Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 07/25/21 Consumer Catholic: Everything Given. Nothing Wasted.

Episode Date: July 26, 2021

Homily from the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Nothing given to God is wasted. The Apostles asked the question, "What good are these for so many?" Yet, Jesus invited them to give what they had and to trust Him with all of it. Jesus invites us to do the same: Give everything and know that nothing will be wasted. Mass Readings from July 25, 2021: 2 Kings 4:42-44 Psalms 145:10-11, 15-18Ephesians 4:1-6 John 6:1-15

So a bunch of years ago, I had read a book, I think I might have mentioned earlier this last year, but a book called Knight by a man named Elie Vassell. Eli Vesel was a prisoner in a concentration camp during World War II. He was Jewish and his father. He and his father were carted off. I think Ellie was 13 years old when he and his father were brought to Dachau or Auschwitz, it's one of those two concentration camps. And in the book, I remember reading it in college.

And Elie Vesel, even as a 13 or 14-year-old, he recognized that the more desperate things became, people became one of two different types of people. That some people, when the more desperate things became, they did all they could to get all they could. And so the more desperate things became, the more they had to grasp onto things and take from other people. Others, the more desperate things became, the more they gave. And I remember thinking, the circumstances revealed that people were either givers or takers. And I was haunted by this. I'm just like really actually kind of, I don't want to say tormented by it, but like really,

it still haunts me even now because I keep asking the question, okay, which one would I be? In that kind of situation, when those circumstances are so desperate like this, which one would I be? Would I be a giver or would I be a taker? And the question, of course, it's not just in those kind of circumstances, would I be a giver taker? The big question is which one am I? Because every one of us right now, we don't have to wait for circumstances to get horrible to know. Okay, am I a giver or am I a taker? I mentioned a couple weeks ago, Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen van Tuan.

He was a Vietnamese man who became a priest, he became a bishop, and at one point the Communist Party put him in prison. And he was in solitary confinement for eight years. He was in prison totally for 13 years. And he says that one of the great pains he had was that in prison, especially in solitary confinement, one of the great sufferings of his heart was that he had nothing to give. And there was nothing he could do.

Just he was by himself in this cell. and he had no one to help, he had no one to serve. He had, again, he felt useless. He felt worthless. He felt helpless. And in the cell, his greatest pain in so many ways was, I have nothing to offer. I have nothing to give. And I remember seeing this, here's Elie Vesel's book about there are givers and takers.

Here's Cardinal Van Twan's book called Five Loves and Two Fish. And his great pain was that they have nothing to give. And I wonder if that would be our pain. Like, I wonder if in a cell that would be my pain. I wonder if any point in my life, I think, because I'm, maybe like me, we're so used to taking. We're so used to receiving. We're so used to consuming. In fact, we get so used to consuming that there's a priest, his name is Father Michael White.

He wrote a book a bunch of years ago where he noticed something in his parish. He noticed this culture in his parish. He describes it like this. He said that in the course of Lent, one of the things that he and his parish staff would do is all throughout Lent, they would put on these pretty elaborate suppers. And all Fridays during Lent, they would have supper and entertainers. and some kind of like deep kind of prayer thing. And he said that this was, it exhausted the entire staff because in the weeks leading up to this,

they had all the preparation, all the planning, all the organization. During the six, seven weeks of Lent, they were up late, they were getting up early, they were doing everything they possibly could to put on the most incredible meal and the most incredible entertainment, most incredible prayer that anyone could possibly, possibly want. And he said the breaking point for him came one night. It might have been the sixth night or the seventh night. seventh night and someone came up to him and said and basically they complained about the food and he thought wait a second this is not only not only have the staff been putting their lives on hold

and sacrificing so much and giving so much and offering so much and working so hard but also this meal is free and you're comparing you're complaining about free food and he realized that maybe what they were doing they weren't helping the parish by doing this thing maybe they were exacerbating a problem and the problem he noticed he called it this he said I think we're raising a culture of consumer Catholics. And I wonder about that, that term, consumer Catholics, where our mentality is that we show up and we show up to take, we show up to receive, we show up to consume. Nothing is given, but everything is just taken. And I wonder if that's part of who we are. You might have heard the Prado principle. The Prado distribution is an 80-20 theory, right?

And basically that in virtually any domain, whether it be agriculture or business or education, or virtually any domain, 80% of the fruit comes from 20% of the workers or 80% of the income comes from 20% of the clients. So as an example, Barnes & Noble has hundreds of thousands of book titles, right? Obviously, 80% of Barnes & Noble's revenue comes from only 20% of their book titles. Same thing is true for Coca-Cola, that while they sell around the world, 80% of their income on a yearly basis comes from only 20% of their clients. So while you and I buy a random Coke here and there,

80% of their business comes from places like Delta that serves it to hundreds of thousands of people or McDonald's that serves millions of people. So 80%, 20%, so the question, Matthew Kelly, might know Matthew Kelly, the question he asked was, is the Pareto principle, the Pareto distribution, is that true in parishes? Is it true that 80% of the work that gets done in parishes

is done by only 20% of the people? Or 80% of the giving that happens, is that only done by 20% of the people? So he and his team, they did this, this nationwide survey, this nationwide study that was pretty in depth. And they found out that the Catholic Church broke the Paredo distribution. That they found out that 80% of all of the volunteer hours in an average Catholic parish is done by 6.4% of the parish.

80% of the work is only done by 6.4% of the parish. That 80% of the giving that happens, 80% of all the giving that happens in any given year, is done by 6.8% of the parish. And that also, that there's an 84% overlap between those two groups. Basically, they're the same people. The same people who give their time are the ones who give their money.

Honestly, it blows my mind to realize the parish. You might not know this about the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church serves, clothes, feeds, houses, more people than any other institution on the planet. And we do this at less than 7% power. Because there are givers, right? There are givers in the church. You might be a giver in the church.

Might be someone who regularly, you're part of the less than 7%. But the rest of us, the rest of us are takers. The rest of us might be consumer Catholics. We're going to talk about this for the next few weeks. Because reality is, that's how it is, but also the reality is it doesn't have to be this way. It doesn't have to stay this way. In fact, it might say it like this, it can't. It must not stay this way.

We can't stay. The gospel today, okay. We have the feeding of the 5,000. I don't know if you knew this, but the feeding of the 5,000 is only one of two miracles that are in all four Gospels. The other miracle is the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. So it makes, it's very obvious why that one's in all four Gospels. But why is this miracle in all four Gospels? Why was this miracle so important that every one of the gospel writers included it in what they wrote down about Jesus?

And I think there could be a lot of reasons. One reason might be because it is true that God wants to feed us. And maybe it's true that, yes, we come and consume, but maybe actually part of that is what God wants to do. He wants to give us food. He wants us to be fed by him. I think that actually is true. But I think the other reason is because this story, this miracle,

highlights the fact that those who follow Jesus have to be givers, that it's not an option, that those who follow Christ, those Christians, we have to be givers, that it's not an option. What does Jesus say? He says, in the other three gospels, he says, you give them something to eat. The apostles recognized, yep, they're hungry. And Jesus says, okay, you give them something.

And the response is, well, here's what we have. We have five lobes. It's not even theirs. It belongs to this kid over there. They stole his lunch and said, there's a boy here, he has five lobes, two fish. Here's all that we have. And then they say this next line in John's Gospel. We heard it just a second ago.

And they say, but what good are these for so many? Here's what I have. Yeah, but what good is it? What good is what I have to offer? You might think, like, there's other people who have so many more things to offer. Of course, yeah, less than 7% of Catholics do more than 80% of the work, but I don't have anything to offer. And what difference would it make if I did?

Remember, Cardinal Van Tuan, he in prison, he just was pained by this, that recognition of, I have nothing to offer here. There's literally nothing I can do. There's nothing that I can give. You almost hear God say, when you say, I have nothing to offer that Jesus says, okay, I'll take it.

I'll take all of here or nothing. every last piece of what you don't have to offer, I will take all of it. Because what Jesus says, he says, give what you do have. Basically, give what you do have. That's the call, everything given. And still, there's something inside of us,

I think that can stop us. I think there's so many things that can stop us. I think one of the things that can stop us is scarcity, like a mindset where we just focus on what we don't have, where we look at all the things, all the people we can't feed, all the things we can't do, all the things we don't have to offer, as opposed to Jesus says, okay, give what you do have. We can have a scarcity mindset, or we might even have fear. We focus on what I won't have if I give this away.

In fact, this is one of the things that just honestly grips my heart sometimes. I remember when I was, after I graduated college, I was a missionary in Central America, and I maybe have told this story before, but at one point, all the teachers, all the missionaries, you're on a bus. It was maybe like a 12, 14-hour bus ride. the beginning leg of the bus ride, I was kind of hungry. I might have had some food in my bag. But I had no idea when we were going to stop and I had no idea when we're going to eat next.

I had no idea where the next food would come from. But there was one of the other teachers. His name is Mike wrote it. Mike wrote it. Now he's a doctor. Philosophy. He teaches that University of St. Thomas and St. Paul, Minnesota. Incredible guy. Mike was walking up and down the aisles.

He had this, he had bought this bag of bread rolls, right, of rolls. And he was walking up and down the aisles basically saying, is everyone want any bread? They don't want any bread. Not just to all their teachers. He was offering everybody on the bus. these strangers do want any bread? And I remember watching him walk by and I was thinking, dude, you have no idea when

your next meal is coming from. You have no idea if you're going to get hungry. You have no idea if we're going to eat the rest of the day today. And here you are with your food offering this to other people and I realize in that moment, my fear of the, am I a giver, am I a taker? It was really illuminated and it was not just a fear that I did not know. I absolutely knew. Mike is a giver and I am a taker.

Because I focused on what I wouldn't have if I gave it away. Or sometimes the thing that Sopsis is comparison. Basically, we say we focus on what others have. Or maybe what Sopsis is a sense of hopelessness, right? Where we focus on the wrong invitation, we focus on the wrong call. We say, here's what I mean. We focus, Jesus didn't say, give them all enough food. He just said, give them what you have.

So sometimes we focus on the wrong call. I can't do all these things. You're right, you can't. You can't feed 5,000 people, not including women and children, but you can give what you have. what you have. And here's the thing, imagine, imagine what could happen if we did this. Just, I mean, for a moment, just imagine what would happen if we did this? Imagine if this wasn't just like a Bible story that's kind of a little lesson from Jesus. What if this was the way that Catholic Christians actually lived every single day? As I said already, that the Catholic Church

is the single largest organization on the planet that feeds more people, houses more people, clothes, clothes more people, employs more people than any other single charitable organization in the world. And we do that on less than 7% manpower. Imagine how many more people could be helped if we were at just at like 8%. Honestly, I imagine how many more people, how many more relationships could be restored, how many more people could be reached with the gospel, the mercy of Jesus Christ. If we didn't just double this to 14, what if we just increased it by 1% or 2%? What if we were operating at 9% efficiency or 9% power?

The world, I mean, what is the church doing right now at less than the same? 7% it is transforming the world what if that just changed by one or two percent Last week we talked about last week we talked about St. Maximilian Colby and how in Auschwitz He saw that man who said please spare my life because I have a wife I have children and st. Maximilian Colby decided okay, here's where I'm gonna pour everything out Here's where everything in my life will be given and that's the call for all of us everything given In fact, that's probably our motto. Everything given. I've got five loaves and two fish.

Okay, give it all. Everything given. I've got my time. I've got my gifts. Okay. Everything gets given. So we ask the question, how? Like, how do you do that?

How do you live that way? The reality is, you just have to start. The reality, of course, is how do you become a giver rather than a taker? How do we become someone who offers and pours ourselves out rather than becoming consumer Catholics? is we just have to start somewhere. The goal is everything given, but the first steps are what you call first fruits. Basically, be able to say, okay, God,

do what you will with my life, do what you will with my time, do what you will with my stuff. And so again, the first steps have to do with first fruits. And so my invitation, of course, is in the Old Testament, there was a thing called first fruits. Basically what it was was if you had a field and had crops in it, 10% of those crops, whatever the fruit was, that belonged to either the Lord or belonged to the poor.

But it wasn't yours, because it was your first fruits. It was meant to be given if you had a firstborn of the flock, right? Of the sheep or goat, a ram, whatever that. That first one, that was given to the Lord, that's dedicated to the Lord. That's the first fruits. And so basically, that first 10% that belongs to God. It belongs to other people. What if we did that?

Catholics, I think we give at roughly, I think, maybe 2% of our income, maybe less than that, on average. But what if we actually lived the biblical Old Testament injunction, to give 10% to give actually a tithe. And you might not be ready to that. Maybe you'll have to start at 2% and build your way up to 10%. But what if we actually did that? What if we lived in such a way that God actually, practically, objectively, got our first fruits?

Not just kind of like, oh yeah, I would like to give more. But what if we planned it out? It would mean we'd have to have a budget. And that's my invitation, is to make a budget. Because we need to know what we have in order to know what we have to give. And so what I need to do is, do is I need to sit down. Maybe I need to sit down even this week and make a budget because I need to know what I have in order to know here's what I have to give. And then to make

the decision, here's how I'm going to set that aside. Here's how am I actually going to contribute and give God first dibs and give God my first fruits with my stuff and also with my time. And remember, 6.4% of people and parishes do 80% of the volunteer work. I need to decide, okay, where am I going to serve? But also, where am I going to pray? When am I going to pray? Mother Teresa, who did so much incredible work, so much incredible service to the poor and for the poor,

she lived with the poor. She said, I could never do what I do, even for one single day, if it wasn't for the two hours I would spend in the presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. So we need to be people who pray. We need to be people who not only give our time to others in service, but we have to, have to give God our time in prayer.

And what that looks like is it looks like deciding. My first fruits when it comes to time is what's the first thing that gets scheduled? The first thing that gets scheduled where you have some freedom to schedule stuff, if you might have to work from 9 to 5 or whatever that is, that part is already taken, where you first get to put something on your own, where you decide in your calendar that's your first fruit. The first thing to get scheduled is, when am I going to pray? I mean, I was talking with, I wasn't talking with.

I read a letter from a man who's been doing the Bible in a year. And he said that, you know, that 20 minutes, sometimes 35 minutes, I was just listening to the Bible and talking to God about it. He said, everything has changed. He said, my entire, like, the way I go to work has changed, the way I talk to my wife has changed, the way I've raised my kids has changed. He says, the way I walk through this world has changed because of that 20 minutes every single day that I spend in prayer.

It doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, it can be so simple. Colonel Van Tuan, once more. He talks about this. He says that people said, Father, or, you know, Cardinal, you must have had so much time to pray when you were in prison. He had nothing else to do, right? You just, you're in a room by yourself.

You must have had so much time to pray when you're in prison. He said, you would think that. But he said, I was so either in pain or sick or suffering or exhausted or distracted and distressed. He said, I found it so difficult to pray. And he'd shared this story. He shared a story about a man who used to walk into the church and then bop out. He was stopped by the church.

stop in front of the blessed sacrament, and then leave the church. And at one point someone said, or are you even going to the church? Do you even have enough time to pray? And he said, yeah, I have time to pray, but my prayer is really simple. I'm a simple guy. What he would do is he'd go into the church, go in front of the Jesus and the Eucharist, and he would say these words, he'd say, hi Jesus, it's me, Jim.

And that's it. Hi Jesus, it's me, Jim. And then he'd leave. But every day, he would do that, multiple times a day if he could. Hi Jesus, it's me Jim. As Jim got older, he was put on a hospital floor. And the nurses and doctors, they recognized that when Jim was there, the floor was different.

When Jim was there, the patients were different because Jim would walk up and down the hallway when he could, and he would stop and visit patients and sit with them and visit with them. And he had, he himself had no visitors. But the nurses and doctors and doctors, realized, recognized that Jim had so much joy. And they said, Jim, why are you so joyful? And he said, well, I get to visit with people all day and say, yeah, but you don't, you don't have anyone who visits you. And he said, well, doesn't someone visiting you make you happy? Yes. But no one visits you. He says, but I visit them. And that makes me happy. Because I have,

I'm giving what I have to give. When Jim could no longer walk up and down the floors, he had two chairs sat next to his bed. When one person would come to visit, the chair would be empty and people ask him about it. And he said that, I used to go into the church. I used to say, hi Jesus, it's me, Jim. He said, but now when I'm in bed and I can't go see him, Jesus comes to me and he says, hi Jim, it's me Jesus. Cardinal of Antoine, he said, there were days when weeks, months, when he couldn't hardly pray. All he could say was, Hi Jesus, it's me, Francis.

He gave what he had. And that's the reality, of course, everything given and nothing wasted. And this is the last thing. At the end of the gospel, Jesus, after his miracle of feeding 5,000 people, not counting women and children, Jesus says,

gather the fragments left over so that nothing will be wasted. And you know this, you know this, that nothing given to God has ever wasted. Nothing given to God is ever wasted. But our motto is, everything given and nothing wasted. The last story about Cardinal of Antoine is this moment when he sees a quote, he says this, he's in prison, he says, my morale was at its lowest. I was almost in despair in the darkness of my cell, cut off from my diocese, cut off from

God's people, from any human contact. I could not do anything for anyone. I could not even talk to anyone. I felt completely useless. again, I meant to be a giver, but I can't give. He said, I prayed, but God did not seem to hear. And then all of a sudden I saw as if in a vision Christ on the cross crucified and dying. And he was completely helpless.

Certainly worse off than me in my prison cell. And then I heard a voice. Was it his voice saying, at this precise moment on the cross, I redeemed all the sins of the world. Jesus saying, at this precise moment on the cross with nothing left to give, I redeemed all of the sins of the world.

Jesus is the ultimate giver. And what He proves to us, what he demonstrates to us, what he absolutely makes absolutely clear for us, is that when everything is given, nothing is wasted. Even the moment we have nothing left to give, that is the supreme moment when Jesus Christ redeemed the world and redeemed your heart and redeemed my heart. Because of that, we must become givers.

We start with our first fruits. And we end with everything, everything given, and nothing wasted.