Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 10/06/24 Marriage: A Catholic Vision

Episode Date: October 5, 2024

Homily from the Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time. God has called us here. God is with us here. God will not leave us here. Marriage will always be a challenge. But there is a way to move forward in this challenge that brings greater peace and joy. There are no guarantees other than "I will not leave" and "God will not leave". Mass Readings from October 6, 2024: Genesis 2:18-24 Psalms 128:1-6Hebrews 2:9-11 Mark 10:2-16

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 Mark. Chapter 10, verse 2 through 16. The Pharisees approached Jesus and asked, Is it lawful for a husband to divorce his wife? They were testing him. Jesus said to them in reply, What did Moses command you? They replied,

Moses permitted a husband to write a bill of divorce and dismiss her. But Jesus told them, because of the hardness of your hearts, he wrote you this commandment. But from the beginning of creation, God made them male and feel. female. For this reason, a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God is joined

together, no human being must separate. In the house, the disciples again questioned Jesus about this. He said to them, whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery. And people were bringing children him that he might touch them, but the disciples rebuked him, rebuked them. When Jesus saw this, he became indignant and said to them, Let the children come to me. Do not prevent them. For the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen. I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.

Then he embraced them and blessed them, placing his hands on them. The gospel of the Lord. They should have a seat. So I'm always tempted to start. I'm going to talk about marriage, and I'm always tempted to start with the princess bride, like the marriage thing. I'm going to refrain. That's it.

I just, I needed to say it, not do it. I just need to get it out of my system. But, you know, it's so interesting, whenever I think, it has to this happens, whenever we talk about marriage, there is this sense of the, there's the rise of what about ism. So what about isn't, if you're familiar with that phrase, what aboutism? It's the, try to make any declaration on one. topic. It's like, yeah, but what about, what about these situations? What about that situation?

And we recognize that, yes, there are a lot of various situations that people find themselves in, especially when it comes to marriage. I know that there are people who are joining us, people who are listening to this, people are part of this, who your story is, you wanted to remain married, but your spouse walked away. And the question is, what about them? Like, yeah, I get it. That's very complex. Others will say, what about situations where there is violence? Yeah, what about those situations? Well, we know that every person has an obligation to protect themselves. So to be able to remove yourself from a violent situation, of course, there's all those

situations. And I think especially when we come to the gospel today where Jesus talks about the rule, essentially, of marriage and divorce, and then ultimately remarriage, it can be really, really hard. And we think, but what about all these situations? What about this and what about that? And it makes sense. Because this is one of Jesus's hard teachings. I think it's worth pausing for a second and recognizing that when it comes,

comes to the church's teaching about divorce and remarriage, it wasn't the church that invented this. This is actually coming from the very mouth of God himself. So if anyone is upset, it's, it makes sense. But we're upset with the Lord, not with like, you know, the church. Okay, that being said, this is a difficult teaching. And we could be tempted to focus on how bad things are. But I don't want to do that. I want to look at how good things could be. Like, I don't want to just focus on, here's the struggles in marriage. I want to say, like, here's the struggles, but also here is the beauty of marriage. In fact, I think one of the things we realize is that our marriages, as Catholics, become especially different when we look

at marriage like the world. I think we live marriage the way the world lives marriage because we look at marriage the way the world looks at marriage. So what I want to propose today is just what if we didn't? What if we had a Catholic view of marriage where we were convinced of three things that in every marriage, as Catholics, we'd say, oh, no, here's what I know. Here's what I know.

I know these things are true. I know that God called us here. That every Catholic couple could say, I know God called us here. That I know that God is with us here. And I know that God will not leave us here. That if we were convinced of this, I think that what it would do is,

yes, we still have difficulties. We'd still have problems. We still have suffering. We still have struggle. But we would know these three things. things. God called us here. God is with us here and God will not leave us here. So the first thing is that this truth, this conviction, God called us here. And so that's called vocation. And so at the root of a Catholic understanding of marriage is that this is a vocation. You know, we have vocation prayer.

We prayed up until not too long ago. And we prayed for calls of religious life and holy marriages in our diocese because why? Because we believe that every couple who is to be married is is called by God. In fact, this is something I think is fascinating. If we looked at this just slightly different, I think sometimes couples have the notion that they're getting married was their idea. In the sense that it's like,

no, we like each other and we want to spend our lives together. We're in love with each other. It's our idea. And that's good. That's all good. But at the heart of it is, no, actually at some level, yes, we love each other. Of course, we want to spend our lives together.

and we believe that God has brought us together, that this is actually we're called here by God. You know, that notion of vocation, the notion of being called, every one of us here is a primary vocation. There's kind of three senses of vocation to talk about the first two. The primary sense of vocation is the fact that God has made everyone with the destiny. So you've been made with the destiny. Now, when I say destiny, I don't mean fate because we don't believe in fate,

but you've been made with a destiny, meaning you are created by God with a destination in mind, that that destination, that destination never changes. God's destiny for you is that you'd be with him forever in heaven. That's the destination. God wants every one of us. No matter how we've wrecked our lives or how well we're living, even if we don't even believe in God, that's still our destiny, our destination that God has placed into our hearts as he's calling us all to be with him forever. So that's the first sense of vocation. The second sense of vocation is what's the vehicle by which we'll get there? Or another way to say it is, what is the primary relationship at which I'll become that person who can be a saint.

So people who discern marriage, that's the discernment. The discernment is, okay, what's the primary relationship by which I'll become the person I was called to be? I'll become the person that I was meant to be. What's the primary relationship by which I'll become a saint? That's the purpose. It's so important for us to understand this. If we got that and realized that the heart of marriage is this is the primary relationship

by which I'll become the person, God wants me to be, a lot would change. That this is not the destination. The destination is bigger. This is the vehicle. This is the route. This is the primary relationship. And I think, you know, a lot of times people have questions about why can't Catholics get married outside the church?

Like, why can't they get married on the beach? Why can't they get married in the woods, mountaintop, that kind of thing? And it makes sense because beaches are beautiful and forests and mountaintops are beautiful. why can't we just get married there? But I would say this. I would say if we understood that marriage is one of the ways that we follow Jesus. Another way to say it is, here's a couple saying, we're getting married to each other because we've discerned that this is how God is calling us to be disciples of Jesus.

So this is the heart of this. If I understood this is that God called us here, we have to get married in churchwide. because we as a couple have discerned that this is how God is calling us to be disciples of Jesus. So thinking about it like this, my favorite place in the world is my parents' place on the lake. Like my favorite place in the world. I love it. It's, I could go there at any time of the year. If you were to ask me, like, where would you want to go tomorrow? I'd say, there, probably.

And so it makes sense that why don't I just get ordained? Why didn't I just get ordained at my parents' place? Why didn't it get ordained on the dock on, you know, on Go Lake? That would be, that would have been great. but if you were to hear me say, yeah, I want to get ordained at my parents' place on the lake, you would say, well, that's ridiculous. Why? Because your ordination, Father Mike, is not about you. Your ordination is about how you are following Jesus and actually how you are called to serve the church. Something similar happens whenever a couple is saying yes to marriage. What they're saying is,

this isn't about us. Even the ceremony isn't about us. This is the way that we're we have discerned that God has called us to follow him and to serve the church. Just like when a priest is ordained, that's how God has called him to follow him and to serve the church. Because we realize this, that no vocation is about you. No vocation. Priesthood, religious life, marriage, it's not about you. Because why? Because priesthood is not about self-fulfillment.

And religious life is not about self-fulfillment and marriage is not a self-fulfillment project. The question, of course, comes up like, yeah but shouldn't you be happy. Like wouldn't, it doesn't want you to be happy. I would say this. Let's admit this first of all. Yes, at some level, your relationship that you're in should be fun. Like when you start dating each other at some level, at some level just, this needs to be

said. It should be easy. And genuinely, really, at some real level, this person makes me happy and I make them happy. That's just, that's at the basic level, right? A basic level is that we find each other sexually attractive. that is, that's kind of necessary for marriage. That's a really, really important piece of marriage. But shouldn't we be happy?

That's another question. I remember listening to a therapist talk about this, and the therapist was saying that psychology will say that positive emotion is more closely associated with working towards a worthy goal than it is by having the worthy goal. So you imagine, here's a couple who says, we believe that we're called to this.

We believe that God has called us here. Well, that's working towards a worthy goal. Remember, marriage is not the destination. Marriage is the vehicle. Marriage is that primary relationship that will get us to that destination. The destination, of course, is God himself to be a saint. And this is one of those things. I think sometimes if I say to be a saint is God's call for your life,

sometimes people say like, oh my gosh, that seems so difficult, though. It seems so tough. And maybe it is. but here's the reality of how good God is. God's plan for you becoming a saint. If you're called the marriage, God's plan for you becoming a saint is not, hey, go to Calcutta and give away everything.

God's plan for you becoming a saint, if you're called a marriage, is not, okay, go to the Amazon and reach out to people who have never heard of Jesus, to everybody. Here's how God, if you're called a marriage, here's how God wants you to be a saint. He says basically this. He says, it's simple. Just love the person you already love most in the world.

Like, how good is God? They said, that's it. If you want to be a saint, you call to marriage, just love the person you already love most in the world, but love them how I love them. It's amazing. And also, I imagine, it's super easy. Just kidding. Not at all. Not at all easy.

But God has called us here. That's the conviction God has called us here. And also, God is with us here. Even in the midst of difficulty, even in the midst of trial. So in the summertime, sometimes I get the opportunity to go to stuburn. youth conferences and they're great, you know, a couple thousand kids who are there at the end of the weekend, they have an opportunity at the end of the Mass to say, are there any young women here who, over the course of this weekend, seeing nuns and seeing religious sisters around,

have, you know, experienced maybe a spark of a call to check out religious life. They come forward and give them blessing, some advice, send them back, and then the guys come up. I always bring the priest up on stage and then tell the guys, all these guys come down, like if you're interested, if something's sparked in you, maybe you want to be a priest, maybe God's calling you to be a priest. And then I always give them a warning, because I've just learned this over the last number of years. I give them mourning and tell them, but here's the temptation.

You might be here right now and be like, yeah, I think I'm going to pursue this vocation. I want to discern this. I want to pray to God about this. And what's going to happen is you're going to go home and you're going to stop praying. Truly, you're going to go home and you're going to avoid prayer at all costs

because you have this fear. Not all of them do, but many of them do. They have this fear that if I keep praying, God will make me be a priest. And I don't want to be a priest. And it seems like a horrible life. It seems like a really difficult life. And I don't want to do it.

And I don't want to make God, I don't want to let God make me. So I'm just going to stay distant from him. It's a horrible, horrible plan. So what I do is I ask all the men who are dads, both biological dads and adoptive dads to stand up in the crowd. And all these men are standing up and all these dads are there and everyone's cheering to the dads. It's awesome.

So behind them are the dads. And in front of them on the stage are the priests. And I ask the dads, the biological and adoptive dads. and say, dads, do you love being a dad? They're all like, yeah. You know, does being a dad bring you joy? Yeah, like, do you love your kids more than anything? Yeah.

Guys, is being a dad really hard? They're like, yes. Like, does it crush you? Yes. Are there days where you think being a dad is going to kill you? Yes. And then I turn to the priest and say, men, do you love being a spiritual father? Do you love being a priest?

Yes. Does being a priest bring a priest bring you joy? Yes. Does being a priest give you life and purpose and your mission? You love it. Yes. Is bringing a priest really, really hard? Yes. Does it sometimes crush you? Yes. Does it sometimes feel like it's going to kill you? Yes.

So I told the young man, hey, look it. Behind you and in front of you. This is it. Pick your poison. Because one of these two vocations is going to kill you. That is Jesus' call, right? Christ's call is come follow me and die. Come follow me and die to yourself. And this is the reality. This is the reality of every single one of our vocations is, yes, it is full of joy. But at the same time, it will cost you everything. It is full of joy, but at the same time, if you want to do it right, it's going to cost you everything. But the world sees it like this world sees of marriage as a piece of paper.

I mean, we hear people say that all the time, right? I don't need to get marriage. I don't need a piece of paper to prove that I love this person. And the church would agree. You don't need a piece of paper to prove that you love anyone. That's a contract. And contracts are great. contracts are incredibly helpful, but contracts are unique.

Contracts are an agreement about an exchange of goods or services based off a condition. A contract is an agreement of an exchange of goods or services based off a condition. I'll do this for you if you do this for me. I will re-refer your house if you pay me this much money. And so that's it. And that's good. It's really helpful. And you can void a contract.

Right? So pay the guy to re-refer house. If he doesn't re-refer the house, he voids the contract. I don't have to pay him. or if I don't pay him, it voids the contract. He doesn't have to re-roof the house. And sometimes the problem is that sometimes even Catholics, we approach marriage like a contract.

We might not be like super shallow in the sense of like, well, you know, I'll stay nice if you stay pretty, like that kind of thing. Maybe it's not shallow like that. Maybe it's deeper. Maybe it's, well, here's the deal. We'll get married and I will be kind to you if you're kind to me. And I'll be patient with you if you're patient with me.

and I'll love you if you love me I'll be faithful to you if you're faithful to me but if you're not then I don't have to be if you're not patient I won't be patient if you don't love me I won't love you if you're not faithful then I don't have to be faithful

and yet a marriage is not a contract a marriage is a different word it's a covenant in fact when we look all through scriptures what we find is whenever God enters that kind of relationship with his people he doesn't enter contracts with us. He enters into covenants with us and covenants are massively different because the contract is an exchange of goods or services based off a condition. A covenant is an exchange of persons.

This is God who says not, hey, do this and I'll do this. Here's God who says, I'll be yours and you'll be mine. He says, you'll be my people and I will be your God. We recognize that it's an exchange of persons and it's an exchange of persons without condition. It is literally unconditional love. Think about that's what every one of us wants. And marriage is the opportunity to make a promise that when you enter into this, you're entering into an exchange of persons without a condition

and without guarantees. That's really important, right? When we enter into marriage, we're entering without conditions and without guarantees, except there's two guarantees. The two guarantees are this, I will not leave and God will not leave. Those are the two guarantees of marriage, two promises of marriage,

is that I will not leave and God will not leave. Even in the midst of real pain, as everyone who's been married ever knows, even in the midst of real loss, and sometimes even the midst of the worst things imaginable. I mean, I know how many couples who struggle with the pain of infertility. Not only that, but I know how many couples would say,

listen, we did everything right. Like we dated the right way. We courted the right way. We got to engage the right way. We're doing all the right things, and we still can't get pregnant. Or we did everything right, and we have a child with special needs.

Or we did everything right, and we can't seem to make ends meet. We did everything right, and all these other couples, they seem so carefree, but we did everything right. Why are we having such problems? Why are we having such difficulties?

Why is this so hard? We need to remember this. We need to remember that following Jesus or doing everything right is no guarantee to be free from pain. Go back to Matthew chapter 7. In the sermon on the Mount, Jesus says he's, this is actually a reading that a lot of our marriage couples choose as their gospel. They choose the reading that says,

if you hear the one who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise person who built their house on a foundation of rock. It goes on to say, the rains fell, the floods came, the winds blew and buffeted the house, but it did not collapse, it had been set solidly on rock. Keep in mind that Jesus says, yeah, you hear these words of mine and you do everything right, you act on them, the rains still fall, the floods still come, the winds still buffet the house. He doesn't say if you do everything right, you'll get everything you want. What he says is, if you do all those things right, listen.

I will be there with you. I mean, today in the second reading, Hebrews, what's to say? Here's the Lord God who made him perfect through suffering. The truth is, God is with us here. And the last truth is, God will not leave us here. Because even in the most difficult situations, in the most difficult situations where couples are discouraged and they're desperate and they're disillusioned and they're disappointed,

there's always hope. You know, your couples say this all the time. that, you know, this is not the same person I married. Here's my spouse. They're not the same person I married. I guess we just grew apart. Now, the reality, of course, is that, yeah, you're always going to grow. You can't change whether or not you grow.

What you can change is whether you grow apart or grow together. And that's one of the situations that's, okay, God wants to help here. What we can control is whether we grow apart or grow together. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago, that this great book by Emerson Eggrix called Love and Respect, that yes, both men and women, husbands and wives, both want to be loved and respected. And men would rather be respected by their wives than loved,

and women would rather oftentimes be loved by their husbands than respected. But really, what it comes down to is this, and what it comes down to is attention. Because I've heard it said that there is really no difference between love and attention. Just being attending to each other. which can start at any point. In fact, I was listening to, of all people, a divorce lawyer talk about,

he was asked the question, why does, when you're talking with these couples, as they're coming, they're getting divorced, like, what is it? And he shared a story about one wife he was working with. And he asked her, he asked her the question of, when did you know that this was the end? And she said, she actually pointed to this, she pointed to the specialty granola. She said she always has this specialty granola she puts in her, yogurt every single morning. And he comes from a special store. And whenever it gets low, her husband would always go and get the extra yogurt. She never asked him to do it. He just did it.

He wanted to see the bag getting alone. He'll go out of his way to this special store and get her special granola and she'd always have it. And she said, I remember the day, I ran out of granola and he didn't go get more granola. And so I left the bag out there. Maybe he just forgot. Maybe he's busy this week, but he didn't get it the next week either and didn't get it the next week either and the empty bag just sat there and he never got the granola. And I realized things have changed. And then the divorce lawyer asked her, like, was there anything for him that he would have noticed? And she had said, yeah, she said that as part of their marriage, she would often initiate intimacy. And she said, I don't know why, but at one point I just stopped initiating.

sexual intimacy with him. And it was just that sense of they just stopped paying attention to each other because there had no difference between love and attention. I remember a couple I was working with, one of their first really, really big fights came when, anybody shared the story before, but he was a computer programmer type guy, and she came to their house and at one point he was on his computer. And she's like, hey, how are you doing? He's like, hey, good to see you, da-da-da.

How's your day? And he's talking to her as he's working on his. computer and at one point she's telling him how her day was and he gets up and walks into the kitchen and as he walks into the kitchen she stops talking and he calls out like what's wrong what's wrong keep talking and she's not talking and he puts his head back in the living room and she is like staring daggers at him just complete ice and he's like what's wrong and she's like I was telling you a story and you literally got up and walked out of the room he's like I could still hear you and they had this big fight because she was like I needed your attention he's like I gave you my attention with my ears

and they decided, they said, okay, here's what we need to do. Out of this fight, out of this argument, every time we see each other, after we haven't seen each other for a while, we need at least 15 minutes of eyeball time. They just decided. They discovered like, okay, this is what we need. Not like talking to each other while doing something else, but we need each other's attention. We need eyeball time, because why?

Because there's no difference between love and attention. Remember talking with a woman who was really struggling because that's what happens, right? So often, marriages seem so attention. tenuous, they're so difficult at times. And she was sharing how her husband and her were on completely different wavelengths. But he's very affectionate, but she got skeeved out by his affection. She wanted to talk with him, but he never was much of a talker. And so they had gone to a therapist and the therapist said, you guys need to get away on vacation. You have a romantic vacation

where you kind of spark the love for each other again. That's not a bad idea. That's a fine idea. But in talking with her some more, it was like, okay, so wait, so your husband's very affectionate. yeah, he always wants to hug me, always wants to hold me, always wants to like rub my back. And like, okay, and she's like, I don't like that. It's like, so I asked her the question. I said, this is kind of a deeper question. I said, do you not like it because you don't like your husband holding you or holding your hand or rubbing your back?

Or is it because if you lean into the hug, if you lean into that affection, he expects the next thing that's going to happen is sex. She's like, that's the thing. Like, okay. So it's not that you don't like affection. It's that you feel pressured that if you accept and receive. his affection, it's going to go from zero to 60. And she's like, exactly.

And I said, in your husband, does he really doesn't like talking? Well, like, no, he doesn't like this kind of talking. I said, okay, I remember hearing a psychologist talk about this. He said, you know, the average couple has about 20 minutes, maybe 20 minutes a day with each other. Maybe not even 20 uninterrupted minutes. If you're a parents of kids, you might not even have that. But he said, if you get 20 minutes a day with your spouse,

this is the person that, remember, God has called you to love each other, that God is with you and your love for each other. He said, if you have 20 minutes, why don't you have a conversation with your spouse about how do we optimize these 20 minutes? What I mean by that is, how do we make these 20 minutes the best 20 minutes that possibly could be for our relationship? So in this case, this woman, here's 20 minutes where she could be like, well, you know, actually for 20 minutes, do you want to hold my hand? Like, yeah, of course, I'll hold your hand. You want to give me a hug and hold on to me in that 20 minutes.

Like, of course, I'd receive that. I mean, I love you. For him, she could say, he could say, I'm not much of a talker, not much of a listener. Yeah, but for 20 minutes, I think you could probably, you know, spare some time. You spare 20 minutes to listen to your wife, to talk with your wife. And this opportunity that couples have to do what? To give each other attention.

And each couple gets to decide for themselves. we could stay here or we can move forward. Why? Because God is not going to leave us here. If we lean into this, God is not going to leave us here. And so here's the last thing. What can we do now? In fact, so in getting to this Sunday morning,

one of the things that I was very acutely aware of is that most of our students are not married currently. And so the question is, what can I do right now? What can anyone do right now? Well, not only to know that, okay, God is called us here, God is with us here, and God will not leave us here. But one is, what can you do now? You can fall in love.

And I don't just mean fall in love with that person. I mean fall in love with Jesus. How do I fall in love with Jesus? Remember, there's no difference between love and attention. To fall in love with Jesus would be, I'm going to spend time paying attention to Jesus. Jesus. I'm going to learn how closely associated it is to love someone is to pay attention to them. And I'm going to start with God. Because if that's not the foundation of my relationship,

then who's calling me, who's with me here, who's not going to leave me here, to spend time with Jesus. And then even if you're not in a relationship right now, to love the people who are there, like to love the people that you're nearest. And this is the last thing. Years ago, I maybe have shared the story before, but I think it just strikes me as so good. Years ago, there was a young man here. His name's Michael, and he was engaged to a woman named Lisa. And he lived in one of our men's households. And Michael was an engineer where everything was very much ordered and very much, you know,

everything needed to be where it's supposed to be. Good guy, but very ordered. And he had some roommates who did not, who they were not engineers. And they liked to leave things where they did not belong. and so Michael would get so frustrated because they would leave their dishes out, you know, and they'd leave it in the sink, they'd leave it on the table, they'd leave it in their bedrooms. And he was just like, I just, I need to teach them a lesson. Like, what am I going to do to teach them a lesson?

They need to do their dishes. They need to put their dishes away. How can I, you guys had these thoughts of like, how can I teach them a lesson of what to do with their dishes? And then he stopped himself after a bit, after a bit. And he was like, wait a second. He said, he was engaged with Lisa. So he's like, I'm going to marry this woman in six months. And my guess is at some point, she's.

she's going to leave her dishes out. Or at some point, she's going to do something that I don't like. He said, in that moment, I'm not going to teach my wife a lesson. In that moment, I'm just going to do my wife's dishes. In that moment, I'm just going to do what I expect I would like her to do. I'm just going to do that for her because I love her. And he said, if I could be the kind of man who just does that for my roommates, who are nowhere near as attractive as my future wife,

I'll be able to do that for her. If I can love the guys that I'm living with who are just my roommates right now, I will be able to love the woman who will be my wife in just a little bit. This is training and love. And yes, there's a lot of bad news out there. But the great news, the great news, is that as Catholics, we can have a new vision for marriage, when we are convinced and convicted, that God has called us here, God is with us here.

With God's grace, he will not leave us here.