Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 08/29/21 Living in Later?

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

Homily from the Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time. Am I doing “everything but”? Often we avoid doing what is essential by filling our lives with many things that are optional. Mass Readings from August 29, 2021: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8 Psalms 15:2-5James 1:17-18, 21-22, 27 Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

So, if you know me, you know that I am a really, really big NBA fan. I mean, I live and breathe basketball. If you don't know me, that's a joke. But you know, there's the debate. The debate that always comes up. I mean, if anyone talking about the NBA, the debate is always, who's the greatest? And typically, who's the greatest NBA player of all time? Typically, three names come to the surface, right?

You have Michael, you have Kobe, and you have that one other guy from Cleveland. we don't say his name out loud. Anyways, I don't think, you know, again, as I said, I'm not an expert in NBA. I'm not an expert in basketball at all, but I think all of those, I mean, they're good, don't get me wrong. They're decent, but they're not the greatest. The greatest NBA player of all time is a man named Greg. Greg Whittington.

Greg Whittington is a 6'8 power forward who played for the Denver Nuggets. I would argue, I would submit, that far better than Michael, far better than Kobe, far better than LeBron. Greg Whittington is the greatest basketball player, greatest NBA player of all time. We'll come back to him in a second. But, you know, this season right now, people coming back to campus,

people coming back to start school again, gets me thinking, as I mentioned before Mass, about commencement speeches, about just graduation speeches. I don't know if you've ever been to a graduation. Some of you haven't. I know. Sorry. But graduation speeches can fall into two categories.

They are either awesome, or they're awful. There is very little middle ground. Like, they're either incredible, and they put them on the internet, and they live forever. Have you ever gone on the internet and watched commencement speeches, like the really awesome ones? Okay, well, I have.

And they're great, you guys. I'm not weird. Because they even, like, put, like, a soundtrack to this. It's, like, inspiring and get a little choked up. I'm very emotionally human being in the first place. But as that person standing behind the podium, looking at all these people who have just done, they've done so much, right?

they've accomplished, they've gone through school, they've worked really hard, and this person says all the things, right? Now, take that next step. Now go out there. Now, never give up and change the world. Make a difference. Be the kind of person you're going to be. Like, all those things are incredible.

And when I was thinking about this, you think, when you were at your graduation, and they said all those things, maybe they did it really well, maybe they did it really poorly, but they looked at you and they said, this is it. Go out there and do all the things. Go out there and never quit. Go out there and never give up. Go out there and make a difference. Go out there again.

and be the person you're going to be for the rest of your life, what happens? You go home, and the next day you wake up and you just, like, go to your summer job. The next day, like, well, I guess, you know, I guess I'll do that. Yeah, I want to do all those things. I'll just do them later.

Because that's what it is. It's one of those situations where, like, you might even be thinking, okay, as you're sitting there in the seats, like, yeah, I need to remember that. I need to remember that for later. And here we are. And I've got news. Later is now.

later is right now everything that they were talking about like go and do the thing go and be courageous go and be the person you're going to be for the rest of your life that's right now that's this which is it blows my mind you know I was thinking about that

because I'm thinking about the first reading the first reading is from the book of Deuteronomy chapter 4 so if you know anything about the Old Testament you know here's the people of Israel and they're enslaved for 400 years in Egypt and then what does God do? God fights for them against the Egyptians, he sets them free, they get to the Red Sea, he parts the waters there, sets them free, and then what happens is he leads them for 40 years in the wilderness.

He leads them and feeds them for 40 years in the wilderness. He takes care of them. Now, if you read the book of numbers, it's kind of like the story as it's happening. But Deuteronomy, what we heard today, is different. It's Moses telling basically the exact same story, but he's telling the people of Israel this at the end of 40 years of wilderness wandering. It's after they've already been set free, after they've already gone through the Red Sea, after they've already wandered for 40 years, Moses is standing there, here's the picture, Moses is standing in front of the people on what they call the plains of Moab.

And right past him is this river called the Jordan River. And Moses is telling them all this story. Here's what you've been through. Here's what you've gone through. Here's what you've done. Here's what God has done for you. And he says, what's going to happen, though, is tomorrow you're going to wake up. And I'm not going to go with you because God said I can't go with you.

But tomorrow you're going to wake up. up and you're going to be led across that Jordan River and you're going to go into the promised land and you're going to have to fight. Imagine if you're one of those Jews who maybe you'd go to bed that night. You're like, I don't know if I want to. Imagine going to bed and all this promise, right, everyone, your entire life, your parents' entire life, your grandparents' entire life, they kept saying the same thing. Moses kept saying the same thing. Someday you're going to get to the Jordan River and someday you're going to go across the Jordan River. And someday you're going to go across is Jordan River, someday you're going to the promised land, and someday you're going to fight. And here's

Moses, and he says, actually, someday, that's today. Later, that's right now. And maybe you go to bed thinking, I don't know if I want to. I don't know if I want to fight. I've been talking with a lot of students who, even this last week, well, just share with me about how exhausted they are already. I don't know if that's you, but so many students, like, class hasn't even started, as you probably know. And it's one of those things where it's like I'm already exhausted. I'm already so tired. I'm already so drained. And we haven't even started yet. And that can be so, I can feel so absolutely discouraging. We can look at this day, looks at this night and say, I'm so busy. I'm doing everything. The question I have to ask is, okay, am I doing everything or am I doing everything but?

what I mean by that is, am I doing what I need to do? Or am I doing everything but what I need to be doing? Because a lot of times, you know, a lot of times what I find myself doing is, I find myself living for later. What I mean by that is, okay, I know I have to fight, I know I have to cross the Jordan, I know I have to make a decision, I know I have to move, I know I have to do, I know I have to do the thing. And we'll do that. We'll just going to do that, we're just going to get to that later.

And I find myself living for later by just figure. out a bunch of things other than the one thing that I need to be doing right now. And so I find myself living and later, I avoid, and if you're anything like me, I avoid doing what I need to do. And I get exhausted. It's exhausting to do that because a lot of us, what we've done is we've filled our lives with non-essentials, which is if you've done that, if you feel life with the non-essentials, you are in good company because that's exactly what the gospel is about today. When Jesus is talking to the Pharisees, sometimes we look at the Pharisees, we think they're the bad guys. Of course, in the gospel, we have good people. That's Jesus.

and the apostles, and we have the bad people. That's the Pharisees. But the Pharisees aren't bad people. Pharisees are people who believe in God and they want to love God perfectly. They're good people who want to love God without making a mistake. They want to love God without breaking a rule. And so what they ended up doing is in the Old Testament. God says, hey, when you come to the temple, if you're going to worship me, I need you to purify yourself in this particular way. They purify your hands. If you're going to the temple, I need you to you. to purify the vessels in a particular way. So the Pharisees are like, of course, God, we're going to do that.

We're going to do even more than that. We're not just going to purify our hands when we go to the temple. How about this? How about we take that temple purification, bring it to our breakfast? How about we take the way we purify our worship vessels and bring that to like our breakfast bowl? The idea behind this whole thing is they weren't trying to do less. They were trying to do more.

They weren't trying to do less for God. They were trying to love him as best they could. The problem, of course, is that what was meant to be a help to them, what was meant to supplement, they started seeing as a requirement. So if you don't do that thing, you're doing something wrong. And it got even worse because it turns out that a lot of times those things they came up with, those ideas of here's a good thing to do, that they came up with, those optional things.

they oftentimes chose to do those optional things instead of doing what was essential. But again, they're not any different than us. How many times do we do exactly everything except for the one thing we need to be doing? We do all of these things that are supplemental instead of doing the thing that is essential. Because we can just keep on being preoccupied with,

okay, as long as I don't make any mistakes, as long as they don't break any rules, as long as if I stay on track, if I stay on pace, then I'll be fine. And what happens is so often we can be so preoccupied with the rules. We can so preoccupied with doing the thing or not doing the thing that we missed the point. That's what the Pharisees did. They were so preoccupied with the rules that they ended up missing the point. They're so preoccupied with, hey, don't break a rule, that they missed the entire reason they were doing the thing. So back to the NBA. Greatest player of all time, Greg Whittington.

Actually, he's tied for the greatest player of all time with 25 other guys because Greg Whittington has the lowest number of fouls ever of a professional basketball player. He actually ties it with 25 other people. He has zero. He's never committed one foul. He's not even never, has he fouled out? He's never fouled, ever. So that makes me come to the conclusion that, listen, I've seen Michael Jordan foul.

I've seen LeBron foul. I've seen Kobe foul. Greg Winnington, zero fouls. That's called perfect. You can't get better than perfect. So I rest my case. greatest NBA player of all time. But think about it, that's how sometimes we approach this whole thing.

Sometimes that's how we approach the Lord. We just think, as long as I don't make a mistake, as long as I don't mess up, I'm doing it. In fact, I'm doing it better than everyone else. But imagine, imagine if someone were invited you to play basketball, but you'd never heard of what basketball was. So they said, hey, play basketball with me, and you're like, how do you play? And they said, okay, well, you can't double dribble,

and you can't travel and you can't charge. Do you want to play? They told you all the things you can't do during the game. Do you want to play? Say, well, no thanks. If someone were to look at you and say, let me tell you all the rules, and after I've told you all the rules,

then you can decide whether or not you want to play this game. That would be completely backwards. Because instead of, you know, how about, we do this, how about instead of starting with the rules, you start with the point. The Pharisees can look at their lives and say, hey, we're doing so well. Why? Because I'm not breaking any rules.

And in the midst of that, they forgot the point of the rules in the first place. I think so many of us who are Christians, so many of us, maybe you were even raised Christian or raised Catholic, that when people brought you up in the church, they started with the rules. And said, okay, if we're going to be Catholic, here's what we do. No, no, no, we're Catholic. We don't do that. We're Catholic. We do this. And so what happens is what we look at our faith and how many of us are taught,

based off of the rules. And so how about this? When many of us decide, okay, am I going to do this for life? Am I going to actually be a Catholic for the rest of my life? We base that off of our assessment of the rules. Do I really want to follow these rules or not, as opposed to basing it off the point of the game. So one of our missionaries, Lauren, she gave me this example.

And it was, she said, she pointed out that it's a real talent to be able to teach people how to play board games. Again, this is a talent to teach people how to be, but I didn't know this because I don't play board games, because I think board games are aptly named. They're named that way because you have to be so bored that you're willing to play them. So I, but I can see your point. The point is it takes an incredible amount of talent to know how to teach someone how to play a game because a lot of us, how do we teach someone? We say, okay, well, you're going to roll these dice and then you're going to take some marbles and you're going to shuffle them around this thing and draw five cards and then put those down. but no, don't put those down too.

As opposed to starting with, okay, listen, here's how you win this game. To be able to explain the game by saying, okay, here is the point of this game. And if you do this, you can win. I don't know how many Catholic Christians were raised with the reality, not just distant possibility, the real possibility that you actually, if you want to play this game, you can win. That God actually wants you to win. And what's the point of the game? The point of the game is him.

The point of the game is the God of the universe actually cares about you. The point of the God of the universe actually wants to have a relationship with you. The point is the God of the universe wants to spend eternity with you. And the great news is this game is possible to win. It's actually possible to finish this game and have him forever. But I think too many of us that we get to bogged down with the non-essential rules that we miss the point. So when we say, am I going to choose him? What we're really thinking about is, am I going to choose to follow the rules,

or am I going to choose to live my own way? But here we're standing on the plains of Moab. Here we are standing in front of the Jordan River going, like, I have no idea how you're going to cross this river here. Here we are looking at the promised land and asking the question, do I really want to fight? Because the answer isn't for later. The answer is for now.

Later is now. So back to the commencement speeches, when they're looking at y'all and saying, okay, don't give up and don't quit and stand your ground and be courageous and be the person that you will be for the rest of your life. That's now. That's not later. When I wake up tomorrow morning, what am I going to choose? So this is the last thing.

A number of years ago, there was a young woman who showed up on our campus, and she came out to all the events. I thought like, oh, she's all in. This girl is just, she's sold out for the Lord. She came to an event we had on Thursday night. She came to a Friday afternoon event and that Friday evening activity. She was always around, and I thought, oh, my gosh, she's in. But last summer, I went for a walk with her on campus.

And she said, hey, remember meeting me that first weekend of being on campus? Of course I remember meeting you. She said, you don't know this. She said, but on Saturday night, I went to bed and I told myself, she said, I know I needed to go to confession before going to Mass. So she said, if I don't get up tomorrow morning and go to confession before Mass, I'm just going to take the next four years off. Like, I'm just going to take the next four years off of following Jesus. I'm just going to take the next four years off of being a Catholic.

I'll just not be Catholic of the next four years. I'll just take a break during my college career when it comes to the faith. And she's telling me this. I'm like, are you what? Like, my heart dropped, my stomach flipped. I was just, I'm like, are you kidding me? I had no idea. I thought she was like all in.

And she said, but no, I said that night, if I don't get up tomorrow morning and go to confession, if I don't go to Mass this Sunday, I'm just going to take the next four years off. But she said, but if I get up tomorrow morning and I go to church, I'm all in. And Jesus gets my whole life. I do not recommend any of us putting ourselves in that position. Like, what if the power went out and her alarm went off? I'm like, what the heck? But the next morning, she woke up on time, and she made.

made her way down to the ballroom where we have morning mass. And she went to a confession. She reminds me. I don't remember. It's a spiritual annesia thing. Went to mass and she can say right now that almost every good thing in her life, she can trace back to that decision. Because not only was that where she made friends for the rest of her life, not only was that decision where she met her now husband. Good luck, go look around.

Not only was that the place where she found her passion for wanting to serve people who are in critical care. She wanted to serve people who were ill. She wanted to serve women and couples who struggled with infertility. That's where she found her passion, but also above everything else, making that decision is where she discovered the truth about this God who sees her. and knows her and loves her. She woke up that morning, and she just decided real simply, I'm going to love him back, and every good thing in her life,

she can trace back to that decision. This one morning where she said, okay, I can put this off for later, but maybe later is now. I can put it out for tomorrow, but maybe actually tomorrow is today. Or she woke up in the first day of her college career, and she said, okay, this is the day. This is the day that I'm going to choose Jesus. And as I said already,

every good thing in her life can be traced back to that morning.