Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 09/27/26 Blind Spots: Complaint

Episode Date: September 26, 2026

Homily from the Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time Training ourselves to notice the negative. Many of us have a default stance to notice the negative. When it comes to our assessment of ourselves or of any given situation, our default setting can often be complaint. And yet God calls us to rise above, to stop noticing the negative and begin approaching His world with wonder and praise. Mass Readings from September 27, 2026: Ezekiel 18:25-28 Psalms 25:4-9Philippians 2:1-11 Matthew 21:28-32

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.

and reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew chapter 21 verses 28 through 32 Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people what is your opinion a man had two sons he came to the first and said son go out and work in the vineyard today he said in reply i will not but afterwards he changed his mind and went the man came to the other son and gave the same order he said it in reply yes sir but did not go.

Which of the two did his father's will? They answered the first. Jesus said to them, Amen, I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you. When John came to you in the way of righteousness, you did not believe him,

but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him. The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. Wait you to have a seat. So earlier in the summer, or last summer, we host a retreat or a camp for middle schoolers. And so it's called Camp Survive.

And as I said, for six, seventh, and eighth graders. But we have high schoolers who serve as junior counselors. And so they give a weekend and we have this training before they serve either week one or week two. So here we are at the training. We're at a church. And we've been, you know, sleeping the night on the church floor and everything. It's Sunday morning. And we had breakfast.

walk up to this table of high school boys. They were all rising seniors last summer. They're all on the same high school football team. So big guys, fun guys. Also, the kind of guys, great young men, right, who are willing to not only give a weekend of their summer to training for this camp, but also to dedicate a week of their summer to serve at this camp. So great guys. I sit down at breakfast. And I'm like, guys, how's it going? How's breakfast? And they're like, oh, man, just too much food. Like, what? And they're like, there's too much. You know, I don't normally eat breakfast. the other guy's like, you know, I don't eat breakfast either. And they said, this whole weekend, too.

They're just, they're giving, they're feeding us too much. They're giving us too much food. It's too good. And they're all agreeing. They're all like, yeah, it's just, man, too much food. Pretty soon, someone from the counter, like the kitchen counter, says, by the way, quick announcement, we just have fresh baked cinnamon rolls for anyone who wants them.

And you would have thought that these guys just got detention for three weeks. They're like, are you kidding me? What the heck? Fresh cinnamon rolls? it's too much, it's too good. And I was like, this is crazy. It was a buffet. Like every meal was a buffet. Like, no one was making them eat massive quantities of food, but they still found time to complain because there was too much food and it was too good. And I just, I sat there and we talked about this. I was like, have you ever, have you ever done anything like that?

And the answer is, of course we have. I mean, here we are in this room. We're from Minnesota. we can find anything to complain about. I mean, in the winter, it's too cold. Or in the winter, there's too much snow this winter or there's not enough snow this winter. In the summertime, when it's finally warm, it's like, oh, it's too hot now. Or it's not hot enough.

It was one of those situations. You would think that in Minnesota, complaining is our love language. I don't know if it's true around the world, but I think it might be. Because I think this is one of our blind spots. You know, we spent the last, this is, I guess, the fourth installment

of this series being called, we've been calling blind spots, where we talk about those invisible vices that we just take for granted. That they're the acceptable sins, right? There are sins that they don't really need to be addressed. They don't really need to be repented of because they're just kind of always there.

We talked about gossip. We talked about anger. We talked about entitlement. And this weekend, we're talking about complaining. Because I think when it comes to complaining, we're just like those boys at camp. That we can, we have a, we're like bloodhounds. We can always find something to complain about.

Look at even the first reading. The first reading blows my mind. It's from the book of the prophet Ezekiel. And he says, you say it's unfair. Now, pause. What are they complaining about? They're saying God's ways are not fair. God is being unfair.

How is God being unfair? Here's what it says. It's that if someone turns to sin, they get justice. If they turn to him, to God, they get mercy. That's what they're complaining about. They're complaining about the fact that if they turn away from sin, they get mercy. If they turn back to sin, they get justice. God reveals that he's both just and merciful.

Here's God who's saying, I am so good that I will give you what you choose. And humanity's response is to complain. And I think this is, here's why I think this is a real issue. I think because it's so common. Now, obviously, if something is wrong or something is unjust, then we should talk about it. But I think a lot of times we bring up something to complain about it, not to do something about it. we just want to complain. The problem is when complaint becomes the content of our conversation.

I came across someone that made the claim. They said that in every conversation, there's at least one complaint for every minute of the conversation. I don't know if that's true, but it seems like it's very true in my life, because I'm no exception. I'm no exception. This is ridiculous. Someone asked me the question, hey, father, how are you? Or how is the weekend?

Or how is the school you're going? How is the trip? and my brain automatically scours. Like my default is that I can look at the day. I can look at the semester. I can look at my life and can think, oh, wow, wow, 95% of it is fantastic. But my mind is trained to look for the five.

That I've become trained to notice the negative. In fact, studies I've actually shown, I think there was in 1992. Studies showed that 75% of the things people complain about are not aimed at fixing anything. They're not trying to address. address any wrong, we're not trying to correct any injustice. 75% of what we complain about is not aimed at fixing anything.

It's like spritzing fart spray in the air. Like, it doesn't do anything. It just ruins people's day. It doesn't do anything more than this, except actually it does do something. It makes us less. Complaining. Complaining makes us less. It makes us less happy. It makes us less capable.

It makes us less resilient. There's a psychologist named Albert Ellis. And he talked about this. He talked about the connection between complaining and when he turned, termed low frustration tolerance. So low frustration tolerance is this. He said, it's the learned belief that discomfort, inconvenience, difficulty, or even simply not getting what I want is not merely unpleasant, but it's unbearable. So if I have low frustration tolerance that I, the slightest inconvenience has to be shouted about. The fact that I didn't get what I wanted to

get has to be shared with everybody. And so he said, someone with a high frustration tolerance would say something like, I really don't like this, but I can handle it. Someone with low frustration tolerance would say, I really don't like this, therefore I shouldn't have to deal with it. But you need to hear about it. The example of traffic. I keep bringing it up every single week, I think because I find it annoying. But someone with high frustration tolerance would say, this is annoying.

Oh, well. Someone with low frustration tolerance would say, are you kidding me? This is ridiculous. Like, why does this always, they say, why does this always happen to me? I cannot deal with this. Some with low frustration tolerance for them complaining becomes the verbal expression of how I see the world. In habitual complaining, it trains us that every inconvenience needs to be narrated as outrage. That we become trained. Actually, we train ourselves to believe that every frustration is absolutely unacceptable.

And it has to be announced, right? It's not just unacceptable. It has to be announced to someone. Someone has to hear this. Again, not that nothing is wrong, but so much of what we complain about, so much of what we complain about is just life. I had to get up in the morning, like everyone else in the world. I had to go to work. I have traffic. I have chores. I didn't get enough sleep. I got too much sleep. There's nobody around me. I have no friends. I have too many friends. Like, again, so much of what we complain about is just life. And so the question is, where does this desire, where does this need? Where does this default to complain come from? I think, well, the number one thing, it comes from a desire for connection.

That we know, we know that when we have shared experiences, we feel united. And almost nothing unites us better than shared suffering. That's why we're always talking about the weather, the weather. Because it's something we're all experiencing, where I want to have connection, something we're all experiencing. And so I'll talk about the weather, but I won't talk about it in a way that's positive. This is, what a great day. I'm more default to how it's not exactly how I want, right?

you also want it differently than this. We have this desire for connection, but also this desire to be seen. I'm going through some kind of grievance. I want to be heard. I want someone to sympathize with me. Another reason for our complaint is fear.

Things are overwhelming. Things are difficult. And I need to share that with somebody because I'm afraid that they will stay difficult. They will stay uncomfortable. But I think there's even a deeper thing, a deeper reason for us to share our complaints. It goes back to, if you look at the Old Testament, and the people of Israel, it's a book of Exodus or the book of numbers, here they are.

And they've been set free from slavery in Egypt, right? So the people of Israel were slaves in Egypt for 430 years. So everyone who's alive at this point is generation after generation after generation of being a slave. and here they are. Now they're free, but they still looked at the world with what you might call a victim mentality or a slave mentality. They had what you might call learned helplessness, where they were convinced they're powerless. And so rather than believing they have the capacity to do something, they just complained. Again, look at the story in Exodus. They have been fought for. The God has done miracles that probably all of them have seen. They were, they walked through the Red Sea in the,

with the water of the sea like a wall to their right and to their left. They were guided. They were guided by a pillar of fire at night and guided by a pillar of cloud during the day. They were fed manna every single day. They guide signs of God's providence. They had reliable guides. They had Moses and other people to guide them. And what happens? And they still complained. Why? Because they had that slave mentality, a victim mentality, that makes everything a problem. And this is the thing. Complaint makes everything a problem. There's too much food. It's too good. It's free. We're being guided by a flame at night. Could someone turn the flame down? I mean, there's a sense here where complaint makes everything a problem. Now, we have to pause because we have to remember that complaint

can be good. Complaint can be a good when we're trying to resolve something. But if it's not trying to resolve something, it literally doesn't help. There was a study in 2018 that it was called a diary study of 113 employees over 10 working days. And what they did is they had them have conversations about workplace mistreatments. So real things. Like to be mistreated in the workplace is a real grievance. It's a real something you could complain about. But they found, again, over these 10 days, 113 people.

they found that these conversations, only the conversations that offered alternative explanations or solutions helped buffer the negative emotional effects. But conversations that only offered comfort or consolation did not show the same buffering effect in this particular study. So someone just said, I just want to be heard. You know, sometimes you hear this. What do you want? The three things.

Do you want to be heard? Do you want to be held, held, or do you want to be helped? This particular study said, being heard. and being held doesn't do a whole lot. But actually doing something with this, to hear someone complain, and then to be helped actually helps. This is remarkable.

That actually helping someone actually helps. But we can be really good. Complaining can be good when we're aimed at resolving something. It can be really good when it comes to God. It can be really good when it involves bringing our pain to God. Because bringing our pain to God can be an act of trust. Going back to the Old Testament, there's an entire book called the Book of Lamentations. It was written by a man named Jeremiah.

In Jeremiah, he wrote this as he was walking through the streets of Jerusalem and he saw the absolute destruction of this city that he loved, of these people that he loved. He saw them dying in the streets. He saw them starving to death. And he wandered through the streets and he just cried out to God. This lament to God. It broke his heart and he brought. that broken heart and he brought what broke his heart he brought those things to God. This is important.

Lament. We need this. We need the mind. It's different than complaining. Lament gives us a way to tell God the truth about our pain while still remaining in relationship with him. With that, when you and I, when we bring our suffering to God, we can ask him, help us, God, help us to see, help us to act, help us to love in this situation. But if I merely rehearse my grievance, I can leave myself exactly where I started, only more miserable. Another way to say it is this, is every time we complain, we reinforce negative thoughts. Therefore, with every complaint, our problems just get a little bit bigger. Problems just take up more of our field of vision.

And we've trained ourselves so often, if we give ourselves over to complain, we train ourselves to notice the negative. So no wonder we can find anything to complain about. We've trained ourselves to notice the negative. So what's the solution? What's the remedy? Every one of these blind spots we've been talking about over the last month, every one of them has some remedies. And the remedy for complaint is twofold.

The remedy is wonder and praise. Because I've trained myself to notice the negative. What wonder does, wonder opens up my attention again. That there's goodness here that I stopped noticing. That we know complaint can tell the truth about what's wrong, but it can still miss out on the truth about what's good. but wonder opens our attention to what we stopped noticing. I came across this young woman. Her name is McKinning Galloway.

And McKinnon has suffered a lot in her life. Here's how she described how she suffered. She said, my first surgery, she had her first brain surgery when she was 19, I think, she said. She said it was really tough, but I moved forward. When I was 21, I had my second brain surgery. again, it was also terrifying, but I was back in college in 10 days. When I was 23, I had a grand mal seizure, and I was diagnosed with epilepsy.

When I was 25, my dad took his life. That one shattered me. But eventually, I picked up the pieces and moved forward. But when I was 29, she said, 29 completely broke me. I had my third and fourth brain surgery. My eye rolled inwards. I got complete paralysis on this side, had a cerebral stroke, and I lost all of my hearing. And that's when she said, I am completely deaf.

So I couldn't see. I could barely walk. I couldn't really speak. And I definitely couldn't hear at all. She said, and it was the first time I remember thinking, how much does a person have to go through? I can't do this. I'm done. She said, and I stayed in that mindset for a really long time.

because I remember looking in the mirror and it was like this stranger looking back at me. I knew I wasn't moving forward, but I also knew it wasn't healthy staying exactly where I was. But one day it dawned on me, I couldn't stay in the same mindset that wasn't helping me heal. So I had to fix my focus. Pause, she had to fix her focus. If she'd been trained to notice the negative, and there was a ton, a ton of suffering, ton of negativity, wonder had to train her to be able to see that there was still goodness. in this world. She said, I had to fix my focus. So I had to change saying, I can't do this to,

I'll figure it out. And McKinnon said this. She said, once you do that, that is so unbelievably powerful. Because you stop staring at doors that won't open and all of a sudden these windows do. Solutions happen. So I started working with some of the top deaf technicians in the world. I went to physical therapy, went to speech therapy. And I finally got back to life I thought I lost. So my advice, her advice, the advice of someone who's been through it. Her advice is this, if you're You have to stop saying, I can't do this, and start saying, I'll figure it out, because once you do that, you'll be unstoppable. This is the power of wonder. When we've been trained to notice the negative, we can choose to allow wonder to realize that there is goodness here that I stopped noticing.

Remember St. Paul, the reading we had today, two verses after the reading stops for today. St. Paul says, he says, do everything without grumbling or complaining. and I would say, and instead, do everything with wonder. To walk through this world, realizing there is goodness in this world that I stopped noticing. And then what praise is, praise is then to say it out loud. Wonder is, it's open your attention to realize that there is goodness in this world that I stopped noticing. And praise is to point it out loud.

Second of the last little story that came across the story of a man. he was describing Saturday, he stopped at Lowe's. And he said, this woman at Lowe's told me, you shouldn't be doing all this cleaning on Saturday. And he said this, I told her, I'd be disappointed if I didn't have anything to clean. And he said, let me back up. He said, I just finished this 20-mile bike ride on some trail. And it felt amazing.

He stopped at Lose to grab some floor cleaner, some scrubbies, spray bottles, glass cleaner, some pellets from my grill, just some regular Saturday stuff. And he said, I'm at the self-checkout. One of the ladies working there. She says, how are you doing today? And I said, I feel amazing. Just finished a bike ride. She looks inside in my bag and sees all those cleaning supplies.

And she says, ah, you shouldn't be doing all that cleaning on a Saturday? And that's when I told her, I'd be disappointed if I didn't have anything to clean. She said, he said, I told her, I'm going home to clean the things that I prayed for. She said, how old are you? He said, I'm 40 years old. She said, you're wise beyond your years. And I laughed at her. But I meant what I said.

he said, I've learned to stop complaining about the maintenance of the things that I prayed for. I have floors to clean because I have somewhere to live. I have a grill that needs pellets because I have food to cook and people I love feeding. I have a house that gets dirty because people live in it. I have clothes to wash because I have clothes to wear. And after riding 20 miles this morning, I even have a body that I've been blessed with that still moves. He going on to say, you hear me clearly, gratitude, praise doesn't mean pretending that life doesn't get hard. Those are, there are real problems in the world, the real financial pressures, there's real exhaustion, there's real injustice, there are real things in our personal lives that need changing.

But gratitude or praise doesn't require denial. Because he said, because I've learned that if I'm not careful, I'll get so frustrated by the responsibility attached to the blessing that I'll forget that I asked for the blessing. And this is the last thing. The last thing and the next step. Wonder and praise. in the book of Exodus and the book of numbers, people of Israel, they were stuck. All they could do was grumble.

All they could do is complain. And I think that's one of the reasons why God spoke to them. And whenever they marched, whenever they went into battle, whenever they did something dangerous, as they walked to the promised land, God said this. He said, let Judah go up first. Judah is the fourth of the 12 tribes of Israel. But he said, God said, let Judah go up first. Why?

Maybe there's many reasons. but here's one reason I believe. Judah, his name, the name Judah, means praise. So to these people that were so captive, right? They're still captive by this slave mentality, by this victim mentality, by this complaint, this spirit of complaint. God says, no, let praise go up first. That he trained, wanted to train people who felt powerless

to know that they actually had power. They had the power to praise. And when we do it, it changed. changes things. Years ago, there was a student here and great guy. He was on the cross-country team, the track team, All-Star. Great student, great life. And at one point, he came to me because he was like, I'm just, I'm so down. He said, I have no zest for the things that used to bring me joy. I don't care about running anymore. Don't care about school anymore. I don't care about anything anymore. And I don't know what to do. He had been trained to notice the negative. He said,

what do I said, okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you for the next two weeks, day, I'm going to invite you to intentionally choose wonder and praise. I choose wonder, to look at your life, running, schoolwork, whoever you're dating at the time, all these things, to look at those things with new eyes, and then to note it. Praise. Either write it down or speak it out. So two weeks go by, comes back. I said, how have the two weeks been? He said, well, I've been doing what you said. I've been trying every morning, every night, trying to choose, intentionally to choose wonder and praise. I said, how did it go? He said, it's incredible. And I said, whew, I'm glad it works. But that's us. That's all of us. That's our invitation for the next week, for the next two weeks,

maybe for the rest of our lifetime, is to wake up with wonder, to walk through this world with wonder, to ask God to help us to see with new eyes, and then praise. It means to say it. We say our complaints. We say those things out loud. Praise, if it's going to be praise, has to also be out loud. So wonder, notice, notice the goodness in this world and praise, point it out, point out the good things you found out loud. Because what we're doing is we're breaking the blind spot of complaining and training ourselves in wonder to notice the good, in training ourselves. In training ourselves, and praise pointing it out this week notice the good and wonder and praise the Lord God out loud