Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 07/31/22 Then What?

Episode Date: August 1, 2022

Homily from the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Time and Death make most of what we live for hevel. We are preoccupied with "done", but we are simultaneously addicted to asking "then what?". The wisdom of Ecclesiastes notes that so much of what we live for is impermanent, passing, or meaningless. Yet Jesus reveals that there is a real meaning and a real hope. Mass Readings from July 31, 2022: Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23 Psalms 90:3-6, 12-14 and 17Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11 Luke 12:13-21

So, I kind of have this, I don't know, not obsession. And obsession is the wrong word. We're going to use that word later on. That's not an obsession. I really like underdog movies. I really like comeback stories. I think I'm like everyone else because the underdog movies, the comeback stories are the ones that everyone loves, like Rocky Underdog.

Here's Rudy, the story of Rudy Rudiger, right? So this kid who grew up loving Notre Dame football, wanted to play Notre Dame football for his whole life when he's too small, but he's like scrappy. And so he got in there. You probably know the movie. You know the movie. and he worked, trained, got in the last play of the last game that Notre Dame was playing against Georgia Tech, his last opportunity, and he got to tackle.

Kind of this big thing got carried off the field, Rudy. It's a real story, true story. Remember the Titans? One of those kind of situations of here's these underdogs, these comeback, miracle, the 1980 Olympic hockey team. Again, all these stories are so good. One that has happened, a real story. They haven't made a movie about it yet.

But if you've seen the Kentucky Derby here this last year in 2022, this incredible, story of this horse called Rich Strike, who wasn't supposed to be in the race. In fact, there was apparently there was like a lane that was open that they had, I don't know if they drew his name, but this horse who, I think most horses they say cost millions of dollars, these thoroughbreds in the Kentucky debris, cost millions of dollars and he costs something like 30,000, which I think is still expensive, but I'm not a horse person. Anyways, rich strike, his name gets drawn, he's in whatever lane. Not expected to win, not expected to do well. In the most, incredible upset. He was, the odds against him were 80 to 1. In the last lap, not the last stretch,

home stretch, he passes 16 other horses and wins by like a length or wins by a body. What he's just incredible. It's just the coolest thing. I'm not even a horse person. And it's just the coolest thing to watch. But here's the question. When it comes to Rudy, when it comes to Miracle, when it comes to Rich Strike here winning the Kentucky Derby, the question is okay. So then what? Like, yeah, that's great. Rudy. You got to play in the Notre Dame game and you got to tackle. So then what? What did you do after that?

Or the hockey players in Miracle? Like, great, did you go on to the NHL? Because that's what we really want to know is, okay, after that, then what? Even same thing with Rich Strike. He didn't compete in the Preakness right after the Kentucky Derby. He was in the Belmont stakes, I think in June, and he got sixth. It's kind of like, okay, well, that's great. But it's so interesting because I think a lot of times, even if someone does something

really incredible, something, they do something really, really well, unless they do it again and again and again, it's kind of like their failures. In some ways, like, I may think about, like, the idea of like the one-hit wonder, the song, this band that makes it, but they only have one hit. There can be a hit that everyone knows, a song that everyone knows, but we're like, oh, yeah, but they were just a one-hit wonder. So let me think about this, Rolling Stone has like a top 10 one-hit wonders of all time. The number one song might be from a band you've never heard of. If I said the name of the band, you might be like, who is that? The band is called Chumbawumba and the song is called tub-thumping. If I said those two words, those are only two words.

You might be like, I don't know that song, but if I said, I get knocked down, you're like, okay, I know that one. Because why? It's the number one one-hit wonder, basically of all time. But I was looking at this list of 10 one-hit wonder songs, and some of them, they're all awesome. They're all super fun. Dexie's Midnight Runners. Come on, I lean. I didn't realize. Come on, I lean was their only hit. The one that kind of broke my heart a little bit was because I loved this song and we'll still love currently. But the band Aha had one hit and that one hit was take on me. It was the coolest video when I was a kid watching this thing was like real life, but there was also cartoon kind of thing. It was super cool and the song's amazing. I could never hit that note. The point is we look at these one hit wonders and it's kind of, again, it's kind of like a failure thing

because we're so conditioned in our lives to ask that question, okay, you did great, you did amazing, then what? It's, I think what gives like gives rise to our preoccupation with checklists. Because I think, you know, I don't know, I love checklists. I have checklists. On this sheet in front of me, I have a checklist in my notebook every single day I look at and have a checklist because checklists can be helpful because all the things we need to do. But checklists can not only be helpful, checklists can also be illusory. What I mean by that is they can sometimes give us the impression that we're doing something important.

They can give us the impression that we're doing something significant. They can give us the impression that we're moving forward because I'm checking the things off the box and I'm doing this checklist. And sometimes you don't stop to ask the question, okay, is this significant? Is this something I should be doing? or am I just preoccupied with, okay, check this one, then what? What's the next thing? It's illusory.

And I think about that term illusory because in the first reading, it's from the book of Ecclesiastes, which is one of the wisdom books. And here's the story, right? It's not really a story. It's this man named Koaleth. There's the author, and he's pointing to this teacher named Koleth. Koilth means teacher. And Koleth says, vanity of vanities, everything is vanity.

Now, that term vanity doesn't mean like, Sovane, you probably think the song's about you. Maybe another one. No, Carly Simon did that. She had a number of hits. It was great. But vanity doesn't mean an ornate preoccupation with what other people think. In this case, vanity is actually the Hebrew word Hevel, H-E-V-E-E-L. And that Hebrew word Hevel literally means smoke, or literally means vapor. And so here you have Koaleth saying, vapor, smoke. Of smoke. In fact, that one of the definitions of that is meaningless. It's just smoke.

It's not real. It just goes away. And so the beginnings of the very beginning lines of this book of Ecclesiastes is meaninglessness of meaninglessness. Everything is meaningless, which I think is a strong start to a book on wisdom. Because that's what it is. It's just vapor. It's just smoke.

It's meaningless. But there's another meaning to the term smoke or the term hevel. And it's like an enigma, meaning, you know, smoke is, you look at smoke. And I remember hearing a commentator talk about this and said, so smoke is the thing. You can look at smoke, but you can't grab onto it. You can't hold it. And so similarly, in so many areas of our lives, that's what it is. All of life is hevel, right?

It's the smoke that gets real, but I try to grasp after it, and it escapes me. The beautiful thing of this whole book of Ecclesiases is he puts all of this in the context of the life of King Solomon. So here's Solomon who goes through his life and basically says, I'm looking back in my life and here's the things I live for. And I realize they're all hevel, they're all this smoke. They're all grasping, chasing after the wind. He starts with saying, you know, yeah, so here I am, Solomon, the king.

And I can have any food I want, any drink I want. And I realize, after a bit, it's all Hevel. So he says maybe, maybe wealth. And I mean, in time of Solomon, we remember this from a couple weeks ago, it said in the time of Solomon, they had so much gold. He amassed so much gold that silver was like rocks. Silver was like stones. So he said, I amassed all this wealth. But then in the end, what is it?

It's just hevel. So we had success in fame. Remember, the queen of Sheba comes to visit him and he had this notoriety and realizes, okay, fame. And success, it's all hevel. It's just smoke. And so even that sense of he has an importance, he has wisdom. And even in the book of Ecclesiastes, it says, yeah, but even the people who are wise, they die, just like fools do.

So what's the point? Like, I'm going from this to then what, to then what, to then what? And he realizes that all of it is just a chase after Hevel. chase after smoke. It's a chase after wind because none of it makes me happy, which reminds me of another wisdom author in Jim Carrey, who a couple of years ago, Jim Carrey was quoted as saying, he said, I think that everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so that they can discover that it's not the answer. I think that's remarkable. Think about Jim Carrey. I wish that everyone could get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of.

dreamed of and realize that it doesn't make them happy, that it's just a chase after the wind, because we get what we thought we wanted, and then we asked the question, then what? So right after I graduated college, I did a thing called Knowles. Nol stands for the National Outdoor Leadership School. It was like training to be a guide in the wilderness, which I never actually ended up doing, but I got to go in the wilderness for a month, and it was incredible in the North Cascades, and one of the things I discovered was, as we were hiking, a lot of times we were climbing mountains, and they would have, okay, the goal for today is get to this summit. And so we're hiking up this trail, it's getting really difficult. And we're like, oh, there it is.

There's the summit. And we're getting closer and closer. We get to the summit and realize it was not the summit. It was what they call a false summit. So you're walking, looking at this thing, thinking, that's the top of the mountain. You get there and you realize, okay, that's not the top of the mountain. The next one is the top of the mountain. And then the next one actually is a false summit as well. And it was one of those really, really discouraging things. It was almost there. You get there and you realize you're not even close. And learning that concept of false summit is, as I think what what the author of Ecclesiastes wants to highlight, wants to expose, wants to shatter the idea of everything you think you want,

everything you think is going to make you happy. Those things are just false summits. They're basically false hopes. I think the job of the author of Ecclesiastes, taking it upon himself, is to ask that question. When you're living for the other question, then what? You're living, you're living for a false hope. And this is what's true for so many of us, right?

We talk about this for our students all of the time. It's that sense of, okay, in high school, I got a, once I know what college I'm going to get to, go to, then I'll be fine, then I'll be happy. Once I got into that college, okay, then I'll be happy. Once I get into that college, okay, then I'll be happy. Because sometimes that stress of the first year or second year is like, I don't know what I want to do, but now I have my major, okay, then I'll be fine. Or once I graduate, then I'll be fine.

Or once after graduation, I have that relationship, once that person proposes, once we actually get done with the wedding, all these things, it's just the then what? Then what? Once we have kids, once those kids are grown. Once I'll be happy. Once I retire, then I'll be happy. Because we have this obsession with being done, right? I just want to be done with this thing. I'm going to be done with school. I want to be done with work. I'm going to be done with whatever it is that's giving me stress in my life. And we're so strange because I think all of us have that mentality of I'll be happy

when I'm done. And then we're never done. Because we're all looking for done and we're all addicted to then what? And I think that unless we're willing to ask the hard questions of Ecclesiastes, we will not have sufficiently smashed the false hopes and false summits that too many of us live for in order to find out whether or not the real hopes or real summits even exist. In fact, I think speaking of celebrities, back in 1991, Madonna, remember not our lady Madonna, but like the singer. In 1991, she was quoted in an issue of vanity,

Again, ironically, vanity fair. She was describing herself. She was describing why she's successful, and it comes from this place of deep, deep pain. She said this. She said, I have an iron will, and all of my will has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy. I'm always struggling with that fear. I push past one spell of it, and I discover myself as a special human being.

And then I get to another stage, and I think I'm mediocre and uninteresting. and I find a way to get myself out of that. Again and again, my drive in life is from this horrible fear of being mediocre, and that's always pushing me, pushing me. Because even though I'm somebody, I still have to prove that somebody. My struggle has never ended, and it probably never will. And the goal of Ecclesiastes is what the highlight, that most of what we're doing is chasing after the whim.

We're chasing after Hevel. And he's done this. He's just brilliant, because why? the author of Ecclesiastes has created a life, or he's painted a picture of a life in which God has been factored out of the equation. And with God out of the equation, he just looks at this and says,

wow, there's nothing new. With God out of the equation, he says, there's nothing here that lasts, that everything ends. In fact, he even highlights this, that everything dies and everyone dies. And then what? He points out that time and death,

will make most of life Hevel. That time and death will make most of what we live for Hevel. When you think about that, time will erase everything. Time will erase you. Time will erase everything about you. Time will erase every memory of you. One of the things we ask, our students,

we just asked them the other day. In fact, I asked them how many of them, how many of us can name the full names of our great-grandparents and not one of our students could. I remember, I had a grandma Julie, my great-grandma Julie, and my grandma Aggie, my great-grandma Aggie. That's it. I don't know their husband's names. I don't know the names of my other two great-grandmas. I don't know where they lived.

I don't know anything about them. There's a saying. You've mentioned it before, but it's worth repeating. it's that every person dies twice. One is the day they stop breathing and the other is the day

that their name was mentioned for the last time. Time and death will make most of what we live for Hebel. So what do we do? I think the question is, what's the solution? Here's what's not the solution.

the solution is not to avoid death. The solution is not to avoid thinking about death because that's what we do already. We already remove death as far as we can from ourselves. I think about this. If we have the chance, we'll die not at home. We'll die away from home. Even if we did that die at home,

what's the first thing after someone has died? They do. They take the body away. So we remove death from ourselves. We remove death from our daily life. In fact, then we end up disguising death. and this is just something that just bottles my mind is that at a wake or at a funeral, what do we do?

We put makeup on a corpse so that people say, oh, she looks like she's sleeping. Why? They look so young. Why? We avoid death. We disguise death and we distract ourselves from death. And because of that, I think we forget. We forget that every one of us is going to die.

We don't pay attention to life and it takes us by surprise. It takes us by surprise when time and death make most of what we live for Hevel. I mean, and there's the obvious stuff, right? Like, you know, that person who is kind of always relives high school? They're like, yeah, you know? So I was the Section 8A track high school champion in back in 1992. And like, look at that and be like, okay, bro, that's cool. Why?

Because we realize that's Hevel. What about the gold medalist in the Olympics in 1992? That's also Hevel. The person who says, like, I got the lead in the junior high school play. Okay? Neat. That's Hevel. But so is the person who won the Academy Award last year for best actress or best actor.

That's Hevel. He's like, okay, I'm glad you're an extra in someone random music video that was filmed in downtown Fargo. Neat. But also, my face was on a billboard in Times Square. It's Hevel. It's Hevel. It's smoke. You can't grasp, it can't hold on to it.

If you try, it slips away. But how many of our lives are spent, how many relationships are spent, are sacrificed, trying to grasp onto this Hevel? The person who says, well, who gets the inheritance? How many families have been completely destroyed over who gets the inheritance? That's the gospel today, right?

This man, someone in the crowd says, Lord, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me. In response to him, Jesus tells this story of the parable of the foolish rich man who is collecting all these things, grasping all this stuff. He's successful. He's wealthy. And Jesus calls him a fool. The Lord calls him a fool.

He says, you fool. This night, your life will be demanded of you. Basically, you're preoccupied. with this inheritance, it's Hevel. You're preoccupied with hoarding onto your stuff, it's Hevel, and you're forgetting one massively important thing. You are dying. Everyone listening to these words, everyone listening to these words right now, you're living. But everyone listening to these words right now, you are dying. Every one of us is in the active process of dying. We can't forget that. Can't ignore it. There's a, the country of Bhutan. The Bhutanese people, Bhutan is one of, like,

I think it's on a list of developed countries is maybe like 160th. So it's not super developed. But on the list of happiest countries in the world, it's in the top 20. And there's a lot of reasons for that. You know, they have a strong sense of community, strong sense of family. It's mostly rural, so it's not as urbanized. And so those are some of the things that cause people disconnect and whatnot. But the experts in Bhutan, who say, why are we so happy? They say it's because they regularly, as a part of their culture,

they regularly face their own deaths. They regularly face each other's deaths. In fact, their funerals will last 21 days. And in fact, there's an article I read about someone talking and said, in America, what you like to do is as soon as you can, you leave the body and go have cake after the funeral. We said here in Bhutan, we're going to talk about death even if it ruins the taste of the cake. There's a practice they have of reflecting on death two to three times a day.

And they say that by reflecting on death, it highlights the beauty of life. By knowing that every one of us is walking to a cliff, all of us are walking to a cliff, and we're going to fall off at some point we don't know when, they said, then we appreciate the goodness. of being able to walk with each other. Appreciate the goodness of being able to breathe right now in this moment. Because there's this word in Bhutanese, and it is metakpa. And that word roughly translated means no permanence.

This is really remarkable. Here's Bhutan, which is largely a Buddhist country. And in Buddhism, you realize it's a philosophy, it's an outlook, the worldview, where God has been removed from the equation. and this is the highest level of wisdom. And it's wisdom. It's the highest level of wisdom

that a person can achieve when they've removed God from the equation. Say, you reflect on death, knowing that everything is impermanent. It's all false hopes. It's all false summits. This is the highest wisdom. It's just like Ecclesiastes

that has also removed God from the equation. The remarkable thing is we realize that Ecclesiastes is one book in the 73 books of, 73 books of Sacred Scripture, and asked that hard question to smash the false hopes and smash the false summits. But we realize that it also answers the big question, which is, God is a real part of the equation, that there is actually a real summit.

There are actually real hopes. That even the final lines of Ecclesiastes is incredible because the author lets God come back in on the very last page, a very last line of Ecclesiastes. and the author says this, says basically, after all this wisdom, after the highest wisdom you can have where God doesn't exist, where he's been removed from the equation, here's what ultimate wisdom will consist of. Fear God and keep his commandments. This is the whole duty of humans.

For God will bring every deed into judgment, every hidden thing, whether good or evil. But ultimately, we'd say it's all hevel, none of it matters. and the author of Eccles, he says, you're right, none of it matters if God is removed from the equation, but God is real. And this is what Jesus is saying in the gospel today. Jesus, his whole life says this. He says to the man, like, you fool, why?

Because you're holding on. You're holding on to this Hevel. You're chasing after the wind. You're grasping, but you're grasping out what is Hevel. That's why St. Paul says, seek not what is below. Don't seek what's Hevel, but seek what's above. because everything we do actually matters. Keep this in mind, nothing I hold on to will last.

Nothing I grasp at will last. But everything I give will. Nothing I grasp at, none of the Hevel that I grasp at, will I be able to hold on to. Why? Because it's smoke. But everything I surrender to God will endure. So here's the Bhutanese who refers. on death, and that's incredible, it's beautiful, part of what makes them happy.

But they're not the only ones. In fact, there is a Christian tradition that dates back to the very beginning of Christianity where we are invited to reflect on our own death on a daily basis. In fact, there's a guy named Blessed Charles Difficold. He was a desert kind of hermit who went out to be a missionary to Muslims, and he would himself spend 30 minutes every single day reflecting on his own death, praying about his own death. You don't have to do 30 minutes every day, but think about these Bhutanese Buddhists

who are wise enough to reflect on their own desk two to three times a day, to stop and to think as Christians, as those who belong to Christ, and to reflect on the fact that, okay, this life is not going to live forever, but also, I'm not going to want forever, but also there's more to this life than just this life. You know, there's a custom of the monks and nuns of having like a skull on their desk. So as they would do their work, they'd be reminded of this Latin phrase Memento Mori, which simply means nothing more than remember your death, to remember the fact that at some point you are going to die and at some point you're going to have the opportunity,

like Ecclesiastes says, to answer for your death. This is the last thing. There's a church in Rome. There's a lot of churches in Rome. There's one church in particular in Rome that was built by capuchin monks, so a strain of the Franciscan order. And it's called the Bone Church. And it is aptly called the bone church because the entire thing is made of bones, human bones, that there are archways that are skulls stacked, you know, over six feet high. The walls and altars are made from human femurs. There's pelvices and there's spines. There's in fact whole intact skeletons. Some of those skeletons are a priest and they have their vestments on. Some of those skeletons are beggars and they're

wearing beggars clothes. Some of the skeletons have whatever tool they used to use when they were alive. And they're holding those tools here in this church made of bones. As you walk into the bone church, there is a sign. There reminds every visitor, every pilgrim of the most important thing they can be reminded of by looking at this bone church. It's not simply dark. It's not macabre. It's not grotesque. it's a reminder and that sign says what you are now we used to be what we are now you will be it is a part of our story to reflect on our own death and to not avoid it to not remove it to not disguise it to not distract our souls from this but he's incredible because in this chapel in this church the last six rooms i think are the most important the last six rooms are the chapel

of the resurrection. And in the chapel of the resurrection, there is this painting, and the painting is framed with bones, naturally. But the painting itself is a painting of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, because it's highlighting this reality that, yes, every one of us is going to die. But it's highlighting a deeper reality is that every one of us is going to be raised from the dead to everlasting glory or to everlasting shame. And there's an author who described this, and she wrote this, she said, one day, by the mercy of God, they will again, these bones will again belong to living bodies. Bodies more alive and more lovely than they were when they first walked to the earth.

So much of our lives are spent obsessing over the question, then what? and ecclesiastes highlights this obsession by smashing those false hopes and smashing those false summits by revealing that most of what we live for is Hevel, that we actually can't answer the question, then what? But Jesus, in coming to us, he reminds us that God is actually a real part of the equation. Jesus, in coming to us, reminds us that what we choose in this life matters. Jesus, in coming to us, he reminds us that everything surrendered to him lasts forever. And Jesus, in his resurrection, he answers the question, then what? Because Jesus then points to his body that lived, that died.

And that is risen. And he says, then this.