Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 08/01/21 Consumer Catholic: Choose God.

Episode Date: August 2, 2021

Homily from the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Choose God over the works of God. The signs point to Jesus and Jesus is the point of the signs. When we are challenged to merely consume… When we are challenged to want the gifts more than the Giver of the gift, we must allow ourselves to be trained in a trust in God. To be trained in freedom. Mass Readings from August 1, 2021: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-15 Psalms 78:3-4, 23-25, 54Ephesians 4:17, 20-24 John 6:24-35

So I don't know if you ever did this when you were growing up. If you went over to someone's house because they had something in their house that you didn't have in your house, like, I don't know, maybe they had cable and you didn't have cable. Maybe your mom didn't let you have MTV and so they had MTV and their parents actually even let them watch MTV. Maybe because their mom actually cooked really well. I've never done anything like that. I've never gone over to Pete Sharpanteer's house because he had the Ewok Village from Return of the Jedi just to play with it, not because I wanted to. But maybe someone did that to you.

Maybe that's a situation. Someone can do that to us, right? They came over to our house, not because they wanted to be our friend, but because we had something, a swing set, a playground, or whatever, I don't know, making stuff up. Whether or not choosing us, they're choosing the stuff we have. Or we didn't choose them, we were just choosing the stuff that they had. And bring this up because that's what we see in the gospel today.

It's so clear. And this is the sixth chapter of John's Gospel. We're going to actually be sitting in the sixth chapter of John's Gospel for a while. We were there last weekend. We're going to be there next weekend. Take a break and then following the weekend. But we have Jesus, and what does he say? He says, this thing that I never understood when I was growing up.

He said this thing, he says, you're looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled. And I always thought, like, I don't know, isn't that the same thing? That you saw the signs of the multiplication of the loaves, but I didn't know what he meant. Basically what he is saying is, in John's Gospel, he uses this term, signs and wonders, a bunch. And whenever Jesus does a miracle, John says that's a sign or that's a one- because the signs are meant to point to something, right? That's the signs do.

Signs point to something. The signs point to Jesus. So Jesus is saying, you're here, you're coming to me, not because you saw the signs, meaning not because you believe in me, but because you're thinking about yourself. Not because you want, not because you want me, but because you want something for you. You want something for yourself. You just, I mean, basically, Jesus, the signs point to Jesus, he's the point of the signs. And all they want, they just wanted more food.

In last week we started kind of this kind of semi-series about consumer Catholic. And the idea is that a lot of us, when we come to the Lord, come to the church, we just take, right? We just want to get. We just want to receive. We just want to consume. And the call last weekend was, how do we become givers, right? How do we have that as our motto that everything is given and nothing is wasted? But we want to do this not because it just will help like the local church of forgivers or

not just because it helped the church around the world if we're givers, but because we need it. Because too often, too often most of us, we prefer the gifts over the giver of the gifts. And that's why we show up, that's why we come to the Lord, not because we want him, but because we want what he has to offer. So I've been talking a little bit about this guy, and Cardinal Francis Xavier Nguyen Van Tuan, this Vietnamese priest who became a bishop who was arrested by the communist,

put in jail for no reason whatsoever other than the fact that he was a Catholic priest. And he was in prison for 13 years, I think eight of those years, was in solitary confinement. And he said that on those 13 years, he learned two lessons. One lesson was from last week. And that lesson was that he had to offer all that he had to God and let God turn his offering into abundant nourishment for others. That's what he said. That I had to offer everything I had to God.

Remember everything given, nothing wasted. He said the second lesson he learned in that solitary confinement, the second lesson he learned, the second lesson he learned in that awful jail cell was that he had to choose God over the works of God. Because remember, he was, he's kind of a dynamic guy. He had so much to give, so much to offer. And in prison, he was, one of the pains of his life was he didn't have anything to do. He didn't have anything to offer. He didn't, he couldn't do anything for people. He had nothing to give. And so he said, I had to learn to choose God over the works of God. In fact, he has this extended quote that describes a little bit of his cell. He said this, gosh,

He was in a prison in Foucahn, and he says this. He says, when I was in prison in Foucan, I found myself confined to a cell without windows. In extremely hot weather, suffocating. I felt myself gradually becoming more lifeless until I lost consciousness. This happened on a regular basis because there's the stifling air in there. At times the light in the cell was left on day and night, and other times it was always dark. It was so humid that mushrooms began to grow on my sleeping mat. In the darkness, I saw light coming in through a crack at the bottom of the bottom of the

up the door to let the water run out. So I spent 100 days on the floor putting my nose near the crack in order to breathe. I can just imagine how suffocating. If you've ever been in a sauna, like this would be the experience. Just like laying on the floor, 100 days just trying to breathe. When it rained and the water level rose, little insects like spiders, millipedes, mesquitos, et cetera, came in and I had no strength left even to drive them away. And then he follows all that description up with the words, to choose God and not. God's works. God wants me here and nowhere else. Like this is this time in in that prison camp, in that solitary confinement, that's eight years, God, that I could be here to choose God and not

God's works. God wants me here and no one else. See, those those long years, those 13 years of prison were training. He was training for Cardinal Van Twan. In fact, after this, he's lifted, he's taken out of solitary confinement after eight years, and he put in the hold of his ship with 15 other prisoners as they moved them, the ship them north. And he said, he found himself surrounded by these men. He saw the desperation, the hatred, the desire for revenge on their faces of his fellow prisoners. He shared their suffering, but immediately a voice called out to him again, can choose God and not the works of God. And he had this prayer, he said, and in the hold of this ship, among 1,500 other prisoners, he said, in truth, Lord, this is my cathedral. And these are the

people of God that you have given me to take care of. I have to be a confirmation of God's love in the presence of the midst of these desperate, miserable then. It's your will, so I choose it. See, those years, again, it's training. This is God's will for you. It's a training and freedom. Here's what I mean by this, is that most of us are just slaves. Like, honestly, most of it, we're just slaves. We're consumer Catholics, which means we're slave to our circumstances. Our moods rise and fall based off of our circumstances. That our experience, of freedom, our experience of slavery, it rises and falls based off of our situation.

That even we're slaves to ourselves. Again, we just want to take, we just want to eat, we just want to receive, just want to consume. We're not unique, right? This is the case even back in the first reading today, the book of Exodus. We have the people of Israel who actually were actual slaves and they never knew, they were slaves for 400 years.

They never knew freedom. Their grandparents never knew freedom. And here they are being set for having been set free by the Lord God and they're in the wilderness and what they're saying is we want to go back. They're saying that we wish, at least if we were back as enslaved in Egypt, at least then we would have our fill of food and we'd have plenty of bread, we'd have plenty of meat. We'd be slaves, but we'd be able to consume what we wanted to consume. These people, they never knew free.

They didn't know how to live in freedom. So they were victims. They were powerless. And so God is going to say basically, okay, the next 40 years, I'm going to train you. Next, 40 years, I mean 40 years of training. That you can find yourself in any circumstance, you can find yourself in any situation, and you can know that you can trust me.

So what does he do? He gives the manna. Remember, he gives the manna why? Because God does want to feed us. God does want to give us these gifts. He loves you and he wants to feed us. But then he says, but here's the deal. Here's the rule.

Only gather enough of this manna, only gather enough of this bread from heaven for that one day. You can gather twice as much on Fridays because you don't have to gather it on the Sabbath. But that's it. That is the rule. So here is God who says, I'm going to give you what you need, but also I'm going to give you some rules. And he says in the Exodus,

he says, thus I will test them. That testing is training. Every day, you're going to be trained. Are you willing to obey me? Are you free to obey me? Are you able to trust me? It was training in obedience.

It was training and trust and above everything else. It's training and freedom. Because these people, they were slaves their entire lives, they have to learn how to be free. Now, our slavery, so often, how many of us are slaves to our emotions? I mean, how many of our slaves to, I'm not going to do this thing?

Why? Because I don't really feel like it. That can be us every single day of the week. Again, it's consumer Catholics. Well, I'm not going to give, why? Because I don't really feel like it. I'm not going to pray. Why?

Because I don't really feel like trusting in the Lord. Why? I don't really feel like trusting in the Lord right now. I remember we had a former student, his name's Dean. And Dean once said, talked about emotions. He was in prayer one day and he said that, the Lord kind of spoke to him about emotions, and he revealed this, and he shared it with me. He said, emotions do not reveal the truth about reality.

Like, emotions don't reveal the truth about our situations, right? They don't reveal the truth about whether we should do this or shouldn't do that. Emotions do not reveal the truth about reality, but they do reveal the condition of our heart. Say that again, because it's just so good. He said, emotions do not reveal the truth about reality, but they do reveal the truth, the condition of our heart. It reveals what I value. My emotions reveal what I long for. My emotions reveal what I desire.

Our emotions reveal where we're slaves. You know, oftentimes our emotions reveal that sometimes nine times out of ten, maybe even ten times out of ten, I would rather have the gifts of God than I would have God. Like Jesus could look at us and say, you're here for more food and you're not here for me. So sometimes we think, well, we have to be more motivated. You just need to be more motivated to do the thing.

Be more motivated to not be a consumer. Be more motivated to have that freedom. And we have to realize, this is completely true. Motivation is overrated. Like, it's just motivation. The Olympics, the Olympics just started, I think, like, two Fridays ago. Over a week ago, the Olympics started. And you can ask the question, how many of those Olympians wait until they feel like it to train?

The answer is going to be absolutely zero. Absolutely none of them. None of them wait until they feel like it to start training. They've made a decision. And so they do it. They don't wait to feel like it. Why? Because they're free.

That's a huge gift. Discipline equals freedom, says this former Navy SEAL. Have that discipline to be able to not be a slave to my emotions, not to be a slave to how I feel because we realize action precedes attitude. They've actually done many studies on this. When someone doesn't feel like exercising, they don't feel like doing the hard task. If they start, then the more they do it, they feel like it. What we do is we choose to act and then the feelings come.

I remember listening to a therapist talk about this and he was examining the reality. He says, why is it so often that parents of adult children find themselves loving their adult children more and more and more and more and oftentimes loving their spouse less and less and less? And he examined it and he said, I think one of the reasons is because when our kids were little and they needed us to take care of them, it wasn't an option to do the action of love or not. It was if you don't do the action of love, your kids die. Right? They starve. They freeze to death. Whatever the thing is.

So you have to, regardless of whether you feel like it or not, you get up and take care of your kid who's sick. Regardless of whether you feel like it or not, you get in the car and you pick up your kid who needs to be picked up after soccer, whatever the thing is. He said, but when it comes to our spouses, we can often ask the question. I don't, we can observe. I don't really feel like it. And then I didn't do it. But the kids, I don't feel like it. It doesn't matter.

Do the action of love. But with your spouse, it could be, I don't feel like it. so I didn't do the action of love and over time it grows. It either grows with more and more affection, more and more love for those grown children, or it grows into less and less and less love and less and less affection for that spouse. In the desert, in that prison cell for Carlin-Vantuan, decision is training in freedom. Making the decision is training and freedom.

It's even the freedom to promise. I mean, it's just one of those things. I often tell our couples about their wedding day and their vows, and they may have said this before, but I want to say it again, is you have the freedom to make a vow, that on a couple's wedding day, they vow things. They promise to love each other. They promise to be faithful to each other. They promise to honor each other. If you think about it, that's kind of, it's kind of silly that we have them promise this on their wedding day because on their wedding day, of course they're going to love each other on their

wedding day. Of course they're going to be faithful to each other on their wedding day. Of course, they're going to honor each other on their wedding day. The couple makes a price. promise on their wedding day to love and be faithful and to honor, not because they need to on that day, but because they know the truth. And the truth is, the day is going to come when I won't feel like loving you. I promise you when that day comes, I will choose to love you. The day is going to come when I won't feel like being faithful to you, I'm promising to you. And when that day comes, I will be faithful to you.

The day is going to come when I won't feel like honoring you. I promise you today, when that day comes, I will have already chosen, I am going to honor you. You don't have to wait for motivation. In fact, if you do wait for motivation, here's what you're waiting for. You're not waiting for a feeling. What's the root word of motivation? The root word of motivation is motive, which means I have a reason. It means you have a why.

And those of us here, Catholic Christians who don't want to be consumer Catholics, but want to be actual Catholics, givers, the disciples of Jesus, We have a why. Our why is a who. Our motive behind everything that we do is not the gift of the giver, it's actually the giver. And this is the last thing.

We have to. Every one of us has to break the slavery of being consumer Catholics. We have to enter into training and becoming free to choose. Becoming free to be able to decide ahead of time. Because the hard truth is this. if you and I, if we wait until we feel like it,

if we wait until we feel motivated, our entire lives will pass us by while we wait. But you and I were being trained in freedom, the freedom to obey God's command. We're being trained in freedom, the freedom to trust his providence, to trust in his care. You and I are being trained in freedom, trained in the freedom to love him, to love the giver,

more than we love the gifts of the giver.