Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 04/03/22 Last Words: Use This.

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

Homily from the Fifth Sunday of Lent. Some last words have the power to define a person's life. From the Cross, Jesus utters His last words. He thirsts for us to allow Him to forgive us. Mass Readings from April 3, 2022: Isaiah 43:16-21 Psalms 126:1-6Philippians 3:8-14 John 8:1-11

So I know that I totally, I talked about a movie last week, one of those famous movies, Citizen Kane, and I was like, you know what, I'm on a roll. Why not? Keep on the movie theme. In fact, I was reflecting on how often in really great stories, how often in really good movies, there are incredible last words. So one of the movies that is ranked really high in IMDB with Citizen Kane is a movie that came out in 1998. It's called Saving Private Ryan. Have you guys ever seen Saved? So it's, again, it's probably made before many people were born, but it is one of those high, It's one of those movies that is just, you can't watch it and be unmoved. The movie opens up with this old man, and he's walking with his wife behind him and his grown children behind her.

And you find pretty soon that he's walking into a cemetery. It's a cemetery in France, in fact, in Normandy, amongst all these headstones of allied troops who died in the invasion of Normandy on D-Day. And he walks up to the headstone of a person in particular, the headstone of a man named Captain John Miller, and he stops, and he stops, and he's just stands there and then the entire movie is told in flashback. And they flashback immediately to June 6, 1944, D-Day. With all the, it's graphic.

In fact, there are World War II vets who are there who watched the movie and they said that is exactly what it was like. It's just horrible. And so the story follows these eight men, these eight U.S. Army Rangers, led by Captain John Miller as they hit Normandy. And they make it past D-Day. They survive and they get it to D-Day plus one. But on D-Day plus one or plus two, they get a new assignment.

What happened was there were these four Ryan brothers. They're the four sons of a widow. And all four men were deployed on D-Day. And on D-Day, three of the brothers were killed in action. And one of the sons, one of the brothers, Private James Ryan, he was alive. He was with the 101st Airborne Division somewhere in Normandy. And so Captain John Miller and his eight men, they got a new assignment. The new assignment was to find Private Ryan and to get him out of battle, to bring him back to his mom.

because the U.S. government said we don't want to have this woman, this widow, lose all four of her sons in a single battle. And so the whole goal is to save Private Ryan. So the whole rest of the story is these eight men as they're going through tragedy and suffering and betrayal and all of this pain just to make it possible to save this one man, Private James Ryan. They encounter him, they get him to this place where they're in this middle of this battle and after the battle is fought and they've won. all but two of the soldiers have been killed. And Captain John Miller is there on this bridge and he's bleeding out.

And kneeling in front of him is Private James Ryan. And with his last words, he says, Ryan, listen to me. And Private Ryan says, yes, sir. And these are his last words. He says, James, earn this. Earn it. And then with that, he gave his last breath.

And we've been talking about how powerful words are, how words have the power to disclose what's in our hearts, right? Words have the power to reveal what's in our hearts. But there are some words, some last words, that have the power to define a life. And the reality is those last words of Captain John Miller, James, earn this, earn it, define the rest of his life. They shaped the rest of his entire life.

And so what we've been doing for the last, gosh, six weeks, essentially, is we've been looking at the seven last words of Jesus that in the extreme moment of his life on the cross, Jesus had these seven utterances. He said these seven things that not only disclose his heart, but also define our lives. So today, the seventh utterance, the seventh word, or sorry, the fifth word of Jesus is from John's Gospel,

chapter 19. Very simple, it's only two verses. It says this. It says after this, aware that everything was now finished, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled, Jesus said, I thirst. There was a vessel filled with common wine, so they put a sponge soaked with wine on a sprig of hyssop and put it up to his mouth.

That's it. That's the entire fifth last word of Jesus. It's just simply, I thirst. And it's so short, it's so quick, it's over so fast, it goes by us so quickly that sometimes I think it's, we forget all that's led up to this. So what's led up to this moment where Jesus on the cross simply says these two words. He simply says, I thirst. Well, think about the last time that Jesus probably ate anything. This is 3 o'clock in the afternoon. The last last time Jesus had anything to eat that we know of was the night before at the last supper with his apostles. There's also likely the last time Jesus had, Jesus had anything to drink. It was the night before. And then what happened after that, right? After the last supper,

the last thing he had to drink, he walked the mile or two from the upper room through the Kidron Valley over to the Garden of Githemite. And what happened in the Garden of Githemone, where he was in agony, right? He's this Luke's gospel. Luke is a physician. And he described Jesus weeping, not only weeping in agony and suffering and praying out to his father, but also Luke says, as a physician, he says, his sweat became like drops of blood that fell to the ground. That's actually a rare but real medical condition called hematohydrosis, where the capillaries rise to the surface of one's skin and they're so agitated, so stressed, so anxious, they actually burst on the skin. It's not just a matter of like sweating blood, it's a matter of like basically your

whole body would become one living bruise. And then the guards came. He was betrayed by one of his good friends. And that night they beat him, brought him to Caius's house, a mile and a half or two miles back to Caius's his house. And he was put in a dried out cistern. You know a cistern is where you keep water, but this was dried out. So imagine, here's Jesus. The last time he had anything to drink was at supper. Here he is. He's literally bleeding from the pores of his body in a dried out cistern all night. Till the next morning he brought to Pilots Place. Pilate examines him, brings him over to Herod's place, brings him back. I don't know about you, but when I get up in the morning, I have like multiple glasses of water.

It's just one of those things that you weigh up so thirsty. Here's Jesus, who probably hasn't slept since the morning before this, hasn't had a thing to drink since the night before this. He brought to Pilate, brought back to Pilate, and then Scripture says the pilot had him scourged. And one of those things, it's just, it's so short. And it's short for a reason. It says he had him scourged and doesn't describe it for a very particular reason. It's because everyone writing the gospel, everyone reading the gospel, everyone reading the gospel,

gospel, they knew what scourging looked like, and it would have been horrible to describe it. All they had to say was they had him scourged. That meant they led him out to the courtyard for scourging and stripped him absolutely naked. And they would bind his hands and his feet in shackles and manacles and stretch him out so that he couldn't move because if you were being scourged, you want to screw him out of the way, but they had to make it so that you literally could not move out of the way. And in that place, they would have these things basically are called cat of nine tails. So it would be a wooden handle about a foot, foot and a half long. And at the end of that foot and a half long handle, there'd be at least nine leather straps. At the end of those leather

straps, there'd be weights. At the end of those weights, there'd be tied like pieces of bone, pieces of glass, a piece of metal. What would happen is when those weights would hit your skin, then the metal or the bone or the glass would grab into your skin and then they'd pull it back. So it's not just a matter of like, just, you know, have some lashes in the sense of, here's marks on top of your skin. The idea was it would cut through your skin, grab onto the muscle, then pull the muscle out through the skin. That's the whole point.

You know, there's a church in Israel, in Jerusalem, called the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Sepulchre means tomb. It's a church built over Galgatha. It's built over the tomb of Jesus. And there's actually a pillar there. It's made of rock. It's made of granite.

And the pillar is the pillar that the Romans would tie. people to when they scourge them. If you look at the pillar, you don't have to look very closely to see that there's groove marks in the stone. Those are groove marks from the whips that the Romans would use. You look at that and realize, oh my gosh, if that's what these whips would do to granite, what would those whips do to human flesh? In fact, when Jim Cavazel was playing Jesus in the Passion of the Christ, there was a time where they actually used actual scourges. They didn't have them with the hooks on the end. They just had leather straps. And they put a board on his back. And said, okay, soldiers, you know, actors, just hit the board. At one point,

one of the leather straps missed the board and hit Jim Caviesel himself. And he said he was out of breath. They'd knocked the wind out of him for minutes. In fact, he couldn't film the next day. That was one strap without a weight and without a piece of metal or bone or glass. And they incapacitated a healthy man. After that, it says, scripture says, they made a crown of thorns. and a lot of us we see that little ringlet around Jesus' head. But actually how Romans made a crown, they made it like a helmet. And each thorn was two to four inches long. And they pressed it into his skull.

You know, when they scourge someone, a lot of times the historians described that it would actually literally expose the spine of those who were scourged. He would tear their face. Because they would scourge from the back of the neck all the way down to the feet. oftentimes intestines would fall out. And it wasn't done yet. Then they gave him a cross, and he carried the cross beam.

The cross beam was roughly 125 to 150 pounds. And he carried it the quarter mile all the way up Calvary, where he was crucified. And we know that when the nails go into the hands, the Romans knew how to do this. They knew how to put the nails in the exact spot where the nerves would be so painful to hang upon the cross. And actually, a person on the cross would die by suffocating.

Their lungs would fill up with fluid and they would be unable to breathe. And it's from the cross. In fact, from the cross, excrucio. We have the word excruciating. That literally means from the cross. X is from the and Crucio is the cross. So excruciating. From the cross, in excruciating pain,

Jesus says these two words, after a day and a half of being awake, after not having drank anything since the night before, after losing so much fluid all day, he simply says these words, I thirst. You know, so interesting, we've been following these last words of Jesus. Every last word he speaks is he's talking to somebody. I don't know if you noticed that. The first last word Jesus says, he says, Father, forgive them. They don't know what they're doing.

He's talking to the father. The second last word, he talks to the criminal, and he says, truly I say to you today, you'll be with me in paradise. He's talking to the criminal. The third last word, he talks to his mom, and he says, woman, behold your son, talks to the disciple, behold your mother. Last week, you have Jesus cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? He's talking to God his father again.

But today, he says, I thirst, and the question is, who is he talking to? And who is he saying those words to? Because this is the power of words. This is not only, you can have the most profound speaker, you have the most profound words uttered, but if you don't have someone hearing them, they mean nothing. You can have the most profound words, but if you don't have someone hearing them and acting on them, they absolutely mean completely nothing. So here's the gospel today. It's John chapter 8. And this scene is really familiar to us if we know the gospel story,

right? Where here's this woman and she's brought me, here's Jesus, gets up early in the morning, goes to the temple and he's teaching and they bring this woman in and it is so incredible. Just you can imagine the scene of this woman. Imagine the humiliation and the shock that she went through. Because they say, we caught her in the very act of committing adultery. There she was. It's funny that the guy's not there. That's interesting. But there she was. Who knows? It's like in the middle of this fling, maybe in the middle of this long-term relationship, in the middle of this moment of privacy, it's a moment of passion, and all of a sudden people burst in and into this moment of privacy, this moment of whatever it was, she is thrust into public. She's thrust into people's

view in front of everyone. And in that moment, her life is literally over. I mean, to really, really, in that moment, her life is over. Because the verdict is death by stoning. Her life is over, and then Jesus speaks. And it isn't. Imagine that. Her life is over, and then Jesus speaks.

And it isn't anymore. In front of her, Jesus says, throw the first stone, and, you know, one by one that go away. And he says, woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you? No one, sir. And then he says those incredible words. He says, neither do I condemn you. Go and from now on don't sin anymore.

Let's go back to this. Her life is over. Then Jesus speaks and it isn't. It's hearing Jesus's words. Neither do I condemn you. Go. And from now on don't sin anymore. I mean, that's one of those crazy moments where Jesus says, okay, you're forgiven.

You're released. But also, don't waste this moment. You also, that's one of those moments where it's like, okay, let these words, let this moment of freedom, let it do something in your life. You have a new lease on life. What are you going to do with it? You have a new lease on life. What are you going to do with it?

Here's Jesus, ultimately saying, don't waste it. Use it. I think a lot of us, we've heard of, you know, Fyodor Doyshevsky, you know, the great Russian author. He's one of the greatest authors of all time, maybe the greatest Russian author of all time. At one point, Dostoevsky was arrested by the Russian government. He was accused of subversion and conspiracy,

and he was sentenced to death. and for weeks he was in prison waiting as the days ticked down to the day that he was going to be in front of a firing squad, and so the day came, and they led him out with a bunch of other men in front of this firing squad. Doyshevsky was number five, and they lined him up in front of all these other soldiers with their rifles loaded. They blindfolded them. They raised their guns and waited. And he waited there for up to, he describes ten minutes. knowing that the next breath he took could be his last breath, knowing that the next beat of his heart could be the last moment his heartbeat,

knowing that the next moment they say fire, his life is over. And he waited there for 10 minutes. And then all of a sudden an official came into the courtyard with the decree of pardon and said, you're not going to be killed today, you're sentenced to four years in prison. He said that moment changed his entire life, changed the course of his entire life. In fact, years later, he wrote the book called The Idiot. And in it, he made a character who was also facing death on the gallows by hanging.

And he, in this man's mind, as he's on the gallows, getting ready to be killed, the man was wondering, what would he do if he had one more chance to live, like Dostoevsky actually did in his real life? And he said this in the book, he said, I would turn every minute into an age. Nothing would be wasted. Every minute would be accounted for. like if you were given a new lease on life

what would you do with it if you were given an opportunity it's like okay my life is not over right now what would I do with it nothing would be wasted here is Jesus saying neither do I condemn you go use this here's Jesus on the cross

saying I thirst what is he saying when he's who is he talking to when he says I thirst you know every saint has said since the time this gospel is written, they've all said that it wasn't just physical thirst that Jesus was referring to, that he was referring to the fact that he thirsts for you, that the greater pain was not

his physical thirst, even though that was bad. The greatest pain that he experienced was the fact here is love that's unrequited, here's love that's poured out, here is love that's for you. In fact, Mother Teresa, she talked about this, she said, I thirst. Those two words are everything. She said this, in this thirst of God is seen how much God wants our love and how much we need his love. Who is he saying those words to? Mother Teresa, she heard those words. I don't know if you know anything about Mother Teresa. She started out as this like, she grew up in Albania. If you can name that on a map, that's great, good job. And then at one point, she realized God was calling her to be a nun, which is a big deal. So she became a nun and then moved to India,

which is another big deal. But then she just realized she was serving people in India. They're pretty much well to do, and on her way to a retreat, after being a nun for a bunch of years, on the train, she heard the words of Jesus, I thirst, and realized he was speaking to her. And she realized, as she was being called, what she calls a call within a call. That from that moment on, she said, I want to love Jesus like he's never been loved before. The word was spoken, and then the word was heard. On the cross, when Jesus says, I thirst, who is he talking to? I think he is talking to anyone who cares.

I think he's talking to anyone who actually cares. You know, Mother Teresa later on, she said, in the words of Jesus, she put these words into Jesus' mouth. She said that Jesus said, you don't need to change to believe in my love. For it will be belief in my love that changes you. Because I think a lot of times we might hear those words and say, if Jesus is speaking to you, well, no, not me.

He's not talking to me. Like, listen, I'm disqualified. He's talking to someone else. Think about the woman. woman caught in adultery. How difficult would it be for her to believe that Jesus was speaking to her? I don't condemn you. How difficult it would be for her to believe Jesus was talking to her? And yet he was. How tough would it be for Mother Teresa to believe Jesus was talking to her? She was just some simple nun from Albania. In fact, her other sisters said that she had no discernible

gifts. They recognized nothing special about her. And yet he was talking to her. how difficult would it be for St. Paul to believe that Jesus was talking to him. He's a murderer, a radical persecutor of Christians, and yet Jesus was talking to him. One of the things we realize is you cannot let your past disqualify you. When it comes to Jesus, we cannot let our past disqualify us. In fact, Paul writes about that in second reading today, Philippians chapter 3. He says, forgetting what lies behind, that's the reality for so many of us. we let our past us qualify us. St. Paul says, no, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward

to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God's upward calling in Jesus Christ. Jesus says, I thirst with his last words. Who is he talking to? Who is he thirsting for? He's talking to whoever cares. He is thirsting for you. I mean, I don't know if you ever stopped and just looked at the crucifix and said, like, why did you do that, Jesus? Like, why did you do that, Jesus? Like, why that? Why did you die for me? The answer is he does that to forgive our sins. In fact, that's the price of forgiveness. That's what forgiveness costs. And so many people would see what Jesus has done. So many people would see the length to which Jesus would go. So many people would hear those last words, I thirst, and just be unmoved. And then there are some people here tonight. Those here

who will see his suffering, those here who will behold his wounds, those here who will hear the words, I thirst and you'll say, Jesus, please, do not let what you did on the cross go to waste on me. You love me when I am unlovable. You have room in your broken heart for my broken heart.

Jesus, you died on the cross, you thirsted so I could be forgiven. Do not let what you did on the cross go to waste on me. Why is he on the cross to forgive sins? Where is he thirsting for? He's thirsting for our hearts. And how does he forgive our sins?

Where does he forgive our sins? He forgives our sins and confession. I mean, I think about this. Jesus is saying, I thirst to heal. I thirst to forgive. I thirst to love you in the sacrament of confession. Don't waste this. Use this.

Use it. Because we can't stop it. We know that, right? We can't. Christ has already sacrificed himself for us. We can't stop it. even ask that. You notice from the cross, Jesus doesn't say, someone stop this. He just says, I thirst. And every time you and I go to confession, we console his thirst. Years ago, when I was

in seminary, my grandma, my grandma Helen was the last of my grandparents to die. And so for a couple weeks at the end of her life, I'd make the drive every night from St. Paul, what the seminary was, to Litchfield. That she died in the small town of Litchfield. And my uncle was so awesome. My uncle, he cared for her for years leading up to her death. But those last weeks, like all of her family who were around, would go to her bedside. We just spent so many hours with her, just talking to her while she still could talk,

holding her hand, praying with her. But there came a time, and maybe you've been in this place too. There came a time when she couldn't talk anymore. Came a time when, nope, grandma's dying now. It came a time where she was so thirsty. And so next to her bed, you'd have like a couple with ice chips in it. And so we'd just, you know, feed her some ice chips. but after that you don't want her to choke on them.

So there was this, I don't know if you've ever seen this. I have little sticks with a sponge at the end. In a cup of water. And my grandma, my grandma Helen would be laying there. She couldn't speak, but she'd look over at the cup. Just look over at the cup and look up at us. And what she was saying with her eyes, what she couldn't say with her mouth,

she was saying, I thirst. And so one of the things we could do, the only thing we could do was you could put that sponge in the water and just like move it around her mouth. We couldn't stop her from dying. but we could console her in her thirst. Like that was the chance we had, that was the opportunity that we had

for this woman caught in adultery. Jesus invited her, please, let yourself be loved. That was her chance. For Mother Teresa, Jesus inviting her, please, let your life be changed. That was her chance. For St. Paul, Jesus is saying, just let yourself be forgiven.

That was his chance. But tonight, this is the reality. Tonight, this is our chance. This is your chance. Like this is your chance now. Don't waste it. Like tonight this is our chance to change those things in our lives that we know

they need to change. Don't waste this moment. He thirsts now and this is our chance to console his thirst. You know, next weekend, after this Mass, we're having a confession. There are about five or six priests who are going to be here right after Mass. You have adoration and a chance to go to confession.

It's one of those things. I don't know if you'd realize this. every time we go to confession, we are consoling his heart. In fact, there's this tradition in the church that when Jesus was in the garden and he was suffering, when he was being scourged and suffering, when he was walking to Calvary, when he was on the cross, and he was suffering so badly the thing and maybe even wanted to give up, the thing that consoled him.

So many saints have said this, the thing that consoled Jesus in the moment maybe he wanted to give up when he was so thirsty is he, God the Father, let him see, he let him see you go to confession the father let him see the truth that one day you the one he was thirsting so much for would say i'm not going to let what you did go to waste on me jesus that one day it would actually matter the one day would actually change your life because words have the power to disclose our hearts they have the power to define our life and this is the last thing.

After all the battles and after all the chaos and after Captain Miller dies, it flashes back to current day in the movie Saving Private Ryan, and there's old man Ryan, and he's standing there in front of this tombstone. And he's talking to Captain John Miller, and he says, my family's with me here today. They wanted to come with me,

and to be honest with you, I wasn't sure how I'd feel when I got here, but then he looks at this tombstone of this man who died for him, and he says these words. He says, every day I think about what you said to me that day on the bridge. I've tried to live the best life I could. And I hope that was enough. I hope that, at least in your eyes, I've earned what all of you have done for me.

What we know as Christians is we can never earn what Jesus has done for us. But we also know as Christians is that you don't have to earn it. Jesus already loves you. You don't have to earn it. Jesus already thirsts for you, you don't have to earn it. Jesus has already sacrificed himself for you. You don't have to earn it, but we do have to not let this go to waste. We do have to use it.

His love is yours. Don't let it be wasted on you. He thirst for you. Don't let that be wasted on you. He has already sacrificed himself for you. Don't let that be wasted on you. He has given his gift of mercy. mercy. He's given his gift of reconciliation. He's given the gift of confession. And he looked at us

today. And he simply says, use this. Use it.