Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 08/25/24 Your Turn

Episode Date: August 24, 2024

Homily from the Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time. Do not miss your turn. There are times in our lives when we have the opportunity and the ability to make a decision that will change the direction of our lives. Joshua issued this invitation to the people of Israel as they entered the Promised Land and we are issued the same invitation. We must decide for ourselves whom we will serve. Mass Readings from August 25, 2024: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b Psalms 34:2-3, 16-21Ephesians 5:21-32 John 6:60-69

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. 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 John. Chapter 6 verses 60 through 69. Many of Jesus' disciples who are listening said, This saying is hard. Who can accept it? Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, Does this shock you?

What if you were to see the son of man ascending to where he was before? It is the spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. the words I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe. Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said, for this reason, I have told you

that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my father. As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him. Jesus then said to the 12, do you also want to leave? Simon Peter answered him, Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God, the gospel of the Lord. I should have a seat. So, growing up, I'm the fourth of six kids, and so I don't know if you had this experience, if you had any older siblings, but a lot of life was about like, hey, well, wait.

You have to wait for your turn because your older siblings have to do something and you have to wait for your turn because you'll be able to do those things when you get to that, whatever that age is. So like I can't wait until I get to stay up past whatever time. Like, well, wait your turn, kind of a thing. Or I can't wait until I get to drive and I get your turn. I can't wait until I get to look after my little brother's brother and sister

because that was the thing. Like I wanted to be the one babysitting. I don't know what was about me, but I wanted to do that. But it's like, no, no, wait your turn. even when it came to college. This, as I mentioned, this is the freshman weekend for us here at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. A bunch of freshmen just arrived this last Wednesday and Thursday.

And so this is their first weekend on campus. I remember my first weekend. I remember actually dropping off my oldest sister, my second sister, my older brother at college their first day. And then it was one of those things like, wait your turn. And then it was one day, it was my turn. Just like one day it was my turn to drive. One day it was my turn to be able to stay up late.

One day it was my turn to watch after my little brother and my little sister. It's one of those things where I go, okay, now it's your turn. Again, I had seen my sister and all the stress of moving onto campus her freshman first day. My older sister, all the stress, all the stress. And then I can distinctly remember, okay, this is now my turn to experience all of the stress and all the fun, the joy of trying to wrangle in your emotions as you're like, I don't know if mom and dad should leave yet. You should probably leave, but don't leave.

You know, like all those things. It was finally my turn. And there's something about when you realize, you look up basically, and you realize, okay, it's my turn now. And so for our freshmen, it's one of those realities of, okay, now it's your turn. And you don't want to miss it. You don't want to lose your turn. I've been praying about this because not only because the freshmen are here now,

but because of the first reading. You write here for the book of Joshua. Now, if you know anything about the book of Joshua, this is chapter 24. This is the final chapter. These are Joshua's last words to the people of Israel before they enter the promised land for good. And he tells him, you know, your ancestors came before you, right?

Your ancestors who lived in Egypt, they made their choice. Your ancestors who, they were set free from slavery in Egypt. They saw the promised land and they were too afraid. They made their choice. Even 30 years before this, people who went into battle in the promised land, they made their choice.

And now we're saying, You guys, you saw this. You saw your parents do this. You saw your grandparents do this. Now it's your turn. And he has this big line where he says, decide for yourselves today whom you'll serve. Like basically, when you go into the promised land,

there will be a bunch of different people and a bunch of different gods. And so what you need to do is you need to decide for yourselves today whom you'll serve. Now it's your turn. And I just think about this. Like, how difficult that is. Like, when we hear that we even, that word decide, just choose, make a decision.

It is so difficult for us because we know this. We know that the word decide actually etymologically. It comes from the English word. It just basically means to cut off. So every time you decide, every time you make a decision, you're making an incision, right? Every time you make a decision, you're cutting off every other opportunity. And life is so full of so many opportunities, right? We have so many options in our lives that it's, I think, I wonder if right now,

in our day and age, it is a harder time to decide than at any other time. Why? Because we have more options than any other time. And we just, we can just reflect on our own lives. We have, I mean, I saw a package the other day that had eight different kinds of mustard. Like, why? I thought there was one. Oh, there are two, right? There's yellow and brown. Like that is it. There's grape upon, which is very fancy for people way above my pay grade. But you have this reality that you have so many options that we get, we develop this, this syndrome called optionitis. Right? Optionitis is there are so many opportunities.

There are so many choices. There are so many things I could choose, so many options that I just, I don't want to choose. And so what happens is we don't move. What happens is we like, how could I possibly choose? And we find ourselves oftentimes not making a decision. When we have an idea of, well, what could happen if you did? Like, what could happen if you just chose? So back when Peter Jackson, who was the director of Lord of the Rings,

so this is the Lord of the Rings moment, back when Peter Jackson was casting Lord of the Rings, he was casting for a photo, right? So he tells the story about how he was in London doing the casting, and he said we had seen over 300 photos, and no one was right. Meanwhile, back in the United States in L.A., Elijah Woods wanted this one, he wanted the part. and so what he did on his own.

No one asked him to do this. He hired a dialect coach to get the dialect right. He went to a local costume shop and got like a kind of a Hobbit costume. He went up into a tree. He had a friend film him in a tree. And he didn't have any of the script, but he had the books from Lord of the Rings. And so he just read lines from the actual J.R.R. Tolkien book, Lord of the Rings. And then he sent the VHS tape across the ocean to Peter Jackson.

And Peter Jackson said, we put it in the VCR and played it and saw that's our furtough. And he said this word, he said, he cast himself. Again, no one had asked him to do this. No one had told him what you need to do is we need to come here, you need to come to London, you need to go. He just said, I want this thing. I'm going to choose. I'm going to act.

And that's the reality. He cast himself because, why? Because he made the decision. This is something that I want. And there's a comedian who said something about this. I saw this kind of video talking about this. And the comedian said this. He said, that's the terrible thing about life.

It's self-assignment. It's reflecting that for one second. The terrible thing about life is its self-assignment. We get to choose the person we will be tomorrow today. And no one's waiting for us to make a decision because most of life just we don't make a decision. So back to Joshua in the book of Joshua chapter 24. He says, okay, people of Israel, decide for yourselves today whom you'll serve.

Now, keep this in mind. Who are these people? These are people. Now, God had set the people of Israel free from slavery. They had 40 years of wandering in the wilderness. The book of Joshua, chapter 1, happened 31 years before this. So this is now 71 years after the people of Israel have been set free from slavery by God in Egypt. And Joshua says, okay, but now is the day you need to decide.

He says, decide for yourselves today whom you're going to serve. Why? Because you're going into the promised land. And I've got news for you. It is dangerous. You're going to go into the promised land and here's the reality. The reality is there are people and there are things in the promised land that will do everything they can to steal your heart. There are people and there are things in the promised land

that will do everything they possibly can to steal your faith, to steal your time, to steal your life. The promised land is dangerous. It is a dangerous place. And yet here's the other part of it. Yet you're supposed to be there. Yes, it's dangerous.

And it will do everything it possibly can to steal your heart from you. But you're supposed to be there. This is your turn. Don't miss your turn. Don't lose your turn. And the same thing is true for... Again, back on campus here,

same thing is true for every one of our students. our campus, like any other campus, it's a dangerous place because there are people and there are things on every college campus, including ours, that will do everything they possibly can to steal the hearts of our students, to steal the time of our students,

to steal the life, to steal the faith of our students. It's a dangerous place to be on campus. And yet, for every one of our students, the truth is also this, you're supposed to be here. And wherever you're at in life, you know this. The world is just like this. The world is dangerous. And the world does everything it possibly can

to steal your heart and to steal your time, to steal your life, to steal your faith. And yet, you're supposed to be here. Wherever you're at, that's where you're supposed to be. And the challenge is, the invitation is, don't lose your turn. But to decide for yourselves today whom you'll serve, which I think is so cool. Like an incredible opportunity. You get to decide for yourself. Will Jesus Christ simply remain the God of my parents?

was raised Catholic. You might have been raised Catholic. A lot of our students, a lot of them were raised Catholic. And the question they get to ask is, will Jesus Christ be the God of my parents or will he be mine? Because we know we have to choose because we've said this many, many times, God, the father, doesn't have grandchildren, right? God is not a grandfather and he doesn't have grandchildren. He is a father. He only has children. And it reminds me so much, I met this young woman this last summer in Chicago. And it was Kate. And Kate was raised by Catholic parents who sent her to Catholic school and went to Catholic Mass. And so Kate actually went off to a Catholic university.

And she said, while she was there, she did the things because that's what you're supposed to do. Right? She went to Mass because that's what you're supposed to do. And she tried to, like, you fast on Good Friday and you know Ash is on Ash Wednesday. And she said, I did all the things because that's what you're supposed to do. But it was just doing that. I was just doing the things. But then she said, she went on a focused mission trip. And on this focused mission trip, She said one night they were in adoration and they were having praise and worship and just adoring Jesus in the Eucharist.

And she said something happened in that time where all of a sudden I realized Jesus is real. He is God and I choose him. And she said in that moment, it's kind of like Peter in the gospel today. We're like, where am I going to go? Like I don't know where you're going to lead me. I have no idea where you're even teaching Jesus. All I know is I know you. In that moment she was like, okay, I know Jesus.

She said it was that moment that the faith that my parents became my faith. It wasn't just their faith anymore. That was mine. She could actually choose. She made a decision. So here's the question. So if you were to make that choice, if we were to make that choice to say, okay, actually, I'm going to let Jesus be the Lord.

He's the God I'm going to serve. What are we choosing? I think sometimes the hesitation is, I'll make the decision and I'll choose to follow the rules. I think sometimes we think, what I'm choosing is, I'm choosing the restrictions, right? So if I choose Jesus at any point in my life, but including our time in college, I'm just choosing, okay, I guess I'll just do this and not do that.

And sometimes we can reduce faith to simply a set of rules or, yep, I'm going to do the things like Kate had said. But what do you actually choosing? I think one thing we're choosing is you're choosing friendship. What I mean by that is not just friendship with the Lord, although that's the preeminent thing. I mean that we invite our students to actually not just spend time with us for an hour on Sundays, but to actually be part of the community.

Because I think about this, your freshman here in college, you actually get to choose who you'll spend time with. And we know how important it is. This is for all of us. It doesn't matter how old you are. Who we choose to spend our time with is of almost absolute. importance. This man named Jim Rhone, and years ago, he had this quote that I think is really, it's accurate. He said, we are the average of the five people we spend the most

time with. So if the five people I spend the most time with are people who are pursuing the Lord, then I'm going to become the kind of person who pursues the Lord. If the five people I spend the most time with are positive people, I'm going to become a more positive person. If the five people I spend the most time with are people who actually embrace life and embrace joy, I'm going to become a kind of person who embraces life or embraces joy. We're the average of the five people we spend the most time with. So here's the question. When I'm choosing Jesus, what I'm also choosing is, who will I spend my time with? A couple years ago, we had a student, she was graduating, and she was a TA for one of the professors here on campus.

And in kind of the exit interview, the professor looked at her, and her name is Emma, and said, Emma, okay, so you're part of Newman, right? Read the Bulldog Catholic, the campus ministry here. And she said, yeah, and she said, can I ask you a question? She said, over the last number of years, all of my best students have been involved in Newman. And you're among them, Emma, and she's like, offshocks, you know, she said, but no, why? What is it about this group? What is it about Newman that all my best students are involved in Newman? And Emma said, well, I don't know, here's my guess. One is, my guess is we spend our time with people who help us.

We spend our time with people who actually care about us. We spend our time with people who know how to be friends or are learning how to be friends. Again, we don't have a perfect community, but it's a community where people genuinely care for each other. She said the other thing is, we know, for part of Newman, we know that our lives matter. That if we've chosen Jesus, we know that our time matters.

And then we know that what we do matters. And so we're not here to just kind of run off the clock and have four years and end up with a piece of paper at the end. We know our lives matter, our time matters, but we do matters. And so I think we just naturally bring that to academic excellence. So I think those are things you get to choose. You get to choose friendship. You get to choose excellence. But of course, the ultimate thing when the disciples had the opportunity today in John's Gospel,

They could stay with Jesus or they could walk away from him. They had the opportunity to do what? The opportunity to leave Jesus or they had the opportunity to choose Jesus. And this is the most amazing thing on earth. We can't always choose the community we're part of. We can't necessarily always choose whether we have meaningful tasks in front of us or not. But the reality is if you choose Jesus, you get Jesus. If you choose Jesus, you get Jesus.

And this is your turn to choose him. Again, no matter how old you are, no matter where you are in life, this Sunday, this day, this moment is your opportunity to choose Jesus. To realize, just like the Israelites, as they're being led into the promised land, and Joshua is saying, okay, listen, decide for your desolds today whom you'll serve. Realize that Joshua was also pointing to them and saying, realize that everything has prepared you for this moment,

everything that you've lived through, those 40 years of wandering in the desert, those 31 years of battling in the promised land, all those things have prepared you for this moment for today when he says, decide for yourselves, today whom you'll serve. And this is the same for you and for me. Everything that's gone before you and me in our lives to this moment has prepared ourselves for this choice. And this is your turn.

It's your turn to actually meet the God who has loved you. You might have spent your whole Catholic life if you're Catholic, your whole Christian life just doing the things, going through the motions. I do it because they told me to do it. This is your choice. This is your opportunity. This is your moment to be able to actually choose to meet the God who died for you, who lives for you,

who sent out His Holy Spirit to change you. And I'm telling you, if you do this, I promise you, you will find out that God is real. If you do this, make this choice for Jesus. I promise you, you will find out that not only is God real, God is good. And you'll get him. Now, I know, of course,

that there's people who would be like, yeah, but it's like our students, right, be like, ah, but I don't want to choose. Like, it's my first weekend on campus. Just let me not choose. I don't want to choose. And we know this. We know this. The truth is not to choose is to make a choice.

Not to choose is to choose. So I either choose the discomfort of deciding or I choose the pain of regret that I didn't decide. Here's last thing. Maybe today. Your answer is yes. Like maybe today you're saying, okay, Lord, here you are in the middle of mass. I'm going to choose you. Yes, I will decide for myself today who I will serve.

Jesus, I choose you. That's awesome. That's amazing. If you want to read Joshua chapter 24, the rest of it, I invite you to do this because after the people of Israel say, we'll choose to serve the Lord our God. Joshua's response is, yeah, that's great, but you're going to fail. I mean, literally, he says, you may not be able to actually follow this, the Lord God. You may not actually be able to belong to him.

You might say you want him now. But Joshua was kind of saying, hey, spoiler, you're going to fail. And that might be us. We might say, okay, today, Jesus, I choose you. I know who you are, just like Peter. Where am I going to go? Jesus, you have the words of eternal life. I've come to believe and I'm convinced that you are the Holy One of God.

Yes, I choose you. And then we fail. Okay, and then what? What happens then? I'll say this. If you choose Jesus today, if you decide for yourself today whom you'll serve and you say, I will serve Jesus and then you fail, then you will have the profound privilege

and the great joy of being able to meet the God of grace. You'll have the profound privilege and the great joy of being able to meet the God who loves you even at your worst moment. You will have the profound privilege and the great joy of being able to encounter God at your worst. And so he gives us his best. So really, we have nothing to lose.

You know, every one of us has a limited number of heartbeats in our lives. It's finite. Every one of us has a limited number of steps that we get to take in our lives. That number, it's finite. So the questions are this. Who will my heartbeat for with this finite number of heartbeats? And where will my steps take me with this finite number of steps? I might fail, but you don't need to worry about that day.

Joshua says, decide for yourself today. Because why? Because it's your turn. It's your turn to decide. Don't lose your turn.