was written in Japan that led to Takashi Nagai in his faith. And it started 400 years before Takashi Nagai. In fact, it started with a man named St. Francis Xavier.

St. Francis Xavier was one of the first Jesuits. And he came to Japan in 1545. And as St. Francis Xavier came to Japan at 1545, he brought the gospel, and immediately he had like a thousand converts. Within 30 years of the gospel being brought to Japan, there were over 200,000 Catholics. It was just incredible. But because there were all these samurai who became Catholic, there were all these other Damio who became Catholic, there were the other people of importance who became Catholic, pretty soon the emperor realized that they are giving their allegiance to a Lord who's name is not his. They're giving their allegiance to a Lord's name

is Jesus. And so he came down pretty hard on Christians. One of the first moments that really just demonstrated the persecution of Christians was involved the Martyr, it called the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki. In 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki, led by a man named Paul Miki. Paul Miki was a Jesuit himself, but he's Japanese Jesuit. Ranged from people his age. He was 30. 33 years old, all the way down to about, I think, 13 or 14 years old, these 26 Catholics in order to humiliate them. And in order to break the faith of the Japanese Catholics of Nagasaki, they were marched through the winter, single file, through the snow, up to Nagasaki.

And the emperor had thought, or the person in charge had thought, that I'm going to, I'm going to demonstrate how humiliated these men are. I'm going to show them being tortured. I'm going to show them being killed. And the faith of the people there in Nagasaki is going to be. be broken. And so here is Paul Miki and his companions, these 26 martyrs that were led through the valley. At the end of the valley, they were led up a hill. And the hill was called Nishikizakka, Nishizhaka. And they were crucified up there. And at one point,

Paul Miki indicated that he wanted to speak. And this was his peak moment. This was his mountain top moment. After living a life in the valley, Palmiki was now on a hill and he was now on a cross just like Jesus. And he was able to say words that were just like Jesus. He said this. He said, I'm a Japanese and a brother of the society of Jesus. Basically, I'm Japanese and I'm a Jesuit. He says, I've committed no crime. The only reason that I'm condemned to die is that I have taught the gospel of my Lord Jesus Christ and I'm happy to die and I accept death as a great gift from my Lord. And then he did something amazing. He asked for the crowd, he asked them if they saw fear on the face of the 26th around among him. And he showed them there was no

fear. Why? Because heaven was real. Get only one dying prayer, one dying request that they believe. That even as they continue to walk through the valley, that they also forgive Emperor Hideyoshi. And they're responsible for their execution. And his last words were among this. He said, after Christ's example, I forgive my persecutors. I mean, this is, again, this is what it is to look like Jesus on the mountaintop, but he can only do this because he went through a valley. Because why? because the valley is the place of the way. You went on to say, I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on them all,

and I hope that my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful reign. Here's Paul Miki who said, no, I don't just forgive. I don't just not hate. I'm asking that God uses my sacrifice so that everyone who's here can have faith, can have trust in God when they're walking through the valley.

That martyrdom of those 26 Catholics began roughly almost 300 years of Catholics living in the valley. In fact, they were called the hidden Christians. For the next 250, 300 years, they were called the hidden Christians. And they settled in that valley. In fact, the valleys called the Urukami Valley outside just in Nagasaki. And there were some incredible stories of how, you know, at one point the priests were all driven out of Japan. And for roughly 250 years, just blows my mind. After roughly 250 years, those Catholic Christians, they live without a priest.

And so some of the elders, they had like a water man who was in charge of baptizing people. They had a calendar man who was in charge of keeping track of Advent and Christmas and Lent and Eastern all those dates. They had, and then a head person. The head person was in charge with like holding together the faith and passing on the faith. Because the priest before they left, 250 years before this, they had said, when he said, listen, the Japanese, they said, listen, the Catholic Church will come back to Japan. Like, don't be afraid. And when the church comes back, you will know it by three signs. Their priests will be celibate.

He said that there'll be a statue of Mary and they'll be obedient to the Papa Sama in Rome. And so years later, I think it was 1864, there was this, I think it was a French priest, Father Petiguan, who arrived in Nagasaki. He went to the valley. He went to the Urukami Valley. And he went to the church because they allowed Europeans,

Westerners, to worship. But they didn't allow Japanese to worship in the church. And here is Father Petitjean who had dreamt of going to Japan. His whole life, he had heard about St. Francis Xavier. He heard about those 26 martyrs in Japan. Now he was finally there, but he couldn't talk to any Japanese because if they talked to him, they could get persecuted, they could have their land stolen, they could be killed. But some of the women there in the Okami Valley, who had been living in the valley, right, that place of the way, they'd heard that there was a Catholic. It heard that he wasn't married, and they heard that he was faithful to

Papa Sama in Rome, so they had two of the three. And so one day, they disguised themselves, and they snuck into the church. And they found Father Petitjean just dejectedly praying his bravery. And they saw him, and they asked him the question. They said, basically, they walked up and said, where's the statue of Holy Mary? He didn't understand it at first. And they were just like, know, where is Holy Mary? And he understood it. He's like, oh yeah, or right over here, right over here. And it's amazing because one of the women said, listen, our hearts, because he was afraid. Like, what are they doing? They're trying to trap me. She said, no, our hearts and your heart are the same. And so we showed them the statue of Mary. And when they saw her,

these women just cried out, yes, that's her. That's her. And look, it's her. And in her arms is the child Jesus. For 250 years, these Catholics held on to the faith. These Catholics lived in the Urukami Valley. If this was a mountaintop moment where they finally realized, okay, here is God who has come to us. And he's given us not just baptism. He's given us all the sacraments. It's only because they had spent so much time in the valley. And that's where the valley where those Catholics learned to trust God. That's the valley where their faith was formed. That's the valley where their faith was forged. Just like St. Paul said to the Corinthians in the second reading today, he's like, listen, he said, your ancestors.

they all pass through it, they all pass through the fire, they all pass through the cloud, they all pass through the sea, they all pass through these low places. Here's a question, here's a pause on this one. Question for us as Catholics in the 21st century. How do we see low places? Like how do we understand valleys? In the gospel today, you know, Jesus points out these two tragedies that happen. Pilot mingles the blood of Jews with the sacrifices, the pagans, this building falls down to some of the Jews in Jerusalem. The question is, Jesus says, do you think that happened because they're bad? Do you think that happened because God's punishing them? Do you think that's happened because they deserved it? Do you think it's happening because it's just an accident? Question, how do we live

in the valley? How do we live in the place of the way? Because after 250 years of living in the valley, the darkest day for those people in the valley was yet to come. And it came on August 9th, 1945. On the morning of August 9, 1945, there was a U.S. Air Force pilot named Major Charles Sweeney, who also was raised a Catholic, who piloted a B-29 bomber named a boxcar, loaded with an atomic bomb called Fat Man. And it was, it wasn't destined for Urukami Valley. Actually, his target was somewhere else, but the cloud cover was too thick, and they had mechanical difficulties. they were running low on fuel, and so he diverted his course, and he was flying over the Urukami Valley, flying over that part of Nagasaki, and at one moment, there was an opening in the clouds,

and he spotted the Urukami Cathedral. And it was when he spotted the Urukami Cathedral that he knew he would release the bomb. So at 11 a.m., the atomic bomb detonated only 300 meters from the Uraqami Cathedral. That day was like a normal day for all the residents of Nagasaki. It was a normal day for Takashi. He was at work. His children, they were in the mountains

to keep them safe from all the bombing. His wife Madori was at home praying a rosary. And the church at the Urukami Cathedral, two priests were hearing confessions that day. And then the bomb was dropped. There's an account from the book, A Song for Nagasaki. that talks about it, it says the plutonium 239 bomb exploded in Nagasaki with the equivalent force of 22,000 tons of conventional explosives.

Not counting the radiation, which is lethal, its intense heat which reached several million degrees at its epicenter the whole mass of the huge bomb ionized and a fireball created making the air around it luminous emitting ultraviolet and infrared rays rays and blistering roof tiles further than half a mile from the epicenter Exposed human skin was scorched up to two and a half miles away. The velocity of the wind that rushed out from the epicenter was going faster than a mile a second, which is 60 times the weight of a major cyclone, or the speed of a major cyclone.

A mile of second, destroying everything. In the book, Asong for Nagasaki, there's a couple different descriptions of what happened. In fact, Midori, Tagashi, She's wife, her 19-year-old cousin, she just found her two small brothers. They were chasing dragonflies where she was. She told them their mother wanted them, and they heard the plane coming, so they ran to go into a bomb shelter.

And as they entered, the bomb went off, and it says this, they were picked up and hurled to the far wall, and she blacked out. Coming to, she feared, she heard the two children whimpering at her feet and wondered why it was so dark. As the little light began to penetrate the gloom, she was paralyzed with terror. Two hideous monsters had appeared at the shelter's end. entrance, making croaking noises and trying to crawl in. As the darkness lifted a little, she saw that they were human beings, but been outside when

the bomb exploded. In less than seconds, they had been skinned alive, half a mile from the epicenter. She saw that the raw bodies had been picked up and smashed into the side of the shelter. She went outside. She could hardly see anything. She stood there, her eyes involuntarily drinking in this hideous details. There were four children playing in a sandbox. and the skin of their hands had been torn away at the wrists

and hung from their fingernails like inside out gloves. She was losing her mind, she felt, come back into the shelter. And they just kept crying out. She kept hearing the words, Mizu, Mizu, which means water. There's a 10-year-old girl, Michiko. And she found herself after the bomb pinned by rubble. And she cried and cried and cried. And someone came, she didn't know who it was, someone came in and got her free.

And outside, she saw the evil-looking clouds coming in, and it goes on to say, she became conscious of a tiny voice becoming hysterical, and it was her two-year-old sister, trapped under a crossbeam. She turned for help, and she saw it dashing toward them a naked woman, her body greasy, purple like an eggplant, with her head, hair, reddish-brown, and frizzled. And she realized, oh my gosh, it's my mom. This naked woman, her clothes burned off. Her body almost destroyed was her own mom.

And she said, all she could do, speechless, she pointed to her little sister. And the mom looked wildly at the fires that had already started, dived into the rubble, put her shoulder under the beam and heaved. The two-year-old was free, and the mom hugging her to her breast, collapsed to the ground. There was no skin left on her shoulder that she had put under the beam with just raw, bleeding meat. And her father appeared, badly burnt too. And she watched in dumb helplessness as her mom, his wife, grown and struggled to rise. then all of her strength ebbed away,

and she collapsed dead. You know, it's interesting. Major Sweeney, after the fact, the pilot, he said that dropping the bomb was necessary. He said that while it was horrible, it saved millions of lives and put an end of the war. And he claimed, and other people claimed, that there was no other way.

They claimed that every other option would have been more deadly. It would have been deadlier to not drop the bomb. If you asked the question, What was this? What was this valley? Like the gospel, was it, was it God's punishment? Was it random? Was it an accident? The question comes back to us is, how do we see this valley? Urukami Valley? How do we see any valley? How could this valley possibly be the place of the way? Here's Takashi when he was in the hospital when this bomb had gone off and so he was relatively protected,

but he was very badly injured, and he spent days, days and nights, tending to the wounded, saving lives. Again, his two children were safe, but his wife, Maduri. He found her body days later. Charred burnt almost to ash, but he saw her clutching her rosary, and he took consolation in the fact that she died praying to our lady. Now, up to this point, Madari already, or sorry, Takashi already had leukemia. And after the bomb went off and after he exerted,

He became even more sick. He almost died, in fact. He had a miraculous recovery that happened on August 9th. On November 23rd of that same year, there was an outdoor mass outside of the rubble of Rokami Cathedral. And Takashi was asked to speak. He was asked to try to make sense of all of this and try to speak words that would encourage the people of Nagasaki, the Catholics of Nagasaki. And he didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to make sense of this. And his wife, his beloved wife, had died. here he was on the verge of death himself. Everything he had owned, almost everyone he knew, they were gone.

And so he didn't know what to say. How do you make sense of this? How do he make sense of the valley? And he heard two stories that just clicked with him. And they're both stories of how children, immediately after the bomb, who were badly burned, who were injured, how they gathered in groups and instinctively turned a prayer.

There's some of these stories that these kids, even though their skin was burnt off, would huddled together and they would pray the rosary. They would gather together, not because anyone told them, because they knew what it was like to live in the valley. They knew what it was like to be able to trust God, even in the worst of moments. And so here in the worst moments of their life, their last moments of their lives, these young children, up to adolescence, up to teenagers,

gathered together and they would sing songs praising God. I like how they said to this. It said, this was not a force or organized prayer. but a deeply ingrained response to their suffering. Reflecting the faith that had been nurtured in their families and community for almost 300 years, these Catholics knew what it was like to have walked in the valley, to have lived in the valley. And so, Takashi knew what he had to do.

He, on the day on November 23rd, he got up and he ascended the steps. This man who had lived his life in the valley, he ascended the steps to the Orakami Cathedral. He bowed to the priests who were there. He bowed to the people who were listening. And then he said these words. It's kind of a longer quote, but I apologize, but these are his words. Takashi Nagai.

Just months after almost everyone he knew and loved was killed, he himself was badly injured, said, on the morning of August 9th, the world stood at a crossroads. A decision had to be made. Peace or further cruel bloodshed and carnage. Just then, at 11.02 a.m. And Adamon exploded over our suburb. In an instant, 8,000 Christians were called the guy.

In a few hours, flames turned to ash, this venerable far eastern holy place, the church itself. He said at midnight that night, our cathedral suddenly burst into flames and was consumed. At exactly the same time in the imperial palace, his majesty of the emperor, had made known his decision to end the war. And on August 15th, the imperial rescript, which put an end to fighting, was formerly promulgated, and the whole world saw the light of peace. I don't know if you know this, August 15th, is also the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Takashi and the guy made a connection.

He said, here, our lady, the queen of peace, on that feast day, and the assumption of Mary, this feast of the assumption of Mary, war ended. He said, was this the convergence of events? Was it just merely coincidental, or was it the mysterious providence of God? He goes on to say, he said,

I heard that the atom bomb was destined for another city. Heavy clouds rendered that target impossible, and the American crew headed for the secondary target, us, Nagasaki. Then a mechanical problem arose, and the bomb was dropped further north and planned and burst right over our cathedral. And he said these words that were just so powerful. He said, it was not the American crew, I believe, who chose our suburb. I guess the question, well, who was it then? He said, God's Providence chose Urukami and carried the bomb right over our homes. He asked the question, is there not a profound connection, relationship between the annihilation of Nagasaki and the end of the war?

Was not Nagasaki, the chosen victim, the land without blemish, slain and whole burnt offering as an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II? Now, at this point, so many people in the crowd, they were angry. They also had lost everyone that they knew. They had lost everything that they owned. They're getting mad, but Takashi just calmly, calmly waited. And he continued, he said, we are all inheritors of Adam's sin.

We are all inheritors of Cain's sin. He killed his brother. And yes, we have forgotten that we're God's children. We've turned to idols and forgotten love. Hating one another, killing one another. Yes, even joyfully killing one another. At last, the evil and horrible conflict came to an end. The mere repentance was not enough for peace.

We had to offer a stupendous sacrifice. Cities had been leveled, but even that wasn't enough. only this sacrifice of Nagasaki sufficed. And at that moment, God inspired the emperor to issue a proclamation that ended the war. The Christian flock of Nagasaki was true to the faith through three centuries of persecution, and during the recent war, it prayed ceaselessly for lasting peace.

So here was the one pure lamb that had to be sacrificed as Holocaust on his altar, so that many millions might be saved. And last he said, In the very depths of our grief, like in this valley, we were able to gaze up and see something beautiful, pure and sublime. Happy are those who weep. They shall be comforted. He said, we must walk the way of reparation, ridiculed, whipped, punished for our crimes, sweaty and bloody. But we can turn our mind's eye to Jesus carrying his cross up the hill of Calvary.

The Lord has given. The Lord has taken away. blessed be the name of the Lord. And he concluded by saying, let us be thankful that Nagasaki was chosen for the whole burnt sacrifice. Let us be thankful that through this sacrifice,

peace was granted to the whole world and religious freedom to Japan. How do we make sense of life in the valley? How do we make sense of having to walk through the valley and having everything taken from us? How do we make sense of life not turning out the way we want to? Takashi said, we're Hensai. Hensai is the Japanese word.

for whole burnt offering. Basically, here's, here is Tukashi who said, we got to participate. This is not an accident. It's not God's punishment. We didn't deserve this. We were given the gift of being able to participate in God's redemption of the world.

We were able to be given the gift of being able to end the war by our sacrifice. By my wife's sacrifice. There was no more violence. By my neighbor's sacrifice. There was no more violence. I wonder, I wonder,

we realize this is so difficult to accept. I wonder if Major Sweeney was right. Major Sweeney said, dropping the bomb was necessary. Takashi Nagai also said dropping the bomb was necessary. Again, in a way, both were right

that Nagasaki was offered as a sacrifice necessary to end the war. But I think of the two men, of the two perspectives, one is deeper and one is truer than the other. The first one is spoken from someone who is willing to offer the sacrifice. The other, from Takashi, is spoken by someone who's willing to be the sacrifice.

And I know that we might hate this. But I've also seen people point to the differences between Hiroshima, which also experienced the atomic bomb and Nagasaki. And they've said that in the wake of the atomic bomb, Hiroshima is defined by anger and resentment and bitterness. Whereas if you visit Nagasaki, it is defined by the anger and resentment and bitterness. It is defined by sadness, but also forgiveness and peace. In fact, people even said that Nagasaki is a global symbol of peace. That it is a sign of what it is to forgive. An example of how we all might be.

In some ways, Nagasaki, this place in the valley is at the same time as city on a hill. And this is the last thing. We know that peak moments happen. But growth occurs in the valley. That every one of us, we love mountain moments. But those mountain moments are rarely moments of transformation. That we know that when we are on the path to become like Jesus, that happens most in the valley.

As you might have heard, there is no crown without the cross. There is no resurrection without Calvary. And for every one of us, there can be no way that we live like Jesus, look like Jesus, and love like Jesus. Unless we pass to the place of the way. And the place of the way is the valley.