Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 06/13/21 Everyday Courage

Episode Date: June 14, 2021

Homily from the Eleventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. Everyday courage simply does what is necessary. Courage is not merely needed for the big moments of life, but is required for each moment of a life well-lived. Courage is all of the other virtues the moment they are needed the most. Mass Readings from June 13, 2021: Ezekiel 17:22-24 Psalm 92:2-3, 13-162 Corinthians 5:6-10 Mark 4:26-34

Man, we got some weather going on outside. Hopefully the storm doesn't knock out our cameras. But back in 1972, they're in Poland. There's a young man. He was only 24 years old, but he was ordained a priest at 24, which is just remarkable to me. I just think that's incredible. He took the name Father Jerzy. Father Jerzy Popoletschku was his name.

And Father Jerzy had been raised under communist rule. Obviously, the communists had invaded Poland and they had, they had invaded Poland and they, oppressed the Polish people his entire life. He gets ordained at 24 in 1972, and one of his first assignments was he was assigned to be a chaplain basically to the steelworkers there in the town in which he lived. And it's really cool. He just really entered into what it was to be one of the steelworkers. He learned how to do all the things that they did. He learned to live how they lived. And one of the things he also saw was he saw what they had to endure, not just when it came to but what they had to endure as workers under what was called the workers movement, you know,

under what was called under the communists, this totalitarian regime. Now, of course, he had lived that way, he grew up on a farm, but he had recognized that here is the evils of communism and the way in which communism just destroys the individual. But the question comes up is like, well, what can an individual do against, like something like the Soviet Union, especially in the 1970s, 1980s, like what could an individual do against the Soviet Union? It was immovable, it was unstoppable, it was unbeatable. And so what Father Jersey did, he just stood up, he just stood for workers, he stood for Christ, he stood for the individual against the state, against the collective, against the group. And for three years,

he just preached. When he saw what was going on, he just preached constantly, not just against communism, but for Christ, not just against this evil, that dictatorship, but also for the people and for the fact that they were not just called to be free from the evil oppression of communism, but that they were called to embrace their own personal responsibility, that they were personally responsible for their own actions, even if they were in the midst of a totalitarian regime. At one point, it is so interesting, because a lot of times right now, we can be at a place where even if religious people start talking about the evils of a society or the evils of communism or socialism, we just leave it at that.

But Father Jersey never forgot Jesus in this. Because he wasn't just trying to reform the culture, wasn't just trying to say, well, these workers are poor, our poor, we need to have more money. In fact, he said this, he said, that's not the end. It can't be the end. He said, money can be printed. You just make more of it.

But prudence, temperance, courage, justice, those things can't be printed. You can make more money, but he says, you can't print love and faith and hope. he was threatened almost daily. He was under surveillance constantly. At one point into the communists, they were trying to turn even other clergy against him

to make them see Father Jersey as an enemy of the church. For the first half of 1984, he was interrogated by the communists over a dozen times. There were many attempts on his life, and finally one day on October 19, 1984, he was driving, and three men stopped his car, and they dragged him out of this car,

and they beat him with clubs. They smashed his skull. They crushed his teeth to nubs. And they bound and gagged him, threw him in the trunk of their car, drove him to a river still alive, and threw him alive in this river. I left him for dead, and he did die.

Just think of what he said. Money can be printed, but not faith. And not hope, not love, and not courage. The courage can't be given to someone. You know, in the second reading today from St. Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, he says, we are always courageous. He actually says it twice.

He says we are always courageous. When we realize is that courage is not, for those of us who live in the world, for Christians, courage is not a luxury. Courage is a necessity. And I know you can hear this and say, well, yeah, I guess Father's for the Jersey story. Yes, that's powerful. Yeah, but that's another time. That's another place.

That's for him. Yeah, I'm glad he was courageous. But we don't, father, we don't live under a dictatorship. This is at 1984, right? George Orwell's dystopian novel, 1984, where he describes Big Brother, right? The Big Brother is always watching. Big Brother is controlling what you think because it wants to control what you do. That's what you call hard of total.

What George Orwell described in 1984 was what you call hard totalitarianism. Basically, it's a posed from the outside. And the example is, in the book, at least, 1984, all the people are hard. forced to watch screens constantly. Even at night, they're constantly forced to take in the messages, taking the noise, to tolerate this constant bombardment of message and of noise from these screens, and they can't turn it off because the screen is constantly surveilling them. And I go, we don't live that way. We don't live in that kind of dystopia. We live in more, there's another dystopian novel that came out roughly the same time as George Orwell wrote 1984, was written by a man

named Elders Huxley, and that dystopian novel is called Brave New World. I bring it up all the time because I did my senior dissertation on Brave New World and morality and whatnot. Whereas 1984 was hard totalitarianism, Brave New World was like a soft totalitarianism. Basically, rather than the state coming in and crushing them, the people just chose to numb themselves. Whenever they were distressed, the state provided them with drugs to drug themselves with. Whenever they were distressed, they were taught to simply distract themselves.

They lived under a tyranny, but it was a tyranny of comfort. And I wonder, are we more like 1984, are we more like Brave New World, where it's a hard to tellitarianism or where they say you can't turn off your screen or is it a soft teleteranism where we realize no one is forcing us to watch screens all day, but we can't turn away. You know, I first heard of a man named Alexander Shuljanitsyn in 1998. He had survived the Communist Depression, Soviet Union. He had survived the Gullogs, right?

And so he survived to write about the state of affairs, the work camps, essentially death camps in Siberia. He wrote a series of books, a three-volume book called the Gulag Archipelago, where he revealed and exposed the evils of the Soviet Union and the evils of communism. And at one point, the first thing I ever read of his was his 1978 address to the Harvard commencement class. So as the 1978 class of Harvard, they invited this man who had spoken out so powerfully against his own, the oppressive government in his own nation.

They brought him to, what do you have to say to these Harvard graduates? What do you have to say to us? What do you have to say to the West? And in 1978, Solzhenitsyn got up and he said, what I see as a survivor, what I see as an outsider, is that you are no better off than we were in the Soviet Union. He says, yes, the communists, they made us get rid of God, but you've gotten rid of God. now no one's forced you to, you just chose to. He says that we in the West, we put too much focus on political and social reforms.

Here's one of the things he said. He said, the defense of individual rights has reached such heights as to make society as a whole defenseless against certain individuals. He said, it's time in the West to defend not so much human rights as human obligations. that he was saying it's time for us not to just lift up human rights, but to lift up human responsibilities. Even more, even more, he said this is the most striking indictment that I just remember coming away from this 1998,

reading this 1978 address, he said, the most striking feature of the West. When he came here as an outsider, from Russia, from the Soviet Union, coming to the United States, he said the most striking feature of the West, our crisis was a decline in courage. This thing that St. Paul said, we are always courageous. He looked at our culture and said, you have this decline in courage. And I wonder, I wonder, maybe that's true.

But I wonder if one of the main contributing reasons why that is the case, if that is the case, is that too many of us believe that courage is needed only in the big moments. Right? I think that a lot of us, we think, well, you think of courage, we think of, yeah, those really dramatic moments where someone needs to stand up and they need to go out, they need to do something incredibly enormous. Because if that's true, then courage is something only a few people really actually need. If we only need courage in the big moments, in those heroic moments, then courage is something

that only heroic people need. And they only need it in rare moments. But here's the thing. St. Paul, St. Paul seems to maintain that courage is required for any life that's lived on purpose. We are always courageous. Not just in big moments. He says, we are always courageous. It's required for every life lived on purpose.

What's required is, I think you might call everyday courage. Everyday courage. In next four weeks, we're going to kind of talk about this. We're going to expand this, this reality that we need everyday courage. And I want to follow the guy, a man in the Old Testament. His name is Tobit. He talked about in the book of Tobit. Tobit's story opens up. He describes that he was a Jew and he was from the tribe of Naftali.

Now, if you know anything about Naftali, it's one of the 12 tribes of Israel, right? And it's one of the most northern tribes in Israel. So after King Solomon died, his son Rehoboam, he was not a good ruler. And so there's a man in the north named Jeroboam, and Jeroboam split the kingdom in two. And so he took the ten tribes in the north, and he created what they called the kingdom of Israel, whereas Rehoboam had the two tribes in the south and had the kingdom of Judah. Now, one of the things that Jeroboam did is he knew that people, all the Jews in the north, they would go into Jerusalem because Jerusalem was a place to worship.

I mean, it's been established that the only place you can worship God, offer sacrifices, in the temple, and that's in Jerusalem, and that's in the south. And so what Jeroboam did is he set up false worship up in the north. In two places called Bethel and in Dan. He set up these places of false worship. So here's what does Tobit do? What does Tobit do when all of his neighbors, all of his family, his entire tribe of Naftali, he's now turning to this false worship,

turning to this idolatry, well, Tobit had courage. And he didn't fight anybody. he just, every year, three times a year, he saddled his donkey and he walked with his family, his wife and his son, Tobias, and they walked down to Jerusalem, even though none of their family went, even though none of their friends went, even though none of their neighbors went with them, they knew. No, we need to go to Jerusalem because that's the place God has told us, commanded us to worship. That's everyday courage. Things got worse, though.

What happened was then there's this king, Shamaneser, and Shamaneser invaded, he's from Assyria. They invaded the north, the ten tribes of the north, and basically obliterated them. and took Tobit and his wife and his son and exiled them to a place called Nineveh. You know Nineveh because of Jonah. So now not only are you easy surrounded by pagan people who are not worshipping the true God, he has no way of getting to Jerusalem. He has no way of actually honoring the Lord how the Lord has commanded him to honor him. And yet Tobit was a man of courage, everyday courage.

And he didn't say, well, I can't do all these things, so I can't do anything. And he said, just because I can't do everything, doesn't mean I can't do anything. And so even though I can't go to Jerusalem and worship, what I can still do, I can still keep kosher. Like even though no one around me is keeping kosher, no one around me is keeping the dietary laws of the people of God, I can do that.

And the second thing he said is there are people who are poor around me. One of the commandments to the people of God is to care for the poor. I can do that. And third, people are dying around me, and one of the commandments of God is to bury the dead. So I can do that. And this is how Tobit lived. He didn't let the fact that he couldn't do everything stop him from doing the things that he knew he needed to do.

And that wasn't dramatic. It was just life. It wasn't big moments. It was what you call everyday life. And what everyday life requires is everyday courage. Because that, if we don't have that, we have nothing. Basically, the definition of courage I love is from C.S. Louis. C.S. Louis, he defines courage like us.

He says, courage is every one of the other virtues at its moment of testing. So every one of the other virtues at this moment when it's needed the most. Because we realize this. We realize, right, that it's easy to be good when being good is easy. It's easy to be honest when being honest is easy. It's easy to have faith when having faith is easy. It's easy to have hope when having hope is easy. But when faith and hope and honesty and courage and goodness are needed is when it's hard to be honest.

When it's hard to have faith. And when it's hard to have hope. Courage is every one of those other virtues. At the moment, it's needed most. And if I don't have courage, then I really don't have any of those other virtues. So Aristotle described it like this. He said that courage lies between two extremes. One is cowardice and the other is rashness.

That courage isn't just running away. And also courage isn't just charging in. And I was thinking about this and I was thinking, oh my gosh, this is completely me. Because I'm so often tempted to the extremes. And I want to be in the middle, right? I want to have courage. But oftentimes I'm tempted to cowardice. And one of the ways that I'm tempted to cowardness is avoidance.

So I think avoidance is one of my spiritual gifts. Like if there's a problem and I can just pretend it doesn't exist, like that is I'm so good at that Like I just no, it's fine, it's fine, it'll work itself out It'll something will happen, it'll all get resolved. It's basically, it's what they call strategic procrastination. Have you heard of strategic? Strategic procrastination is you might call it everything but. Do you have something to do?

And you're like, this is a very important thing I need to do. I know I need to do it. And instead of doing it, I do everything but. I need, so on campus, like, okay, I know I need to study, need to write this paper, I need to, whatever the thing is. Okay, yeah, but also the dishes need washing, and also I haven't washed my sheets for a while, and also my clothes need to get washed, and also the dog needs to, and lawn and all these kind of things, it's everything but it's, that's cowardice.

Because I know the thing I need to do, I'm going to avoid it, and I'm going to have this strategic procrastination, and I'm going to fall into doing everything but what I have to do. That's cowardice. The other opposite extreme is being rash, right? It's thinking that courage is unnecessary leaping. Being rash is unnecessary leaping. And I think about this because recently, I've kind of been faced with this big project,

like potential project that could possibly happen for us. And I know that the next step I needed to take, because this is a couple weeks ago, the next step I needed to take was I needed to clear it with the proper authorities or within the proper channels with this whole thing. I just basically, I need to have basic conversations. But I kept looking at them thinking, ah, but that could take time. and then they could bring up questions that don't know what the answer to

and they might say no and all these kind of things. So then I thought, you know what? I'm going to be bold. Like, I'm going to be aggressive. Forget it. Like, I'm just going to do it. And that's me being brave.

No, that's not. That I would be, if I did that, I would be avoiding the exercise of everyday courage because it would not have been courageous because it was not the right next step to just jump to the end. That would have been unnecessary leaping.

That would have been rash. The correct next step involved a difficult phone call that I just didn't want to make. Like the correct next step involved more moderation than I wanted to have. I wanted to get it off my desk. I just wanted to have it to be done. But that wasn't what was needed. That wasn't what was necessary.

And that's what courage demands. Courage demands that we do what's necessary. There's a quote. I don't know. People say it. St. Francis, the C.C. said it. And maybe he did, but he lived it. The quote says, start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible, and soon you'll be doing

the impossible. I'm not sure if that's true. But I do know that the first part is true, that if we're going to be people of courage, we have to start by doing what's necessary. And I know that a lot of people say, well, that's easy for me to say, I don't know what to do. And maybe you don't. But I think too often are saying, I don't know what to do is really means one of two things.

either means I don't want to do what I know to do, or it means I don't know how it'll end. But that's not our call. That's not where courage is needed. It's not needed how it'll end. What it's needed is we need to start by doing what's necessary. Basically, courage begins when you do what you know. Here's Tobit.

He's living in the North. No one else is worshipping, but I know God is calling me to worship, So I'm going to go to Jerusalem. Even though no one else is going, I'm going to exercise everyday courage and just do what I know I need to do. Okay, now I'm in Nineveh. Now I'm exiled from my homeland and I'm living in a foreign land. Okay, what I know I can do is I can keep the dietary lives.

I don't have to eat pork, don't have to eat shellfish. I don't have to do all these things. I know there's still poor people here. I can still take care of them and there's still people dying. I can still bury them. So when these things are no longer possible, he said, not what I can't do. He said, okay, I can still keep kosher. I can still obey the commandments.

I can still care for the core, poor, I can still bury the dead. Even if I don't know how it's supposed to go down, that's the gospel today, right? It says that the farmer goes to bed and gets up every morning. He doesn't know how God is going to do it. He doesn't know how God is going to bring these plants to life. But he knows this is what I have to do. And every day he gets up, that's called everyday courage. That's what you need and it's what I need.

And this is the last thing. These three people, Father Jersey, Solzhenitsyn and Tobit, every one of them have this in common. Everyday courage, which is the capacity to do the next thing necessary. Everyday courage is the capacity to do what you said you would do. Everyday courage is the capacity to rule oneself. Everyday courage is the capacity to surrender oneself

to the Lordship of Jesus. You need to be courageous. You need to be courageous. It is not a luxury. It's a necessity. Because you matter. Because your life matters. Because you matter to your family.

Because you matter to your neighbors. Because you matter to God. That's why St. Paul says, we need to be courageous. He says, because we're striving to please him. And he asked one day, we'll be judged on what we do and on what we don't do. How do you become courageous? It's really simple. I'm Aristotle and Augustine and Aquinas.

They all agreed. They said this. They said, you know, you become a builder by building. You become a singer by singing. You become a runner by running. You become a violinist by playing the violin. And they said, and you become courageous by being courageous. You become courageous by doing.

courageous things every day just doing the next courageous thing just doing the next thing necessary every day which requires everyday courage