Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 09/24/23 Tough Love: Receive and Rejoice

Episode Date: September 23, 2023

Homily from the Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time. We choose our rivals. We are all confronted with the temptation towards resentment, when we see the blessings or gifts that others have. This temptation towards envy can be overcome when we choose to receive the gifts we’ve been given with gratitude, and choose to rejoice in the gift of others. Mass Readings from September 24, 2023: Isaiah 55:6-9 Psalms 145:2-3, 8-9, 17-18Philippians 1:20c-24, 27a Matthew 20:1-16a

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 and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777.7. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless.

The Lord be with you. He reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Chapter 20 verses 1 through 16. Jesus told his disciples this parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner, who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard.

Going out about 9 o'clock, the landowner saw others standing idle in the marketplace, and he said to them, you two go into my vineyard, and I will give you what is just. So they went off. And he went out again around noon, and around three o'clock and did likewise.

Going out about five o'clock, the landowner found others standing around, and he said to them, why do you stand here idle all day? They answered because no one has hired us. He said to them, you two go into my vineyard. When it was evening, the owner of the vineyard

said to his foreman, summon the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and ending with the first. When those who had started at five o'clock came, each received the usual daily wage. So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more, but each of them also got the usual wage. And on receiving it, they grumbled against the landowners, saying,

these last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who bore the day's burden and the heat. He said to one of them in reply, my friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give these last ones the same as you? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous? Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last.

The Gospel of the Lord. Wait, you to have a seat. So the winner for the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1984 is a movie that some people have said is the greatest, I mean, some people have said it's the greatest movie of all time. They have argued actually that the winner of 1984 Best Picture, greatest picture, greatest movie of all time. I saw it when I was 10 because that's how old I was and it was as a 10 year old I was like boring but others said it was again one of the most compelling stories, most creatively done movies. One of the deepest examinations of the human heart. Not only was this the winner of the Academy Award but the two main actors in this movie, they were both nominated for the winner for

the best actor, lead actor. One of them won. The movie is called Amadeus. And if you're a few a certain age, you're like, oh yeah, I know that one. You might have been bored like me when you saw it. But yet people are saying, like, it is, again, it's an incredible story. So the story is centers around two individuals. One is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, right? The composer, Mozart. The other person in this story is Antonio Salieri.

And so it's the kind of fictitious account of these two men's relationship with each other. And it really actually centers mostly around Antonio Salieri. Salieri was a composer himself. This is the mid-18th century. He was an incredible composer. Salieri's life was defined by two things. His life was defined by God and his music. Those are the two stables of his life.

God and his music. And so Salieri had this idea, this vision that, okay, if I'm disciplined, I'll be blessed. If I make sacrifices, I'll be great. If I stay faithful to the Lord, then he's going to do incredible things in my life. And the crazy thing is, he was blessed. He was disciplined and he was great.

he made sacrifices and he was a genius. You know, two weeks ago we started this series called Tough Love. And this series we've been talking about, I've been making the claim that love always involves sacrifice, that love always costs to something. And I believe that that's true. I believe love always demands sacrifice. At the same time, we have to understand,

the opposite isn't true. It is not true that sacrifice guarantees love. It is true that love demands sacrifice, but it is not true that sacrifice earns us love. It is not true that sacrifice makes us deserve love. But that was what Salieri thought. Salieri had this life that was rigid. He had this life that was disciplined.

He was pious. He was faithful. He gave up so many things. He sacrificed so much stuff for God. But he realized that he didn't actually sacrifice this for God. He sacrificed this so that God would bless him. His relationship with God was transactional. This idea that if I discipline myself,

if I sacrifice for God, then he has to bless me. And this gets revealed when he meets Mozart. He was great. When he first heard Mozart's music, he was transported. He was blown away by how beautiful it was. So he automatically assumed, like, okay, God has blessed me to be a great musician because I sacrificed for him. So this person who made music even better than mine,

he must be even holier than I am. He must be even more disciplined than I am. He must be even more rigorous than I am. And he met Mozart, who was basically a child in the worst sense of the term and he was spoiled and he was foolish and he was a cheat and he was a philanderer and he was an adulterer and he was drunk and he was lazy and he was silly and he was a genius. And that sent Salieri into this tailspin asking the question, how possibly could God bless someone even more than me who is just a fool, who is just a waste? And this problem defines

the rest of Salieri's life. It defines his relationship with Mozart. It defines his relationship with God. And it's quite crazy because for the rest of Salieri's life, he's obsessed. Because on the one hand, he hates Mozart. He hates his character. He hates his behavior. And at the same time, he loves his music. He at the same time, he is transported by his music. And he's tormented. In fact, he's tormented so much that he devotes his life to manipulating Mozart to an early death, essentially. And again, his problem was this. His problem was that he thought his relationship with God with transactional. Here's what you do. Here's the agreement. We sacrifice God blesses. The agreement is you do what you don't want to do and God will do what he doesn't want to do,

which means he wants to bless you. If I sacrifice for God, he has to love me. This is the key. If I sacrifice for God, he has to love me. And he meets Mozart and that love dies. And something else takes over. And that something else is exactly what we see in the gospel today. So we all know this parable, kind of like all the parables of Jesus recently. We know these stories, and so to recap, landowner goes out, hires people at 6 a.m. agrees with them for the usual daily wage. They work all day. They work 12 hours from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.

And he hires people at 9 a.m. 12, 3, 5. And then we know the story, right? The people who are hired at 5 will only work one hour, they get paid the usual wage. And so the people work 12 hours, they grumble. And there's the line at the end of this gospel, the end of the parable that sums everything up. where the landowner looks at these men and says, ask the question, are you envious? Because I'm generous.

Envy. Envy, I would say, is the worst. Envy is the worst sin. I would say this. After pride, or maybe united with pride, no other sin has done more damage to the human race than envy. No other vice has done more damage to relationships than envy. No other thing we fall into,

no other thing we choose, no other rebellion against God has ruined more lives and more families than envy. In fact, we can even go back to this. Envy is the cause of all of our problems. Let me rewind. We know, Lucifer, here's Satan, here is an angel who's made to love God. God loved and God poured into Lucifer all of his goodness

because Lucifer originally was an angel blessed by God, an angel loved by God, but what does Lucifer do? In his pride, he rebels. In his pride, he says, I will not serve. In his pride, he says, I will not receive God's love. In his pride, Lucifer says, I will not let myself be loved. That's fine, that's Lucifer. He rebels in pride.

But his envy is what causes us to die. What I mean by that is, Wisdom chapter 2, verse 24, says like this. It says, through the envy of the devil, death entered the world. Do you think, like, here's Satan, he rebels against God, that's his pride, that's his prerogative, he can do that. Why did he want to tempt Adam and Eve? Why did he want the destruction of the human race?

And it says very clearly, it was his envy. So what's envy? It wasn't because, it wasn't because, let me clarify this, the devil didn't lead Adameneve into sin because he thought that if he did, he could win. He knew he couldn't win. Actually, he didn't even want to win. Earlier this summer, I don't know if you followed the,

we did a series in the summer, a homily series called Parabellum. Do you want peace, prepare for war? And in that, I talked about my relationship with board games that my relationship with board games is this. Board games are spelled B-O-R-E-D. They're a waste of time, they're stupid, and if you think that I'm wrong, you're wrong. No, I think board games are the dumbest thing ever.

Why? Because I grew up with my family, my siblings. You might know this. You might have siblings, people who you've played board games with who they're not trying to win. They're not playing the board game to win. They're just playing to make you lose. I don't know if you've ever played with people,

I guess. If you've never played with people who are not trying to win, they're just trying to make you lose, you don't have any siblings. Because that is, in so many ways, there's some people like, no, my game for me is, no, I don't need to win monopoly. I just want to take all your money. I don't care who wins. I just want you to lose.

This is Satan. Sibling. No, just kidding. Satan is like a, he knows he can't win. He doesn't want to win. He just doesn't want you to receive God's love. That's all. He doesn't want to win.

He just wants you to lose. Through the envy of the, the devil. Death entered the world. So again, we have to ask the question, what's envy? Sometimes we look at envy, we think envy is the same thing as jealousy. They're connected, but they're not the same thing. So jealousy can be bad, but jealousy can also be good. And if we realize this, jealousy can be bad, but also can be good. So even scripture, God describes himself as a jealous God. He's a good God, but he's jealous. What that means is God loves us, so if I start giving my heart to someone else or something else, he becomes

jealous. It's like, no, no, no, no, I made you from me. Why are you giving my heart to someone else? Jealousy in a marriage, actually, it could be bad, but it also could be good. If a husband and wife are married to each other and one of them starts giving their heart to someone else, the proper response is for that spouse to be jealous. Because, no, no, your heart is mine and my heart is yours. Jealousy can be bad, but also can be very, very good. In fact, we know in our lives, you can see someone do something amazing and be jealous. But that jealousy can be good. It can be like, wow, they did that. I want to do that too. That's what jealousy says. Jealousy simply says, I want to have

what you have. I want what you have. So it can be good. I want to go after that. You've done something incredible. I want to do something incredible. Jealousy can also be bad. I want what you have. I'm just going to take it. There's some good jealousy. There's bad jealousy. Envy. There's only bad. Because whereas jealousy says, I want what you have. Envy simply says, I don't want you to have what you have. I would be happy if what you have was taken away. So the day before my senior year in high school, my family returned from like a,

we had a kind of weekend away, last weekend at the lake, and got back to my parents' house, and I remember going to the back door and realizing it had been broken open. And we discovered that the night before some people had broken into the house and they had robbed my parents, robbed the house. As we went from room to room in the house,

it was like, way, this was taken, this was taken, this was taken. And my dad, you know, I remember this very clearly, my dad was going through these rooms and he was, he was bummed, he was upset that someone had robbed us. But he wasn't really, really upset until we came to one room. And in this one room, they didn't take anything, they just broke stuff. My dad is a really compassionate, really sensible guy. He's like, I get it.

I understand if someone is desperate. I understand if someone needs something, they might steal it. It's not that he wants it, but he's like, I get it. I understand that. He said, I don't understand just walking into someone's house and saying, I don't need this, I don't want this, I just want you not to have it. That's envy. Jealousy can be theft.

I want to have what you have. But envy is vandalism. I just don't want you to have what you have. And that's what's in the gospel today. Now, some people might think those people who work 12 hours, that no, no, they don't want the other people to have less. They just want more, but that's not the case because even in the gospel, even in the parable, Jesus says, they don't want more. Why? They had agreed to the usual daily wage. That was going to be completely enough for them. All they wanted was the people who worked less to have less. That's all they

wanted. People who worked less to get less. Why? Because I deserve more. I gave more. I did more. I worked harder. I deserve. And that word I deserve is at the heart of envy. Because we realize this, envy is essentially competitive. This is true about envy and pride. Again, they're different, but they're united. Envy and pride are essentially competitive. So C.S. Lewis talks about it like this. C.S. Lewis says, when it comes to pride, it says pride is not taking pleasure in being pretty or being smart or being well-liked or being funny. That's just good. That's great. If you take pleasure in the fact that you're smart, you take pleasure in the fact that you're well-liked or funny, that's awesome. Pride takes pleasure in being prettier than the next person. Pride takes pleasure

in being funnier than the next person, or being more well-liked, or being smarter than the next person. It's essentially competitive, and envy is similar. Envy is having sadness at someone else being smarter. It's having sadness, that someone else being prettier. It's having sadness that someone else is more well-liked. It's having sadness at the fact that someone else might be funnier.

Envy is essentially competitive. And we all experience this, right? Even in the craziest ways, The one German word I know is Shadenfreude. You guys know that word Shadenfreude? Also kindergarten. I know these two German words. So Shaddenfroy to kindergarten.

Shaddenfroid is simply means taking pleasure at someone else's pain. And so it's the reason why fail blogs exist, right? It's a reason why those Instagram videos of people falling down, it's the reason they exist. Shaddenfroid is a reason why some of us, maybe even some of us in this church a couple weeks ago, when Aaron Rogers was out in the field and in the first minute of him playing this season, destroys his leg.

And some of us, here's the thing. Some of us were happy. Some of us were like, serves them right. Question, what has he ever done to you that would deserve our happiness at his being out of commission? That's envy. When we hear bad news about some celebrity

and we're happy about it, that's envy. I don't want what they have. I just want them to not have what they have. That's envy, and we all experience this. He even goes back into the Bible. I mean, one of the great stories of envy in the Bible is between King Saul and David. We know all that story, right? Here's King Saul who's anointed the king.

King Saul is in charge of everything, but he's tormented it. So at one point, he invites this kid, David, who can play the liar, and he sings from him and plays for him, and it sooth Saul. So David's a blessing to Saul. Later on, we know the story, right? Goliath comes out, and he challenges the armies of Israel to battle. And for weeks upon weeks, no one stands up. And then this kid, David, shows up.

And he says, I'll do it. fight Goliath and he wins, we know the story, spoiler, sorry, he wins. And Saul's happy about this. Saul is grateful for David. He coves David in his armor. He actually puts David at the head of his triumphal return to the city. But something happens. That thankfulness for David turns into envy in one moment. As they're riding into the city, people start calling out this song. They say that Saul has slain his thousands and David has slain his 10,000s. And scripture says in that moment, When Saul hears those words, something changes in his heart, which is crazy for two reasons. One, first of all, David's there at Saul's request.

David is there, and David is putting his skills, David's pointing his strength, David's putting his faith at the service of the king. Like, he's just there to help. That's all he wants. He just wants to help. Secondly, it's crazy because, what's the song? The song is, Saul has slain his thousands. No, you haven't.

bro, you've slain like a couple. David is 10,000s. Check the score. He got one guy. So even if you're going to dial it back to actually the reality is the song doesn't even get it right. But what happens is Saul becomes envious. Envy is essentially competitive. Here's the crazy part.

Envy is essentially competitive. And we choose our own competitors. We choose our rivals. Have you ever noticed this? that we aren't envious of everyone. There are people all around us who have way more stuff than us who can do way better than us that we're like, okay, cool. We're not envious of everyone and we're not envious of everything.

We choose our competition. We choose our rivals. We choose our enemies. We choose the people that we're envious of. And we also, here's the good news, we also choose our friends. We choose our competitors. We also choose our friends. Remember hearing a man say, how can you tell if someone's a real friend? instead of you can tell you have a real friend

if two things, if you can tell them bad news and they don't make fun of you, they don't say you're stupid. You have a real friend if you can tell them good news and they rejoice with you. And this is where tough love comes in. Because that's what real friendship is. Real friendship is this tough love.

The willingness to receive the love you've been given rather than resent the love given to another. That's tough love. the willingness to receive the blessings you've been given rather than resent the blessings someone else has been given. Even more than just receiving. Tough love is being willing to receive the gifts you've been given and rejoice in the gifts someone else has been given.

That is tough love. Back in the movie Amadeus, the whole movie comes to this climax where there's a moment of almost friendship between Amadeus and Salieri. Amadeus Mozart, he's on his deathbed. And he's dying that day. He's dying that day. But he hasn't yet finished this.

His magnus opus, right? His big work is called the Requiemann D. It's basically music for a funeral mass. And Salieri's at his deathbed. And Mozart's saying, like, I'm going to quit. I'm going to die. And Salieri's there saying, no, you have to finish. Your genius cannot go to the grave without you finishing this incredible thing.

And so in the climactic scene of the whole movie, this one brilliant man is working with this other brilliant man. and they're creating something incredibly brilliant. And the tragedy of this is that that could have been their whole life. The tragedy of this is that Salieri could have dedicated his whole life to saying, Mozart, you have been blessed beyond me.

But also I have been blessed in a different way. And if your brilliance and my brilliance could help each other, not work against each other, we could create something the world has never, ever seen before. That could have been their entire life, but it wasn't, that's the tragedy. It wasn't because of one thing, because of envy. They could have been friends with their enemies.

He could have chosen to rejoice, but he chose envy. What's even more tragic, we choose our competitors, we choose our enemies, we choose our rivals. Salieri didn't just make Mozart his enemy. Salieri made God his enemy. Because God, you dare to bless this man? Who's a fool? You dare to bless this man who blasphemes you? You dare to bless this man who's nowhere near as holy as I am.

How dare you, God, you are my enemy. And we choose our enemies. And this is the last thing. It's the irony of the whole movie. The irony of the whole story is that Salieri doesn't realize how much he's loved. Could be because someone else has loved more. So Salieri doesn't realize how much he's been blessed because someone else has been blessed more.

Salieri doesn't realize who he is in God's eyes because all he can see is who someone else is in God's eyes. This is the thing. Tough love is receiving the love you've been given rather than resenting the love given to someone else. This is us. We can spend so much time being envious and bitter and looking at the blessings others have been given rather than just being grateful. Receiving the gift, receiving the blessings you and I have been given and rejoicing in others' gifts. The irony of this movie is that Lucifer, he was already loved by God. The irony is that Saul, King Saul, he was already loved by God.

The irony of this movie is that Salieri is already loved by God, and Mozart was already loved by God. The irony of the movie is that Amadeus, that name, Amadeus, means loved by God. And the truth about you and me is, you are already loved by God. So the challenge is, do you realize that? Are we willing to receive that? Are we willing to rejoice in the fact that others are also loved? Is there invitation tonight?

Realize you are already loved by God. Receive the love and the gifts and the blessings that you've already been given and then to have the freedom and the courage and the ability to rejoice in the fact that others are also loved by God.