Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 06/21/26 The Moment of Moments

Episode Date: June 20, 2026

Homily from the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time. We will need Humility and Hope. The moment will come when we will all stand before the Good and Holy God in judgment. This truth can fill us with fear, but there are two virtues we need more powerful than fear: humility and hope. Mass Readings from June 21, 2026: Jeremiah 20:10-13 Psalm 69:8-10, 14, 17, 33-35Romans 5:12-15 Matthew 10:26-33

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.

And with your spirit. He reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Chapter 10 verses 26 through 33. Jesus said to the 12, Fear no one. Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known. What I say to you in the darkness,

speak in the light. What you hear whispered proclaim on the housetops. And do not be afraid of those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the soul. one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your father's knowledge. Even all the hairs on your head are counted. So do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows. Everyone who

acknowledges me before others, I will acknowledge before my heavenly father. But whoever denies me before others, I will deny before my heavenly father. the gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. I should have a seat. So I was thinking about fear recently. I think fear is funny. Now, fear isn't funny.

I think what we are afraid of is sometimes funny. Because you've asked someone like, okay, what are some of your fears? The list is quite diverse. The list goes from like spiders to dying alone. And that sense of being able to say, like, the list can be something like answering the first. phone when I don't know the number or making a call to running into combat or going into battle,

like putting your life on the line. The span of things that we can be afraid of, things like abandonment or rejection or famine, snakes. Like just like the vast amount of things that we can be afraid of are remarkable. In fact, they did a study and then somebody, Jerry Seinfeld made a joke about it that he said that they came out with his survey and they said that The top two fears people have are public speaking, number one, and dying number two. So he made that joke that said, so basically at a funeral, most people would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy because the things that were afraid of, right? So one of those things we're afraid of is death.

And both of them are mentioned, both things are mentioned in the gospel today. So fear is mentioned in the gospel today and death is mentioned in the gospel today. And I think it's one of those situations where oftentimes death and fear, are closely related. Of course, for Christians, we recognize that we're called to never, ever fear the end of our lives. And yet as Christians, I think a lot of us, a lot of us are afraid of death. Maybe we're not necessarily afraid of death. We're afraid of what will happen immediately after death.

Because we know that immediately after, at the moment of our death, we know that there is the judgment. I think that's what makes us afraid. and that makes sense, of course. I mean, pause on this. Have you ever imagined what it would be like or what it will be like to stand before God at the moment of your death? To stand before God in that moment of judgment. To stand before God in the moment of moments.

Because that's good for all of our lives. That is going to be it. That is going to be in all of our lives. That is going to be the moment of moments. Have you ever imagined that moment? I do a lot, actually. What will it be like to stand before God who is goodness himself? To stand before God who is truth himself.

You know, in the gospel, remember, Jesus says, do not fear, do not be afraid. But he says, I will tell you who to fear. He says, fear the one who can cast both body and soul into Gehenna, who Jesus is talking about, he's talking about God. He's talking about, he's talking about the Lord himself. self. But also the God who's good, the God who is truth, but he's also not some kind of benign, permissive grandfather. He is the God of Hebrews chapter 10. The author to Hebrews says this. He says,

it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of a living God. Not because God's bad, but because in that moment, there will be no escaping goodness. In that moment, there will be no avoiding truth. And so this, this is often. been my prayer. This is something that I kneel right there here in the chapel and I remember or enact what will it be like in the moment of moments when I know. This is the thing. I pray about I know and I see what it's, I see what it was to have been loved so much and to not love him back. What will that moment of moments be like when I know, I know what it was, I know, I will know what it will have been to have been given so much grace, to have been given so many chances in that

moment of moment standing before God, and knowing without doubt the sheer amount of mercy, the sheer amount of love that God has been offering to me every moment of my entire life, to see and to know the truth that each thought, every word is known. And not just to others, like it says in the gospel, but to me, in that moment to know that the truth of my life, to know the truth of my heart, and also to know the truth that there's no more time. There's no more time to change. I want to invite you to do this. I think we all need to do this, to do this exercise, to do the exercise where you put yourself in that situation where the moment of moments has arrived. And in that moment, in that moment, you are totally helpless,

totally defenseless. In that moment, there's no escaping goodness. In that moment, there's no avoiding truth. And there's no argument. There's no excuses. There's no but, but, but, no, there's none of that. There's no defense. And there's no time, right?

There's no opportunity to change. There's no opportunity to say, well, God, I'll be better in the future because there is no future. In that moment of moments, there will be only one thing left. that one thing left will be the truth of what I've become. The one thing left will be who I've chosen to be. That will be the one thing left in the moment of moments. Who you and I have chosen to become and Jesus.

That's all in the end. It'll be who you and I have chosen to become and Jesus. Because that's so important for us to understand. Recently, I was speaking with a young man who was talking about this. we were talking about how the fact that he's a Catholic Christian and he fears death. He says he fears judgment because he knows the truth. Number one, he knows the stakes are really high. Heaven or hell?

Pretty high stakes. Number two, he said, I know myself too well. He said, I know my own weakness. In fact, he was kind of echoing something that last April, there's a comedian named Theo Vaughn. Theo Vaughn was on his podcast. And so when I called in and Theo Vaughn started reflecting on his own weakness. And he just, he was in this moment of vulnerability, this is what he was.

he said. It just was so powerful. He said this. He said, I've been struggling, man. That's the Ovan. He said, I've been struggling. He says, for the past couple years, it's been a struggle in certain ways with certain behaviors that I'm not proud of, right? Or really just behaviors that I didn't want to do anymore. He wanted to describe how we talked to God. He said this. He said, I started praying like, God, just please help me with this. This is a broken part of me that I bring to you and I need help with it. And this is, this is so many of our prayers. This is that prayer of that young man, who's like, I fear judgment. Why? Because I know myself. I know my weakness. And here's the Ovan who says,

God, I just come before you. It just helped me, this broken part of me that I need help with. And then he goes on to say, and then I would add to my prayer. I would say, even God, even as I pray to you right now, there's a part of me that knows I'm probably lying to you. There's a part of me that knows I'm going to do that behavior again. So can you come into the that part of me and help me there? He wasn't just honest about the surface. He's honest about what is beneath the surface. God, I don't want to do this anymore. This part of me that's broken, I don't want it to be broken anymore. And yet, God, I know there's a part of me that even right now I'm probably lying to you. There's a part of me that even right now, I know I'm going to

do this again. This is, this is, you guys, to get prayer advice in such good guidance from Theo Von is exactly what we've gotten. Why? Because He knows himself and then he's not afraid to invite God into it. This is what every one of us needs, especially if we have that fear of judgment, the fear of death, fear of our own weakness to know ourselves and then to invite God into this. See, the issue is this, the young man I was talking with before. He was talking about fear of judgment as if God was indifferent.

Like the theory is, he knows his weakness, he knows that takes are high. But he was imagining that God at the moment of judgment, judgment was kind of like, oh, well, you didn't make it. Well, easy come, easy go. As if God didn't care and just, and that might be a lot of us. That might be a lot of us imagining that in the moment of judgment, God's going to be just like, yeah, it would be nice if he made it to heaven, but, oh, well, as if God is indifferent, as if God would say something like, well, easy come, easy go. Let's stop on that for one second. One second. Ask the question, what part of God's plan of salvation was ever easy come. Like from the first moment in the Garden of Eden, right? Here are our first

parents who have rebelled against the Lord. They want to go their own way. And what does God do? He doesn't like, well, easy come, easy come. He begins in that moment to fight for his children. There was never easy come. In fact, the first reading today, Jeremiah chapter 20, Jeremiah describes this. He says, I'm surrounded by, I'm attacked, I'm trapped. And then he says this. He says, but the Lord is with me like a mighty champion. So praise the Lord, for he's rescued the life of his poor from the power of the wicked.

If we ever were tempted to have that mentality like the young man, there's like, well, God just doesn't really care. He's kind of indifferent. Just pause and think, all that God has done to win you back, do you think he would let you go that easily? All that God has done to win your heart,

do you think they'd be like, oh gosh i hope they say yes no here's the thing god is deeply invested in your winning so with the second reading today romans chapter five it says this through through one man sin entered the world and through that sin death and death reigned and death rained but how much more did the grace of god and the gracious gift of the one man jesus christ overflow for the many how did that happen because he picked up a cross and he carried it and died on it Because that's how much you mean to him. So this idea that God is indifferent to our choosing hell.

God is indifferent to our weakness. God is indifferent. Just lets us go. There's no easy come, easy go, because there was no easy come. The come was at the price of his very life and death and resurrection. And so, yeah, I get it. I know myself. Because of that, I get to have humility.

Yes, we know ourselves. and because of that we get to have humility. But we also have to have hope because we know him. We have to have hope because we know what he's done. I have humility because I know what I've done. We have hope because we know what he's done. And that's how we live. Like that is right now, today, starting today,

that is how we have to pray. That we have to stand before God with these two things. And without these two things, we will never be able to stand before God, particularly in that moment of moments. We need humility and we need hope. We live the truth of who we are, that's humility. And we live the truth of who he is.

That's hope. And this is the last thing. We can actually practice for the moment of moments. We can practice for that moment that moment that we all fear. By doing what? By presenting our true self before God as we truly are. basically by being like Theobon and acknowledging, God, I need you. Or being like another saint, St. Philip Neri.

One of my favorite prayers of St. Philip Neri, who was the Apostle of Rome. St. Philip Neri, apparently every morning he'd start the day by praying this prayer. He'd say, watch out for Philip today, Lord, because if you give him the chance, he will betray you. That's humility. but he trusted in God's help, and that is hope. Do you know that every time we go to confession, every person who goes to confession has those two virtues? Every person who goes to confession makes a good confession

has those two virtues, the virtue of humility and the virtue of hope. Humility, I know I need to be here. Hope, I know he wants me to be here. So that's how we practice. When we pray, we pray with humility and hope. when we go to confession and we say what's unsaid and we reveal what's unseen, we are living in humility and hope. So you don't have to be afraid.

Because if we live with humility and hope, when that moment of moments comes, we can die with humility and hope.