Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 05/05/24 Nunc Coepi: Begin Again

Episode Date: May 4, 2024

Homily from the Sixth Sunday of Easter. The strength that got you here is not the strength needed to get you there. As we continue to grow and age and mature, we also continue to experience the reality of decline. Each of us will come to know what it is to have less youthful strength. Rather than lament this fact, we can learn to adapt and choose a different strength. We can choose a new definition of what it is to "win" at life. Mass Readings from May 5, 2024: Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48 Psalms 98:1-41 John 4:7-10 John 15:9-17

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 John. Chapter 15 verses 9 through 17. Jesus said to his disciples, as the Father loves me, so I also love you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love just as I have kept my Father's commandments and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete. This is my commandment. Love one another, is I have loved you. No one has greater love than this to lay down one's life for one's friends. You are my friends, if you do what I command you.

And no longer call you slaves because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends because I have told you everything I've heard from my father. It was not me who chose you. It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you

and appointed you to go and to bear fruit that will remain so that whatever you ask the father and my name, name, He may give you. This I command you. Love one another, the gospel of the Lord. Right. You should have a seat. So I've been recently, I've been reading books by a man named Arthur Brooks. Arthur Brooks is this, he's a sociologist and an author, clearly. One of his books is called From Strength to Strength. And in this book, he starts the whole thing by talking about how he's on a plane at one point, I think going from L.A. to D.C. is this overnight flight. And he's doing his work.

but in the middle of this flight, he hears this elderly woman behind him talking to her husband. And she says these words that just got his attention. She says, she says to him, it's not true that no one needs you anymore. And as this man was talking, he was expressing this sense of like, I might as well be dead. I'm at this point in my life. And he's roughly 80, somewhere in these 80s, 80s, at this point in his life, he's like, I might as well be dead. No one needs me anymore.

I'm washed up, I'm burned out. my life is over essentially. My life is meaningless now. And here's his wife just trying to convince him. So here's Arthur Brooks. He's sitting there. And he's getting, he said, I'm trying not to eavesdrop, but it's really compelling this conversation. And so when they land, the lights turn on and he gets up expecting to find this, you know, husk of a man, this kind of like this shell of a person who's broken, turns around and he says, I looked in this man. I'm like, I knew him. Well, he didn't know him. He was famous. He was a man that even for Arthur Brooks as a child, he admired this man. In fact, other people on the plane, as they saw this man was there, they stopped him and they were like,

oh my gosh, the pilot came out from the cockpit and actually stopped this man and told him that ever since the pilot was a child, this man had been his hero. And Arthur Brooks was as compelled by this and said, what is it? That 20 minutes ago, this man was saying, my life might as well be over, but as soon as they land and people recognize him, his life has value now, this kind of this sentence. And so that started Arthur Brooks. This is about maybe 12 years ago. This experience happened in 2012, started Arthur Brooks on this journey of examining, like, how do we manage decline? Like, especially for those people who like strive really, those people who strive, those people who go after greatness in their lives, people who work really, really hard and they say, okay,

I'm going to actually do it. I'm going to accomplish something. And in fact, you know, as I mentioned, last week, last week, our students had the finals week. And so many of them graduated just yesterday. And this recognition of so many of them are going off and they're going off to do what, they're going off to do something great. because that's what we want to do.

Every one of us, we want to, hopefully, we want to do something great with our lives. But at some point, no matter how great we become, at some point, no matter how accomplished we are, at some point, no matter how much good we do, we hit this place of decline. And that's what Arthur Brooks' book is about, is about from strength to strength.

What happens when you get to this place of decline? Because that reality of decline happens to all of us. In some people, they think, in Arthur Brooks talks about this, some people think, like, no, no, I'm going to outwork decline. So like other people, they slow down, other people, they, you know, peter out. I'm not going to be like that. I'm just going to work harder. I'm going to go faster.

I'm going to push myself more. But the reality is human beings, we peak and then we go down. And this isn't just in athletics. I mean, athletics, if you're in any of the explosive sports like sprinting and stuff, your peak is between 20, 27. After that, you're going, you're decreasing. You're in decline. Endurance sports is a little bit later than that, but it still happens.

And so sometimes we think, well, yeah, my job isn't to like lift things, is it to like jump. My job is to think. My job is to apply my knowledge to problems to solve them. No matter what field of study we find ourselves in, no matter what field of work we find ourselves in, decline happens for every human being. Not when we think it's going to happen. In fact, there was a survey in 2009 that asked Americans, is what do you think, how old do you think you would be when you're getting old?

Like, what do you think getting old means? And what age is getting old? And the average answer in 2009 was 85 years old. And like, that's what getting old is. That's, you're old if you're 85, which is fascinating because the average age of death is 79. So most people will actually die before they get old. If they're dying six years before they actually consider the son's old. So this rate of decline happens so much.

sooner than we think. It happens actually between most, most of us, between our 30s and our 50s, that you would peak at 29 and actually decline between your 30s and your 50s, even in knowledge work. In fact, they've talked about this, that people who do research, that the massive number of Pulitzer Prize, no, Nobel Prize winners happen in their 30s. In fact, the likelihood of a person winning a Nobel Prize in their 70s is the same as it is winning the Nobel Prize at 20, which is roughly zero, zero percent chance of winning the Nobel Prize, zero percent of having any kind of innovation or any kind of invention that late in life. In fact, this decline is so real that air traffic controllers, they have a mandatory retirement age of 56 years old. Because why?

Because we're not going to keep you around because you're so good at your job. No, you used to be good at your job. You're no longer as good as you need to be because we need to keep these planes from hitting each other and crashing. because the reality is every one of us declines. And so we started this series four weeks ago in the beginning of Easter, and the series is this Nook Chepi. And a series is this notion of, okay, let's say this every single day, every single hour of each day, now I begin.

Like now is the time. What happens when I say now I begin, but I've lost my old strength. What happens when I say now I begin, but I actually don't have the strength in me to keep moving forward. At least I don't have the old strength. How I say now begin is let's do the same thing over and over again. And it might be something like this.

It might be more like Noonk-Cheppi, meaning begin again. And I say begin again by asking a new question. And that new question is, what does winning mean? like in your life and my life. Because for those of us who strive, for those of us who are like, no, I want to be great. I want to make an impact.

I want to do something great with my life. Okay, what does winning mean there? We can think like winning means, you know, having that invention, having an innovation, having making that impact. Maybe winning means making money. Maybe winning means like bought a house. I own it myself.

Whatever winning means. At some point, we have to redefine what winning means. And we have to, in some ways, we have that embrace the full meaning of Jungchepi which is not just now I begin, but also means let's begin again. It's now time to begin again. And this goes back to the scripture. I mean, think about in the first reading, you have the Acts of the Apostles.

And here's Peter who has this revolutionary thought. And it's a revolutionary revelation to him. Because if you go back to the Old Testament, you have God. What's he do? God chooses Israel as his own people. And even God even says, I didn't choose Israel because they're special. I didn't choose Israel because they're big or because they're strong or because they're smart, because they're clever, because they're better at all than other human beings.

He said, I chose Israel as my own possession because, for three purposes. One, I chose them so that they would have land. This is a promise, the promise God made to Abraham. He chose them, so they would have a land. He chose them, secondly, that they would guarantee them a dynasty. But the third reason God chose people of Israel, right, through Abraham, is he chose them because he said, through you, through this people, the people of Israel, the Jewish people, through you, the whole world would be blessed.

And so we have this whole Old Testament of this entire story of God working with this people that he chose, and he gives them a land, and he gives them a dynasty. But the point isn't just they would have land. The point wasn't just that they have a kingdom. The point was that because God chose this people, ultimately, it wasn't for their sake. It was for the world's sake. But think about, if you're... a Jewish person living in the first century.

Think about if you were Peter in the first reading today. And you're realizing, okay, I'm Jewish. All my parents, grandparents, going all the way back as far as I can remember, they were Jewish, part of the chosen people. And everyone else is not part of the chosen people. Everyone else is on the outside. And then all of a sudden, in the revelation of Jesus,

it's, okay, those who are on the outside, the point is to bring them inside. And so the thinking that Peter would have had, the thinking that those first Christians would have had that was like, no, preserved our Jewish identity had to be replaced by a different kind of thinking. What winning would have looked like as a Jew in the first century had to be replaced by a new vision of what winning would look like as a Christian in the first century. And again, this is true for all of us in so many ways, especially when we get to that second half of life, especially if you get to that part of life we realize I'm in decline, we have to

realize that the mindset that got me here, like the attitude that got me here, the work that got me here will not be the right kind of mindset that will get me there. That the work that I put in to get me to this part of the race might not be enough to get me to the finish of the race. And what God might be inviting us to do in that season is not give up, but is to change our definition of winning. In fact, Arthur Brooks points this out. He points out that, yes, invention and innovation, that's a young person's game. That when it comes down to starting companies, when it comes to inventing new products, when it comes to research breakthroughs,

it's very rare that a person has a breakthrough like that after 40. And so that time is done. But Arthur Brooks points out that while innovation might be a young man's game, synthesizing and integration of knowledge is an old person's game. That, in fact, that some of the best professors on campus in research, they're the young ones, but the best professors on campus who teach the best, those are the old ones. In fact, the part of our brain or the part of our brain that synthesizes information

and integrates information, the part of our brain that becomes wise actually increases with age while the part of our brain that innovates decreases with age. And so what do we have to do? We have to switch our mindset. And this is the most important thing. It's so important for us to switch our mindset. Because sometimes we get so stuck in our mindset that we can't actually change. I came across a study recently that said that the average human being has 60,000,

to 70,000 thoughts every day. This is incredible. Think about your brain. 60 to 70,000 thoughts every single day. But they went on to say that 90% of those thoughts are the same thing, are the same thought. But even though our brains are constantly moving, 60 to 70,000 thoughts every single day,

90% of them are about the same thing. And so no wonder in some ways we get stuck. No wonder in some ways we can just think like, no, this is the only way to look at a thing because that's the only way we've been looking at a thing where I believe that God is calling us. No, actually, begin again. Look at it differently. In fact, I saw this video recently.

If you guys have seen this too. It was a video of they brought a bunch of adults into this kind of interview looking space. I sat down and said, ask them one question. The question was, who would you love to have dinner with? Who would you love to sit down and have a meal with? And these adults were like, oh, you know, famous people. Like, I would love to have a meal with the president. I'd love to have a meal with this great author.

I'd love to have a meal with Taylor Swift. I'd love to have a meal with all these, like, famous people that they've never met in their entire lives. And then they escorted the parents out and then put the parents in a room where they could watch the interview space and they invited their children in. And the kids sat, their own kids, their own kids sat down in those same chairs

and they asked those kids of those parents who are now watching this, who would you most want to have dinner with? And the answer kept coming, back, my mom and my dad. I love to you have dinner with my family. I would live to have dinner with my brothers and sisters. I loved to have dinner with my grandma and grandpa. There was this radical way of changing thing. When we hear that question, who would you like to have dinner with? We think of someone who doesn't know us and doesn't care about us. But a new idea, a new vision of

life, a new vision of winning could be actually, why wouldn't I choose to have dinner with the people who do care about me, the people who do love me, the people that I do know, the people that I actually do love, to actually move from an old strength to a new strength. So an old way of thinking to a new way of thinking, we asked the question like, well, how do you do that, how do you move from a strength to a strength? How do you move from an old way that doesn't seem to work anymore? Why? Because it's in decline to a new way.

And I think maybe the secret is the secret of IT. What I mean like the secret of IT is whenever you have a problem with your computer and you call IT you guys know this right you from a problem with the computer and you call IT what's the first thing they say okay one person just said this yeah you turn it off and turn it back on again death how you have to do restart turn off and turn back on again this is nukechepi just begin again to be able to have the sense of that realization of okay what has worked up till now won't work till then what has got me to this place won't get me to heaven. And this is what Jesus is coming along. He's coming along and saying, what? I'll give you a new commandment. What's the new commandment? It's not simply be righteous.

That's wonderful. That's good. It works. It gets you a certain distance. It's not simply obey the commandments, although that's very, very valuable. There's a new way. He actually says, if you want to, win at life. You have to be like me. You have to love like I love. And this is what it is to when we experience ourselves in a place of decline where it's like we try to fight and try to work, try even harder. That sense of like, I just need to be persistent. And the Lord says, actually, no, no, no, no, you need to be present.

What I need to do, I say, I need to work harder. And God says, no, actually, I just need you to love well. I know that quote from St. John of the Cross, who had said so clearly, he said, at the twilight of our lives, we will be judged on love alone. For the Christian, what God has done is he stepped into our love lives and he's given us a new vision for what winning is, a new vision for how do we move from an old strength that's on the decline to a new strength that will never decline.

Because the reality, of course, is that every single one of us, we will never actually get that capacity to love taken away from us. There was this incredible woman, young woman named Kiarabedano back in Italy in the 1980s. Kira, I think she was 17 years old. And at one point, you know, she was a high schooler and she loved to dance. She loved tennis. She loved swimming. She'll hang with her friends.

She loved the Lord Jesus. At one point when she was 17 years old, she was playing tennis, and she fell to the ground. They brought her to the hospital, and she spent the next, I think it was two years in this hospital, slowly with the parts of her body, extremities, all the way to her core, becoming more and more paralyzed.

At one point, she was offered pain medication, and Kira Bedano said, no, no, no, I want to give me as little pain medication as possible because I want to be able to unite my sufferings to the sufferings of Jesus. People will come to visit her thinking that they would cheer her up, and they would leave themselves being cheered up. They would leave themselves being consoled.

They came to give her a smile. She would give them a smile. And at the end of her life, here's Kirabedano, who, again, as a young person, that old strength being taken completely away. Because we look at her, we look at her youth and we'd be like, oh my gosh, even I just described her as someone who played tennis and she danced and she hang out with her friends and she was very active. So we look at that and we think, oh, youth, life.

What a great witness to the gospel. All of those things were taken away. from her between the ages of 17 and 19. And she didn't try to cling to what was declining. She had a real vision, a new vision for what winning was. And her new vision was shaped by Jesus. And a new vision is love. And that's what she said.

She said, I can't serve and I can't sing and I can't dance and I can't run. I can't move. She said, but I still have my heart. And with that, I can always love. And this is true for every one of us. As we move from an old strength that's on the decline, in the second half of life where we realize there is a new strength that's needed

with the old vision of what winning is to a new vision of what winning is. The vision has to be this, has to be the vision of Kirabedano, has to be the vision that Peter realized was replaced, the vision that Jesus gives us. and the vision is, no, I don't simply need to be persistent. It's, I need to be present.

I don't simply need to work hard. I am simply called to love well. This is the last thing. In the catechism, it quotes, I think it's St. Gregory of Nazianzus. About this, about this call to love like God loves. About this call to begin again. About this call to say, okay, winning for me. Winning is looking like Jesus.

It's winning is loving like Jesus. He says, and he said this, he said, he who climbs, meaning the one who's going after the Lord, he who climbs never stops going from beginning to beginning, even if you and I find ourselves on the decline. Even if you and find ourselves like what used to work in the past doesn't work anymore, we can begin again. Because the one who climbs, the one who goes after the Lord, one who strives after God, never stops going from beginning to beginning.

that no matter where you are, no matter how much strength we have or don't have, we can with all the saints, say, I know what winning truly is. Winning is looking like Jesus. Winning is loving like Jesus. And when I fail, I say, now I begin. And when my strength fails,

I simply say, Nook-Cepi, let's begin again.