Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 05/31/20 Exiles: The First Gift

Episode Date: June 2, 2020

Homily from Pentecost Sunday. For the love of God has been poured into our hearts. Jesus sent the Holy Spirit so that we could receive the first gift of the Holy Spirit: to know what it is to be loved by the Father. Mass Readings from May 31, 2020: Acts 2:1-11 Psalms 104:1, 24, 29-31, 341 Corinthians 12:3-7, 12-13 John 20:19-23 Download the Homily Study

So we prayed those words, Lord sent out your spirit and renew the face of the earth. And that's the thing is like, this is the work of the Holy Spirit. The work of the Holy Spirit is to renew. And like just, I just think about that. I've been praying about this, like knowing that we're coming down to Pentecost, going down to this moment and that the work of the Holy Spirit is to renew. And like how badly that's needed right now for us to receive the Holy Spirit in such a way that the Lord can renew the face of the earth, that he can renew cultures, that he can renew

that he can renew us. And so the idea, I think, behind it, I always go into Pentecost with this idea of like, let's go, let's do, like beyond mission. Like last week we talked about, he was Jesus in the enunciator, or ascension, that's all these A words, in the ascension, he says, I'm going to leave and I'm going to send the Holy Spirit. And what's going to happen is you're going to have my co-mission. Like, I'm going to send you out. So go do like, do great things.

And that's, I think, what's needed. But at the same time, something's more important than that. Something's so much more important than mission. Something's so much important. and go. And so the spirit renews. What he has to renew first is something deep inside of us. I was reminded recently of one of our former students, his name was Clark. And Clark was raised, I mentioned it before a couple years ago, but Clark was raised in a Catholic family and brought to Mass every Sunday and was baptized, confirmed, went through all the things. His mom was really

involved in their parish, his siblings kind of involved, that kind of thing. And Clark, Clark was just as involved as any person could have expect, you know, just living in Minnesota, going to church, came up to UMD, more or less went to Mass every Sunday, and a couple of years in there, like maybe three out of four weekends, kind of a situation. It's just kind of like, if you want to say, like the gift of the Holy Spirit in his life just cooled. Jesus wasn't number one. Jesus wasn't Lord in his life. And then he graduated and left, and I wouldn't have known anything about the rest of his life except something happened to Clark after he left. Well, one is he moved from Minnesota to Wisconsin, which is just devastating.

I mean, talk about exile. Oh gosh. Just, but no, we went to Wisconsin and he was an engineer and while he was there, you know, we do these podcasts every Sunday. We podcast the homilies on, we record them and put them on iTunes and he was like, you know, I miss UMD and I'm just going to tune into some of these things. And for whatever reason, just the Holy Spirit spoke to him, not when he was on campus, but after he had graduated and left campus, and something happened in Clark that was remarkable.

Something changed in him. Like, you know, he had a reason, we talked about this a couple weeks ago, he had a reason to be Catholic. He had a reason to go to church. He had something, he knew why he was going to continue to be Catholic for the rest of his life. And he had been restored because he was going to live that life. Like right with the temple and you have the city and the people, the community, he was restored. but there's something that had to happen. He had to be renewed.

That the gift that God had given him in his baptism and his strengthened in his confirmation, that had to be changed, that had to be renewed. He was given what I would call the first gift of the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit has so many gifts, right? The God himself, the third person in the Trinity, has so many gifts of wisdom and understanding,

and counsel and prophecy and fear of the Lord, the gift of the gift of making us holy and making us children of God. But the first gift of the Holy Spirit is to know that you're loved. That's it. That's the first gift of the Holy Spirit. When you have the Holy Spirit, his first gift that he places inside every one of us is this depth of knowledge that you're loved. Which I think is not very common.

I think most of us don't know that. I think we've heard it. I think we've been told it. But I'll say this a thousand times. I believe that most Catholics, while we've heard that God loves us, most of us really, truly, if we're pressed, what do we believe? I believe God tolerates me. That's one of the reasons why we need this renewal.

We need, because we're living in exile. We're made for the father's house. Made to live in the father's heart. That's the gift of the Holy Spirit. And yet we don't. We don't live there. I mean, that's it. We're living as if we're still in exile.

We're living as if we don't have a home. So many are living as if we don't have a family. I'll say this even as Catholic. Here we are. We're living as if, maybe you're finding yourself right now, living as if you aren't really loved. Nothing as if you don't actually have a father. If the Holy Spirit is the spirit of adoption. In fact, Scripture says this. It says, the love of God has been poured out into our hearts.

The love of God has been poured it to our hearts by the Holy Spirit so that we can cry out Abba Father. The only thing, the only reason we can even say Abba Father is because we have the Holy Spirit in us. Why? If the love of God poured into our hearts, what is the love of God? The love of God is the Holy Spirit. Because of that, we have access to the Father, and so many of us are living in exile, because we're living as if we don't know what it's like to be loved. You know today's Gospel, someone pointed this out, one of our missionaries pointed this out to me.

Today's Gospel, Jesus says to the Apostles, he says, As the Father sent me, so I send you, which is huge, right? That's the co-mission, that's the, let's go, let's bring salvation to the world, let's bring mercy to the world. Before he said that, and that's in John 20, before Jesus says that. In John 15, Jesus says, as the Father loved me, so I have, love you. So later on he says as the Father has sent me so I send you now but before that he says listen as the Father loves me so I love you think about

this this is at the last supper John 15 is the last supper so this is 50 days ago over 50 days ago from Pentecost and through they if you ever read those last supper discourses from like John 13 all the way through John 18 I think it is all Jesus can say is basically this message of do you have any idea how much you're loved. That's what you keep saying. As a father loves me, so I love you. You don't have any idea.

And that's the truth is like you can't have any idea how much you're loved. Because we, I think sometimes we've got into this box where we don't acknowledge the fact that he knows. We don't really live in the reality that he knows us, like that he knew you before he chose you. Scripture says, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. So Jesus, he already, God already saw it. God already saw all of the places you would fail. He already saw all the places you would mess up. He already, he knew about the infidelity,

he knew about the abortion, he knew about the anger, he knew about the hatred that would be in your heart. He knew about how many people you would hurt. He knew it all before he chose you. So that's why Jesus is saying, do you have any idea how much? I know all this and I still love you.

That's what... He proves it in the cross and he shows the power of that in the resurrection. That's why he restores us. But today he wants to renew us in this. He prays in John 17, I think it is, John 17 or John 18, He says, I'm praying for you that, he says, talking to the Father, talking to the Father about his Apostles, he says, I pray that the love with which you love me, Father, may be in them, and I in them. Let's pause on this one for a second here.

What is the love between the Father and the Son? Love between the Father and the Son, the love that the Father and Son of experience for all eternity is so real, so powerful that it's actually a third person. It's the third person in the Trinity. It's the Holy Spirit. And so here's Jesus in John's gospel saying, they don't have any idea. You have no idea how much I love you. And he's talking to his father and he's saying, well, I pray for the Father,

that the love with which you love me may be in them. And then at Pentecost, it happened. And unlike this day, it actually happened because that love is the Holy Spirit dwelling inside all of us, abiding in us, his presence. Like bringing us back from exile saying, I abide in you now. That's one of the reasons by St. Paul says that you're now temples of the Holy Spirit. Why? Because in the old temple, that was the place where God's presence would abide. That's the place where God's presence would reside.

You got to the temple a couple times a year and you realize, although God is everywhere, right? God is there all places. He's omnipresent. He's particularly present in the temple. It's one of the reasons why when the Jews came back from exile, from Babylon, and they rebuilt the temple, says the young men, young people, when they laid the foundation stones, they cried out for joy. They were so excited.

They were rejoicing. But it says, in the book of Ezra chapter 3, it says very puzzlingly, it says, but the elders, those who had seen the old temple, they wept. Because in some mysterious way, God's presence was missing. In some mysterious way, he wasn't fully restored because our lives were not fully renewed. But your temple of the Holy Spirit, that he abides in you. The problem with a lot of us though is we don't let them abide in us. We don't know how to be loved.

We don't let them abide in us. You know, we just know this truth that we can't add the Holy Spirit to a life that's lived contrary to the Word of God. We can't just add the Holy Spirit to a life that's lived contrary to the Word of God. As a good friend of mine, his name is Dan Krebsbock. He's a missionary for focus and he said this before, you can't just turn your baptism off. You know, you're baptized at one point. You were confirmed at one point.

You can't just turn your baptism on and off. You can't just turn your confirmation on and off. If you're loved by the Father, that's it. You're loved by the Father. And I can't just say, I'd rather not be loved right now. You can't have the Holy Spirit to a life that's lived contrary to God's Word. It's a contrary, that's lived contrary to His love. You can't just turn it on and off.

But here's the good news, but it can be renewed. God's presence in your life, God's gifts in your life, God's Holy Spirit in the life. the baptism can be renewed. Your confirmation can be renewed. That's one of the reasons why on Easter, we renew our baptismal promises. And today what I'm going to invite us all to do

is to renew our confirmation. Today, to renew your confirmation. And you do that to realize, first of all, not because God wants to send me out to do something, but because he just desperately wants me to know how much he loves me. I'm walking through this world as I'm still, as if I'm still in exile, as if I'm not actually loved by my father.

This goes back to Clark. One of the things that just hit him so powerfully when he was by himself in exile, in Wisconsin, is this truth of, oh my gosh, the father loves me. I have access to him at all times, at all places, in all moments. And even when Clark got cancer, he had cancer with this, he bore it with such courage, with such strength, with such fortitude, with such love, because he's like, no, I'm facing this as one who's loved. I'm facing this, having been given the Holy Spirit, the love of God lives inside of me. I am a temple of the Holy Spirit. He abides in me, his presence is true.

And that's the truth about the temple is it was a place where the Holy Spirit would abide, but this is the second thing and the last thing. The truth about the temple is that not only was the place where the Holy Spirit would abide, the temple was also the place of sacrifice. And so if you and I are made into the temples of the Holy Spirit, not only is God's love in us, and we get to be loved, and have access to the place, to the Father, but we also, we then become the place of sacrifice. It's one of the reasons why St. Paul writes to the Romans chapter 12 verse 1, he says,

Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and beloved, and every mass we say this, we say, Lord, accept us as an oblation to you. Let us be the sacrifice to you. Why? Because with the Holy Spirit, you are the temple of God and the temple is not only the place where the Holy Spirit and God's presence abides is also where the sacrifice happens. And Clark in his life, he's so badly. He said, I just, I want to get better so that I can lead by it. studies. I want to get better so that I can lead other people to God's love. He said, I want to get better for purpose. I want to get healed of this cancer so that I can live and serve God with every breath for the rest of my life. But he didn't get better. That cancer killed him. But when the Holy Spirit lives

inside of you, not even cancer can stop you. Because this is the reality. The truth is he offered himself as a living sacrifice, holy and beloved. Not only was his body, the temple of the Holy Spirit, where the Spirit of God, the love of God would abide and hold him. His body was also the place of sacrifice. And with every pain, with every breath, and with every injury, and with every last heartbeat, it was a prayer because the Holy Spirit poured out into Clark,

transformed every breath, every heartbeat, every wound, every pain into a prayer, into a place of sacrifice. So he did not get the chance to lead many people to Jesus through Bible study. But even now, because he was willing to be loved first, the first gift of God is to be loved, to be a temple of God's presence. and then ultimately to be the temple where God is worshipped in sacrifice, I can honestly and assuredly say that there are lives that are even saved even now

because of the Holy Spirit that's been poured out into his heart, that as Clark was able to cry out, Abba Father, now there are people who today, because of that sacrifice, because of that transformation, because Clark let himself be loved, who today at this Mass, are crying out the same words. I know I have a dad in heaven because the Holy Spirit has poured into my heart because of the witness of my friend, of my son, of my brother, Clark. This is the gift of Pentecost, the first gift of the Holy Spirit,

to know you're loved and to be renewed in that love. Thank you.