Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 08/15/21 Consumer Catholic: The Body

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

Homily from the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary. You are your body. The Assumption of Mary reveals many things. One of the things it reveals is that our destiny is to be reunited with our resurrected bodies forever. Our bodies are good, and an essential part of what it is to be human. Mass Readings from August 15, 2021: Revelation 11:19; 12:1-6, 10 Psalms 45:10-12, 161 Corinthians 15:20-27 Luke 1:39-56

So the assumption, if you, I don't know if anyone could have anticipated or predicted how necessary the assumption would be in 2021 right now in our day and age. So there's a story that I'll tell that I've told like years and years ago because it was one of those remarkable things. So I was in seminary and at one point I went home for a long weekend visit or something. I went up to my childhood bedroom. My mom had kept it there and didn't remodel it. And on my bed was a children's book. and it was a children's book that my mom had gone to a funeral of a friend at this time years ago and they read it at the person's funeral.

My mom really liked it and so she got me this book thinking like, oh, maybe if you get ordained, you can go all the way with this, you'll do funerals and then maybe you can read this book at funerals. And so I looked at it, it was a book called The Next Place. And in it, it was all about heaven and all about the next place, about life after death. And in it it said something like, you know, in the next place, I will no longer be tall or short. You know, in the next place, I'll no longer be fat or thin.

In the next place, I will no longer be a boy or a girl. And I'll finally, in the next place, I'll finally be free to just be me. And I remember reading it and walking down stairs into the kitchen? And my mom was like, oh, do you like that book? And I'm like, well, it's heresy. And she was like, but I like it. I'm like, well, mama, you're a heretic. That's the thing.

Because although there's a lot of good ideas, they're like, I won't be fat or thin or tall or short or all these kind of things. The reality, of course, is that you are your body. Like, what a human being is. Human being is a body and soul together. That's what a human being is. You're not your soul. You're not simply a body.

You are your body and your soul. And this book was all about, like, no, at some point, you get to be free of your body to just be yourself. But the Christian worldview is that you are your body. And so we don't become free of our bodies. death. In fact, we believe in this thing that we say every single Sunday, I believe in the resurrection of the body. That doesn't just mean Jesus' resurrection. That means the fact that at the end of time, every human being, every human being, whether we are risen to glory

or risen to utter shame, risen in glory in heaven or in hell, we all hate our bodies back for all eternity. Because what a human being is is a body and a soul together. And to separate that and to deny that is to it's actually to deny the heart of Christianity and this is one of the things like so one of the things that we we will do we have a thing called the theology of the body like seminar here on campus and one of the kind of the I guess schicks I think we probably call it is at one point we say okay um everyone we got sort of volunteer and we have Bob we have stand up and say okay Bob come up to the front and okay everyone look at Bob's body and the funny thing about this is because we're like what I don't look at Bob's body like but that's

what you have to do right if you're looking at Bob if I were to say hey look at Bob you would look at his body. That's how the only way you can see Bob. In fact, John Paul II, he had said, he said the body and it alone is capable of making visible the invisible, the spiritual and divine. Like as human beings, right? As you and I, there's nothing we've ever known that we haven't known in and through our bodies. There's no one you love that you haven't loved in and through your body, whether that's hearing the words I love you, saying the words I love you, holding that person's hand, whatever the thing, feeding someone, being fed by them because they care about you, the only way you and I have ever possibly known anything, known anyone, or known any love,

has always been in and through our bodies. Because you are your body. And then this is so profound. Again, once again, the body in it alone is capable of making visible the invisible, the spiritual and the divine. This is so profound and so rooted in what we are as Christians, is, so some of my ancestors like Germanic and Nordic type people, at one point when Christianity came to the Germanic people, came to the Nordic people, they had a custom.

And the custom was, in death, you would have a funeral pyre, right? In death, you would burn the body to destruction. And if you were going to be a Christian, you couldn't have that happen. You couldn't do that. You couldn't be cremated, essentially. Why? Because those Germanic, those Nordic people, they saw the body as a trap. They saw the body as a shell.

They saw the body as the thing that encaged the real you. And if you wanted to actually have the real you, your soul escape and be free, you had to destroy the body. And so what it meant was that if you were a Christian and you were Germanic or you're Nordic or whatever it was, you couldn't actually be cremated. So that's one of the reasons why the church had for years, centuries really, had prohibited Christians from being cremated because it was intended as the denial and the destruction of the body. Now, you can be cremated now if you want because typically when people are being cremated, they're not cremated because they don't believe the body is part of them.

We believe it because, like my sister, she's like, I don't want to wake up in a coffin somewhere. Like, okay, I get it. You want to wake up in a furnace, though. I get it. But that sense of you couldn't be cremated because if you meant it, if I doing that, you meant to deny the reality of the body. And yet that's what we, I think we find ourselves in a culture right now that denies the reality,

of the body. In fact, back into 2012, crying out loud, almost 10 years ago, Minnesota would face this big debate. The debate was over same-sex marriage. And I remember I actually literally participated in a debate up at the local Catholic college here. And at one point, I was arguing for the traditional definition of marriage. At one point, my counterpart, the person I was debating, he said this line, he said, I'm not defined by my biology. I must have had some kind of look on my face that was like, oh my gosh, because the moderator said, Father Schmidt, do you have something to say? I said, oh my gosh, yes, yes. Because this just, that statement, that line, I'm not defined by my biology, I said that reveals everything we're actually talking about, everything we're really arguing about

here, because this is not a debate about the definition of marriage. This is not the debate about sexual morality. This isn't even a debate about morality itself. This is a debate about conflicting worldviews, that one is a Christian worldview that says you are, you are, you. your body. And what this other person was proposing was what we call a Gnostic worldview. The Gnostic worldview that says that your body isn't actually you. That says the material world, the flesh, isn't actually good. And this is the critical debate because at the heart of Christianity is the body. Now here's, again, this is not just a 2021. This is not a political thing. This is not a, this is a Christian worldview kind of a thing. At the heart of Christianity is the body.

I mean, think about, the greatest mystery in Christianity is the Trinity, right? The God's very identity. But the second biggest mystery in all of Christianity, which means on all the universe, is this thing called the incarnation. Right. So what's the incarnation? Incarnation. If you spoke Spanish, you know that carne means meat, right? So the incarnation is not God becoming Spanish, but the incarnation is the enmeatement of God,

like the enflashment of God that at some point here's God who has no body, right, who is immaterial. some point in history, God wills to take on himself a body. Now, why does he do this? He does this to save us, to redeem humanity. Now, how could God have done it? He could have done it any way he wanted because He's God. God who created the world just by willing it, he could say, you know, saved. God who created the world by willing it, by simply saying the words,

he could have redeemed the world by simply willing it, by simply saying the words. But how did he do it? How did he redeem this world? How did he redeem it you and me? he did it by taking on a body and by living in that body and by sleeping and eating and suffering in that body

by dying in that body and by rising in that body that's one of the reasons why there's this early church father and his name is Tertullian and Tertullian said the flesh is the hinge of salvation it's because

it's a very, in Christ's very body that we're given salvation. I mean, think about that's not only how God saved the world, by living on this world and suffering and dying and rising in his body. That's how he gave you salvation. I mean, think, how were you made into a child of God? Well, water was poured over your body.

How, if you've ever been given the anointing of the sick, how are you given that healing? Well, oil was put on your body. If you ever been given a sacrament of reconciliation, how are you given that? Well, the sign of the cross was made over your body, and you heard those words spoken out loud over you, I absolve you of all of your sins in the name of the Father and of this Holy Son and the Holy Spirit.

I mean, the greatest gift we've ever been given, which is the Eucharist, is what? It's we take his body and receive it in our bodies. See, salvation is, this is the most incredible thing. Salvation is not just about the soul. Salvation is about the soul and the body. Why? Because you are not just a soul. You are a soul and a body.

And here is God himself who saves us through his body. And he saves us by touching our bodies. I mean, this is the most incredible thing. I mean, think about this. Not only do we have the incarnation, right, the infleshment of God, that on this life and this earth he lives and he suffers and he dies and he rises in his body. But there's this other piece called the ascension, where God, Jesus Christ, ascends to heaven. And what does he do? He doesn't leave that body here. He ascended to heaven.

You know what that means? That means that God has permanently decided that for eternity, for the rest of eternity, for until time doesn't ever end, God has forever united humanity to divinity. What does that mean? That means that from all eternity, now forever, human being, a human body, is going to be united to divinity forever. This is how important the body is. And today's feast, today's feast of the assumption of Mary, highlights not just the goodness of the body, but the goodness of your body. I mean, this is the key.

Because here, the incarnation, of course, that's the goodness of the body, the resurrection, the ascension of Jesus in heaven. Of course, that's the goodness of the body. But the assumption of Mary highlights the goodness of your body. Because Christ's body, of course, but it's simply purely human like Mary? Her body being assumed into heaven, body and blood, body and soul for all eternity, highlights the goodness of your body and the goodness essentially of the woman's body. You know, if you ever, again, I mention this is the, this is the worldview between a Christian worldview

and a Gnostic worldview. There's a Gnostic Gospel called the Gospel of St. Thomas, which is just, it's a false gospel, right? At the end of the Gospel of Thomas, there's this scene where Peter, is talking to Jesus about Mary Magdalene. And he says, what about Mary Magdalene? What about her? Will she go to heaven too? And Jesus says, don't worry, I'll turn her into a man so she can go to heaven too.

And again, this is not a Christian gospel. This is a Nauta gospel. It's a false gospel. But think about this. I'll turn her into a man so she can go to heaven too. That's not Christianity. Because Christianity says that, no, there is a woman's body in heaven already. That what Mary is experiencing, what she's participating in,

is what is your destiny and my destiny. that your body is meant to be fully redeemed and fully glorified for all eternity in heaven. But your body, not someone else's, your body, not a different version, your body completely healed of whatever brokenness, healed of whatever woundedness, healed of whatever thing drags it down right now, but completely transformed. And this is so cool. the kind of body that will glorify the Lord forever in heaven. This is the reason why we celebrate the Feast of the Assumption today.

And this is why we need in 2021 to absolutely celebrate the Feast of the Assumption. Because we need to never ever forget. You are your body. And your body has a destiny. And that destiny is to be with God forever in heaven. to glorify God forever in heaven. So we give God praise right now. We say, God, prepare us, right?

Because he didn't just come to save your soul. He came to save you. And what you are is not just a soul. You are also a body. And so we participate in this glorification, this resurrection, this ascension, Mary's assumption. One day, when we, our bodies are resurrected as well.

One day when our bodies are glorified as well is going to be the day where your body and mine dwell in eternity in heaven with God and give him glory like Mary's does already.