Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 10/10/21 Holding On: Holding On to You

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

Homily from the Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time. What you've been holding on to ends up holding on to you. Anything can keep us from Heaven. Anything that we prefer over and over (and anything that we defer putting down over and over) can end up holding on to us. There are times when we've chosen so often that we no longer have a choice. And there are times when we have put off letting go so often that we can't put it down. And we find ourselves stuck. What do we hold on to then? Mass Readings from October 10th, 2021: Wisdom 7:7-11 Psalms 90:12-17Hebrews 4:12-13 Mark 10:17-30

So whenever I hear this gospel, it always takes me back to the time when I bought my first car. So I was in college and it was time to like have my own car because everything I mean up to that point, everything I'd ever owned, it was either not nice or it was not mine. So you know, I'm the fourth of six kids. So basically my parents are like, yeah, you can have your brothers, whatever. So I had a pretty sweet Sony disc man. It was a disc man sport, so don't get jealous, you know. It was pretty awesome. But this is the first big purchase.

It was the first thing, again, that it was going to cost a lot and it was going to be mine. And I remember I thought about the rich young man. Because I was like, okay, I'm going to have a thing. I'm going to have a thing that might be hard to get rid of. I'm going to have a thing that is going to cost a lot. And I remember thinking, shoot, I don't want to lose my soul over this car. Because, I mean, you guys, this was a 1993 Honda Civic. And now it had no power windows.

It had no power locks. had no power steering, it had no power brakes, it had no air conditioning, but it had no... but it did have AM and FM. It did have a cassette deck, and I didn't mention this, it was a hatchback. So you could see how I would be concerned

about losing my soul over this kind of car. In fact, so it was a look at the little roller skate, a little white roller skate. My sister, when she saw it, she called it a little egg, and I was like, okay, that's interesting. And I told one of my friends that, you know, my sister says that's the egg, and she said, it doesn't look like an egg.

more like a maggot. So that was Maggie, my car named Maggie. But I was so troubled by this, right? I was like, I don't want what happens when I buy this thing that's expensive to my soul. And I talked to my campus priest, and he said, you need to ask this question. He said, are you going to own it or is it going to own you?

So when you move forward and you buy stuff, you have to ask this question, are you going to own it or is it going to own you? Because here's the story. Again, let's go back to the gospel, the rich young man. And we see this man who walks away sad because he couldn't do what Jesus was asking him to do.

He walks away sad. In fact, in Luke's gospel, the word for him walking away sad, that word sad is the exact same word that Luke's uses to describe Jesus in the Garden of Githemeny. It wasn't like he was kind of sort of Charlie Brown sad. He was devastated.

He was crushed by this. But he couldn't let go of. And I have to ask this question. Is there anything in my life that I can't let go of. Is there anything in my life that I can't let go of? And maybe it's things. Maybe it is stuff.

But I think a lot of times what we can't let go of is not the thing. I think it's what the things represent. So it's not necessarily, I can let go on my car, but it's, how about having a slightly less nice car? Because that slightly more nice car gives me some status, right? So the car doesn't represent a car. It represents the status. Or even for some people, I have more than I need.

And actually, I don't even use this anymore, but I like having it because it gives me what? It gives me a sense of security. I don't want to let this go because it gives me status. I don't want to let this go because it gives me some sense of security. Or maybe it's not even a thing. Maybe it's what I do, something I do regularly. And I don't want to stop doing this because it gives me my identity. Maybe it gives me a sense of worth when I do this thing.

And, man, maybe you've been to a place where you've tried to let go and you realized that the things you've been holding on to are actually. holding on to you. About three weeks ago we started this new series called Holding On. And we started the whole thing by acknowledging the truth that I am not yet the person God created me to be. And the truth is that you're not yet the person God created you to be. And so last week we looked at this and said, okay, I can't become the person God made me to be unless I'm willing to keep holding on to some things. Like promises. The first week, two weeks ago, we looked at this and said, it's possible that I can't become the person God made me to be

unless I stop holding on what's holding me back. But what happens, again this big question, what happens when we realize that the things I've been holding on to are actually holding on to me because this is a real thing. This is a real thing for every single one of us. When the day comes, when I realize,

I try to put it down and I realize I am unable to stop holding on. The day comes when I want to give it up, I want to stop the thing, but I have this shocking awareness of I am incapable of letting go. And the question is, how do we get to a place like that?

Like what brings us to a place where what we've been holding on to is holding on to us, and I think it's two things, at least. I think it's one is, it's what we prefer over and over and over, and it's what we defer over and over and over. It's what we prefer over and over and what we defer over and over. Because I think when it comes to what we prefer over over,

basically it's what we choose on a daily basis, which is really interesting because I'm not talking about bad things. You know, week one, when Jesus said, if your hand causes you to sin, if your eye causes you to sin, your foot causing you to sin, get rid of those things. Those were sins. Those are things that were getting in the way of God, but we have to ask the question,

what can keep me from heaven? What can keep us from heaven? And the answer, it's a hard answer, it's a hard truth. But the answer is anything. What can keep me from heaven? Anything. Anything that I prefer more than Jesus. So look at the first reading. It's in the book of wisdom. And it's fascinating because in the book of wisdom, the author talks about four things. He talks about four good things. He says there's power or influence. He says this thing of sceptor and throne, power and influence. He talks about wealth, gold and silver. He talks about health. And he talks about comeliness or beauty. None of those things are bad. All of those four things are good things.

who doesn't want influence, who doesn't want to be powerful, who doesn't want wealth, who doesn't want health, who doesn't want beauty. But he says this, he says, but when it came to wisdom, in this case, wisdom is living like God wants us to. He says, when it came to wisdom or living like God wants us to, I prefer that more than wealth. I preferred living like God wants me to more than health, more than beauty, more than influence.

I preferred again and again, what we prefer over and over. He said, I preferred living like God wants me, to more than these four other good things. And so I have to ask the question, the problem is not those four things. The problem is when I want them more than I want Jesus. The problem is not those things. The problem is when I care about them more than I care about Christ. The problem is when I hope for them more.

Let me think about this, gosh, you guys, how many times are you getting up and you're grinding away? And you even say it, like you say it like that, use that word. You're grinding, man. Nice job. You're grinding to what? You grind to bring in the dough. You're grinding to bringing the money.

You're grinding to be the guy. You're grinding to be that person who wins. And that's not bad. That's a good thing. But am I getting up early and grinding away at the rosary beads? What occupies my mind, what drives me is this desire to be important. Okay, is what drives me a desire to surrender to Jesus. I mean, health, gosh, I know so many y'all.

You're saying fit and you're getting up early in the morning. You're getting to the gym. We're getting outside and running. And like, that's good. That's such a good thing. But how many times were we set in the alarm saying, I need to get to the chapel because I need to spend time with the Lord? What can keep us from heaven?

Anything that we prefer to Jesus. And we realize this, even good things can become a trap. Go back to the rich young man. The rich young man had two incredible things. He had wealth and he had youth. Two things that basically made him virtually unstoppable in the ancient world. He had wealth and he had youth. In that culture, think about this, in that culture, he could do anything.

He's virtually unlimited potential. In that culture, with what he had, health, wealth, and youth, he could do anything except one thing. With his wealth and with his youth, he could do anything except let go. With all that wealth, with all that youth, he could do anything except be free. Because we realize this, right? We realize that there's a certain security in slavery. there's a certain comfort in being comfortable in what we're used to.

So let's even go back to the Old Testament, right? You have the Jewish people, the people of Israel, and they're enslaved in Egypt for hundreds of years. And at one point, what does God do? God sends Moses and these ten plagues, and they get delivered mightily from slavery in Egypt. God leads them to the Red Sea. And incredible, they're in the wilderness.

And like two months into the hike, two months into the camping trip, all of us, it's in Numbers Chapter 11. Two months in, all of a sudden they stopped complaining, start complaining. It says to this, actually, they began grumbling. And they said, we remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt. And the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlic. Yeah, we were slaves, but, dude, there were onions.

I love how we say it, too. They say, we remember the fish that we used to eat without cost in Egypt. Really, it was without cost. Yeah, they just gave it to us. Who gave it to you? Our masters. Okay. You've answered the question. But how many of us are saying, like, I'd rather go back. See, what happened for them is they let go of Egypt, but Egypt had not let go of them. And anything we prefer over and over, anything we choose over and over, we get to the place

where we no longer have a choice. We can prefer this over and over and over. We can choose it over and over again until we no longer have a choice. You know, it's true. We can begin to grumble. They began to grumble, and then something changed in them. that change in them has happened to me. Gosh, okay, here's a story. Years ago, my parents thought it was a good idea to have family pictures, which is not a bad idea. It was a great idea. They also had a good idea that every subdivision of family member would have their own color polo t-shirt. So my mom and dad had their own color polo t-shirt, and my brother with his

wife and their kids had their own color polo t-shirt and the other siblings. And there are three siblings, myself, my older sister and my younger brother, we're the single siblings. And so my mom, again, great idea. She's a great woman, very smart. She thought, it'd be a great idea for the single siblings to all have the same color polo t-shirt. And so I went along with it. It wasn't bad. And so what happened was I started making fun of it. I started making fun of like, oh, the single sibling t-shirt, whatever, our polo shirt.

And also the color was not like my color, whatever. And so I started, but I started joking about it. Like, oh, I hate this. This is awful. And I'm telling you the truth. It started out as a joke. I didn't care. But the more I grumbled, the more I complied.

the more I complained, the more I found myself caring. The more I started talking about how I hated this, the more I actually hated this. And someone who shall be unnamed, ruined the day for everyone. And there literally is not even a picture of me looking at the camera, smiling. You guys, I was like 32.

This is the worst. They had to do one of those candid shots where I'm looking the other way. I'm like, take a picture now, I'm fine. I'm like, at the time, you guys, at the time I was thinking, in my head, I was thinking, stop, just stop. I remember thinking,

telling myself, choose joy. I remember telling myself, just laugh at yourself and be done with it, and I couldn't. I had chosen it to the point that there was no longer a choice anymore. The Israelites, they began to grumble, and then they became a grumble. They began to grumble, and they became a grumble. That saying became a grumble. It comes from a book, one of my favorite books by my pal C.S. Lewis.

He has a book called The Great Divorce, and the stories about the divorce, the difference between heaven and hell. And so the story kind of a synopsis is Lewis wakes up and he's in hell essentially and he gets on a bus that takes him to the plains of heaven and he's with a bunch of other dead people, a bunch of ghosts and these spirits or saints, angels, come down from heaven and basically they're riding across the plane

and they try to convince these ghosts come with us to heaven. Like abandon whatever it is you're holding on to that would lead you back to hell and just come into joy, come into freedom, come into heaven. And one of these people was this woman who just basically can't stop complaining And at one point, C.S. Lewis and his guide, they hear this. And Lewis says this. He says, that unhappy creature, this woman, she doesn't seem to be the sort to me that ought to be even

in danger of damnation. He says, she isn't wicked. She's just silly. She's a garrulous, crabbyal woman who got into the habit of complaining or grumbling. And then his guide, the good, the saint says to he says, the question isn't, if she's a grumbler, the question is whether or not she's a grumble. He says, if there's a real woman there, if there's real person there, even a trace of one, still there inside the grumbling, it can be brought back to life again. He goes on to say this. He says, hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others. But you're still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. I go back to the polo shirt moment where I'm like, stop this now. You even criticize it in yourself

and wish you could stop it, but he says, but there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy the mood, but just the grumble itself

going on forever like a machine. It's not a question of God sending us to hell. In each of us, there is something growing, and it will be hell unless it is nipped in the bud. In other words, you could say, do not practice what you do not want to become. Do not practice what you do not want to become. Because every one of us is creating ourselves into a certain kind of things. Like, for example, we have anger. That's fine.

Anger is fine. But if anger hardens, it becomes resentment. And that's deadly. Or we have desire. Desire is not bad. But if it hardens, it becomes greed. It can become greed. And that's, that's all I think about. That's all I am. I'm just greed. Or curiosity. Curiosity isn't bad. But if I just have this constant need to see or need to look, that can harden, it can become lust. Or the curiosity that's just, I just have the need to taste. That can harden and it can become gluttony. Or the curiosity, I just need to try it.

And that can become this chronic dissatisfaction. Or even just think of something like gossip. Do you have any relationships in your life where that's all you do? That if you didn't have other people to talk about, you'd have nothing to talk about. That's all the relationship is. It's not a friendship. gossip ship. Or even negativity, you ever find yourself in the place that I found myself in that trap that day,

but find yourself, you realize, wait a second, the only thing that comes out of my mouth is something negative. And I realize, I have become what I practiced. I chose this so often that it's no longer a choice. I preferred this over and over that now it's holding on to me. Even when we know it's time to let go, even when we know it's time to stop holding on, we can defer letting go so much that we put it off so often that now we can't put it down. We put it off so often that we can't put it down.

I'm just used to it. Even like your pace of life, just used to it. So a couple of years ago, like two years ago, I was at a small private school in Indiana, known for its football team, and it's Irish heritage called Notre Dame. I just have to say, okay. And I had lunch with a bunch of students,

and at one point the students were saying, they were asking the question, they said, isn't, isn't it more stressful now to be a college student than ever before? Isn't there more pressure on students now to be in college than ever before? And we talked about it a little bit, and they kind of expressed their frustration over all the anxiety they had and all the stress they had over all the pressure they had. And I was trying to be sensitive, you know, a nice priest and stuff. Like, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Anyways, at one point, this young man who was graduating, he kind of announced to the table that he had recently been hired as a senior in college by the premier investment bank in the world. And he kind of set it off as one of those kind of humble brags, like, oh, by the way, you know, hired by someone. And everyone on the table was like, oh my gosh, that's incredible. It was a pretty great achievement. Because apparently to get hired by this, the premier investment bank in the world, it is more difficult to be hired by them than it is to get into Harvard or Yale. Less than 4% of the people who apply get interviews.

He got hired, which is awesome. And he kind of threw it out there, like, we got hired by this bank. And I kind of looked, I was feeling salty, feeling saucy. And I said something like, oh, so you just, you don't really care. about your pace of life. He's like, what? And I said, you just got done complaining for a while now about how stressful undergrad is

and how much pressure you have as an undergrad. And you just signed up to be hired by a company that expects 80 to 100 hours of work out of you every single week. Now, here's the deal. I like high achievers. If you want to work 80 to 100 hours a week, two thumbs up.

That's my life. So, but you just got done complaining about undergrad. and now you just hitched your wagon to this thing, because you don't know when to stop. We defer putting it down so often that there's a reason why they call them golden handcuffs. Because it's a pretty sweet deal, because starting pay at that company is 110 plus

without the bonus included, and the bonus is at least half that. Golden, for sure. But handcuffs, for sure, too. You know, it's true that the chains of habit are so light. Actually, say, like, the chains of habit are too, light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken. Chains of habit, we just get used to, are too light to be felt until they're too heavy to be broken. St. John of the Cross, he said it more like this. He said, give a bird. A bird that's held by a strong wire rope or a slender

and delicate thread ends up the same. It can't fly. Whether a bird is held by a strong wire rope or a small, thin, delicate thread, it doesn't matter. because the end result is the same. It can't fly. But I've put off, I put this off so often that I can't put it down. I've deferred doing something about this so much that I'm now stuck

and I'm the rich young man. And that could be anything for us, right? That could be, I can't let go of my wealth. I can't let go of resentment. I can't let go of jealousy. It just drives me. I can't let go of gluttony. I can't let go of my pride or my lust or my negativity or my need to have influence

these things that I'm holding on to or holding on. to me. So what do we do when we're stuck? And this is the answer. There's good news, by the way. Oh, three, nine-tenths diagnosis, one-tenth, one-tenth solution. But there is hope because that hope is in the gospel today. And hope is in one key line that Mark wrote down. And the hope is in the line that says, Jesus, looking at him, loved him. And if you find yourself stuck, you find yourself realizing I've preferred this so over and over. I've deferred this over and over. And what I'm holding on to it is now holding onto me.

If you find yourself like a slave, here's what, tonight, Jesus, looking at you, loves you. And so this, whatever this is, has a hold on me. So what do I do? Simple. You hold on to him.

What I've been holding on to is holding on to me. So what do I do? Hold on to him. What I preferred and what I've preferred? I've deferred so much. There are so many chains holding me, so I can't break them. I am not strong enough to break some of these chains that are actually in my life. So what do I do?

I hold on to him. That's why, years ago, this priest told me this one line that just changed my entire life. Because I was experiencing this frustration of, like, I can't break freesome from these things. And he said, listen, he said, listen, he said, serious sin and serious prayer cannot coexist. One will kill the other. Serious sin and serious prayer cannot coexist. One will kill the other. So if you find yourself in this place where you're stuck, you find this place where, like,

I can't break free, the answer is keep holding on to him. And I've got to say, you might not realize it, but he'll give you freedom. It's the last thing. I know I, like, talked about myself a lot tonight. I apologize for that. But when I was younger, but when I was younger, I was really angry. like all the time angry like I had a really, really bad temper

and I hated it hated it a lot but I couldn't do anything about it there's nothing I could do to change it I remember one time I was at my parents' place on the lake and and I'd blown up I'd done something inside the house with my siblings and especially with my little sister I just blew up and man I was just so ashamed of myself

I remember walking outside and the rain was just coming down It's like one of those like downpour, rains, just torrential downpour. The kind of where you step outside and you're instantly soaked. And I stepped outside and I was instantly soaked. And I remember walking down the stairs toward the lake and I walked on the dock and I walked to the end of the dock. I didn't even stop. I just like kept walking off into the lake and I was fully clothed and I just like.

And it wasn't even trying to get away from my family in the house. I was trying to get away from me because I hated it. And I couldn't change it. I remember standing in the lake. You know, the water's coming down. It's coming up. was coming down and it's like, God, what the heck? God, please, just, I hate this in me.

I just do something about this. And I just felt so powerless because it had a hold on me. So all I did, I was just like, all I can do is I can just keep holding on to you. All I can do is just keep showing up and praying. And that's hard too because, gosh, you know, your family sees you go pray and then they see you come home and be a jerk. But that was all I could do. Because here's a question.

How do you stop being angry? How do you stop being jealous? How do you stop resentment? How do you stop greed? How do you stop lust when it's just like there's all these chains in our hearts? And the answer is you just keep holding onto him. Then what do you do after that? You keep holding onto him.

So years later, I got ordained and, you know, fast forward. I'm a priest now. And I went on to lunch with my little sister and with someone that you knew in high school who was a religious sister and a physician. Her name is Sister Mara, and at one point Sister Mara said to my sister Sarah, she said, Sarah, what's the biggest thing you've noticed about Father Michael since he was ordained? He became a priest.

My sister thought for a second, and she said, well, he used to be angry all the time, and he used to be really mean. And now he's not angry anymore. And that's the biggest thing I think I can say about him. And she said that, and I realized, oh my gosh, that's true. true. I didn't even realize it. The thing that I've been holding on to me was broken, was gone. Not because I was good or strong, but just because I did what he asked me to do, which is just keep holding on to him. And this is the truth for you, too. I discover this thing, and I know you will

too. Here's the thing, he already loves you. You don't have to convince him to love you. You don't have to convince him to help you. Don't have to convince him to care about you. He already loves you. you are holding onto him and that's what matters and the day is going to come when you realize that the one that you're holding on to is the one who is holding on to you