Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 10/29/23 Lost: Love Is the Way

Episode Date: October 28, 2023

Homily from the Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time. You are called to be love. When a person is lost, they need to know where they are. We know: you are here. But we also need to know where we are going and how to get there. We know that as well: we are called to be saints and the way is love. Mass Readings from October 29, 2023: Exodus 22:20-26 Psalms 18:2-3, 3-4, 47, 511 Thessalonians 1:5-10 Matthew 22:34-40

Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. 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 Matthew, in chapter 22 verses 34 through 40. When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together and one of them, a scholar of the law, tested him by asking, Teacher, which commandment of the law is the greatest? He said to him, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. The gospel of the Lord. Wait you to have a seat. So we have spent the last four, three, four weeks

talking about just what it is to be lost. And one of the things just kind of recap that in order to not be lost, right, in order to be un-lost, it's a couple things. You need a couple things. Actually, let's back up a little bit. I think this is kind of fascinating. I don't know if you've ever reflected on the reality

that you can't be lost if you don't believe that there's a destination. I don't have ever thought about that. Like, that you can't actually ever be lost if you don't really believe that there's a destination. I mean, I know those people out there who are like, I'm a journey person, like, yeah, me too. It's great. Journey is great because who you become on the journey is very important.

But you have to go somewhere too. Like, the journey without a destination doesn't mean anything. The journey without a destination is pointless. It's fruitless. It's destinationless. So if you have no destination, you can never be lost, which conversely, if you have a destination, you can be doubly lost, right? Because I might not know where I am.

I might not have any idea where I'm going and triply lost. And I have no idea how to get there. Because that's what it is to be lost, right? One or all three of those things. I don't know where I am. I don't know where I'm going. I don't know how to get there. Now, a couple weeks ago, we said it was kind of.

a simplistic answer, but I think it's a true answer to, like, when it comes to the question, where are you? The answer is you are here. Like, that's, that's true. And we can overcomplicate it by like, what does that mean? No, but you're here. Like, this is your life. This is who you are today, like who you are right now is who you are. And this is where you are. This is your life right now. But the next two questions are very important. Like, where are you going? And how do you get there? You know, we've been talking about this when it comes to this series on Lost. we've been talking about the truth that if you're a Christian, you know that you have been, and every person who's on the face of this earth has been created on purpose.

That there's no one who is an accident. No life is an accident. That you know that every person who's alive, they've been created on purpose. And if you've been created on purpose, that also means that you've been created for a purpose. Another way to say it is you have a call. like God has a call on your life. And as Catholics, what we like to do is like to take normal words and make them in Latin. And so that means that you have a vocation because that's basically what that means, right?

The word call in Latin is vocare. So you have a vocation. And so one of the things we have to realize is that's the destination. You have a call. So when it comes to vocation, let's get a little kind of catechesis for the night. So there are three senses of vocation. Like three ways we can use the term vocation. The first one is this.

It's what they term the universal call the holiness. What that basically means is that every person who exists, whether you are agnostic or atheist, whether you're Jewish, Muslim, Christian, whatever. If you're nothing, you have been created with a destiny. God has a destiny. Now, not fate, right? Faith is you don't have a choice. Destiny simply means you've been created with a destination.

God has a destination in mind for you. That the universal call the holiness means that God wants every person who exists to be with him forever in heaven. Like that's your destination. That's the ultimate call. That call, I'll tell you this, that call will. never change. That vocation will never change. Even if you make a shipwreck of your life, God will never change that call. If you're breathing, if you're vertical, God's call, that first sense of call

will never ever change. You have been made for this purpose. This is the destination. This is the destiny. We can say no to it. But that's what God wants. To live with him forever in heaven. Never never changes. Now, the second sense of call is what we typically think of when, as Catholics, we think of vocation. The big four, right? Marriage and family, priesthood, consecrated, single life and religious life. That's the second sense of call, and that might change once or twice in a person's life. And then the third sense of call is, like, what is God calling you to today? What's he calling you to in this season of your life? And that changes all of the time. It's always changing. But one of the things we have to realize is that when we're discerning that middle

vocation, right? The thing that a lot of us are like, I just want to know, like, am I called to be a priest, to be married, to be single, my call to be a religious sister. Like, a lot of times, we don't know how to get there. And so we discern, I think we discern, sometimes discern that wrong. I think sometimes we discern the wrong thing when we're looking at, God, what are you calling me in this middle vocation? So, example, years ago, years ago, there was a young woman, and she was in marriage prep with her husband, and it was a good place to go to marriage prep with. At one point, it was like two weeks before her wedding, and she wanted to meet one-on-one without without him. And I was like, okay, great, let's talk. We met, and she said, I have a really big

problem. So what is that? She said, I might be called to be a nun. I was like, yeah, you do have a big problem. You need to figure this out, and I'll give you 14 days to do it. No, but it was, I was like, okay, let's talk about this. Like, tell me more. You know, that's always a great thing. Okay, great. Keep going. And so why do you think you might be called to be a nun? And she said, Well, ever since I was a kid, I have always wanted to live simplicity like nuns do, you know? Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to live poverty. Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to take care of people that no one else was taking care of, like nuns do. I said, I listened to some more, so we talked more, and I was like, okay, this is great.

I got news for you. I know a ton of families that live simplicity. Like, I know a ton of married couples who live in poverty. And I know a ton of parents who feed and clothe and take care of people who would not be fed or clothed or taken care of and they call them their children. And so like this reality, of course,

is that she was kind of discerning the tasks. She was kind of discerning like the lifestyle of a religious sister, but like that changes all the time. You might be a nun in not live simplicity or not live poverty or not live that service. But you can live those tasks. No, this is the crazy thing. I think a lot of us,

when we're discerning that middle sense of vocation, that middle sense of call, that's what we're discerning? Like, what's the tasks? What are the tasks I like? What's the lifestyle I can imagine? And that's not bad. But what are we actually discerning when we're discerning that middle sense of call?

What we're discerning is this, not just tasks, not just lifestyle, we're discerning what is the primary relationship by which God will make me into this person that he made me to be? What's the primary relationship, in which God will help me become the person he's called me to be. So in marriage, it's for husband's wives.

Your job is to get each other to heaven. Help your children get to heaven. The main primary relationship for a priest is to be the bridegroom to the bride, like basically to pour out his life for his parish. The primary relationship of a religious sister is to be the bride to Jesus, the bridegroom. And then also to pour out her lives for her sisters or brothers,

like to be a consecrated single person. The primary relationship is this single person in the midst of his community or her community and I'm going to pour my life out for them because realize, go back to the gospel today. In the gospel, the Great Commandment, right? Love God with everything. Love your neighbors yourself.

The Great Commandment has nothing to do as tasks. When it comes to like the Great Commandment, Jesus doesn't say, do this and do this. It has nothing to do with lifestyle. It has nothing to do with check off these boxes. It has everything to do with relationship. Jesus is saying if you want to be the person, God has made you to be. The first thing you need to do, put God first.

The number one relationship of every one of our lives has to be with God himself. And after that, love. The whole thing is love. So we realized, okay, so what's your destination? It's to be a saint. How do you get there? Well, love. That's the answer.

Love is the way. I'm lost. No, no, no, actually, you're not lost because love is the way. You know where you're going. You're called to be a saint. You're called to be someone who looks like Jesus in this world. And the way you get there, the way any of us get there, is through love. So the question we get to ask ourselves is, what is the primary relationship by which we will learn to love?

That's one of the reasons why St. John Paul II. He used to call marriage and family the school of love. Mostly because that's the place where hopefully not a place where, all of us, but hopefully that's the place where we first learned what it was to be loved just for your own sake. Not because you can do anything for your family, not because you bring great benefit to your family, but that should be the first place where you and I learn to be loved for our own sake. And then later on, marriage and family is where we learn to love someone for their own sake. Of course, the problem is a lot of us, we look at, when we're discerning

marriage, we consider marriage to be kind of a self-fulfillment project. Like, this is where I'm going to go to be happy. I got to tell you, marriage is not where you go to be happy. Here's what I always say it like this. I say, marriage is where bad people go to die. Clarify. Marriage is where bad people go to die to themselves

and learn how to love the way God loves. See what I did there? They're like, what the? No, it's true. Because, again, marriage is not a self-as-smovement project. I was talking with this couple. I've been married for years and years, and they do a lot of mentor couple stuff.

And they talked about the three letters of marriage. They said the first letter is what the culture around us says about marriage. And it's a capital A. And what our culture says around us, it's like when you find that person, when you meet them, capital A, here you are, you're united, and they heal all what, everything has broken in you. This person can fulfill all of your longings.

This person is, they're the answer to all your questions. Like, you found the one. You complete me. This whole idea, right? This idea that when you find that person and marry that person, they heal what's. broken, they make up for what's lacking, they answer every question, and then you get married, and you realize they can't heal what's broken, they don't make up for what's lacking, and they

don't fulfill you. And so what happens is that you have the next letter of marriage, and that's a V. Because once you realize that, oh, what, this person doesn't heal me, this person doesn't complete me, this person doesn't provide all the answers for me, maybe I need to go somewhere else and find someone else, or find something else. So the marriage looks like a V. But this couple, they said, actually there's a third letter, and that third letter is realizing that marriage is not a self-fulfilling project. It's a self-offering project. It's not where I go to get something. It's where I go to give another person what they need, and they use the image of the capital H.

So here you are. A couple is united, but they're both pursuing the Lord. They're with united, because why? Because I'm not going to do this life thing alone. I'm going to be united with you, but you're not going to answer all my questions. You're not going to solve all my problems. you're loving you is not going to heal me, but I'm going to be united to with you,

and we're going to pursue God. And that idea behind this whole thing is that marriage then is not going to be the life I imagined. It's going to be the life I get. I know so many of the married couples here tonight, you realize that that's the reality. That the vocation you discerned and the life you're currently living

are not always exactly the same. And so many of us, that is exactly what it is. the life we imagined, the vocation we imagined, and the life we get, the vocation we get can often be completely different. The love that I want and the love that's asked of me might be completely different. Years ago, when I was just a new priest, there's a couple that I came across and long before I was ordained, maybe 10 years before I was ordained, they had met and they fell in love. They were kind of an athletic couple. They were like that sporty spice couple. And they did a lot of trathlons, a lot of marathons together. They did a lot of like cross-country ski

races and this kind of thing where they, that was their first thing kind of joined them together. And so they got engaged, they got married with this idea that like our life is going to be awesome. Like we're going to train all the time together. Like we're going to go to races together. Like we're going to get a hotel room together finally after now that we're married. This whole idea is that the life that they pictured was just this life of just the thing that brought us together at first, like races and training and sports and being active. That's the life we're going to live. Well, two weeks. After they got married, they got into a horrible car accident.

And that bride was paralyzed from the neck down. And the life they imagined and the life that they're currently living are vastly different. For 32 years now, that husband has been loving his wife every single day. For 32 years, he has not been living the life he imagined. He's not been living the vocation he imagined. He has been pouring himself out and living. the vocation he's been called to. This bride, you know, so often,

it's one thing to be the person giving the love, giving the care. It's another thing to be the person who has to receive that. But for 32 years, this bride has received her husband's love on an hourly, daily basis. And she is not living the life

or the vocation she imagined, but she is powerfully, they're both powerfully living. The vocation that they've been given. He's been loving her, and she's received him and let him love her. Why? Because love is the way.

What's the primary relationship by which God will help you become that man or become that woman? Because why? Because our vocations always change, right? The tasks, the thing we're called to will always change. So years ago, the previous Archbishop of this diocese was a man named Archbishop Dennis Schnier. And Archbishop Dennis Schnur comes from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. So at one point, a bunch of years ago, here's just the kid, Dennis Schnur. And he discerns that he's going to be a priest. He discerns God's calling him to be a priest.

He's going to be a priest in like rural Cedar Rapids, Iowa. And that's what happened. Like he was first ordained and he was in a parish down in rural Iowa for two years. And then after he's like, this is my, this is it. This is my vocation. This is what I discerned. I discerned I want to be a country priest. And then after two years of being a country priest, the U.S. Council of Catholic bishops asked him to be their secretary. So he moved. He moved from Cedar Rapids to Washington DC and he spent the next 25 years as the secretary for the USCB, which I never asked him this, but I always wanted to ask him, like, did that tick you off? I always wondered if that bothered you're sitting there after like five, 10, 15 years of being a secretary for the bishops going

like, what? This is not the life I imagined as the life of a priest. This is not the vocation I thought I discerned. But after 25 years of doing that, I think it was 2002 where John Paul II called up Father Dennis Schnur and asked him to be the next bishop of the Diocese of Duluth, and that man became our spiritual father. His vocation didn't change. The primary relationship didn't change. The season changed, the tasks changed, but that primary relationship didn't ever change. Now he's currently the Archbishop of Cincinnati. And again, his, his vocation didn't change because that primary relationship of standing there and saying, okay, I will pour out my life for the people that God has brought into my life. That is the call for every one of us. And I know that

right now you might be like, okay, this whole series is fine. That's great, Father, if you actually know your vocation, but I'm not married and I'm not a priest. And what do I do if I'm single? You know, it's crazy. There's this man. His name was Jan. Back in the 1930s, Jan, he grew up He grew up in Poland. That's why his name is Jan, not John. And Jan grew up in Poland, and Jan's dad was, his father was a tailor. But his dad wanted him to be an accountant because he's like, I'm living life of a tailor, but I think I want you to be even better than me. I want you to be an accountant. And Jan was pretty smart. And so he actually studied, became an accountant. But he then had a lot of like kind of ailments. And I think it was, some people

who know Jan's story, they think it was because that he just, the stress of the job just got to him. And this could be us too, right? This can be, we can have great plans for our lives and like we try to take the test and like, oh man, I can't pass the test. Or we have great, great intentions and we're like, we try to get to that place and realize, I am really trying and really trying and all meeting Allah met with his failure. That was what Jan's life was like. So after trying to be an accountant, he came back to his dad and said, Dad, can I just apprentice myself to you as a tailor? I'll work with you. So dad said, sure, he came back. No, Jan, I don't know what, I don't know what his plans or I don't know what his dreams,

I don't know if he wanted to be married or if he wanted to be a priest. But his circumstances of life made it so that he wasn't able to get married. His mom was incredibly sick, and so Jan just spent, he worked with his dad all day, and then at night he just cared for his mom, who was sick. And because of that, he never had the opportunity to get married. So he found himself, and maybe the situation that a lot of us are finding ourselves

where it's like, no, I liked the different vocation, but I'm not choosing. choosing this single life, but here I am. Now, what's remarkable is that Yon didn't become a bachelor. What he actually ended up doing is he ended up becoming a consecrated single person. And what that means is that he said, okay, God, I'm going to dedicate this singleness

that maybe I didn't even choose, but I'm going to dedicate this singleness for love. I'm not going to spend my free time on myself. I'm going to spend my life on love. So at one point in 1939, 39 in his little town, the priests, they saw the writing on the wall, they saw the Nazis coming in and the communist coming from the other direction. And they said to basically, hey, we're going to get taken out. When the Nazis come in, they're going to take out the priests.

When the communists come in, they're going to take out the priests. And so they asked Jan, they said, Jan, could you please just begin leading the young men in our parish? And he was an introvert. He didn't want to do it. He was like, well, I don't have anything to offer. But they asked him to do it. And so he did. What he did is he started these groups called Living Rosary Groups, where he got groups of 15 men. I had a number of them. Fifteen men here, 15 men here, 50 men here. And he just started walking with them,

teaching them how to pray, teaching them how to love, teaching them how to be a disciple of Jesus. Because that's a big question. Like, if I'm lost, how do I get home? Well, you love. Then next question, love who?

And the answer is, again, from the gospel today. Love God with everything you have, and then love whoever's in front of you. You guys, that's why it's so easy. I think once again, I think sometimes we think being a saint is like so astronomically impossible for us, but it's not. Being a saint is relatively easy because of God's grace. We get into it on our own, but God has given us a grace and then just says, okay, two things, just do two things. Love me first and then love whoever is there. Love me first and then love whoever is in front of you.

That's why the first reading, Exodus 22. God says, okay, if there's an orphan, take care of the orphan. If there's a widow, love that widow. If there's an immigrant or stranger, love that immigrant or stranger. So that's what Yon did. These priests said, Yon, there's these 15 men, these 15 men, these 15 men. They're in front of you. They're there. Just love them.

And so we did. Some of those men died in World War II. Some of those men got married and had families. And because of the love that Yon taught them, they became incredible fathers and incredible husbands. Ten of those men became priests. and one of those priests was a man named Father Carol Voitia who ended up becoming St. John Paul the Great, who actually was instrumental in ending communism.

John Paul once said, I would not have become a priest if it were not for Jan Tirnowski. This single man who said, I'm going to use my singleness, I'm going to pour myself out in love. I'm going to love God first. He prayed four hours a day.

I'm going to love God first, and then I'm going to love whoever is there. And the person who happened to be there was the future John Paul II, who, as I said later on, went on to say, would not have become a priest if it had not been for Jan Turnowski. His call was love because love is the way. And this is the last thing. The last thing, I promise. So I mentioned married people. I mentioned priests. I mentioned consecrated single.

I haven't mentioned any religious sisters. And good thing the Hamings are here tonight or be mad at me. But there is a religious sister, and she's a religious sister that some people love you to say her name. They're like, oh, I love her. And sometimes when you say the name of St. Teresa Lissue, you have people who are like irrationally angry at her. For some reason, I think sometimes because people love her so much that are like, ah, why I ought to. She knew her vocation at 15. That's when she entered the convent.

You're like, well, if I only knew, there's resentment out there. We all know it. But St. Teres is so relatable. Why? Because at one point she wrote this down. She was in her vocation, right, since she was 15 years old. She wrote this down and she said, okay, Lord, Jesus, to be your spouse, awesome.

To be a Carmelite, my union with you to be the mother of souls, that's it. So to be a spouse, to be a Carmelite, to be mother of souls, Jesus, that's awesome. It should content me, but it doesn't. And this is the thing for all of you who are in your vocation right now, all of you who are longing for your vocation at some point. You're like, yeah, yeah, I know I should be okay. I know I should be fine. I know it should content me, but it doesn't.

you're in good company. Here's Teres, who ranted about the fact that, like, I get it. Fine, Jesus, I'm your spouse. Want, want, want. You know, like this? It should content me, but it doesn't. She said, I vision myself. She said, I feel in myself other occasions. I feel myself called to be a soldier, to be a priest, to be an apostle, to be a doctor of the church. I find myself called to be a martyr. I feel the need, the desire to perform all the most heroic deeds for you alone, Jesus. And she's like, I don't know what to do with this. I don't know what to do. Like, I'm not content. I'm in my vocation, but I'm not content. And so she said, I went to the Bible. She started reading the first letter of St. Paul's to the Corinthians chapter 13 and 14.

And she said, when I started reading that, I realized, okay, not all are called to be apostles, not all are called to be prophets, not all are called to all these things. And she's like, fine. It doesn't help me. I get it. I can't do all of it, but I want to. So she kept reading. And she said, I realized, as I was reading 1st Corinthians 14, that there are incredible gifts like faith and hope, but there is one gift that is greater than all of them. She said, I discovered that love is the excellent way that surely leads to God. And at last, when I realized that, I found rest.

She said, I understood that love alone makes its members act, the body of Christ, right? And if this love were to be extinguished, the apostles would no love. longer preached the gospel, the martyrs would refuse to shed their blood. I understood that love embraces all vocations, that love is all things, that it embraces all times and all places. In a word, love is eternal. And so that's my vocation. She said, to be love in the heart of the church. Oh, my Jesus, my love, at last I have found my vocation. My vocation is love. And from now on, in the church, that's what I will be. I will be love. And this is our call. like this is every one of our call.

You are not lost. You're called to be love. That you don't have to wait for a vocation. Love is the way. To do what? To love God with everything you have. To love whoever is there. And to realize that every time we do this,

you are not lost. You are love. And love is the way home.