Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 04/10/20 Prepared But Not Ready

Episode Date: April 11, 2020

Homily from Good Friday of the Lord's Passion. Why are we surprised when we discover that “weakness” is actually weak? Jesus prepared His disciples for His Passion. But they were not ready, because they had not factored in their own weakness. But Jesus had factored it in. It was, in fact, why He entered His Passion. Mass Readings from April 10, 2020: Isaiah 52:13—53:12 Psalms 31:2, 6, 12-13, 15-17, 25Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 John 18:1—19:42

I want to thank everyone who is able to be here and pray with us on this Good Friday. At this time, you know, after this, we have intercessions, which are prayers for the church throughout the world, and pray for our local communities, our families, people who believe in Christ, people don't believe in Christ, people don't believe in God. We'll pray for everybody in a bit. And then we're going to have the veneration of the cross.

We just heard the gospel proclaimed of the love of God for us. So if you have those crosses in your homes, during that time where we venerate the cross here, my invitation is that you just kind of get yourselves prepared and prepare yourselves to venerate the cross. I was thinking about that term, like to be prepared. Actually, I was thinking about this on Wednesday night. I was talking with a group of teens, and they said, how do you prepare for the Tritome? And it was one of those kind of things that I had the sense of, like, I don't know.

I mean, if at this point you're not, if at this point you haven't prepared, if at this point you haven't used Lent to be prepared, I'm not sure how you can get prepared. because I'm cramming for a test. Like maybe a little bit can change, but there's only so much you can do. There's something about being prepared that is the long game. It's not just the short thing. Even at the same time, we recognize that I was thinking, how do you prepare for Good Friday?

How do you prepare to enter in? How do you prepare for what God wants you to do ever? Because the apostles today in the gospel today, we... The apostles, the disciples, they were prepared. I mean, if you would ask them, they would have been, yeah, I've been, I've been completely prepared. I've lived with Jesus. He called me, I've been his friend,

I've been living with him for the last three years. Like, I am prepared. He sent me out on mission through my hand, through my prayers, his power, his spirit, his name has healed the sick. It has delivered people from bondage to Satan. Like, I am prepared. And even you even have a St. Thomas, you know, the doubter. He also is the same St. Thomas in John's Gospel,

who, when Jesus is going to Jerusalem, The other apostles are quite afraid and Thomas says, let's also go with them to die with him. He's prepared. Peter, how many times when Jesus looks at him at the Last Supper and he says, Peter, this day you'll deny me? He says, no, Lord, I'm going to die for you. They were prepared.

They've even been warned what was going to happen. Jesus had told them what's going to happen is, we're going to get to Jerusalem, I'll be handed over, I'll be arrested, I'll be tortured, I'll be beaten, I will die. They are prepared. And I guess, again, the thing is, they knew all that stuff already. And they factored it all in.

But there's one thing that they hadn't factored in. In all of that, there's one thing they hadn't factored in because they were prepared but they weren't ready. This is going to be the kind of this theme here. They were prepared, but they weren't ready. Because they hadn't factored in one thing. And that one thing they hadn't factored in wasn't Jesus' identity, it wasn't Jesus' power,

it wasn't their own even, their own willingness. What they hadn't factored in was they hadn't factored in their own weakness. Then when it came to this moment of truth for every single one of them, they were prepared but they weren't ready because they did not. They were not aware or they weren't admitting their own weakness, their own fragility. They had gotten to this place where they were prepared but not ready. And this whole story, the whole story that we hear today, it reveals. The whole humanity, like the human condition, the fact that every,

one of us is like permeated with weakness, that every single one of us has wounds everywhere. The fact that every single one of us has a broken heart, heart that is inclined to sin, the human condition is on full display in today's gospel. I mean, every single one of the characters in the gospel reveal the reality of the human condition, reveal the reality of the human heart that maybe God has done stuff that we're prepared but we're not ready because we're not aware of our weakness. I mean, you have the soldiers. They're the obvious ones, right?

Because there are a couple soldiers that have excessive cruelty. They're the ones who make a crown of thorns and mum. They're the ones that if you ever study the Shrard of Turin, there's at least two men, forensic sciences that talked about this, at least two men who seem to take pleasure in abusing Jesus when they've researched the data. But you also have the soldiers who just went along. This was just Friday. This was just work for them.

And this did what they were told. And doing what they're told meant torturing a man to death. They just went along with it, not because they enjoyed it because that's work. That's your job. That's the human condition. That's the broken human heart. You have the soldiers. You have the Sanhedron.

Again, this is the human condition on full display. You have those who are motivated by jealousy, those who are motivated by envy, those personally motivated to discredit Jesus. In fact, in John Chapter 11, after Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, it says, because of that, many of those Pharisees, many of those Herodians, many of those people in Jerusalem were motivated. That's why they wanted to kill him. Whether that's envy, pride, greed, whatever it is.

Then you also have those who just went along with it because they followed this kind of appeasement idea. It's just, hey, it's just easier. It's easier to get along with the Roman government if this one man dies instead of the rest of us. And then there's another group that just remains silent. They didn't do anything because, like, they want to protect their own status. I mean, think about the fact that they were holding on

to whatever little amount of power they had in Jerusalem 2,000 years ago, and we have no idea what their names are. but they were important and they wanted to hold on to that the human condition on full display not ready to do the right thing you have pilot who pilot who in the scriptures

he knows Jesus isn't guilty he actually even says it I find no guilt in this man he is not guilty of anything they're accusing him of but he appealed to subjectivism and who knows what's truth in order to do the thing that was easiest and even said he feared the

crowds, even though he knows, he even says, I have the power to release you, have the power to crucify you. But I wasn't willing to use that power for good. This is our heart. This is my heart. This is your heart. This is the fact that we're not ready for those big moments. We're not ready for those moments when we need to speak and stand up for the truth.

The human condition on full display, we have the crowd. The crowd that joins in, the crowd that when Pilate says, I want to release him, they say, no, we want you to kill him. I mean, think about this. I mean, think about the great, the mystery of God. Here's God who's immortal, he's eternal, he's, you can't hurt God because he's God. And from the very moment that God makes himself vulnerable, human beings, the human condition, the human heart that is so broken, that has so much weakness and so many wounds,

from the very first moment that God makes himself killable, we try to kill him. When he's an infant in the manger, Herod is sending people to kill him. When he reveals himself in Nazareth, the townspeople, his relatives, try to kill him. And now here, we see the reality of the human condition on full display, our weakness that we so often ignore. We have to ask myself that question.

If God showed up to me and made himself killable, would I also be willing to kill him? Or even just be indifferent. Like, yeah, that's what happens. If you fall into the Romans' hands, that's what happens. They just kill you. I mean, you even have Barabbas. The crowd says we want Barabbas, but here's Barabbas, who knows who he is.

He's a thief, he's an insurrectionist, he's a murderer, he knows who he is, and he's... He knew he was guilty, and yet he's totally okay with walking away Scott Free while an innocent man carries his cross. Because that's a human condition. If I can get away with it, are you kidding me? Absolutely. And then you have Peter. You know, so often I wonder, like, why is it that Peter denied Jesus? His best friend. He's Lord. He knows who Jesus is. He knows what Jesus can do.

Why does he deny him? And it could be fear. He just wanted to get swept up in it and wants to save his own skin. I wonder if it's vanity. You know, the sin of vanity is not just like thinking you look good or think you look back. The sin of vanity is an excessive preoccupation with what other people are thinking about you. And I just wonder if in that moment, here's Peter just trying to blend in around the fire, just trying to blend in with all these people who are just kind of in the crowd,

that he's asked to like, no, are you going to align yourself with Jesus or are you going to just be quiet? And maybe Peter who had this excessive fear, excessive concern of what other people think of him, is willing to deny his best friend like you and I do all the time. The example I always think of is just like not being willing to make the sign of the cross when we're out to eat. I am concerned with other people what other people think of me. So I don't do that kind of thing.

I mean, a thousand little ways. The reality is we would be wrong not to see our hearts in the actions of these people because this is all of humanity on display. But that's our temptation. I think our temptation is we've been prepared, but we're not ready. I think because we don't acknowledge how deep our woundedness and our weakness and our potential for evil actually is, even for us who are ordinary. There was a guy who is ordinary.

He might know his name, his name is Adolf Eichmann. Adolf Eichmann was in Austrian. He was completely ordinary back in the 20s, 30s, 40s. He... His dad sent him to this decent, relatively decent high school, but he didn't get good grades, so he had to go to like a normal high school, and there he didn't even finish it. His dad gave him a job with his own business and didn't do really great there.

He got a job as a sales clerk, he got a job as an associate for an oil company, And then at some point when the National Socialists rose to power in Germany and in Austria, Adolf Eichmann joined the National Socialist Party. After the war and everything, he had fled to Argentina. But even then, he was completely ordinary. He was just a normal guy. He wasn't anything special. He had a laundry that went bankrupt.

He went from job to job to job. And as an old man, he was basically just ordinary. Nothing special. But when he was part of the National Socialists, Adolf Eichmann was responsible, he was personally responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions of human beings. And he got his job not because he had this vendetta against Jews,

not because he had this desire to kill people, he got this job because he was really good at logistics. He was really good at making sure trains ran on time, made sure that trains ran at a low cost, and he just, he didn't care, actually he began to care, began to want to program the destination for those trains, and the destination for those trains. with the extermination camps of the Nazis.

Eichmann, in the minds of so many people, it was an absolute monster. When he looked at his life, he'd say, he's just an ordinary guy, except for these things that he did, killing millions of human beings. So when he was brought back to trial, he was captured in Argentina and brought back to Jerusalem, where he stood trial.

And there are a number of people who came in to testify against the fact that, yes, this man is personally responsible for the deaths of millions of Jews. And this one man, um, named Nahil Dinar, Deneur. He came in. He was a witness. He had been in the extermination camps, but he survived. Many of his family, his friends, were killed by Adolf Eichmann.

And so when he walked into that courtroom to testify against him, he expected to see a monster, and he looked at Eichmann, and their eyes locked on each other, and Ejil fell to his knees, and he began sobbing uncontrollably. Just violent tears, screaming out of his knees. of his body. And later on, he was doing an interview with 60 minutes, and people were asking, he said,

because he was such a monster, because you looked in the face of evil? And he said, no, it's because I walked into this courtroom expecting to find a monster, and I looked into the eyes of an ordinary man. He went on to say this. He said, I realized that evil is endemic to the human condition, that any one of us could commit the same atrocities as Adolf Eichmann. concluded with saying these words, he said, because Eichmann is in all of us. Ikeman is in all of us. The question is, am I ready to face him?

Because Jesus, our God who's crucified, he's not unaware of this. We might not have factored this in. We might be prepared because God, his shows us, he's called us, he's given us his grace in baptism, given us his grace through prayers. But we might not be ready because we have factored in our weakness. He has factored in our weaknesses. Jesus has factored in our sins. Like Jesus has factored in how broken we are, even more you say this. The reason why Jesus is on the cross is because of our sins. Because he's factored in so deeply that this is the reason,

your brokenness, my brokenness, the fact that Eichmann is in all of us is the reason why he laid down his life. Because if Jesus doesn't go on that cross, if he doesn't hand himself over, then we would still be lost. That's how broken you and I are. that if Jesus has to hand himself over, if God doesn't choose to freely give of his life and die for us, we would still be alienated from the God who loves us. Because not only has he factored in our sins, not only has he factored in our weakness,

but it's actually those sins, those weaknesses, those things about yourself that you absolutely hate when you see him, when you pay attention to them, that's the thing that draws the merciful heart of our God. It's our misery. It's our brokenness that causes him to flee heaven and come down to earth. It's our brokenness, our misery, that causes him to mount the cross. It's our very weakness that we're shocked by that has caused his heart to be unwilling to simply stand by. Because in this story, we just heard all of the human brokenness is on display.

But also, in this story, the unimaginable and unimaginable. unstoppable love of God for all of humanity in our brokenness is on display. This reveals that God continues to prepare us and we continue to not be ready. We show that we're not ready every time we're shocked by our weaknesses. We show that we're not ready every time we're surprised by our sins. We show we're not ready every time we're discouraged by our brokenness. This story reveals the brokenness of ordinary people that's in all of us. The story also reveals the broken heart of a God who pours out his life for broken ordinary

people, all of us. People who wouldn't stand there but would run away. This is the last thing. There is one person who stood there. Well, there's a couple people who stood there. Mary Magdalene is one. John, the Apostle, is one. But we need to not, make no mistake about this.

there, Mary Magdalene stood there, not because they were stronger than the rest of us. Not because John didn't have any weakness. Not because Mary Magdalene didn't have any weaknesses. Please, we have to get this right. John the Evangelist, John the Apostle, and Mary Magdalene had the exact same weaknesses as every one of the other disciples. So how could they stand there? I wonder if it isn't because they stood there, they didn't stand alone.

there was someone standing with them at the foot of our God's cross. Mary, Mary whose name is Our Lady of Sorrows, Mary who is the mother of Jesus, the mother of God, who from the cross, as we heard in the gospel today, from the cross, he looked at his beloved disciple, and that John, at the beloved disciple, stands for every one of those people who belong to Jesus. And he says, Jesus from the cross says, that's your mom now. He says, mom, that's your son. That's your daughter.

And that's the mandate, every single one of us, that's the gift that God from the cross, and he gives us so many gifts. But in our weakness, what does he also give us? He gives us his mom as our mom. And what does she do when we're weak? She intercedes for us. When we have this brokenness, she holds us. When we fall to the ground because our human condition, on full display, has crushed us.

Our Lady of Sorrows, the Mother of Jesus, the mother of all Christians, she takes her child into her arms and helps them stand in the midst of their weakness. It's one of the reasons why we pray the Hail Mary and at the end of the prayer. We say, Our Lady, Mary, God has prepared me, he's given me his grace. He's the Savior of the world. He's prepared me. But when it comes to my death, I want to be ready. And you're my mom. So in that moment, when I'm called to stand for Christ,

in that moment when I stand before our Lord, not crucified, but risen and glorified, pray for me now, and at the hour of my death, because He has prepared me, and I want to be ready.