Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 05/17/20 Exiles: Why Go Back?

Episode Date: May 18, 2020

Homily from the Sixth Sunday of Easter. Not a habit or a have-to, but the heart is the reason. At some point, the exile will end. You will be able to go back. But why? What is the reason why you will go back? Mass Readings from May 17, 2020: Acts 8:5-8, 14-17 Psalms 66:1-3, 4-7, 16, 201 Peter 3:15-18 John 14:15-21 Download the Homily Study

The Lord be with you. And with your spirit. You're reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Glory to you, O Lord. Chapter 14, verses 15 through 21. Jesus said to his disciples, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to be with you always,

the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot accept because it neither sees nor knows him. But you know him. because he remains with you and I will be with you. I will not leave you orphan. I will come to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me because I live and you will live. On that day you will realize that I am in my father

and you are in me and I in you. Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me will be loved. loved by my father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him, the gospel of the Lord. So in these days, I've been really thinking, you know, these last weeks of the Easter season, and I've just been thinking a lot about the exile of the Jews in Babylon. This seems to keep coming back up again and again. You know the exile in Babylon.

What happened was years and years ago, obviously, there were 12 tribes of Israel, and at one point they split into two. 10 tribes of the north, tribes in the south. And after a number of years, the Assyrians came in and they destroyed the tribes in the north. They destroyed the 10 tribes. And then the 10 tribes. And then the Babylonians came in, and they conquered Jerusalem. And they took those Jews living in Jerusalem in that area and they exiled them. They brought them up to Babylon.

They had to live in Babylon for 70 years. In fact, there's so much of the scriptures that talk about their time in exile. And one of the laments that those Jews in exile had was they said, we have here in Babylon. It's a beautiful place. It's incredible. I mean, it was one of the seven wonders of the world, is the hanging gardens of Babylon. But they said, but we have no priests.

We have no prophet. We have no place to offer our first fruits. Because why? Because they're outside of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the only place you could have the temple. There's the only place you could worship God is in the temple. The only place the temple was was in Jerusalem. And you can't go there now.

And you don't, so you don't have a temple. You don't have priests. They're not there. You don't have worship. Like in so many ways, losing in exile is to deliver. live away from your priests. It's to live away from the temple. It's to live away from that place of worship. Those things that get, those identifiers, right? Those things that like tell you who you are. For 70 years, 70 years they were living in exile. And then King Cyrus says, well, you can go home.

At one point, King Cyrus, the king of, well, he's the king of Persia, which conquered Babylon, whole story. And he tells the Jews, he says, okay, you're free, you can go back if you want, you can go home. Which you imagine is great news. Again, imagine this. 70 years, like the relief, the joy, like after all of this exile, finally, you can go back. And I've been thinking about that a lot because here we are, us now. I think right now what we've been living through for the last two months, maybe up to three months, we've been kind of living in an exile. Similar to how the Jews were in exile, some freedoms taken away, some of me just freedom to travel,

freedom to go to worship, freedom to come to Mass. We've been separated from our priests. And some of you haven't been able to actually even get inside your church, haven't been able to even access the presence of God in the Eucharist, haven't been able to go to the sacraments. And so we can kind of join our hearts and realize, oh my gosh, I've been praying that same prayer. We have no priest, no prophet, no place to offer our first fruits,

no place to worship God. And now the great news is, I know in this state of Minnesota tomorrow, we have the first like small openings, right? We can start to gather in like groups of 10. They say that, I think, Wisconsin it's next Monday. And I know that throughout this region, I think June 1st is going to be kind of like the day that, okay, we're going into this next phase of maybe opening up even more. And that's awesome because that means this Sunday, next Sunday, the Sunday after Pentecost,

or the Monday after the Sunday of Pentecost, basically there's this kind of note of being able to be told, you can go back. When it comes to your church, when it comes to Mass, you can go back. if you want to. And I just imagine. Imagine that day. The relief, the joy, the...

Finally, I can do this. But I also have to imagine the reality. Because in Babylon, when King Cyrus, Persia, after 70 years, King Cyrus says, hey, great news, you can go back. There were quite a few Jews who went back. I mean, thousands of Jews who went back. They left their lives in Babylon,

and they went to... start a new life in Jerusalem, where they could worship God, where they could have their priests, where they could have their temple, where they could be free. But they were just a small fraction. The Jews that returned to Jerusalem were a small fraction. Most Jews stayed in Babylon. Most Jews chose to stay in exile, even though here's the king saying, like, you can go back if you want to now.

Most Jews were like, I don't actually want to. I don't have a reason to. Why would I go back? And I get totally, I get it. Like, I might say, yeah, my family, my ancestors are from there, but this is my life. You can say, yes, that's where my family lived, but this is where my family lives now. You see, yeah, the temple, I get it. That's how my family worshipped, but I don't.

That's how my ancestors worshipped. I get it, but I don't. Imagine, like this living in Babylon, imagine you get pretty comfortable after a while. I mean, you don't have to go up to Jerusalem three times a year to worship God. Crown off the hook for that one. And it's easy in that moment and that comfort to kind of just forget. In fact, to allow God and worship of God to be unimportant. I just don't really care.

Like, it's not that big of it. I know it was a big deal for my parents, maybe a big deal for my grandparents, but I'm kind of more or less indifferent. Again, you can go back, but fine, I don't have a reason to go back. I don't have a reason to go back. And again, whether that's tomorrow or next week or June 1st or July 1st or whenever this is, whenever we're told, hey, you can go back. I imagine a lot of us would say, okay, but why?

Why go back? Because maybe a lot of us have spent our lives. Like, I go to Mass on Sunday because it's my habit. That's just kind of like, or it's what my family does. Or is it just kind of just what you do? Or it's what you have to do. But the last three months, the last two months, up to three months, there hasn't been that habit.

That hasn't existed. There hasn't been the habit. There hasn't been the have to. In fact, I've been able to go to mass in my pajamas. I've been able to kind of roll out of bed and log on whatever I want to in the course of the day on a Sunday. And even if I didn't do that, my bishop has said, you don't even have to go to mass on Sunday. Just do something. I don't have a habit anymore.

I don't have a have a have to anymore. So the question is, why go back? In fact, the bigger question is why be Catholic? I mean, honestly, when it comes to living in exile for however long, and you're told you can go back, why be Catholic at all? That's kind of the question. I don't mean just like why should anyone, but why you? Why should you be Catholic?

Why should you go back? Like, do you have a reason? You know, in the second reading today, it's First Peter chapter 3. St. Peter says, he says, always be ready to give a reason for the hope that's within you. Always be ready to give a reason for the hope that's within you. And I just have to say that that verse has defined my life so much. In high school, I came across it.

And I was like, that's what I need. I realized that what I needed, not more than anything, but what I desired maybe more than anything was it actually was how I chose my college I went to. I chose to go to a Catholic school so I could major in theology. And people were like, you're going to major in theology. Like, what are you going to do with that? And I was like, I don't know. And I would give the answer of like,

maybe I'll be a priest, maybe I'll teach theology, and that was true. I was considering those things. But that wasn't the reason. The reason was because I wanted to be able to give a reason for the hope that's within me. I wanted to be able to explain what I believed and why I believed it. I wanted to be able to not just say I'm Catholic because if it's a habit or because I have to, but the heart of it. And that heart of it is the reason.

Again, I'm not Catholic because it's a habit. I'm not Catholic because I have to be. But I'm Catholic because of the heart. And the heart is the why. It's the reason. So what's the reason? What is the heart? Like why go back?

Why be Catholic? And I would say that the really simple answer is because of Jesus. Like Jesus is the reason. Jesus is the why. Jesus is the heart. And I'll say this, the reason why. Why be Catholic? Why go back?

Because Jesus is who he says he is. And that's what it comes down to. Because Jesus is who he says he is. And we've talked about this a thousand times. But we can't maybe not talk about it today because when St. Peter says, you need to be able to give a reason for the hope that's within you. Like, what is the reason? Well, because I believe with all my heart that Jesus is who we said, he claimed to be God and then he proved it. I mean, we look through the scriptures, look through the Gospels.

We see him again and again claiming to be God. And then people are like, yeah, right, whatever, you're not God. And he's like, okay, I'll let me demonstrate this to you. In Mark Chapter 2, Mark Chapter 2, there's that famous scene where there's the foreman and they have their fifth person, their friend, who's paralyzed. and they get to the house, right? And they can't get through the doors because there's so many people gathering around Jesus that they go up on the roof and they tear away the roof

through the remodeling, you know, make a skylight, and they lower their friend down. And Jesus looks at the man and he says, he looks at the friends and says, he sees their faith and he says, your sins are forgiven. And everyone's like, wait a second, who but God can forgive sins? And Jesus is like, I know, right?

And he says, so to prove to you, yes, only God can forgive sins, but to prove to you that I am who I say I am, he says, rise, pick up your mat and walk. And he heals the man physically to demonstrate that Jesus is who he is essentially. He really is God. A couple weeks ago, we read the story of, in John Chapter 11,

of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. People are like, who is this person? He said, prophet, yeah, he has power, yes. But listen, only God can raise people from the dead. And Jesus claimed to be God, and then he proved it. And, of course, last Easter, six weeks ago, you can imagine that six weeks since Easter. We talked about the resurrection.

And the resurrection is what? It's the one thing that changes everything. Because in the resurrection, maybe beyond anything else, Jesus is proving that he is who he says he is. So what's the reason? Why go back? Why be Catholic? Because Jesus is who he says he is, and here's the next step. There's the next historical fact, the historical reality that then Jesus, God himself, established his own church. He established the Catholic Church. I mean, honestly, it is a matter of historical record that Jesus Christ is the one who established, founded, built up.

and sustains the Catholic Church. And he gathered the apostles. Remember those 12 tribes that were scattered, the 10 tribes in the north, two tribes in the south, all those, he gathered the 12 apostles. And he established a church and he made Peter, in Matthew chapter 16, he made Peter the prime minister of that kingdom, made Peter the prime minister of that kingdom when what, Peter says, you're the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God.

And Jesus says to Simon, he says, now your name's Peter, now your name's rock, and upon this rock, and upon this rock, I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. What you bind on earth is bound in heaven, in heaven, what you loose on earth is loosed in heaven. And in that moment, Jesus was referring to, the little Bible study, Jesus was referring to Isaiah chapter 21, where scripture talks about the prime minister of the kingdom of God, the

prime minister of the kingdom of David, who had all the authority of the king while the king was away. Here's Jesus in even in today's gospel, where he's like, I'm going away, but I will not leave the orphans, not only because he's going to give us the Holy Spirit, because he gave us the church and he gave us the apostles, and he gave us the prime minister of the apostles, Peter, the Pope. So why be Catholic? Well, because Jesus is what he says he is, and then he founded a church and said, this is my gift to you, this is my gift to give you a family that you will be part of for this entire life and into eternity. So why be Catholic? Why go back?

The answer is not because of a habit or because of a have-to, because of the heart. And that's the key. The key is the heart. Because I've met this Jesus and I love him. I've met this Jesus and I love him. Why will you go back? When you're told you can go back, why will you go back? It's because you've met Jesus and you love him. Not because of a habit, not because of a have-to, because of the heart. And you want to love him. And what's Jesus saying in today's gospel? If you love me, what? You know, love is not a feeling. It's more than a feeling.

We own that. Boston told us that and we believe it. But how do we love God? Jesus says, if you love me, well, how do we love God? You know, love is defined as willing the good of the other, as choosing the good of the other. So we love each other by choosing each other's good. But God is the good, right? God doesn't need our good. We can't actually will his good because he is the good.

So how do we love God? Well, Jesus reveals two ways that we love God. One is, he says, as often as you did it for the least of my brethren, you did it for me. When we love others in his name, we're loving him. That's one incredible way. The other way is in today's gospel. The heart is, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. This might sound super weird for us, but this is God talking, right?

This is God talking. And if you love me, what does it look like? It looks like obedience. And it might seem strange for us. But where's obedience? Obedience is where we give God our heart. Reedings is where we, like God, I know what you want from me. and I'm going to do what you want me to do.

And he says, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. What commandment? And the night before he died, Jesus gathered those best friends around him, those apostles, those 12. And he said, do this. Take this all of you and eat of it. Take this all of you and drink from it. This is my body. This is my blood.

And do this. So here's what all comes down to is why go back? Like, why be Catholic? When you get the chance to go back to Mass, why would you go? What is the heart? What's the reason? The reason is because it's not my habit. And it's not my have-to.

The reason is because he asked me to. And if Jesus is who he says he is, God, the only way I can love, the best way I can love him is to do what he's asked me to do. And that's what I want. You know, it's so funny. Getting caught up in the have-toes. I get sometimes nervous. So here's the little story.

I have a number of siblings. I have a sister and brother-in-law. They have three kids, and they, so I'm so grateful. My family, they are pretty much all mask-goers, I think, pretty much every Sunday. I don't keep up on them, so I don't like ask. But I'm pretty sure that's what happens. And I think they go to confession regularly.

I don't ask again. I know. But I'm so grateful for the fact that they go to Mass. But my sister and brother-in-law and their three kids, they're like the Saturday Night Mass goers, right? They're like, yeah, this works out for us. We go to the Saturday Night Mass. Now, as you probably know,

the Saturday Night Mass is like legit. It counts. So just getting that straight. You're like, what the heck? I thought Saturday night was no problem. It's not a problem. It's great. And the fact that they go to Saturday Night Mass is phenomenal.

It's so good. But I found myself getting nervous. And I told my, I told them this. I told my brother-in-law and sister this. I was like, I found myself getting nervous. Like, hmm, I'm glad that Mass is like the heart of their weekend, right? It's a huge important part of the weekend. But I was like, but what about my niece and nephews when they go off to college?

Like, we don't, on campus, we don't have a Saturday night Mass. And like, what if they don't have the access to that, like, you know, convenient time on Saturday night? Well, they just not go. And it's so dumb. I'm like, again, I just got nervous. That's why God didn't call me to be a parent, like an actual biological dad because, like,

I'm nervous about my siblings. I'm nervous about my nieces and nephews. If I had my own biological children, like, I would never sleep at night. I would just be, like, constantly a wreck. Because I just assumed, like, oh, my gosh, all the reason, the only reason they go to mass is because of this. habit. Like, wait a second. Like, sure, maybe it's a good habit. Or maybe they've also actually met Jesus Christ and love him. Because that's the case. I know my niece and my nephews, they have.

Like, they've met Jesus. They've encountered him in his word. I know my nephew, Max, he had spent so much time. He had dedicated himself for years, even as a junior high kid, middle schooler, to read at least, read his Bible like 10, 50 minutes a day. It's incredible. I know my niece, Heidi, that one of the things she's done, she's encountered Jesus in adoration. I know both of them had, all four of them, all three of them, I'm going to have numbers.

All three of them have encountered Christ so powerfully in the sacrament of confession that last fall, I was talking with their youth minister. His name's Dan, and his wife, Britt, is the co- Youth Minister in their hometown. They're so awesome. And Dan was like, hey, I got a fun story to tell you about your nephew, Max, and niece Heidi.

I'm like, what is that? He said, well, a couple Wednesday nights ago at Religious Ed, Max comes up to me and Heidi comes with him and they said, hey, Dan, how many priests do you think you can get for next Wednesday, Religious Ed? He's like, what do you mean? He's like, well, we're going to get as many people as we can to go to confession. So how many priests do you think you can get? And Dan was like, well, get maybe this many, this many.

And Max and Heidi say, get all the priests you can because you're going to need them all. And it was like, okay, so Dan got every one of the priests in the area, in the town, come to Wednesday night, and he said, I was blown away. They had all, with some friends, they'd all gone to these kids in their class who were sophomores and juniors and high school. And they said, we're going to confession on this Wednesday night. He said, I was looking around the church on this Wednesday night. And he said, it looked like I was at a retreat or at like a summer camp, like a youth conference

because there was lines and lines. It went for two, two and a half hours. And I was just like so blown away. I told my nephew Max. I'm like, dude, nice job. Like, that's incredible that you did this. And he's like, well, I mean, it wasn't just me. It was come to other people too.

And I'm like, of course, I know it's a team effort. But the core is this. These are two people, including their younger brother, Alex, these two people, who they don't go to Mass because it's a habit, although it's a great habit. Not just because it's a have to, although we do have to, but because they've met Him, they've met Jesus, they know the heart, the reason why? Why go back?

Because Jesus has changed their lives already. Why will you go back? Because Jesus has changed your life already. So we're not the first people to live in exile. We're not the first people of God to be separated from each other. There were the people of God, the Jews in Babylon, there were Christians in India. He spent years and years without a priest. There's Christians, Catholics in Japan, who Francis Xavier came to Japan

and he was able to evangelize them for four months and then he died. Catholicism flourished for 40 years and then one of the shoguns came to power and like quashed it. And it was illegal to be a Catholic for 250 years. For 250 years, there were no priests who ever were permitted to visit Japan. We're not the first people to live in exile. What do you do in exile? I'd say this, I'd say those who were ready to go back, those who had a reason to go back, were those who had not stopped. They had not forgotten. Here's Daniel in Babylon with Hananii and Azarii and Mishael, all of them in Babylon.

And yeah, they don't have any priests around. They don't have temple worship around. So they couldn't worship God as he asked them to do. But what they could do is what they brought into the king's court, they were brought into his school, and they're like, you get to eat from the king's table, all his food, which would include pork and other foods that were prohibited to Jews. And so they were saying, we know we can't worship God like he deserves, but we also know that he wants us to eat certain food.

we will do what we know he wants us to do. And they held on. They had not stopped in exile. So when it was time to go back, they had a reason to go back. They hadn't forgotten. When Francis Xavier came to Goa, India, hadn't been a priest there for years upon years upon years. And he said, I found like literally thousands of people,

thousands of people who, he said, they don't know they are father, they don't know the Hail Mary, they don't know the creed, they don't know how to make the sign of the cross. He said, all they know is that they're Christians. The only thing they know is that they're Christians. And they said they'd bother me all day. I couldn't even pray my morning prayer or evening prayer because they just kept tugging on me saying,

teach us more about what it is to be Christian. Teach us more about the reason why we're Christians. We need to have a reason. We've been living in exile for so long. What's the heart? And this is the last thing. Those Christians in Japan. 250 years.

without a priest, 250 years without confession, 250 years without Mass. There were Catholics who lived and died and never experienced the Mass. Never experienced what it was like to be freed, to hear the words of the priest, I absolve of your sins in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Spirit. But they held on. In fact, there are stories that talk about how these Japanese Catholics pass on the faith to their kids and they would tell them about the reason why they were Catholic. And they would share the faith by incorporating the

truths of the faith into these songs and so even though it cost them so much, they had a reason. And he didn't stop. And then I think in 1865 the first Catholic priest in 250 years was brought to Nagasaki and he was permitted to build a little small Catholic church but not to serve the local Japanese to only serve those foreigners who are living in Nagasaki who happened to be Catholic. He's a French priest named Father Petitian. And one day he was in this little small chapel and a bunch of these Japanese Catholics,

underground Catholics, unknown to anyone else around them except they knew who they were and they knew whose they were. They came into the church and they knelt down in front of this French priest and one of them whispered to this priest, all of us have the same heart as you. is you. All of us have the same heart as you. Because we've been living in exile. And now we're told maybe, maybe we can go back. And we have the same why. We have the same reason. We have the same heart as you. And that why, that reason, that heart is Jesus. So I don't know when it's going to be

that you're told, okay, you guys, the doors are open. You're free to go back. But I do know this. when it comes to going back every single one of us we'll need to have a reason why when it comes to going back every single one of us will need to have the heart and when it comes to going back you'll be able to walk into your parish and look around and your brothers and sisters next to you

and say all of us have the same heart as you you're able to see your priest for the first time and I don't know how long look at him and say father all of us have the same heart is you and that same heart, that same why, and that same reason is Jesus.