Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 04/01/21 Context Matters

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

Homily from the Evening Mass of the Lord's Supper. On the night He was betrayed…He gave. Everything in the Bible leads to the moment of the Last Supper…and leads to every time we are at the Mass. Mass Readings from April 1, 2021: Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14 Psalms 116:12-13, 15-181 Corinthians 11:23-26 John 13:1-15

So, everything written in this book, everything written in this book leads to this moment right now, tonight. Like everything written in the whole Old Testament, everything written in the New Testament, all of it points to what we're doing tonight, which we'll get back to in a second. So we have to understand, right, that whenever we're reading a story, whenever we're telling a story, context matters, even just life, context matters every time. Because context, I think, is the only thing that helps us get past the surface. context is one of those things like when you know the context of a story, when you know the context of a movie,

when you know the context of what's happening, helps us realize the significance. Because if you don't know the context, we won't know the significance of what's going on. So like, okay, example. When I was in high school, I really loved the musical, Les Mis, like Les Miserabright because whatever, I don't know, nerd. And so I decided I want to read the book because Victor Hugo wrote this great novel. and I finished it in college because not that nerdy. So, but one of the things in that book is just,

strikes me so powerful. So the story, you might know this story, is this man named Jean Valjean. And Jean Valjean, he steals a loaf of bread to feed his sister's children who are dying. And because of that, he gets thrown into jail. And he keeps trying to escape. So he gets, he's in hard labor for 20 years.

And when he gets finally, he's treated so poorly that when he finally gets out of prison, he is just reduced to being an animal. Essentially, he's little more than an animal. He sees this world as being just violent and brutal and doesn't care about you at all. And so you don't care about anyone else. That's like how he lived.

And so he'd go to village to village, and being an ex-con, being an ex-felon, he was never hired by anybody. He couldn't stay with him. No one would feed him until he came to this bishop's house. And the bishop welcomed him and fed him and gave him a place to sleep. And John Valjean rewarded him by stealing his silverware

and running off into the night. The police found him, and he told him that the bishop, bishop just gave it to him, so they brought him back to the bishop's house, and fully expecting the bishop to bust him and say, no, he just stole this from me. The bishop said, actually, yes, I gave him all of these things. And in fact, you forgot the most expensive stuff, these two silver candlesticks from his mantelpiece.

And Jebel Jean is so wracked by this, he's so rocked by this, that he has to come face to face with these two different ways of living, two different ways of looking at the world. One is, I'm just an animal, and everyone else is just an animal. They're just here for me to either plow down or for them to try to try to to plow me over, or I'm going to live like this man. Either just get what you can or live like this bishop. And it's this critical moment, but again, if you haven't read the book, you don't know

the context. That Victor Hugo, he spends the first 100 pages of this book describing the life of the bishop. This guy who shows up for one moment in Jean Valjean's life in this massively long story, but he devotes 100 pages to the fact of the bishop is this isn't just a random moment for the bishop. This is how he lives. This is how he lives his life. He lives a simple life, a humble life, a holy life. And so Jean Valjean just happens to be the guy who showed up that Tuesday.

But here's this bishop who is so conformed to Jesus that that's what makes sense. And that gives the context for this massive conversion, this massive transformation in Jean Valjean's life. So the story goes on, right? Jean Valjean, he changes his life, gives his life to Jesus. He adopts this young woman named Cosette. he raises her as his own and at one point Cosette meets this man Marius again if you've seen the musical you're like yeah

it's so great it's awesome they fall in love Jean Valjean follows Marius to the barricades and he sings that's a awesome song you know the song right to bring him home song I'm not going to do it but just picture it it's it's this prayer where he's this young man is sleeping at the barricades as a French revolutionary and Jean Valjean says praying God bring him home bring him home it's so good and that is not at all what Victor Hugo

wrote in the book in the book Jean Valjean doesn't like this guy much not only because he's a French revolutionary which were not the best also because he wanted to steal his daughter from him and so Jean Valjean follows him to the barricades but not

to like pray over him he follows him to the barricades and make sure he doesn't mess up maybe kind of sort of to protect him but what happens is Marius gets injured and Jean Valjean picks him up this man he does not like he man in fact he might even hate to save his life he goes into the French sewers.

Now we think that's gross, but Victor Hugo thought it was grosser. So what he had done is before he tells this whole story about Jean Valjean going to the barricades and rescuing this man he does not like, he devotes an entire chapter, which is over 100 pages, to the development of the Paris sewers.

It is riveting reading. Remarkable. Every page of page Turner. But why? Because Victor Hugo wants to give the kind of context. Like, this is the depth of this man's character. This is the depth of this man's nobility, that he was willing to pick up this man, this young man, who he did not like, he did not love, who loved his daughter, who was going to steal his daughter away, and he was willing to go

into this parish sewers. And at one point in the book, it's incredible. He's carrying this young man Marius on his shoulders as the slant on the floor goes down deeper and deeper and deeper and the sewage gets higher and higher. It goes up to his mouth and goes up to his nose. And Jean Valjean realizes that the next step he's going to take, he's going to take. He either lets go up Marius and saves his life, or he goes under the sewage and dies with this young man. And so he takes a step down, but instead it was a step up. And then the next step up and step up, and he gets out of the sewers.

Again, the context, if you know the whole story, the context changes everything. Because again, context matters. In fact, I would almost say that context, to truly understand, context is everything. So if you were with us here last Sunday night on Palm Sunday at 6 p.m. Mass, we talked about another piece of literature. The piece of literature was Dante's Inferno. We talked about how Dante Alighari had The Divine Comedies. And he had Inferno, which is on hell and Purgatorio, on Purgatorio, and Paradiso on Paradise. And we talked last Sunday night about how when Dante wrote about hell, there's a sign above hell that says, abandon all hope ye who enter here. And he describes what he

called like the suburbs of hell. And the suburbs of hell were this thing that we could call. call the vestibule of the futile, and is filled with people who never believed in anything, never stood for anything in their entire lives. But if you get past that vestibule of the futile, Dante gives a context for hell. So he gives these rings, these circles of hell. In the first circle of hell that Dante writes about, he called that limbo when he was for those unbaptized people or for the virtuous pagans. Basically not like super hell, but just kind of nice hell, I guess. But then Dante has the second and third circles of hell. He says, gets deeper and deeper, and the second and third, the circles of hell are for those

whose main sins were lust and gluttony. Now, we might think as like 21st century people like, whoa, that's really bad. That's like deep, deep hell. Like, no, for Dante, that's on the outside. Why? Because those physical sins, for him, his context, was, they're not as bad as the sins of the mind or the sins of the soul. Because if you get to levels four and five, that's when you get those whose sins were greed and anger. And not just like anger as an emotion, but anger as a state of being, anger as a chosen way I want to live my life. But when you get to the stages, circles, six, seven, and eight, circle six is those who are guilty of heresy and blasphemy.

Basically, those who have spoken against the Lord, or spoken error about the Lord to God's children and distorted how they saw God. It gets worse because the seventh circle of hell is where he reserves for those people who are guilty of violence. And violence and murder. and what that means is those who are guilty of murder or violence against God's children. But the Eighth Circle, the Eighth Circle is reserved for those whose main sin was fraud. You think that's so crazy, like, wait, fraud is more serious than greed or gluttony or blasphemy or lust.

Like, yes, for Dante, his context was fraud was even worse than all those other sins. Why? Because he said, because fraud was like spiritual theft. when you deceive someone and you steal them away from God's love. He calls them the seducers or the hypocrites or the falsifiers. See, this is the context. It gets worse and worse and worse.

Because when we understand the context, right, everything changes. When we understand the context, we realize the significance of what's going on. And I say all of this to talk about tonight because I think a lot of times we come to Mass and we miss the context. So what do we do?

we walk in, we genuflect, we sit, we stand, we kneel, Body of Christ, Amen. Like, we go through all the motions. But we don't realize the context, and the context is everything that God has done, everything that God has done that's captured in this book points to this moment, has led us to this moment. I mean, even from the very, very first chapters in Genesis. Think about, here's Genesis 2, what happens? God puts Adam and Eve in the garden.

And what does he say? He says, basically, you know, all these trees, all this fruit of these trees, God is ultimately saying, here, listen, I want to be your dad. Let me feed you. From the very beginning of the Bible, here's God who says, I love you, just let me feed you. What do we say? I don't feed myself. The story goes on.

You have a story of like Abraham and Isaac, right? Here is Abraham who has this beloved son, Isaac, and God says to him, Abraham, the father, I want you to take your only beloved son and sacrifice him on. the height to which I'll point out to you. So Abraham takes and his son, Isaac, they're walking up Mount Moriah. And at one point, Isaac turns to his father and he says, Father, we have the fire here, we have the knife here, but where is the sacrifice? What are we going to offer? And at that point, Abraham says these words that echo throughout the rest of the Bible and they echo out throughout the rest of history. Abraham looks at his son and he says, God will provide himself a lamb,

my son. Question, where's the lamb? And Abraham says, God will provide himself a lamb. You know, on that same mountain, on that exact same mountain, earlier in Abraham's life, he had met this first priest you see in the Bible. The first priest in the Bible is a man named Melchizedek. He's a priest and a king. And on that same mountain, Melchizedek offers up a sacrifice, but its unique sacrifice. It's a sacrifice of bread and of wine, which is so remarkable. And on that same mountain, again, Abraham says God will provide for himself a lamb later on. What happens? Hundreds of years later, people of Israel, they're enslaved in Egypt. and how does God set them free?

At one night, God says, okay, here's what you need to do. We heard about it tonight. Exodus Chapter 12, here's what you need to do. If you want freedom and you want life, you are slaves and you're dead. If you want freedom and you want life, what you need to do is take a single, one-year-old, unblemished lamb, sacrifice it and eat its flesh and be marked by its blood. And if you do this, if you eat the flesh of the lamb,

and you're marked, your homes are marked by the blood of the lamb, what you'll get is you'll get freedom and you'll get life. And to not eat the lamb is to not get freedom. To not eat the lamb is to not get life. This sets the path for the next couple books of the Bible that are all about, here is how God wants to be worshipped. Again, everything, everything in the Bible is pointing to tonight because what happens, Jesus shows up.

I just jumped a bunch of hundred years, but Jesus showed up. And John the Baptist looks at Jesus and he turns to Andrew and he turns to John. And he points to Jesus and says, behold, that's the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Now for us, we hear that and we're like, yeah, because Jesus is gentle and he's sweet and he's kind and he's fluffy. Like, you know, when John the Baptist said about Jesus, behold, the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world, he was not pointing out how fluffy Jesus was. He was pointing to Jesus and saying, that right there, that man you see walking, that's the sacrifice. On Mount Moriah, what did Abraham say?

God will provide himself a lamb, my son. And John the Baptist, looks at Jesus and he says, that's the lamb. That's the land that God has provided. That's, in fact, you know, on Palm Sunday, when Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem, that was the same day that all the sacrificial lambs were brought into the city of Jerusalem, the exact same day.

So when you and I pictured this scene, a lot of times I just picture Jesus riding down a donkey, palm branches, people throwing their clothes on the ground. That's all true. But I forget to include the fact that there were thousands of lambs walking in the same. same, exact same gate, exact same door as Jesus was on that Palm Sunday. Because why? Because he is the lamb, the sacrificial lamb who takes away the sins in the world. And on that Passover,

the night we celebrate tonight, what does Jesus say? He looks at his friends and he says, I have longed. I have longed to eat this Passover with you. Why? These are the disciples. Jesus has already celebrated at least two Passover with them. why did he long to eat this Passover with them? We find out when we read Mark and Matthew and Luke because Jesus at one point at that supper he picks up bread and he says, take this all of you and eat of it. This is my body given for you.

Takes a chalice filled with wine and says, take this all of you and drink from it. This is the blood of the new and eternal covenant which we poured out for you and for many for this forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me. Basically, everything, everything in the Bible points to this gift. It's an incredible gift

that Jesus actually gives us in the Eucharist truly his body and truly his blood. But you know what's crazy? What blows my mind is although this is massively clear in the scriptures that everything in the Bible points to Jesus giving us himself in the Eucharist, did you know that only 27% of Catholics actually believe that?

Only 27% percent of Catholics actually believe that. percent of Catholics actually believe that Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist. They think he's just a symbol. Which is bonkers. That is like crazy to think. Especially because if you go back to John's Gospel, John chapter 6, what happens is Jesus has just done some remarkable things. He's fed 5,000 people with a couple loaves and a couple fish. And the next day, people show up and he says to them, you want to believe in me. Here's the deal. I am the bread of life. I'm the bread that came down from heaven. He goes on to say, this is in John chapter 6, verse 51 he says, I'm the living bread that came down from heaven. And whoever eats this bread will live

forever. And then he has this kicker, this killer line. He says, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. Now that moment, people thought he was speaking symbolic. They thought he was speaking literally because it says, then they fought among themselves saying, how can he give us his flesh to eat? Question, you guys know the answer to this question, but I have to ask it. Question, does it sound, when they say, how can this man give us his flesh to eat? Does it sound like they're taking him symbolically or literally? Correct. Literally, that one person or who answered. So, in response to them taking Jesus literally, he doesn't say, yes, listen, listen, listen, back down. I'm being figurative. It's called symbolic language. It's a metaphor. It's like a simile.

Jesus doesn't do that. He says, amen, amen, I say to you, unless, unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you cannot have life. You do not have life within you. He goes on to say it four more times. Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you cannot have eternal life. for my flesh is true food, my blood is true drink. That, that last supper, tonight, the thing that the entire Bible leads to, Jesus is saying, actually, I'm giving you not just a gift of me, I'm giving you me. I'm not giving you a blessing. I'm giving you myself.

I'm not just giving you a gift. The Eucharist isn't just a gift. The Eucharist is the giver of the gift, which makes this night not just incredible, but makes this night awful. It's what makes this night awful because Dante wrote about nine circles of hell and after the circle of fraud the spiritual theft

the deepest circle of hell where Dante puts Lucifer and he puts Cassius and he puts Judas and he puts Judas that ninth circle of hell is the circle of those who have betrayed the deepest circle of hell the deepest, the worst sin that Donde could imagine was betrayal.

You can ask the question like, wait, wait, why, what makes betrayal so bad? What makes betrayal worse than all those others? What makes betrayal worse than murder? What makes betrayal such a unique thing? And I think it's this. If you've ever thought about this, you know, you can't be betrayed by a stranger. You can't be betrayed by an enemy. An enemy can't betray you.

you can only be betrayed by someone that you've trusted. You can only be betrayed by someone that you love. In order to betray, you have to first be trusted. And the depth to which you've loved someone, the depth to which you've trusted someone, that's the depth to which betrayal can destroy you. In fact, that's what betrayal does. I mean, that's the depth of betrayal.

Because if we know this, when going through this life, to be able to trust another person, it's the only thing it keeps us together. To be able to trust another person is the only thing that makes friendships or relationships. It's the only thing that makes society. And that takes courage. It takes faith.

But if someone once said that like this, they said, but if I betray you, then I am undermining your necessary faith in life itself. If I betray you, I'm undermining your necessary faith in humanity. and you actually can hurt, you can traumatize someone that way. In fact, you can completely change the way a person looks at the world. Some of you have been betrayed before, and you know.

Because betrayal is not just an accident, right? Betrayal's not an accident. It's not just, I'm sorry, I was weak at that moment. Betrayal is, I have decided to take your trust and then use that trust in order to get what I want. Betrayal is the kind of thing, is catastrophic. because when we're betrayed, it doesn't just steal our faith and doesn't just steal our courage, it doesn't just steal our trust. It can often steal our goodness. In fact, betrayal can make a person evil. When you've been betrayed, it actually has potential, it has the capacity to turn your heart dark.

And that brings us to the context of tonight. In the second Eucharistic prayer, in the third Eucharistic prayer, in the second reading tonight, 1 Corinthians chapter 11, it gives the context for the thing that the whole Bible was leading towards, and the context goes like this. On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took bread in his hands and said, take this and eat it all of you. This is my body. On the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took a chalice filled with wine, and he said, take this all of you and drink of it. This is the chalice of my blood. The context of the last supper that we celebrate every single day, every single Sunday, and on this Holy Thursday night, the context of the Last Supper, is when we were at our worst, Jesus gave us

his best. When we offered him, the worst thing human beings can offer to another person. He gave us the best thing anyone could possibly, possibly dream of receiving. And they realized that's the context, he looked around the room and he knew. Like, he knew. He looked in their eyes and he washed their feet. and he gave the very best he had to give. He gave himself, and he knew the whole time. And so while betrayal has the capacity to move us to take back our hearts, while betrayal has the capacity to help make us choose not to love,

while material has the capacity to turn our hearts evil, in the face of that, in that context, not Jesus. For Jesus, the context of his greatest gift was our greatest evil. and that context matters. His context is everything. And this is the last thing. Because Jesus has called me his friend and I betray.

Because Jesus has called you his children. And we betray. And you know what he hasn't done? He hasn't taken back his love. It's crazy. In fact, the opposite. He keeps giving. He keeps inviting us back.

He keeps bringing us where. He keeps. He keeps bringing us here. This whole book leads here. This whole book leads to this moment. This whole book leads to this place. When on the night he was betrayed, when we are at our worst,

he gives us his best.