Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 04/15/22 The Crown of Thorns

Episode Date: April 16, 2022

Homily from Good Friday of the Lord's Passion. The heart of envy. The crown of thorns reveals the darkness of the human heart. This darkness is in each one of us in the form of envy. Mass Readings from April 15, 2022: 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

So just as we have the opportunity to just hear the passion and reflect on the passion of our Lord, there's something about this that I think there's some parts of the story that makes sense. And I don't mean that in a bad way, but I think there's some parts that people's actions make sense. Like for Pilot, it makes sense. It has so much political pressure on himself that, yeah, even though he knows this is wrong, he's going to do it anyways because that's sometimes what happens. The moment where the guard strikes Jesus, he thinks he thinks he thinks, he's talking back to the high priest.

And so that makes sense that he would do that. Even the fact that Jesus was scourged, we talked about this, I think, last Sunday, or two Sundays ago, what it meant to be scourged. The fact that that even happened, all those pieces make sense because that was their orders. They were ordered to do this.

The part that doesn't make any sense, is here, again, John's Gospel, we just heard it. It says this, it said, Pilate took Jesus and had him scourged. Okay, we got that. But then it says, and then the soldiers will have a crown out of thorns and placed it upon his head and they clothed him in a purple cloak

and they came to him and said, Hail King of the Jews. The part of it doesn't make any sense. The crown of thorns. The crown of thorns doesn't make any sense. Everything else that happened to Jesus, someone was told to do that. But here is something that

no one was told. No one was told to put a crown of thorns on Jesus. No one was told to go, hey, go over to that bush and then rip off some of these branches with thorns and weave them into a helmet of thorns and place them on Jesus's head. Everything else is, you could at least make an excuse and say, well, that's what they're ordered to do. This is just cruel. Like this is to reflect on that.

And I think there's something about this where we could hear that and say, well, I'm not like that. In fact, you can see that kind of cruelty and say, well, I'm not like that. And the truth of the matter is, yes, you are. There's something about this day, Good Friday. That happens so much in darkness. So much happens in darkness like on Friday. And it's so important for us to face the darkness that is in us. And again, maybe you say, I'm not capable of that.

I say, yes, you are. At least you have the potential for this. There's a book came out not too long ago. It's called Ordinary Men. And it's about those men who became the torturers, essentially, those who became those who ran the concentration camps, those who ran the death camps of the Nazis. And so sometimes we have the image of them.

It's just like these people who were true believers. in like the Nazi propaganda. They were raised from, you know, the part of Nazi Hitler's youth. And so they believed it from a young age. But the majority, the vast majority of those who did unspeakable things to other human beings were just normal people, truly just normal people.

In fact, there's an account in this book. It talks about how a number of these men, women, and children were brought to a place where these 500 police officers in Poland We're told by the supervisors, we need you to kill all of the women and children. They're going to ship the men off to work, just kill these women and children. If you don't want to, you don't have to do it. They didn't even make them do this. They said, if you don't want to do this, you don't have to do this.

And many of them didn't want to do it. But out of 500 men, only like eight or 10 people refused to do it. The 490 just did it. Again, they weren't forced to do it. They just chose to do it. In fact, they even did this mental gymnastics. There's one account where one of the men, he kind of teamed up with his neighbor. He said, I don't want to do this at all.

But if you kill the women, I'll kill the children because, at least in my mind, I'll rationalize that here's a child whose mother's already been killed. I don't want this child to be raised without a mother, to live without a mother. And so it was an act of mercy in their mind. They convinced themselves that this was okay. They didn't have to. They literally could have walked away. And they didn't.

They weren't just following orders. they weren't just doing their job. This was something more. Just like in the gospel today, the men who made a crown of thorns and pressed it into Jesus' head. They weren't just following orders. No one told them to do this.

This was something more. This is basically what you call diabolical. So diabolical goes from the Latin word diabolos, right? Diablo, in Spanish, means devil. It's satanic. What it is is this kind of cruelty actually I think it's connected to one vice more than anything. I think this cruelty is connected to envy more than anything.

It's not hatred. Doesn't have to be. Because to hate someone, you have to actually care about them. But envy is something different. Envy is something more subtle. Envy is something more sneaky. There's a difference between jealousy and envy. Maybe you know this already, but jealousy is an inordinate desire for what someone else has.

The inordinate desire for what someone else has is jealousy. I want that. Envy's different. Envy doesn't even necessarily want the thing. Envy just doesn't want you to have it. So if jealousy says, I want what you have, envies, is, again, it's twisted, it's sneaky. It simply says, I don't want you to have it. I remember at one point years ago, I think it was a senior in high school.

My house got, my parents' house got broken into, and some burglars or burglar, they stole a bunch of stuff. And my dad at some point he said, I understand this. I get it. Someone that is in need, and they're going to take stuff. They're going to rob the house. But there was one room where people just, the people who broke in, they just broke stuff. And I remember him saying the only thing I'm mad about, because I get it. I get the fact that if you need money, if you need whatever, the thing that they're going to take.

I understand that. He says, I don't understand just breaking something. I don't understand just ruining something for someone else. But that's what envy does. Jealousy is, I want that. Envy is just, I don't want you to have that. I just want to take something from you. And again, we experience this on a regular basis.

I mean, how many times have we said something like, you know, here's a band, here's a TV show, here's a movie, here's a person, a celebrity, or whatever it is. And so you just say, like, I don't really like them. And someone says, well, how come? Why? It's great. Or I don't really like that band. I don't really like that person, that celebrity. Like, how come? What'd they ever do? Like, I don't know. Just everyone likes them. That's envy. I don't like them. Why? Because everyone likes them. I just want to take them down a little. Now, in this moment, on this Good Friday service, you could say, well, why are you focusing on this today?

like out of all the brokenness and all of the evil that's on display in the passion of Jesus, why focus on envy? And I would say it's because this, because I think this moment of Jesus' life, it is so fitting that we talk about envy. Because the Book of Wisdom says, through the envy of the devil, death entered the world. So go all the way back to Genesis chapter 3, right? Genesis 1 and 2, God makes this world, makes it good, makes human beings, makes us good in his image and likeness. and then Genesis chapter 3 happens

and you have this right the serpent the devil Satan himself comes into the garden if you ever asked why if you ever like even stopped to ask so why like devil why do you even care like here's God's human beings right Adam and Eve here they're in the garden

they're not doing anything to the devil it doesn't cost the devil anything for them to be loved by God and for them to love God back so why in the world do you want to break it why in the world do you want to get devil because the Satan you already have what you want. In fact, remember Milton, he wrote written in Paradise Lost,

the words he put in Satan's mouth are better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. He has what he wants. It's because envy. Envy is not, I don't have what I want. Envy sees someone else having something good and says, I don't want you to have it. So if we don't even understand, like why does St. Peter say,

the devil prowls around like a roaring line looking for someone to devour. Why? Because he just doesn't want you to have the good thing He just wants you to be loved by the Lord. And this is what happened is from that moment in Genesis chapter 3, this brokenness that comes into the world because of envy. What's the next sin after the eating of the apple?

There's these two brothers, Kane and Abel. What happens? Here's Cain who offers his sacrifice to the Lord. Here's Abel who offers his sacrifice to the Lord. And it says that God accepted Abel's sacrifice, but Cain's sacrifice he didn't accept. And Cain was upset about this. Why?

Not because he wanted what Abel didn't have, because Abel had something that he didn't have. And even God even says, Cain, you don't have to resent this. You don't have to be mad at your brother. You can let go of this envy. You can resist this trap of envy. But Cain doesn't.

As we know, Cain took Abel's life. And that is what led us here to today. That's what's led us here to this Good Friday service. That's what led us to a crown of thorns. That's what led us to cruelty. That's what led us here is envy. And so why does Jesus here? Why does Jesus allow

not just himself to be scourged and crucified, not just allow himself to carry a cross, but to allow himself to be crowned with thorns, as he came to undo what has been done by original sin, and the source of original sin was what? It was through the envy of the devil that death entered the world. Envy destroys and corrupts hearts. And Jesus is the solution.

Jesus bearing a crown of thorns is the solution. Even more, we can do things practically today, even just to be able to realize there's three things that we can do specifically that Jesus made it possible. One is joy, the second is zeal, and the third is the gaze. So joy, our response to when someone else has excellence, when someone else has success, when someone else wins, to have the freedom of the ability to choose to rejoice in their success. Again, envy mourns someone else's success. envy mourns someone else's gifts. But to be able to rejoice, in someone else's gifts, to rejoice in someone else's success, is to escape the trap of envy. Zeal means to be inspired by someone's excellence. I mean, to see someone do something incredible and simply say, I'm inspired by this, that here's someone who has, has, is better than me and whatever field it is. They're better. I mean, I remember meeting someone who at one point,

I used to, you do this comparison kind of thing. We're like, well, someone's really good at X, but I'm good at Y, you know? And there was a guy I met. He was a seminarian, and it was one of those things were everything like I did, he did, but he did it better. Like truly, he just consistently, I'm like, well, I'm funnier. Nope, he's funnier. But I'm more this. Nope, he's more that. Like, it was incredible. Like everything that I thought, like, well, this is kind of part of my identity. He was better in everything. To be able to say, I rejoice in the fact that he has these gifts. And secondly, I'm inspired by the fact that he's developed them so thoroughly that maybe I could shoot for that too. So that's our two responses to the temptation to envy is not to be

sad, not to say, I want you not to have that. Not to destroy it or tear it down, but to say, I rejoice in your gift. I rejoice in what God's given you. And secondly, I'm inspired by that. I'm inspired by the excellence that you've reached for. But the third and most powerful in the last one is something that Jesus reveals to us with every moment of his life. Jesus lived, he spent every moment of his life under the father's gaze, that he lived in the eyes of the Father. I think a lot of times when we experience envy, we experience it because we perceive this as a certain lack in ourselves. There's a certain thing we're missing, but to allow ourselves to be seen beneath the gaze of the Father, to allow the Father

to declare who you are and what your worth is. That's what gives us the ability to rejoice in someone else's success. That's what gives us the ability to be inspired by someone else's excellence. But to live under the gaze of the Father, that when he speaks, no other voice can overwhelm his. Though when the Father defends, there's no liar who can steal or kill or destroy. To live in a place under the Father's gaze where you know that when one is claimed by the Father, there is no room for sorrow at the good of another. The Crown of Thorns makes no sense. until we realize that when Jesus Christ allowed himself to be crowned with thorns, he chose to undo what has ensnared every one of our hearts.

It has led us to be able to be free to choose joy and zeal and the gaze of the Father.