Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 09/04/22 Eulogy Virtues: Loyalty

Episode Date: September 3, 2022

Homily from the Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time. Loyalty is a force that conquers time. The essence of a eulogy virtue is character. Not merely who people think you are, but who you actually are. A person of character does what they said they would do…despite changing feelings or circumstances. This is loyalty. Mass Readings from September 4, 2022: Wisdom 9:13-18 Psalms 90:3-6, 12-14, 17Philemon 9-10, 12-17 Luke 14:25-33

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 Luke, chapter 14, verses 25 through 33, great crowds are traveling with Jesus, and he turned and addressed them. If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work,

the onlookers should laugh at him and say, this one began to build, but did not have the resources to finish. Or what king, marching into battle, would not first sit down and decide whether with 10,000 troops he can successfully oppose another king, advancing upon him with 20,000 troops? But if not, well, he is still far away. He was sent a delegation to ask for peace terms in the same way. Any one of you who does not renounce all of his possessions cannot be my disciple, the gospel of the Lord.

So if you were here last weekend, you know that we just started, the first weekend we started a series, and the series is on eulogy virtues. Basically, it's what's going to be true about you at your eulogy? What's going to be true about you when you die? And I know it's kind of a weird way to start the semester. It's one of those things I was like, I was kind of second-guessing it a little bit. But then I heard about a bunch of our freshman young men from last year.

This group of guys, they got together. They were part of the same Bible study, and they actually sat down and they planned their funerals, each one of them. They got together as part of their Bible study, and they said, okay, what are the readings we want to have at our funeral? What are the songs we want sung at our funeral? They even made provisions for, like, how many masses they wanted said for their souls after they died. I'm like, that's awesome. on their own. I didn't even tell them to do this.

But I asked him, I said, do you guys also write your own eulogies? And they said, no. So I said, then we need to do this because it's so important. It's so important. It's not too early to think about the end. It's not too soon to think about

how things will end. In fact, we're launching into this year, this school year. Maybe this is your first school year. Maybe this is your last school year. Maybe you're not even in school. It's just the next school year. And a lot of us, what do we do?

We're just going to go through the motions. But it's really wise to begin with the end in mind. It's really wise to say, okay, at the end of this year, of these four years, at the end of my life, who is it that I want to be true? What is it that I want to be true about me? And again, we talked about this last week, not just like, what do I want to be true about my resume? Like, what are the achievements I want to have achieved?

What are the accomplishments I want to accomplish? What are the things I can check off my bucket list, even more importantly. Not just what do you want in your resume, what do you want in your eulogy? So here's what many of us do, right? We live for the resume. We live for the achievements,

we live for the accomplishments, but then we're left with the eulogy. We live for checking things off the bucket list, but who is it you want to be at the end? Because that's the reality, right? We live for the resume, but we're left with the eulogy. So the question is, what do you want to be left with? when it's the end of your story.

What is it you want to be left with? Because that's all we'll have. Lou Holtz, right? Lou Holt's a Hall of Fame coach, coach for Notre Dame for a long time. At one point, he told the story about how he and his wife, they're empty nesters, and after accruing all this stuff,

lived in their dream house. One night, they had a fire, and they got out safely, but they just watched everything they owned burn to the ground. He literally said, we, all of our earthly possessions, gone, completely destroyed by that morning to put out the fire and he turned to his wife after everyone was safe and the fire was put out and he said, okay, we can cry for one day. We can be sad about this for one day. For the next 24 hours, we can be sad. But then we can't be

sad anymore. Why? He said, because we didn't lose anything in the fire that we were going to take with us to heaven anyways. We didn't lose anything in that fire that we were going to take with us to heaven anyways. That's what you'll be left with. That's what any of us will be left with. These eulogy virtues, these things about ourselves, they'll be true. So here's a quick thing. I don't know if you know the etymology of the word eulogy. It simply means good words. So it's at our funeral, right? Someone stands up and they say, hopefully, good words about us. But I think it's important to note this, this difference, this distinction between reputation and character. Maybe you've heard this before. Reputation is what people think about you. Character is who you actually are.

So your eulogy could be great, could be good reputation, but it might not actually be true. We can even lose reputation. But no one can touch our character. Reputation is what people think about us. Our character is who we actually are, who we've become, because that, that's all we're left with. And that's what I mean by, like, let's work on this. Let's right now, at the beginning of this year, let's work on eulogy virtues. And that's actually why we can even talk about this. We can even talk, no matter how old you are, how young you are, we can actually start working on those virtues right now. So sometimes the resume stuff, you can't work on it yet. Sometimes the bucket list stuff, you can't work on it yet. Like if you have the goal of, I want to start a

business. Maybe you can't, maybe now is not the right time. I want to start a family. Maybe now is not the right time. I want to go traveling. Maybe now is not the right time. Because when it comes to resume stuff when it comes to bucket list stuff, there are some circumstances that can get in the way. There are people that can get in the way. There are things like, I don't know, economies crashing. There are things like worldwide pandemics that can actually stop you from working on your resume. The great thing is, nothing can stop you from working on your character. I love this reality that you don't have to wait to start becoming the person you want to be at the end. Even more, I love this. You don't have to get anyone's

permission to start becoming the person you want to be at the end of your life. You don't need anyone's permission to begin growing in character. You don't need any season to start growing. You don't need any opportunity to grow. Even if no one's helping you, it doesn't matter. You can still grow in character right now because here's that, that is growing in character is making the decision now about who you want to be later. Growing in character is making the decision now about who you want to be later. why the great Russian author, Fyodor Doyshefsky, he once said this. He said, it seems, in fact, that the second half of a person's life is made up of nothing but the

habits they accumulated during the first half. Imagine a lot of us of a certain age are like, yeah, that's true. Seems to me that the second half of a person's life is made up of nothing but the habits they accumulated in the first half of their life. What is it to have character? Like, what is it to be a person of character? I think it can be really simple. I think a person of character is someone who just does the right thing. Let's make it even simpler. A person of character does what they said they would do.

A person who has character is someone who does what they said they would do. I think a lot of virtues are required for that. Last week we talked about humility. This week, there's one virtue that stands out. If character is being that kind of person who does what you said you would do, I think the virtue we should look at this week is the virtue we should look at. is the virtue of loyalty. I don't know how many funerals you've been at,

but how many times you look at someone and he realized they were a good person, and you hear the same kind of theme, you hear the same kind of words, things like, yeah, he was so good, he just kept his promises. Like, you know what, he would always, you just knew he would show up

when we needed him. Or, you know what I love about her? She was always there when we needed her. So many people, their eulogy words, are, you know what, she was just a good friend. All of those sayings, they all have loyalty at the heart. What it means is I did what I said it would do. You did what you said you would do. No, that idea, that reality of doing what you said you would do, my parents, like this was one of the virtues, they drilled into us. If we said we would do anything, we couldn't quit.

It was like not even a question. So when we were kids, my parents wanted us to swim on the competitive swim team. And I hated swimming. Like early in my life, I was the slowest swimmer in the slowest lane of the one team we had in town. And I hated it so bad. Everyone would wait for me to finish. And I, every single night, I say, mom, can I please quit swimming? She said no. And I'm like, dang it. Okay, fine. So one summer, this is not about swimming. This is about something else. One summer, um, the Olympics were on, right? And I, the Olympics so cool. One of my favorite things about the Olympics is men's gymnastics. Just, I mean, those guys are jacked that can do all these things on the rings and the bars on the mat. And so they had a gymnastics course they offered.

I was in fifth grade. Gymnastics course they offered at the Brainer High School. I don't know if I mentioned, I'm from Brainer. So they offered this course and I signed up, Mom, can I do this gymnastics thing? She said, sure, no problem. You know, community ed kind of situation. We signed up Monday morning. She drives me to the high school, drops me off. I walk inside, walk down the stairs, walk into the gym. And our gym at the high school was pretty big. It was, you know, made up a four full-size basketball courts. And I walked in and it was full, full of kids. And it was full of kids who were there, who were there ready to learn gymnastics, ready to do gymnastics. And it was packed full of kids. And I opened that tour, looked around the room, and saw that in

spite of the fact that there were so many kids in that room ready to do gymnastics, there was one boy. And that was me. I looked in there, I was like, nope. And I shut the door, walked upstairs, walked out, walked the mile and a half back to my parents' house. My mom was like, why are you back so early? I said, mom, I'm not going there. I'm the only boy. She's like, nope, get in the car. Like, mom, please, no. Get in the car.

Like, mom, you can't make me. She's like, yes, I can. And she did. She joined me back to the high school. Walked me in, walked me up to the coach, Mr. Maris. And she said, Mike doesn't want to do this because there's only girls here. And he's like, Mike, I'm going to teach you how to do all these things. So I stayed there and now I can do a roundoff and a front hand spring.

But that was the point, right? The point was, if you said you were going to do it, you have to do it. And even like that notion of loyalty when I come. comes to family. I can't tell you how many times my dad especially reminded me and all my siblings. If anyone on the playground is picking on one of your sisters and one of your brothers, you not only have our permission, you had better help them. You had better to fight them. My dad would always say just aim for their nose. That's the hell is his thing. Now, okay, no, that loyalty is so good, not quitting, so good. Standing up for family, so good. That being said, we've also discovered

that there are limitations to loyalty. There's limitations to loyalty. What that means is, I may never give absolute loyalty to anything less than an absolute reality. I may never give absolute loyalty to anything less than an absolute reality, meaning family is a good.

But it's not an absolute good. Life, your life is a good. It is not an absolute good. Friendship is a good. good. Friendship is not an absolute good. And I've heard it said that a good friend is one who will help you move, and a really good friend is one who will help you move the body. But there's a limit, right? It's a good, but it's not an absolute good. Loyalty is what you might call technically an executive virtue. That means it needs other more foundational virtues to do it well.

So it needs virtue of justice. It needs the virtue of compassion. It needs virtue of prudence to to be loyal and to do that well, you need to have other things. So that means that, okay, I know that if a family member of mine commits a crime, and I know it, and I get subpoenaed and I have to testify against them, justice has a greater claim on my loyalty than family does. And I will rat them out as fast as I possibly can. But it's reality, right, that we recognize that there's limitations in loyalty. And that's what Jesus is pointing out in the gospel today.

No, Jesus, being a Jewish, man, you guys, read the Old Testament, and you realize, so much in the Old Testament is about family. I mean, for crying out loud, the Jewish people are a family. It's the family of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The second half of the Ten Commandments. The first one is, honor your father and mother.

So here's Jesus. In a Jewish context, he knows, and he supports, because he kind of wrote the whole thing, the value of family, which is a good, but not an absolute good. That's why Jesus can say, if it's between your father and me, it's always me. It's between your mother and me, your wife and me, your children, and me.

If it's between your very life and me, it's me. In the gospel today, Jesus is making an absolute claim because he is claiming to be the absolute reality. We can only give absolute loyalty to an absolute reality because there's the limitations of loyalty at the same time. There's also a liberation in loyalty. There's a liberation. and there's a freedom. Why? Because here's my definition of loyalty. Loyalty is a force that

conquers time. Loyalty is a force that conquers time. It's a force that conquers change and transition. What do I mean? Well, I know you've heard this before. Someone, a couple gets married. And what happens? Well, there's time, right? Time happens. Change happens. Transition happens. And at some point, you hear one of them say to the other, like, you're not the same person. You're not the person I married. Or maybe they come talk to me and they say, say, here's this person, and they're not the same person that I'm married. Because there's been time that's past. There's been changed.

There's been transition. In fact, sometimes that's really dramatic, and sometimes that's really quick. I know of a couple who, not too far from here, a bunch of years ago, they met and they fell in love, and two years ago, they got married. And not too long ago, she was, the bride, was in a car accident, and she suffered a severe, traumatic brain injury. And she doesn't think the same. And she doesn't talk the same anymore.

And she doesn't act the same. And she doesn't seem the same at all. But she's married. They're married to each other. You know, on a couple's wedding day, what do they bow? They make a vow. I will love you and honor you. For better, for worse.

For richer, for poorer. in sickness and in health. And they can look at each other and say, okay, this is sickness. That's why loyalty is liberating, right? There's a liberation of loyalty. Because you don't have to ask the question. We don't have to ask the question,

should I stay or should I not stay? That's not the question anymore. In fact, you guys, I mean I said this so often that you're sick of hearing me say this, but there was a wedding just this afternoon of a couple from Newman. They became Catholic right here last Easter.

They got married today on a Sunday. who would have thought. But today, just a couple hours ago, they looked at each other and they vowed, they promised to love each other for the rest of their lives. And I always point this out, isn't it remarkable that on a wedding day couples promise to love each other? Because of course they love each other on their wedding day.

That's why they're getting married. Like, of course they're going to honor each other on their wedding day. That's why they get married. You know, that's not why they make the promise. They're making the promise on their wedding day because they know the day is coming when they won't want to. They know the day is coming

when they won't want to love the other one. They know the day is coming when they won't want to choose the other person. They know the day is coming when they don't want to honor the other person and what they're saying on their wedding day is when that day comes, I will choose you.

When that day comes, I will be loyal. That's the liberation of loyalty. I've already decided. I don't. I don't have to struggle with the question, should I stay or should I go. I can struggle with the, how can we make this better? I can struggle with, though, okay, here's where we're at.

Where do we go from here? But there's a liberation in loyalty. Because loyalty means remaining true to a responsibility in spite of loss or danger. Loyalty means remaining true to the responsibility in spite of loss or danger. How many times have we been tempted after we've made a promise, after we've said we do something. Like, well, I said I would, but now things are different. Like, I said I would, but now circumstances have changed.

I said I would. I didn't realize how much it would cost. It costs more than I planned, so I want to change my answer now. It's in those moments we have to ask the question, who do you and I want to be? Who do we really actually want to be at the end of the story? Because that's the character. That's the eulogy virtue.

In the moment, when being true to this responsibility, brings with it loss and danger. Who is it that I want to be? And it's course, is big things, but it's also in small things. How many times are we in that place where I said I'd hang out this weekend, but something else came up? I said I'd do that thing on Labor Day, but something else came up. It's those moments when we get to exercise who is it that you and I want to be.

Loyalty means remaining true to the responsibility in spite of loss or danger. I think Jesus completely understands this. Look at the gospel today. Jesus says, hey, before you decide, before you build a tower, sit down, ask how much it's going to cost. You might not want to build it. Before you go into battle, sit down and see,

could you even possibly win? You might not want to go into battle. And we have to realize that giving our lives to Jesus, that's a big decision. Like, making a promise to Jesus, like, I'm going to follow you with my whole life. It's going to cost you your whole life. How much are you willing to pay?

because it's going to cost everything. Realize this, this character, this loyalty, doing the right thing will cost everything. I don't know if you caught this in the second reading today. There's this story. There's these three guys. It's kind of a strange story. It can be challenging to us.

There's Paul. There's Philemon and there's Onesimus. Philemon was the slave owner of Onesimus. And I think it's really interesting. Whenever as Christians we talk about slavery, we can be really uncomfortable, and that's good. I think it shows the triumph of Christianity. Why?

We have to realize that for all of human history, for literally all of human history, slavery was a non-starter. Slavery was just, duh, of course we have slavery. We need slavery. We can't do anything without slavery. For all of human history, slavery was not even a question.

Until when? Until Christianity came on the scene and slowly started working itself into the culture until finally, in the 18th century, you have a Christian man named William Wilberforce. who sought to eradicate slavery, at least in the West. And he said this, he said he didn't just want to make slavery illegal. He wanted to make it unthinkable.

And he succeeded. I mean, think about this. Would any of us even entertain slavery? It's absolutely not. It is obviously wrong. It's crazy that it's obviously wrong to us, but for all of human history, it was completely fine. That's the triumph of Christianity over a culture that devalued human beings.

Backs to the story. Paul, Onesimus, and Philemon. What happens is, Onesimus runs away from Philemon. The slave runs away from the slave-narder. He might even stolen some stuff on his way. He goes to Paul in Rome, because he knew that Paul knew Philemon.

While he's talking with Paul, he becomes a Christian. He gets converted. He encounters Jesus Christ and his life changes. And it would have been really easy for him to say, I'm a Christian now here in Rome, and Paul, I'm just going to serve you. And Paul says, listen, I need you to do something. He ran away from Phileman, and you stole from Philemon.

I need you to go back home. Now for us, we'd be like, are you kidding me, Paul? I need you to do this. The incredible thing is what he writes to Philemon. He says, Philemon, I'm sending Onesimus back to you, but I'm not sending him back to you as a slave. I'm sending him back to you as your brother. And you must receive him as your brother.

What that means is when he comes back to you, he no longer works for you. He's not your employee. He's not your servant. He is definitely not your slave. He is your brother, meaning he lives in your home as a family member. Think about how dramatic this would be.

Because, why? Because following Christ costs something. Being loyal to Jesus costs even propriety. Being loyal to Jesus means, yeah, this person you once saw as a slave, now you actually have to live with him as a brother. It's going to cost you something. But imagine.

imagine Philemon's funeral when Onesimus stands up and he says I once knew Philemon as my master and then I countered Jesus as my lord and Paul sent me back to him and this man he was so loyal to Jesus that he never treated me as a slave once again

never again did he look at me like I belong to him he received me as his own brother he was that loyal to Jesus. And this is the last thing. Years ago, a man shared this story with me. He worked for a mission called Prison Fellowship. And he heard the story about a man who was, you know, climbing the corporate ladder and he was getting success after success.

And he wasn't a Christian. And he just kind of lived in a certain life. One night, he had a wife, he had kids. One night he was out late drinking. and he decided to drive. He drove drunk. He hit this young woman with his car. He killed her.

And he drove away. His hit and run, drove off into the night, drove back home. No one found him. No one ever discovered who it was that killed this young woman. He got away with it. Years later, after he created this whole life for himself,

he encountered Jesus. He became a Christian. It was a great day for him. He realized, okay, all my sins are forgiven. Like, Jesus has received. me. I am now a son of the father. I am now a brother of our Lord Jesus. But this part of his history, he knew that he couldn't pretend it didn't exist. And even though everyone, he had a stellar reputation, even though what people thought about him was that, oh, this is a good, good man.

He knew the truth of his character. He knew he could probably get away with it, and people would still think that he was good, but he would know that he was missing something. So he talked to his pastor, he talked to his wife, they talked to their kids. And he went down to the police station and he turned himself in. And he told the story about how he was drinking. And he knew he couldn't bring that girl back. He couldn't give her back to her family. He could give them closure. He could try to offer justice, but he knew. I could just pretend that it wasn't true. But that's not the kind of person I want to be. My loyalty belongs to Jesus more than it does even to taking care of my family.

And he went to jail. And he left, was taken from his family for a number of years. And he paid that price. Why? Because in the end, it's not the resume that matters. In the end, it's not the reputation that we're left with.

In the end, all we're left with is our character. In the end, all we're left with is who we are. In the end, all we're left with, is the person we've spent this life trying to become. And at the moment of our last breath, that's the person that will be. That's the person we'll be left with. That, that and Jesus, if we choose him, in the end, that's all we'll be left with.

The person we've chosen, the character that we've shaped, and the one to whom we owe absolute loyalty.