Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 07/07/24 A Thorn in the Side

Episode Date: July 6, 2024

Homily from the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. God can be glorified through our wounds, not merely in spite of them. We all experience brokenness. We all experience God's love through a broken lens. And yet we do encounter them in this way. Mass Readings from July 7, 2024: Ezekiel 2:2-5 Psalms 123:1-42 Corinthians 12:7-10 Mark 6:1-6

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 33777.7. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless.

The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark. Glory to you, Lord. Chapter 6, verses 1 through 6. Jesus departed from there and came to his native place accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in their synagogues, and many who heard him were astonished. They said, where did this man get all this? What kind of wisdom has been given to him?

What mighty deeds are wrought by his hands? Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon? Are not his sister is here with us? And they took offense at him. Jesus said to them, A prophet is not without honor except in his own native place and among his own kin and in his own house. So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there,

apart from curing a few sick people by laying hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith. The gospel of the Lord. Praise to you to the Lord Jesus Christ. This gospel today is just, It's astonishing, really, in so many ways. I think what's astonishing, I think, what's astonishing as miracles.

What's also astonishing is the lack of miracles. What I mean by that is, is that here's Jesus, who is, he's always God. Here's Jesus, who always is who he says he is. Here's Jesus, who is, again, the maker of, he's the word through whom all things came to be. This is what Scripture tells us. This is Jesus, and he says,

he is unable to perform any mighty deed there. It's unable to perform any miracle there, but he's not unable because he's God. What was the obstacle? That is amazing. I mean, again, we go back and say, it's amazing that Jesus can feed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish.

It's amazing that Jesus can take someone who's born blind and make them able to see. It's amazing that Jesus can call Lazarus back from the dead to life. That's amazing. What's also amazing is when he can't. Or when he doesn't. Both have the capacity to be amazing. And we have to understand this.

today, to be able to lean into this today, that when God does a miracle, it's amazing. When God doesn't do a miracle, that can also be amazing. So I know someone who recently has been going through a lot of back pain, and it's a situation where they just find themselves in a place of discomfort, find themselves in a place of kind of, I don't want to say agony, but you know, that seems like that's what they're experiencing, they're experiencing something excruciating. And one of the things that they do is like they can't lie down, they can't stand, they can't sit, it's everything's painful.

And you might have been in a place like this. You might have experienced something like this. This person has gone to, kind of like last week's gospel, right? Here's this woman with the hemorrhage who's gone to many, many doctors, and nothing is getting any better. It only seems to be getting worse. That might be your situation. You might be in a situation where maybe it's physical pain, maybe it's some kind of mental

anguish, maybe it's something connected to grief. Maybe it's something else. But there's this pain that you have that seems to not be going away. That pain you have that you're even begging the Lord, please do something like, something about this and nothing happens. Now, that's remarkable because I was just speaking with another man. This man was sharing his own backstory, literally backstory, about his back pain. And his back story, his back pain was, he said his pain was a 20 out of 10. And that's a, which is, I imagine when you're in the midst of it, it's an accurate way to describe. And he did

all the treatments. He took all the medications, all the physical, all the physical. He took all the physical therapists, did all the injections. And he was saying about how nothing, nothing helped. And then he knew of a friend of a friend who would often pray with people and those people would be healed. And so in desperation, but also in faith, he got on a plane and flew to where this friend of a friend was living. And he just said, hey, would you please pray over me? And I'd literally just talk to this man. I'm like, how are you? You got prayed over by this guy. He said, yeah, yeah. How are you feeling? He says, Father Mike, I haven't had back pain. for a year now.

That in the name of Jesus, he says, with God is my witness, brother, I got to tell you, said, Padre, with God is my witness, I was healed through this man

by the power of Jesus Christ. Like nothing else worked. Nothing else even moved the needle when it came to his pain. But here, in the name of Jesus, he was declared healed. And again, and he lives that healing. And what I mean by that is

he uses that restoration, right? He uses that health to glorify the Lord. Not only to tell that story, but also to be with people, to pay attention to people, because that's what sin does,

or so illness does to us, sometimes sickness does, pain does it, it kind of folds us in on ourselves. He uses that freedom to give. And you look at these two stories, and both are pretty good people, right? Both are people who actually want to give,

both people, the one who was healed with back pain, the person wasn't healed with back pain. They both want to give of their lives for Jesus. One was healed, One was not. Why not? It could be a matter of faith. I mean, that could be a thing. I don't think in this case that's what it is.

And just like you know people, maybe you know people who have been healed. Most of us know people who haven't been healed. Do we really believe that when God heals, he can be glorified? Do we really believe that when God doesn't heal, he can be glorified? Because St. Paul seems to think so. St. Paul, what does he say? this is one of my favorite scriptures of the entire Bible, which is saying a lot because I say it about almost every scripture.

But it's 2 Corinthians chapter 12 where Paul is saying, he's like, here's what happened to me. He said, in order to keep me from being too elated, I don't know what that means. I don't know if it was getting full of himself. He's like, listen, I'm Paul, the apostle. I don't know what was going on. But in order to keep me from being too elated, I was given a thorn in my side. And again, no one knows what that thorn in the side was.

Maybe it literally was a pain in his side. It could have been, Paul, there's accounts that he had eye or vision problems. It could have been a moral issue. We don't know what the problem was. All we know is whatever was happening to Paul, he hated it. And let's go back to us right now. All we know was that this thorn in the side that Paul experienced, whether that was a physical ailment, a physical pain.

Maybe it was, again, part of his body that ceased to work, his vision, right? Maybe he ceased to be able to see the way he wanted to see. Or if it was something in his heart, something in his soul, something that he wrestled with that he couldn't get past. whatever it was, he hated it. Now let's pause on ourselves. Is there something in your life that you're going through that you say, I hate this about myself?

Like, if God could change anything, I would ask him to change this about me. God, take away this pain. God, take away this deficiency. Got to take away how I look. God, take away this temptation I have. To take away the sin that I have, take away the stumbling block I have.

God, here's the thing. If you took it away, if you heal me of this thing, I could glorify you so. well, and I don't know if you've ever prayed like this. I have prayed like this. God, if you just took this away, I would tell everybody about your power to save. God, if you just were to heal me of this, I would tell, I would not stop telling people about your power to save.

God, if you healed me of this, if you delivered me from this, if you just fixed me, if you just fixed me, I would never stop glorifying your name. And then we have this mind with this thought in mind that if you fixed me, I would I would be able to. Because until you fix me, I can't glorify you. Because until this thorn is gone, I can't glorify you. Until this healing happens, I can't glorify you. And until I'm restored, I can't glorify you.

What does Paul say? I begged the Lord, this thing in me, I hated. I begged the Lord to deliver me. Three times, he says. I'm like, bro, three times, that's it. But then the Lord said this. My grace is sufficient for you. Let's get deep to this.

My grace is sufficient for you. What's that mean? That's Jesus saying, Paul, whatever it is I'm giving you is enough. Paul, if I'm giving you just enough grace for today, it's enough. God, if I'm, Paul, if I'm giving you enough grace to get up and go to the next mission, that's enough. Paul, if I'm giving you just enough grace, whatever that thing is that you need to just put one foot in front of the other, Paul, that's enough.

You actually don't need anymore because you can't use anymore. I mean, I don't know if you ever thought about that. That, God, God can give us this abundance of grace. We can only use so much. Paul realizes this, wait a second, even in my brokenness, whatever he's given me is enough. And it goes on to say, why? Because my power is made perfect in weakness.

You guys, I am an American through and through. What I mean about that is I think bigger is better and stronger is better and faster is better and smarter is better. I think that better is better. This is my mentality, right? Because I'm Christian, Catholic, yes, but also American. So I've been brought into this lie that actually in order to like do great things, you have to be great. But then Jesus says, actually my power is made perfect in weakness.

Whatever I'm giving you, my grace is enough for you. for my powers made perfect and weakness. So yes, God is glorified when people get healed. You know what? He's also glorified when people don't get healed. He's glorified when people get healed like my friend and like, I'm telling everyone about what he's done for my back and healing my back.

God is also glorified when he doesn't heal and people remain in need and remain in pain, remain in sickness, and remain even with that temptation, whatever that thing is. I mean I still say, but I trust him. In fact, wouldn't we say this?

When we say this is completely true, that yes, those people get healed and glorify God, that's awesome. But also, when we see those people who aren't healed themselves, but still glorify the Lord, we realize that's awesomer. The power is made perfect, not in perfection. The power is made perfect, not in strength. The power is made perfect in weakness. Paul realizes this. and we have to too

because if we don't we'll just be waiting around to be perfect in order to glorify God if we don't we'll be putting all these conditions on well God you can't make me holy until and I remember I mean this happens to all of us so years ago we have this household on campus right off campus

it's our women's household it's called the St. Gianna House and we still have it it's great and every year a new group of women come in they live there in community and years ago one of the first genes of first generations of this household a lot of these women, they love St. Catherine of Sienna. They all had this devotion to St. Catherine of Sienna.

And so a number of them, for their confirmation, they chose her as their patron saint. Others just like, they love, she's a doctor of the church, and she's just this awesome person. She is an awesome person, is doctor of the church. She dies at like, I don't know, 30 to 33, someone in there. She dies really young. But at one point, I remember get this call from the women at the household because they were in a tailspin because one of them had this book. And this book proposed the idea that one of the reasons why St.

Catherine of Sienna, fasted so much. It wasn't because she was trying to be holy, trying to get close to the Lord, wasn't just trying to deny herself, but she fasted so much because she had an eating disorder. And in fact, that this eating disorder actually contributed to her dying early, that ultimately it was this abuse of her body

through starving herself, that she starved herself to death. And so they called me over to the house, like, what do we do with this? That maybe she had this eating disorder, and we all thought she was this great saint, and maybe she wasn't really this great saint, and maybe she wasn't really this great saint because she had this big problem.

And I was like, Father, what do we do? Father, what do we do? And I was like, let me talk to my spiritual director. So I talked to my spiritual director, who was this old hermit who lived like way northwoods in Minnesota. He used to teach at the University of St. Thomas. He was this massive professor, big brain guy and also big heart guy, really holy, really close to the Lord.

And I was like, Father, tell him, laid out the soul story for him. Like, yeah, what's going on? This great saint. What if she just had, you know, this eating disorder? that's what actually contributed to her early death. And Father looks at me and he's like, yeah, and? Like, well, yeah, but you know, she had this. He's like, so?

What that would mean? And actually, he pointed out the wise thing, which is there's literally no evidence. That was the case that St. Catherine Santa had an eating disorder. There's no evidence of that. But he says, but so what if she did? It would just be more evidence of God's grace. It would just be more evidence of God's mercy. just be more evidence of God's glory

that even in the midst of her wounds, God made St. Catherine of Sienna, the great St. Catherine of Sienna. It would mean nothing more than God makes great saints out of broken people. That's it. It would need nothing more than you don't have to wait to be healed to be holy.

It would be nothing more that you don't have to be restored to be a saint. We don't have to actually wait for God to do the miraculous thing to be a miracle. So I don't know if you noticed at the beginning of this last thing. I don't know if you noticed the beginning of this mass. On the altar, there are two different sized candles.

And before they were like, Father, don't. It looks so stupid. Like, no, it's going to preach. I know it's not even in this shot. But these two different sized candles, when we go back to the shot of us praying at the altar, I invite you to take a look at these candles and try to see which one of them gives off more light. One is a little stubby guy.

The other one's pretty good, pretty tall one. What's the point of the candle? The point of a candle is to give off light. The point of a candle is to hold the flame. You'll see, when you see, both the stubby little candle and the big tall candle give off the same amount of light. And if the stubby little candle were to say,

well, I can't give off the same light as the tall, or I'm not as great as the tall candle. That stubby little candle would be wrong. Why? Because the whole point of a candle is not how tall or how beautiful or how stately or whatever this candle is. The whole point of the candle is to give

off light. And that's true for all of us. The whole point of our lives is not to be whole. It's not to be intact. It's not to be healed. The whole point of life is not to be fully restored. The whole point of life is not to have a six-pack, right? The whole point of life is not to be completely healthy. The whole point of life is to give off the light of Jesus. That he can be glorified. Yes, he can be glorified in your beauty. He can be glorified in your intelligence. He can be glorified in your charm and your humor. He can be glorified in your health. He can also be glorified in your thorn. He can also be glorified in your thorn. He can be glorified in He can also be glorified in your broken heart.

He can also be glorified in whatever it is you might be wrestling with, that even if it's not taken away, he's there. And even if you're never healed, you can still be holy. We might say, I don't know if I want that. I think I'd rather be healed than holy. I get it. I get it. In desperation, that's what we would trade.

But that's not the point of life. The point of life, it's like the point of his candle. is to give off the light of Jesus. It's to glorify God. And you do not have to wait. You don't have to be healed. You don't have to be fully restored. And you can glorify him now.

You can be holy now. And you can give off that light, even in the midst of weakness. Which is why St. Paul says something crazy. He says, therefore, I will boast of my weaknesses. He goes on to say, he says, I'm not only content with insults and hardships, persecutions, constraints, and weaknesses, I boast of them. For when I'm weak, I'm strong.

And in Christ, so are you.