Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 06/06/21 The Crisis of Love

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

Homily from The Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ. Do we lack faith? Or do we lack love? Most people who call themselves Catholic do not believe one of the most central and most powerful teaching in the Church. Is it because they lack hearing? Do they lack the opportunity to know about this teaching? Do they lack faith? Or is something else missing? Mass Readings from June 6, 2021: Exodus 24:3-8 Psalm 116:12-13, 15-18Hebrews 9:11-15 Mark 14:12-16, 22-26

So once again, this Feast of Corpus Christi is not just the feast. The day is fine. The day is what it is. It's Sunday. It's great. It's awesome. It's good we're here. But the reality I think that I would say is change my life more than anything else in my

entire life, more than anything else in the world. And if there's anything I could ever want to talk about, it would be the Eucharist. And so today is June 6th. And this is the anniversary of my ordination. I was ordained on June 6th. And it just reminds me because I remember the first time I was ever invited to go give a talk in a church. I think I was a seminarian and they said, hey, come on back to Braynard and give a talk. What do you want to talk about?

I was like, oh, how about the Eucharist? And then when I was first ordained and I got to preach as an ordained deacon, it was at a Eucharistic adoration time. So I got to preach on the Eucharist. And the very first time I got to preach as a priest, June 6th, however many years ago, got to preach on the Eucharist. And it's just such a gift to be able to be back here on an anniversary day and talk about the number one thing, I think that's not just in my life, I think it's the number one thing in life is the Eucharist, which this truth, this reality that Jesus is truly present,

body, blood, soul, divinity in the Eucharist is, it is worth everything. And it's also one of the reasons why it's so painful when we realize that I think something like only 24% of, Catholics in the United States believe that. There's something like upwards of 70% or more, 74% more than that. Of Catholics actually, they don't believe that Jesus is really present in the Eucharist,

which is just, no, that's one thing if it was like non-Catholics thinking, well, I don't really think that's really Jesus in the Eucharist. That would be like, that's understandable, it makes sense in some ways. But to have this statistic that 70 plus percent of American Catholics think that, that the Eucharist is just a symbol. And as we said before, Flanier O'Connor, who is this one of the best American authors of the last century, she was Catholic living in the Deep South.

At one point, she was at dinner with a bunch of other people. And there was one of the Catholic at the dinner table. And the other Catholic had been one of these 70 plus percent person that said, she said, well, I think the Eucharist is just a symbol. And they asked Flaner O'Connor what she thought. And she said, well, if it's just a symbol,

then to hell with it. Because that's the truth. And not only if it's just a symbol to hell with it, if it's just a symbol, to hell with us. Because literally, if the Eucharist is just a symbol and we're worshipping bread as if it's actually God, then we're committing idolatry of the worst form and we're going to hell. And this is just how it goes. And yet the reality is that this is true, that we can take Jesus at His words.

So the big question is, how come? Like, how come so many Catholics who were taught that the Eucharist is truly Jesus, believe that it's just a symbol. How come many Christians don't even believe what Scripture says about Jesus and the Eucharist? And I think there may be a number of possibilities, but here's two possibilities. One possibility is we lack knowledge. We just don't know. I mean, there was a time in my life.

I remember I went to Catholic school, went to Catholic school, went to Mass every single Sunday of my life. A couple times during school year, we went to mass during on Wednesdays. I know that I went to First Communion, formation, preparation, all that. stuff. I know at some point someone must have told me that that's really Jesus, and I completely missed it. I remember I was 16 years old or so, and I was reading through a book that talked about, this is really Jesus. He's really in the Eucharist. And I remember being blown away by this. I guess if no one had ever told me, went downstairs, I've told the story so many times, went downstairs and told my siblings, like, you guys, did you know that's really Jesus in the

Euchar? And they're like, yeah, duh. Like, no, it's like really, really him. Like, yes, moron. Like, we know that that's really Jesus. And I just, I had heard, but I didn't know, right? I had heard, but I hadn't listened. And I think maybe that's some of us. We can hear again and again with the gospel today, the Last Supper, which he says doesn't say this is a symbol of my body. He says this is my body. He says this is my body. He says this is my blood.

And every single, I mean, this is crazy because again, it could just be a lack of knowledge. A lack of just, I didn't really hear it. I remember when I first got ordained, I might have mentioned this before too. My godmother at one point, she had been raised Catholic and she left the Catholic Church and she wanted to meet with me because after I got her to her, I got her done. day and she wanted to convince me that Catholicism was wrong, which makes sense. If she thought it was wrong, it's actually an act of love for her to try to talk me out of it. But at one point we were going through John chapter 6. John chapter 6 is the bread of life

discourse, right, where Jesus is saying that I'm the true bread that came up from heaven and you must eat of this bread if you want to live forever and the bread that I shall give you is my flesh for the life of the world. And people are confused. They're like, they're taking him very literally and Jesus isn't saying, doesn't say, no, I only mean this symbolically. He actually doubles down, triples down, he quintuplets down. I mean, five times he reiterates the fact that, no, no, you must eat and drink my body and my blood if you want to live. So I'm going through this John chapter six with my godmother, and she's, at the end of it,

she said, why, I see that that could be a, that could be an interpretation of this. That could be an interpretation of John chapter six. And then I was able to point out to her, well, it is not only an interpretation for the first 1,500 years of Christianity, that was the interpretation. That was the only interpretation that every single Christian who lived, 100% of Christians, 100% believed exactly this, that in the Mass, in the Eucharist, Jesus is truly present, body, blood, soul, and divinity. So again, it could be a lack of knowledge.

Maybe we just haven't heard this. Or maybe we just haven't realized this. But I think that there's another reason why so many don't believe. I don't think it's just because we lack knowledge. I think maybe the main reason that so many of us don't believe Jesus is truly present in the Heuris. It's not because we lack knowledge, but I think it's because we lack love. I think we lack love. Because we value what we love.

And we value most what we love most. Years ago, there was a student here on campus at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. It was Kyle. And Kyle was in our CIA over the course of this year, and Kyle also played on the hockey team. So the Bulldogs here in Duluth are Division I hockey team. And in that year, they went to the national championship. And big game, you know, the final Frozen 4 final game, double overtime. Kyle gets the puck and last minute he scores the winning goal to clinch the national championship.

I don't think the UMD had won the national championship up to that point or had been a really long time since they had won. And here's the guy, he scored the winning goal in double overtime. Like this is like the dream of every Minnesotan high school hockey player in their entire life since they were. were three. It was like you're going to imagine this out on the frozen pond at night by themselves playing, just shooting pucks and thinking, here we are, double over time, last game, national championship, get the puck, shoot the goal. He did it. He lived the dream, right? He lived the whole thing. The town went nuts. It was awesome because we don't have a lot of school spirit here at UMD, but that night they had a lot of school spirit. And the next day we went back to

normal. But the next day I remember talking to Kyle just called him up. They're like, hey, dude, congratulations on the goal. That's awesome. And his response was, yeah, you know, he's pretty humble guy. He's like, yeah, he was really cool. You know, team effort, of course, team player. He said, but nothing is going to compare. He said, this was nice, but nothing is going to compare to the first time I get to receive Jesus in the Eucharist.

And I remember just thinking, like, this is, this is the kid who's just lived, he's just, the night before, he just lived the dream of every single hockey player who's ever lived. And he said, but nothing is going to compare. This is going to mean nothing compared to receiving Jesus in the Eucharist for the first time. We were talking to him a couple years ago,

and I reminded him of that. I'm like, dude, it was so cool. I tell everyone that story. And he says, yeah, he says, it's still true. He says, actually, it's growing that goal. He's not even in my top 10 anymore of life experiences. He says, first is receiving Jesus in the Eucharist. Second is when I got married.

Third is when my first child was born, second child, you know, the kind of thing. Where he's just like, that is not even, we value what we love. And we value most what we love most. We value most what we love most and we're willing to do whatever it takes. In the year 304, the Emperor Diocletian, the Roman Emperor, he made it illegal to have scriptures

and he made it illegal to attend Christian service or Mass on Sundays. And under the pain of death, if you were to go to Mass, you would be killed. And in North Africa, there were 49 Christians who they defied the Emperor's order to stay at home. and to avoid the Mass. And they were caught. They were caught going to Mass. They were caught celebrating Mass. And 49 of them were tortured.

And every 40, all of them, each one of them went to their death for love of Jesus in the Eucharist. At one point, one of them, his name was Emeritus. Emeritus was, he was asked, why? Why did you do this? When you knew that we would find you, we knew that we would arrest you, you knew that we would torture and kill you.

Why did you still do this? And he said, because, is because we can't live without the Mass. We can't live without the Eucharist. He said, the Mass is what makes us Christians. Like, without the Mass, we're not Christians. But who we are is our deepest identity, right, is being made in God's image and liked us.

Our deepest identity is our deepest identity, our deepest identity is we're Christians. And the mass is what makes us Christians. We cannot live without the Mass. And now, my hope is that hopefully we've been able to reflect on this over the last year, especially those who have been prevented from going, going to Mass to reflect on this and realize that we cannot live without the Mass.

That it's going to cost us something. Yes, it could cost us our life. I mean, do this really, truly. This could cost you your life, but it has to cost something. It might not cost your life, but it has to cost something because if we love, then we're willing to let it cost us. If we love the Eucharist, then we love Jesus. Chris, if we love Jesus, we're willing to let it cost us. I remember there was a young woman who used to work here on campus with us. And she was kind of an adventurer, traveler, rock climber.

And so at one point, she had this long extended trip to Thailand, to do some rock climbing in Thailand. And she was on this island off the coast of Thailand for a while. And at one point, she just realized, well, I guess I can't go to church. I guess I can't get to mass because if I was going to get to mass, there wasn't a church on the island. She would have to get up at 3.30 in the morning, walk down, catch a 4 o'clock ferry, take an hour-long ferry across the water there, get on a bus and take a two-hour bus ride to get to the only Catholic church. That was the nearest Catholic church. And she just saw that and said, well, I can't do that.

And then she realized, and she was really good about this because she realized the truth about herself and she realized, wait, if this was for a climbing trip, if this was for an adventure, yes, I would get up at 3.30, catch the 4-clock ferry, take the ferry across, get a 2-hour bus ride to go climb. And she realized I would do that for something else. So my saying, I can't make it to mass because it's four hours away really isn't I can't make it a mass. It's I won't or I'm not willing to. And that convicted her because why? Because if we love something, we're willing to let it cost us. Again, it's not always a lack of knowledge. A lot of times for us for ourselves, it's a lack of love. We say I can't when we simply just

mean I won't or I'm not willing to. And yet for so many people who have loved the Eucharist, they've let it cost them something. Father Walter Chezek is a guy who bring up all the time, right? I just love this man who was raised in the United States and became a missionary to Russia. At one point, he writes about this. He says, when we were in seminary, he said, we thought that it, when we, as missionaries, maybe someday will be difficult to say mass. He said, that was really only a daydream, though. We couldn't imagine. It was something you talked about, though, he said it was something you read about in the history of the church during persecutions, but not really something you would ever have to experience yourself, not being able to say mass.

And then when he got to Poland and then into Russia, he was in solitary confinement for five years and for five years who was unable to say the mass. At one point, he was brought into the gulags, right, into the prison camps, the work camps, where they hardly fed anyone. They literally worked people to death and starved them to death. And yet people, in spite of informers and in spite of the willingness or potential of getting caught, they would offer these clandestine masses, knowing that if they were caught offering mass, they would instantly be killed. And yet he talks about this and he says that in those days,

there was the Eucharistic Fast. And the Eucharistic Fast started at midnight before the next day. So if you're going to receive the Eucharist, you couldn't eat anything or drink anything starting at midnight the night before. And he described, he said, I've seen priests pass up breakfast. up breakfast and work at hard labor on an empty stomach until noon in order to keep the

Eucharistic fast because the noon break at the work site was the time that we could best get together for a hidden mass. And he said that not only the priest did this, the other prisoners would do this, they would get like a crust of bread each day to eat and they would not eat their food so they could keep the fast. In fact, Father Chizek goes on to say, he says, I was amazed at the devotions of these men, the devotion of these men. He said most of them had very little formal religious training.

For the most part, they knew very little of religion except the prayers and beliefs of their pious parents or grandparents had taught them, and yet they believed and they were willing to make unheard-of sacrifices for the consolation of attending Mass and receiving Holy Communion. They lacked knowledge in so many ways, right? They lacked having a lot of knowledge about the true presence of Jesus and the Eucharist, but they didn't lack love. And because of that, they had Him. Again, we can dismiss the Eucharist because we lack knowledge, and we can dismiss the Eucharist because we lack love.

Because we're not willing to value the Eucharist, not willing to let it cost us something. We're not willing to let it cost us time. Because that's the thing that the Eucharist always costs us. The Eucharist always costs us time. Time spent with Jesus and the Eucharist is what actually increases our love. There are stories of John Paul II. he would get up 3.34 o'clock every morning and even as Pope was just working super long hours, he would get up and spend an hour and a half to maybe two hours with Jesus in the Eucharist

and then in daily Mass. And he said that that time of his day was his favorite time of day. It was the best time of every single day. But that time spent with Jesus that cost him, it cost him something. It also did something to him. In fact, there's a story about when John Paul 2nd in 1995 came to the United States. He was in Baltimore and there's a priest out there, Father Michael White is his name, and he was in charge of John Paul II's going around Baltimore area. And at one point John Paul was staying at the bishop's residence and in the Archbishop's house, apparently there's this long hallway and there's all these doors that look the same, just door after door after door, a lot of rooms. And they were doing a tour quick before John Paul

the second had gotten there and one of the doors was open. It was a door open to the Archbishop's chapel, the private chapel there. And the Pope's schedule or handle or said, okay, listen, Father White, make sure that this door is shut when John Paul the second gets here. Why? Because if he sees that the Eucharist is here, he's going to wreck the schedule. He's going to go and he's going to want to pray in front of Jesus, and we can't let him do that. So make sure this door is shut whenever John Paul is here. So they do that, John Paul gets up, he's walking on the hallway,

and he passes the door. It's shut. The door to the door to the door and then he stops, and he backs up and he looks at this closed door, and he looks at the priest who is or, organizing the schedule. And he was told him to shut the door. John Paul didn't know about this. And he looks at him and he points a finger and he wags his finger at him and shakes his head

and he opens the door and he goes in and he prays for like a significant amount of time. He said enough time to wreck the schedule. And it was that sense of like why? How can he do this? Because he had this love for Jesus, a love for the Eucharist. Why?

Because he was willing to let it cost him because he valued most what he loved the most. And because of that, the love just grows. And this is the last thing. And the reality, of course, the Eucharist is God's greatest gift. Salvation is a great gift, absolutely. But the Eucharist is God's greatest gift.

Why? Because it's himself. It's him. It's a free gift. But we will never appreciate it. We will never love it like we should until we value it so much that it costs us. We will never love the Eucharist like we should until we value it so much that it costs us.

Our options until it costs us our hours until it costs us our time. It will never really, really love the Eucharist until we value it so much. And it costs us our life. And only then will we really love this greatest gift that God has ever given to us himself. Here, in the Mass.