Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 07/05/20 Lead Yourself First

Episode Date: July 6, 2020

Homily from the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Freedom requires virtue. The Founding Fathers gave the world a republic that necessitated a people who were virtuous, moral, and religious.. Mass Readings from July 5, 2020: Zechariah 9:9-10 Psalms 145:1-2, 8-11, 13-14Romans 8:9, 11-13 Matthew 11:25-30

So for the last couple months, I've been going through the Old Testament again, just kind of reading some of the books that I just haven't spent a lot of time. And one of the books that I've been spending a lot of time in recently has been the book of judges. I don't know if you ever, judges is kind of, we know it because it's Samson and some other people that are very famous in judges. But one of the themes of the book of judges is, it keeps coming up. At least four times the book of judges says this same refrain. It says, in those days there was no king in Israel.

So you have all these different people. and basically you almost have this, even though they've been given the law of God, even though they've been given like the will of God in Scripture, there's almost anarchy so often. And then God raises up a judge and unites the people and they can fight their enemies and they can be united and turn back to the Lord. And then that judge passes away and they descend back into anarchy. And it says the cycle happens again and again, the book of judges.

But when you get to the end of judges, it's when things get like devastatingly awful. In fact, the last three chapters of judges, like two stories, I'm going to kind of edit these because they're not really stories for kids. That's another thing, little sides. This isn't a book for children. I think it's important that we realize that this is a book for adults, like that church is actually for adults. It's not just for kids.

Yes, God says, Jesus says that the children come onto me, but it's not for kids. So we will edit this as best as we can. So at the end of judges, there's these two stories that kind of conclude the whole deal of how tragic, how devastatingly awful life was then. One story is this Levite, he has a concubine. Again, if you're an adult, you know what a concubine is.

If you're a kid, you don't, and that's good. Move on. And this concubine leaves the Levite. She runs away from her husband-ish guy and runs back to the house of her father, which means things must have been terrible in his home for her. And he goes to get her, and finally he basically convinces her father to give him back.

And so they begin this journey back to their home. They get to the city, and they're going to camp out the night in the city square. And this old man says, no, no, no, no, you don't want to stay. you have a place to say. He's like, we're going to stay here in the city square. We're fine. He says, you don't want to be caught outside in the city square in this town. Because there's places the wild west. It's wilder than the wild west. And it's awful. So come and stay with me. So they go into this old man's home. And as soon as night falls, these men from the city began pounding on this old man's door saying, send that Levite out here so we can

have our way with him. It's like crazy. Like what the heck? The old man's response is almost even crazier. Or he says, no, no, no, don't violate this guest. Instead, take my virgin daughter and his concubine and do what you want with them. Like, what? How crazy is this? So that's what they do. The old man opens the door. He sends the concubine out into the darkness where these men essentially abused here the entire night as the sun rises. This woman makes her way back to this old man's door and she falls on the ground at the threshold of this man's house. Then leave it, open the door and says, get up and realizes she's dead. She's been abused so thoroughly that entire night by all these men that she's died. So the Levite puts her on his animal,

like this mule or donkey, whatever, and brings her back to his home. And then I apologize for this. He cuts her body into 11 pieces and sends her 11 pieces to the 11 tribes of Israel. Now, this was done by the tribe of Benjamin. And so he sends these pieces of his concubine who had been murdered by these men of Benjamin to all the other 11 tribes. And they say, this is how you treat one of our own. And so they rise up. And they essentially, this is the last story of judges, they slaughtered the entire, almost the entire tribe of Benjamin, the children, the women, and most of the men. So at the end, there's like maybe 300, 600 Benjaminites left who now don't have any wives because the 11 tribes swore, we will never give any one of our daughters to anyone from

the tribe of Benjamin. And they realized, wait a second, what have we done? We, in our vengeance, in this anarchy, we decided to kill Benjamin, but he's one of the 12 tribes. Therefore, or we've just eradicated the blessing of God on us, what do we do? Again, in those days, there was no king in Israel. So what they do, they say, okay, how about this? Tribe of Benjamin, those who remain, those who are still alive, if you find any maiden in the woods or any maiden out in the field, just go ahead and take her so you can make her your wife.

So that's what they go and do. And the last line of the book of judges is this devastatingly awful line. In those days, there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what seemed right in their own eyes. That's the refrain. In those days, there was no king in Israel, and everyone did what seemed right in their own eyes. Just as anarchy. So as a result of that, the next book in the Bible is, well, after Ruth, is First Samuel. Samuel, is the last judge of Israel, and what do the people of Israel do?

They come to Samuel and say, Samuel, we need a king. Like, things are so terrible. so awful, we need a king. And Samuel says, no, the Lord wants to be your king. Let him be your king. And they realize, we can't rule ourselves. We can't govern ourselves. Look all this anarchy. So instead we need a monarchy. And even though he didn't want to, it wasn't part of his plan, the Lord God said, okay, fine, you can have a king. And they have Saul, and Saul's terrible. So then they get David, and David's fine, and he becomes terrible. And you have Solomon, and he starts out great, and he ends up terrible. And it seems like these are all the only options.

right, either going to be anarchy. There's no king in Israel, and everyone does what seems right in their own eyes, or monarchy, where the rulers continue to disappoint and disappoint and disappoint. And that brings us to this weekend, where we have Independence Day. And we have this moment where, I don't know if you know this, the story of the first constitutional convention, and Benjamin Franklin is leaving this whole thing after they decided, here's what we're going to do, here's what the country is going to be like. And this woman stops Benjamin Franklin on the street, and she says,

Dr. Franklin, what have you given us? A monarchy or a republic? And his response is this famous response, he says, A republic, madam, if you can keep it, because he knew. He knew that we can receive the gift of a country that is a republic, but to keep the gift of a country that's a republic is a whole different thing. In some ways, it's easier to give a leader. It's easier to give a monarchy.

It's easier to give this kind of like a king, but that's not what God wants to do. That's not what the founding fathers did. What they did was they gave us a republic, which is what? It's a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Let's pause on this. It's a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. We have to ask the question, what kind of people?

This is a really important question. What kind of people? Because this country is really only possible for a certain kind of people. A country where there is no ruler, a country where there is no king, but where the people govern themselves, what kind of people do we have to be? Ben Franklin actually even answers that question. He said it like this.

He said, only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. That when they founded this country, they knew the brokenness of the human heart. They knew the stories of judges. And they also knew the story of First and Second Samuel. They knew the story of kings. And so they knew that virtue was going to be necessary.

That virtue was going to be absolutely necessary because only a virtuous people are even capable of freedom. There's this book that recounts that story, the If You Can Keep It. It's actually called If You Can Keep It. It's by a man named Eric Metaxus. And he quotes another author, his name's Oz Guinness. And in this book, he highlights something that I had never heard of, and he points out the fact that he never heard of it either.

This thing, Oz Guinness, describes as the Golden Triangle of Liberty or the Golden Triangle of Freedom. And the Golden Triangle of Liberty is this, is that freedom requires virtue. The virtue requires faith, and faith requires freedom. So again, freedom requires virtue. That I have to be a person who knows what to do, and I can do it. But then also virtue requires faith. I have to know that there's a purpose to life, and I have to believe in something greater than myself, but then faith requires freedom again and sees this golden triangle of freedom.

They pointed out that what the founding fathers knew, that if we're not going to be ruled, then we need to know how to rule ourselves. I'm not going to have a king, I need to know how to be the king of my own self. If I'm not going to be led, I need to know how to lead myself first. In fact, this was so important, this virtue was so important that John Adams, second president of our country, John Adams said that future generations, of Americans. If he said, he said, if future generations of Americans did not have a greater degree of virtue

than the founding fathers, then they would not have a liberty that would last. Think about it. They didn't see themselves as heroes, right? Like the founding fathers didn't see themselves as perfect people who are like, we're the best humanity ever has to offer. He actually, they, I mean, and that's the thing. Sometimes we get that wrong, right? We sometimes fall into this trap of thinking that because there's a statue of someone

who did something significant in history, that that means we think they're a perfect person. It's just ridiculous. It's crazy, the degree to which we're just quick to say, if we find a fault with someone, let's tear down their statue. We find a fault with someone, let's rename a city. Sorry, I digress on this one. I apologize. It's one of those burrs in my saddle, you know, where it's like, man, okay, how about this?

If you're going to tear down a statue, you can only tear down a statue if you've done something personally that's worth building a statue for. Any monkey with a hammer can destroy a statue. Only a human being with creativity can create. It's easy to tear down. it is so much more difficult to build. There's so many of us who just want to tear down, but we've never built anything.

So John Adams, he said, no, future generations. You're going to need to be better than us. If you're going to hold on to this liberty that will last, he said, or also you might change your rulers and forms of government, but they will never attain lasting liberty. They'll only exchange tyrants and tyrannies. And he said, describing your constant. John Adams said, our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.

It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. That's what our Constitution is made for. It's wholly inadequate to govern anyone less than a holy or a moral and religious people which is really striking because there's a guy named Christian Smith. Christian Smith is a sociologist based on North Carolina recently he's worked for Notre Dame. A number of years ago he did this nationwide study on the moral lives of young adults. He just wanted to ask the question. Let's find out how do young adults in America make moral decisions? So he studied people ages 18 to 28. And what they found was crushing to him personally and to his team. And very incredibly discouraging, he said they came to the conclusion that the majority, roughly 66% of American young adults had neither the categories,

nor the ability to make moral decisions. That's what they discovered. They didn't want to discover that, they didn't create that. That's what they discovered when they examined the moral lives of American young adults. They had neither the categories nor the ability to make moral decisions. What do you mean by categories? I mean, they didn't know how to talk about things like right or wrong or truth or falsehood. They didn't know how to talk about good or evil.

No categories for that. And not only, not categories, didn't have the ability. As an example, they had asked to you one young woman who, like, made a moral decision, he asked, okay, so how did you come to this conclusion? How did you make this decision? And she said, I don't know, I guess it's just a feeling I got. It's just a feeling I got. In those days, there was no king in Israel. And everyone did what seemed right in their own eyes. But to be a moral and virtuous people means I'm able to govern myself first, to be able to revolve every one individually of us, to be able to lead ourselves first. Before I try to lead others,

how about I can wisely and justly lead myself because freedom requires virtue. I think it's one of the reasons by St. Paul in St. Paul's letter to the Romans today, he says, listen, brothers and sisters, you're not in the flesh. You're not governed by the flesh. You're not ruled by the flesh.

You're not ruled by your passions. You actually get to lead yourself. In fact, he goes on to say, in Romans 8, he says, you did not receive a spirit of slavery. You received a spirit of adoption. because you don't simply, you don't belong to a king, you don't belong to a ruler on earth,

you belong to the spirit of God that the king of heaven is your ruler. That's the next piece of the golden triangle, right? Freedom requires virtue, but virtue requires faith. I know many of you know who Alexis de Tocqueville is. Alexis de Tocqueville, who was a Frenchman who came to this country about 50 years after the birth of our nation, and he wanted to find out, like, what is it, that made America, the Revolution of America,

like peaceful in some ways, I guess there was a war, you know, but in the aftermath of the revolution, how come they were stable versus in the aftermath of the French Revolution, there was just chaos and more and more death. And he came to the United States and he wrote a two-volume book, work called Democracy in America. And one of the things that sums up his work, now this isn't a direct quote from him, but it's a quote that summarizes what he discovered in America. Alexis Soutk the Tockville said something like this. He said, I sought for the greatness of America in her commodious harbors and her gentle rivers, and it was not there.

I sought for the greatness of America in her fertile fields and her boundless forests, and it was not there. In her rich minds and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. I sought for the greatness of America in her democratic Congress and in her matchless constitution,

and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America, and her her pulpits aflain with righteousness, that I understand the secret and genius of her power. America is great because she is good. And if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great. That's that second piece of the Golden Triangle.

The virtue requires faith. That faith that there is a God who when the government doesn't see me, he sees me. that when no one else cares about me, he cares about me. Then when the rest of the world says, your choices don't matter, I realize, no, there's a God in heaven, and my choices matter to him. Because faith, freedom requires virtue, but virtue requires faith, and faith requires freedom.

Which means it's not compelled. It means it's not demanded of us. It means it's given to us, offered to us, and we get to choose it freely. That's why Jesus in the gospel today, he says, all you who labor and are burdened, take my yoke upon you. You don't have to. You get to choose this or not,

because faith requires freedom. You don't have to choose to let him be the one who leads us. You don't have to be the one that we belong to. That faith is free. And if we were willing to submit to that yoke, willing to let him be the one who leads us, More than any other, we don't look to an earthly leader.

We look to him. Then we're on the right track. And this is the last thing, this is the last thing. Gosh, even bringing up, like, things that are in the news, it just seems weird. I don't know. I don't know if you guys have overwhelmed for the last, like, four months. It's like everything from, like, the lockdown to, like, conspiracy theories. Do we wear masks?

Not wear masks. It's part of the government program. Whatever. Like, this chaos everywhere. Riots and racism and politics. Like, who's right and who's right and who's wrong. and what's right and what's wrong. And there's a big question like this.

What can I do? Like, honestly, here we are, living in northern Minnesota. Like, what in the world can I do? Other than just go on Twitter and tell everyone how mad I am. Like, right? Like, what can I do? I remember asking that question, a friend of mine, it was when it was kind of quickly after George Floyd

and all these things just like, it seems like it was mushroom cloud. There's like everything exploding. I remember talking to this. He's a black Catholic speaker. He's a friend of mine. His name's Brian, like, Brian, like, what do I do? Like, Brian, what are I supposed to say? What am I supposed to do in this moment?

And Brian just spoke such clearly the Word of God. And he said, Father, listen, you don't have to solve this. And you don't have to have all the answers. And when he said that to me, I was like, oh, that's right. What can I do? I can submit to Jesus and lead myself first. is all of us when we get overwhelmed by all these things what can I do and well I don't have to solve this I don't have to have all the answers what can I do I can submit to Jesus and lead myself first before I tell

other people how to live I can lead myself well I'm doing that right now but before I tell other people how to live I can lead myself first before trying to offer any solution to anyone else I can lead myself first before griping about our leaders I can lead myself first before whining about the I can lead myself first. Before complaining about the church, I can lead myself first. Before fixing anyone else, I can lead myself first. Because Jesus is the king. And you and I, we do not need another, and we do not need to look for another. That in a world where there may be no king in Israel, and where everyone does what seems right in their own eyes, our eyes are on Jesus. and we submit to His yoke, and we the people are the kind of people who even in a world full of chaos can lead ourselves first.