Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 09/25/22 Comfort Breeds Complacency

Episode Date: September 24, 2022

Homily from the Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Complacency is being satisfied with how things are and not being willing to change them. We are insulated from discomfort in many ways. And our lives of comfort can lead to complacency. But encountering Christ can lead to compassion. Mass Readings from September 25, 2022: Amos 6:1, 4-7 Psalms 146:7-101 Timothy 6:11-16 Luke 16:19-31

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 16, verses 19 through 31. Jesus said to the Pharisees, There was a rich man who dressed in purple garments and fine linen and dined sumptuously each day. And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who had gladly have eaten his fill of the scraps

which fell from the rich man's table. Dogs even used to come and lick his sores. When the poor man died, He was carried away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. And from the netherworld where he was in torment, he raised his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he cried out, Father Abraham, have pity on me.

Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am suffering torment in these flames. Abraham replied, my child, remember that you received what was good during your lifetime, while Lazarus likewise received what was bad. But now he is comforted here, whereas you are tormented. Moreover, between us and you, a great chasm is established to prevent anyone from crossing who might wish to go from our side to yours or from your side to ours.

He said, then I beg you, Father, send him to my father's house, for I have five brothers so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment. But Abraham replied, they have Moses and the prophets. let them listen to them. He said, oh no, Father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent. Then Abraham said,

if they will not listen to Moses and to the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead. The gospel of the Lord. So this past summer I got to read a book by a man named Michael Easter. And he was in the book, he talks about this Japanese

procedures, is Japanese custom called Masogi. And so the idea behind a Masogi, it's like a transformational journey or like a rite of passage, that kind of thing. So it's a physical and mental challenge that's meant to kind of like purify a person. Someone described it as like pressing control, alt delete,

kind of rid them of attachments and whatnot. So it involves like, you know, diving into an icy lake or sitting in an icy ocean or underneath a freezing waterfall. It involves cold, apparently a lot. because there's a sense of, like, I want to do this physical and mental challenge that's going to change me. It's going to reset some things in my life. So, like a lot of things, in the West,

they've taken this Japanese concept of Masogi and have adopted it and adapted it. And so, again, Michael Easter writing about this, he talks about how this process of Masogi can be the kind of thing that breaks a person out of the limits that they've accepted and lead them to a place of growth. Right. So they break a person out of the limits they've already accepted and leave them lead them to a place of growth. And in Michael Easter's book, he had two rules for a Mosogi. It can be anything you want.

Again, physical mental challenge, but two rules. One is it has to be really, really hard, and second, you can't die. And those are the things. It has to be really, really hard. And what he meant by really, really hard is he said,

you have to have, in the best case scenario, only a 50% chance of accomplishing the task. So if you are training for a marathon, Toronto Marathon is not a Masogi. But if you're running maybe five miles a week, maybe running a marathon, would you for you be a Mussoge? There were a bunch of examples he used.

One was this man who he wanted to paddleboard 25 miles in the open ocean. And since the second rule is don't die, he had like a boat crew kind of like accompanying it. Because again, I think I don't know if I can actually accomplish this. At the same time, I have to remember, have to stay alive during this whole thing. I read a, I read a story of these group of buddies that during the, midst of the lockdown. And I think somewhere in the 2020, they decided to do a Mosogi themselves.

And theirs was they wanted to run a 5K every hour for 24 hours straight. And it was one of those kind of situations where they say, yeah, we started out. It was great. And, you know, halfway into it still doing okay. But then it got to that place where like we don't know if we actually can finish. We don't actually know if we can do this. So, so those, you know, Spartan races and those tough mothers, those are kind of examples. In fact, two weeks ago, I have a brother and a sister and their spouses who did this this ruck challenge. And it was a 12 hour and a 24 hour ruck. So what a ruck is is you get on your back like a 30 pound or 50 pound backpack.

And then you go hike basically for 12. Some of them did 12 and others did 24 hours. And every so often you stop and they have some kind of workout for you like they did burpees in the ocean. And they had to do like lunge walks and pushups and planks. I think at one point they did 1,100 step ups like step up onto a bench with this. you know, 50-pound thing on your back, they would have to be in teams. And so at some point, they'd say, okay, out of the team with six of you, one of you is injured, quote unquote, and all these have to carry them for the next five miles. That kind of idea. It said that for the 24-hour

Ruck Challenge, only one out of every two people succeed. One out of every two people actually finish the Ruck. So that sounds like a good 50%. That sounds kind of like the idea of Masogi. And it's such an inspiring idea that I have an eighth-grade niece who has, seen her aunt and her uncle going out on these rucks. And so she and her dad have started doing this because it's one of those things where it's just like, I think a lot of this, all this idea of Misogi comes from a place where a person realizes that they've been so protected, that we maybe have been so insulated from discomfort that we've just become satisfied with how things are and we have no desire to change them. Again, I think a lot of our lives, right, are so insulated,

so protected from discomfort, we become satisfied with the way things are. and have no desire to change them. And of course, that might not be you. And there might be places in the world, you know, third world countries or even places closer than that where it's a struggle to survive. And so it wouldn't make a lot of sense

for someone to pick up Amasogi in that way. Because, of course, we know that discomfort, we know that suffering, we know discomfort can make us discouraged. We know that discomfort can make us desperate. In fact, Proverbs chapter 30, verse nine says this. It says, it's just prayer. It's a God, give me only the food that I want because, lest being in need, like being hungry, I should steal and profane the name of my God.

We recognize that discomfort can make us desperate, can lead us to do things we never would want to do, never would choose to do, never would imagine that we would do if we were taken care of. And so we know that suffering is real, right? We know suffering is real and it really hurts. But we have to ask the question, is it also possible that too much comfort can be dangerous? We obviously know that too much suffering can be dangerous. Clearly, that's a reality in life. But is it also possible that too much comfort could be dangerous? There's this concept. It's called the region beta paradox. And the region beta paradox is, it's this. Maybe you have this rule for yourself where if you have to travel less than a mile, you'll walk.

But if you have to travel more than a while, more than a mile, you'll drive. Which is interesting. The paradox is then is that you can end up actually traveling two miles faster than you would travel one mile. Or you'd travel even three miles faster than you travel less than one mile. So that's the paradox. And the idea behind this is if we only end up taking action, when things cross a certain threshold of badness or discomfort, then sometimes better can feel worse than worse feels. That makes any sense.

So, like, the idea is, is, I read this as an example, a person could be miserable for a month, like just mentally, emotionally, miserable for a month, and they say, you know what, I need to see a therapist. I need to take action on this. Another person could feel kind of like, blah, for years. And never take any action. Things never got so bad that I'm actually going to help myself.

Maybe it's the case that you're okay so my job isn't great. Actually my job isn't good at all, but it's not bad enough for me to go out and do the work of getting a better one. Maybe my relationship, you know, again, it's not awesome, but at least they're here. And so I kind of like, why work to make it better? Because it's the idea is because it's not that bad. That's the region beta paradox. And it's in that region where it's like it's not so bad that I'm willing to make a change. and therefore I'm just going to keep things the same.

And that's our tendency, right? Our tendency is that comfort can breed complacency. Things aren't so bad that I need to change them. No, I'm relatively comfortable. And so comfort can breed complacency. And what's complacency? The definition of complacency is when I'm satisfied with how things are

and I'm not willing to change them. I'm satisfied with how things are, I'm not willing to change. And we know, we know that suffering can be dangerous. but also comfort can be dangerous. In fact, the second reading today from First Timothy, St. Paul's letter to Timothy, it's all about the dangers of comfort. Now, we didn't get to hear about the dangers of comfort

because they came right before the section that we heard today. But here's Timothy. Paul, he's writing to Timothy, and he says, listen, we brought nothing into the world. That's what Paul is saying to Timothy, just as we shall not be able to take anything out of this world. If we have food and clothing, we need to be content with that. Basically, he's saying, just be content with what you have

because those who want to be rich are falling into temptation, into a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge them into ruin and destruction. Just wanting to be rich can plunge them into ruin and destruction. He goes on to say, for the love of money is the root of all evils. And some people, in their desire for it, have strayed from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pains.

And that's when he picks up today's reading. It says so many people, so many people are willing to sacrifice everything, their faith, their hope, their life, their eternal life, for the pursuit of money. And then Paul says what he said in today's reading. He says, but you, oh man of God, pursue righteousness, pursue devotion and faith and love, patience and gentleness, and compete well for the faith.

Take hold of it, right? So here's the temptation we all have. We want to pursue comfort, right? I want to pursue wealth. And St. Paul is saying, that is a common temptation, but it is a dangerous temptation. because we know that there's a danger involved. Why?

What's the danger? Well, it can dominate. It can become the thing that we live for. It can become the thing we pursue. And not, again, Scripture doesn't say even just having money. It says the love of money is that. And of course, at this moment, some people might be thinking, oh, this is great. You can press pause because like this doesn't pertain to me.

Like I don't fall into that. category of wealthy. Like, okay, that might be 100% the case. But wealth is kind of relative, I think. I think wealth can be oftentimes kind of subjective. What I mean by that is if you were to ask, you might say, okay, no, I'm father, I'm not wealthy at all. Okay, great. I'm very middle class. Great. If you're middle class, here's a question. Would you rather be middle class now here in 2022 in America, or would you want to be the richest man in the world in 1916? So we had to be the richest person in the world in 1916 or middle class in America, what the average would people have in the United States right now?

You'd say, my gosh, I can't believe in 1916, it'd be incredible. John D. Rockefeller, the richest man in America. I would like to be him. Okay, well, that might be fine because you have a lot of money. but here's what life would look like. You might have incredible real estate. You might have incredible properties like overlooking oceans. May have more than one house.

In order to get to that house, it would take days and days and days of journey. And the journey would not be an air-conditioned comfort of your vehicle. Even if you had like a first-class spot on a train, they weren't air-conditioned. Your house wouldn't be air-conditioned. It probably wouldn't be heated if you wanted to eat. Not only would you not have any exotic food, you'd have the most basic bland. You couldn't like order Thai curry. You couldn't order some kind of like, you know, Italian dish.

You have to order just whatever they have there. That place wouldn't be air condition. Probably would be heated really, really poorly. You want to go to Europe, travel there. That's awesome. That's incredible. It would take months to get there and to get back. Maybe you have a delivery.

You want to get something. You want to ship something. You have no overnight delivery. You can't get a package overnight. Maybe you just wanted to be some entertainment and wanted to listen to the radio. Well, in 1916, the radio had not yet been invented for another four years, so you have no entertainment whatsoever unless you go in person to a live show. Maybe you have a limo, though. That would be kind of nice.

You have like a deluxe luxury limo with a chauffeur. That would be nice. That limo would be many more times likely to break down than your inexpensive car would be. But someone's driving you. You can do all this stuff. Well, yeah, but you can't make any phone calls. You can't text someone ahead of time saying you're running. light, you just show up because that your phone, it's attached to the wall and it does not have

a camera on it. Medical care, there's a story of Calvin Coolidge, right, the president. He had a 16-year-old son who died from an infection that he got on his toe from blister while playing tennis on the White House grounds right around those years. You think, okay, would I swap places with the richest person in the world? in 1916 or would I rather maybe just be me here and now all that's to say is is that so many of us are more wealthy than the vast majority of people who have ever lived I want to say that again we are more wealthy generally speaking than every human being who has ever lived so we should be grateful but of course there's still a danger with that much comfort

because comfort can breed complacency. I mean, which obviously is nothing new. I mean, this isn't like comfort is a new thing. Amos chapter 6, our first reading today. What is, or the opening words of the prophet Amos are woe to the complacent in Zion. And he then paints a picture of why they're complacent because they're so comfortable.

He says they sit on beds of ivory that they anoint themselves with the best oil. They listen to whatever kind of music. He goes out in one of the biggest images is he says, they drink wine out of bowls. These people aren't even using glasses. They're drinking wine out of bowls. That is how comfortable they are.

And also, he says, and they're not made ill. They're not bothered by the collapse of Joseph. What was happening at the time was the northern kingdom of Israel was being under attack by the Assyrians. Those are the cousins, essentially, the family of these people here in Zion. And they're not bothered. Why?

Well, because they're complacent. I'm satisfied with the way things are, not willing to change. You know, that's why Proverbs Shep. chapter 30, I mentioned that before, but the dangers of, God, keep me from being in want, because I don't want to steal and dishonor your name. A proverb chapter 30 also says, God, give me just enough food for the day, lest I be full and deny you. Because there's a danger either way, right? There's a danger of discomfort, but there's also this incredible danger of comfort. It can make us complacent, satisfied with the way things are, and not wanting to change them.

it's possible that we can be so comfortable that we become complacent i think we can be living such a soft life that it leads to a hard heart and we again we might not we might not we might say that we might say like no i'm not i'm not fine with things i i want things to change but i'm not willing to change them why because because i'm fine because i'm taking care of now there's a caveat quick i just want to make this caveat because sometimes in our world right now in our culture right now people say, yeah, we need to redistribute wealth. That's what we need to do. Now, there's a huge difference between Christianity and socialism.

This is very important for us to make. There's a small caveat side point. There's a massive difference between Christianity and socialism. Both Christians and socialists would see the plight of the world and be moved with compassion. Something needs to be done. But the Christian says this, where can I give my stuff to help the people in need? And the socialist says, where can I take someone else's stuff and help the people in need? This is a very important distinction

because one is charity, one is love, the other is theft. One is good and the other is actually, genuinely evil. And so it's really important for us to understand that difference because this parable that Jesus is telling in the gospel today was not about how someone should have gone to the rich man and taken his stuff and said, this is going to Lazarus. It's not about that at all.

It's about how he, the rich man, he should have seen. The rich man, he should have noticed. The rich man, he should have acted. We have to understand this. The rich man was not a bad man. He's not a bad person as far as we know. But we know this. Comfort had made him complacent.

He was satisfied with how things are and wasn't willing to change them. And so what's the answer? I would say the answer isn't like Masogi. That's not necessarily the answer. The answer isn't just do hard things. The answer is something more. The answer is nothing new.

In fact, I was thinking about this whole concept this whole reality of comfort that can breed complacency. And I thought about one of my favorite saints in the world is St. Francis of Assisi. If you don't want to think about St. Francis, he lived around the 13th, 130s, roughly in there. A small town in Italy. And he was an upper, upper class kid, very comfortable. There were people in his small village, even though it was a small village, people who were in need. But people he could help.

but he wasn't a bad guy. Again, every account I've ever read of Francis before he became St. Francis was that he was a good guy, that he was a nice guy, that he was a happy person. He had a pretty good outlook in life. He had some good buddies. And at one point, you know, he went off to battle and it was a failure there, came back pretty disappointed, tried to go off again to battle. And even on the way, he was just, he became disillusioned. So he stopped that pursuit, and he started just kind of like wandering the hills around Assisi.

and in his wandering on those hills around Assisi, he started talking to God. He started praying. And it was in that prayer that he encountered Jesus. See, he was someone who was willing. He had so much comfort. He had become complacent. But he was willing to do hard things, right?

He was willing to go into battle to do Amasogi, right? He might come back. He might not come back. But that didn't change him. It wasn't until he started wandering those hills and started talking to Jesus. that his mind began to change, that he went from comfort and complacency

to compassion. Because he was not encounter with Jesus. What happened? You know the story. He's been praying for a while now, and he goes into this, you know, fallen down church, this chapel, and there's a crucifix.

And he's praying in front of the crucifix, and the crucifix speaks to him. He says, Francis, rebuild my church, for it has fallen into disrepair. And so Francis thought that Jesus on the, cross just meant like fix this little chapel, which I find fascinating and is the perfect example of complacency. Why? Because Francis walked into a chapel that was falling down and he was perfectly

satisfied with the way things were and had no desire to change them. But here's Jesus who says, rebuild my church and he's like, okay, I'm going to get some stones together. I'm start rebuilding this church. That is an incredible example of being so comfortable that I don't even notice. I'm so comfortable. I'm satisfied with the way things are until Jesus steps in and he tells them He didn't see, but he began seeing after that. You know the story of Francis being personally repulsed by lepers? He was afraid of leprosy. That moment when he saw a leper coming and he realized, okay, this is Jesus.

This has to be Jesus. And he kissed the leper, turned to walk away and looked back behind him and the leper was gone. It was Jesus in disguise. I know that I hear that. think, well, yeah, I would do the same thing, too. Like, I would try to revitalize the church. I would try to rebuild a chapel if a crucifix spoke to me. Like, I think I would do that.

If I kissed a leper and it became, it was Jesus, like, of course I would do that. But I don't think I would. Why? Because that's what Jesus says in the gospel today. He says, the rich man says, no, if Lazarus, a man comes back from the dead and tells my brothers that they need to repent, then they will. and Jesus through Abraham says, no, if they won't believe Moses and the prophets,

they don't just, if they won't open their eyes and open their ears and hear what God has already said, their hearts are so hardened, they are so comfortable, they are so complacent that even if someone were to rise from the dead, they wouldn't wake up. And I wonder how many times that's me. God has already said what he needs to say, I know, I know that Jesus wants me to rise out of my own comfort,

my own complacency, live a life of compassion, but in so many ways, I realize, when am I going to start? Here's the big question. This is it. When are you going to start? When are we going to start? Our comfort has bred complacency. But Christ can lead us to compassion.

Because this is the whole thing. St. Francis, he did not become St. Francis because he all of a sudden wanted to be a good guy. He already was a good guy. We have to understand this. It wasn't because he wanted to become a nicer person. He was a very nice person already. It was because he encountered Jesus. Pope Benedict the 16th, he said it like this.

He said, being a Christian is not the result of a lofty ideal or an ethical choice. Right? It's not someone who's like, now I have high ideals. Now I want to be good. It says, that's not what a Christian is. He says, being a Christian is the result of an encounter with a person that changes one life, sets it in a new direction and gives it a new horizon. That's what the difference is.

I realize that's what Francis needed. That's what I need. might be what we all need, not just a renewed sense of sight, but that encounter with Jesus. I know that when I start breaking out of complacency, start looking around with an eye of compassion, I think, well, what can I do? I mean, who can I help? Because I mean, I've heard stories of other saints who, you know, they've come home without shoes on and their parents be like, well, how do you know, how can we don't have any shoes? Like, well, you know, we saw someone without shoes and gave his shoes away. And remember hearing about that as a teenager going, I don't know.

anyone without shoes. I live in northern Minnesota. Everyone has shoes. How do, what can I give? Do I know anyone? Do I see anyone? Do I encounter people on a daily basis who are in poverty? Like, how can I not pass by Lazarus? And that's when I'm reminded of what Mother Teresa of Calcutta said. This woman who had lived in the poorest places in the world, that when she came to America, she shocked Americans and she shocked the reporters when she said that America is the poorest country that has ever existed. They were the poorest country in the world. People were like, wait, wait, what do you mean?

Why? She said, because you suffer from a poverty of loneliness. You have all these material goods, all this comfort. But everyone's lonely. And it's not just America, Europe as well. I remember a couple of years hearing this story about these police who came to this apartment. They came to this apartment because these neighbors phoned in that they heard some screams. They heard this wailing coming from an apartment down the hallway.

The police showed up and there was an elderly couple. The wife was 84 years old and the husband was 94 years old. And no one was sick. No one was hurting. No one was in danger. They were just so lonely. Even though two of them were together. Married this married couple, they were just so lonely.

No one had visited them for years, and they just started wailing out loud. They couldn't do anything, but just cry out. I read the story about the police that came in and just sat with them. They took some pasta off the shelf. They had food. Took pasta off the shelf, boiled some noodles,

put some butter and parmesan on them, and just sat down and ate with this 84. year old and 94 year old couple. They're people who just, they're not seen. This last summer, we took a group of teenagers to a youth conference. And this became really, really prevalent to me. How deeply the poverty goes. There was one of these young girls, I mean, maybe he went to junior in high school.

And at one point, I'll say her name was Abby. they were eating supper or something. I'm like, hey, Abby, how are the tacos? She looked at me and she said, you know my name? And I was like, yeah, of course I do. And she said, you shouldn't know my name. I'm insignificant. She believed that.

How many people, I mean, truly, how many people we pass by every day? Maybe they're not in the gutter like Lazarus. Maybe dogs aren't licking their sores. like Lazarus. Maybe they have food to eat unlike Lazarus. But no one looks at them in the eye. No one stops and gets to know their name. No one asks how they are. And so their conclusion is, I don't matter. I'm insignificant. We know, this is the last thing. We know that comfort can breed complacency. And we also know that an encounter with Christ can lead us to compassion. And so I just,

I just invite all of us to pray for this, to pray for eyes to see Jesus. make to truly um wait for eyes to see others in their poverty to say i'm no longer i refuse to be satisfied with the way things are god i want to have a heart that's willing to change them