Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 10/9/22 Growing Through the Motions: Start With Why

Episode Date: October 8, 2022

Homily from the Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Our Why is a Who. We can know exactly what to do and how to do it. So much of our lives can be spent doing more and more, but never knowing exactly why. But if the reason behind our actions is Jesus, then we can truly be free to love every time we say "yes" to our Who. Mass Readings from October 9, 2022: 2 Kings 5:14-17 Psalms 98:1-42 Timothy 2:8-13 Luke 17:11-19

Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this in other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you.

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke, chapter 17 verses 11 through 19. As Jesus continued his journey to Jerusalem, he traveled through Samaria and Galilee. As he was entering a village, ten lepers met him. They stood at a distance from him and raised their voices saying, Jesus, master, have pity on us. And when he saw them, he said, go, show yourselves to the priests. As they were going, they were cleansed. and one of them, realizing that he had been healed, returned glorifying God in a loud voice.

He fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. He was a Samaritan. Jesus said in reply, 10 were cleansed, were they not? Where are the other nine? Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God? Then he said to him, stand up and go. Your faith has saved you.

The gospel of the Lord. So I was talking with one of the students earlier, a freshman, and you know, you kind of get to know someone, and she was just kind of asking them the normal questions you get to know people with. And so I just asked, you know, so what's your major? And she was like, I don't know. Okay, well, what do you want to do after college? I don't know. I was like, well, what would you like to do after college?

I don't know. I was like, well, what are you interested in? I don't know. One of those things was like, well, what are you doing here? Was kind of my next question. And she said, well, it's because I, she's like, well, it's because what you do. That's what you do. It's the next step.

You go to college. So that's what I did. And that is, this, I'm not picking on her at all. This is super common. It's one of the reasons a lot of times we show up anywhere is because I'm here because it's what I'm supposed to do. I'm here because I'm supposed to be here. It's just, this was the next thing.

And that makes sense, right? So much of life, we know what to do. I mean, even when it comes to school, think about that, like, okay, preschool, then kindergarten, after kindergarten, then first grade, then second grade, and then like, yeah, 13th grade, here we are. And then you get done with 16th grade and like, I don't know what to do next. So grad school, 17th grade. It's just, it's the next thing because why? Because I know what to do.

And in fact, you know how to do it. Probably everyone here who's in college, you know how. You know what to do and you know how to do it. That's really, really good. The problem is that we can live our entire lives like that. We can live our entire lives just showing up and doing what we know to do and doing how we do it. Just we get up and what do we have this job?

Well, I don't know. What I have? I know how. That's why they haven't fired me. Or they haven't found out that they don't know how. But that kind of sense is like, I mean, relationships. I don't know why I'm here. I just know what this is.

I know how to do this. And when it comes to church, when it comes to faith, this is one of the problems we can slip into. I know what to do. Like last week we talked about this, right? We started a series last week about how easy it is to feel like I'm just going through the motions. Like when it comes to life in general, but when it comes to specifically our lives in Christ, when it comes to our relationship with the Lord, when it comes to this,

what we're doing today in Mass, it can really, really easily feel like I'm just simply going through the motions. And I know what to do. Go to Mass on Sunday. I know how to do it. Like when you walked in, you knew all the moves like genuflected, Manit the Sound of the Cross. You know all the lines. Like I say, the Lord be with you.

You know what to say. you know what to do, you know how to do it. There's this author, his name is Simon Sinek. Simon, he's also a speaker, and he talks about this. He highlights that this is how so many people live, right? They know what to do, they know how to do it. How many corporations work this way? How many businesses operate this way?

They know what they're doing. They know how they're doing this. But he says, but the great ones, the great individuals, the exceptional individuals, the exceptional organizations, the exceptional businesses, they don't just know what to do. They don't just know how to do it. They know why.

In fact, he has a whole talk in a book called Start with Why. That if you don't just want to be like everyone else who just goes through the motions, what we have to do is not focus on just simply what do I do and how do I do it. We have to ask the question, why am I doing this? Why am I going through these motions? Because we proposed last week that, you know, the series isn't called going through the motions. The series is called Growing Through the Motions. because I like puns, A, and because B, that's one of the things.

Like, this is what we have to do. And I know that going through the motions, it can feel hollow, it can feel empty, it can feel meaningless, it can feel mundane. Because what do we do? This is how life goes, right? You get up, you go to work, you come home, you go to bed, and then you get up and you go to work, you come home, and you go to bed, and you get up, and you go to work, and you come home, you go to bed, and then it's the weekend, and you don't get up.

You stay in bed. But on Monday, you get up and you go to work and you come home and you go to bed. It's this whole series, a whole cycle that we have of just lather, rinse, repeat. Lather, rinse, repeat, that's our entire life. And it can feel, again, so frustrating. There's something negative about going through the motions. Something negative about going through the motions. But think about that, lather, rinse, repeat.

What do you do? What do you get when you lather, rinse, repeat? Yeah, you go through the motions, but you also get really clean hair. Like, the motions work. There's something negative about the motions, but there's also something necessary about the motions. Without them, we can't grow. With them, we actually can. And this is one of the reasons, right? This is one of the reasons why we need to know why. Why are we doing this? Because at some point, it will be difficult. At some point, it will, if it hasn't already, it will become monotonous.

At some point, it will feel like we're simply going through the motions. And at some point, We'll look at what we're doing and we can ask the question, what does this even do? Like, what good is this? What use is this? It seems so meaningless, seems so mundane. What even good is it? That's why I think of like the first reading today, right? Second Kings. We heard the story. It said, Naiman came out of the Jordan River and he was healed of leprosy. And that was really neat. I don't know if you know the backstory behind Naaman. So I'll tell you. So the backstory behind Neiman is,

Naiman is a general of the Syrian army. He is an enemy of Israel, more or less. But Naiman is awesome. Like, Neiman is wealthy. Naming is powerful. Naman is successful. In fact, Neiman has an incredible reputation for being a pretty good guy. But Naman had a massive problem.

He had leprosy. Which basically means he had a death sentence hanging over his head. And all of his wealth and all of his power, all of his success, all of his being a good man, could not do one thing to help him. So at one point, as the story unfolds, Neiman has a servant girl in his household. And this is actually a young girl that he kidnapped from the Jews. It's a Jewish girl.

And this kidnapped victim, who's now a slave of Neiman, said, well, actually, there's this holy man in Israel, in my homeland. He could heal my master Neiman. So Neiman's like, great, I'm doing this. And so he saddles up everything. He gets together his retinue. We heard that word. a good Bible word for a bunch of stuff, and he heads down to Israel.

And as the king of Israel is sitting there coming, here's Naiman who says, yeah, I'm here because I want to be healed from leprosy. And the king of Israel just freaks out. He's like, what I can't heal leprosy? What am I going to do? He just wants to pick a fight with me. And that's when Elisha, the man of God, says, listen, king, don't worry about it. I got this.

Send him to me. As Naiman is journeying to Elish's place, Elisha's sends out his apprentice and says, tell Naiman if he wants to be healed of lepros. that he needs to bathe seven times in the Jordan River. So that's what he does. He tells him, Damon, if you want my, the man of God, Elisha says, if you want to be healed of leprosy,

bathe yourself seven times in the Jordan River. And Neiman hears this, and he is ticked. He is, he is furious. And basically he freaks out because he says, back home, we have crystal clear rivers. Back home, we have crystal clear lakes. You guys, I don't know if you've ever seen the Jordan River. It's disgusting.

Like, that's where Jesus was baptized. Yeah, it's still gross. that doesn't change anything. You go to the Jordan River, and it's this creek that is just muddy and dark, and people swim in it and stuff, and I'm like, I don't know. I'll watch you and realize that something holy happened here a couple times, but like I'm not touching that water. So, Damon says, what the heck?

What's this going to do? What use is this? Which is where a lot of us are, right? I show up, what good is this? What does this even do? Because I think we're captivated, maybe just as Americans, but maybe as people, we're captivated by two things. One is, if there's going to be a change, it's got to be a big change.

Like, in fact, the apprentice to Naiman, he even says to Naiman, he says, well, if the man of God asked you to do something extraordinary, you'd do it right away. Like, if he asked you to climb up the top of the mountain and, like, dance around, you totally do it. But he just asked you to do something simple, something that seems meaningless, something that seems mundane. Why wouldn't you just do that? We are captivated by the idea that transformation happens all at once in these big, big moments instead of repeatedly going through the motions, or we think that greatness is just inborn. I don't know if you ever thought about that. Sometimes you just think that greatness, excellence, genius is something you're either

born with or you'll never get. There's a man, his name is Laslo Poulgar. Laslo Poulgar was a Hungarian educational psychologist. And he was convinced. People, the mindset, that was, listen, genius is born, not made. And Laslo Polgar challenged that assumption. He had the theory that genius was made, not born. But he didn't know how to go about an experiment, so he said, well, here's what I can do. He put out an ad in papers all throughout Europe,

looking for a woman who is willing to meet him, willing to marry him, willing to have children with him so that they could basically have an experiment on their children to see if they could create geniuses. I'm not saying this is an ethical thing, but it was the 60s. So he does. Actually, this woman from Ukraine named Clara

answers his ad, and he's like, yeah, they met, they married. In 1969, they had their first daughter, Susan. And so here's Lazily, said, okay, we need to find something, some area of challenge where our daughter could become a genius. So it couldn't be something athletic

because maybe she would have, you know, physical prowess, maybe she wouldn't. But that has to also be objective. And so he settled on chess. He says chess is pretty objective and you don't necessarily need to have physical prowess. But his theory was if you take any healthy child, you can create a genius. So he just set out trying to train Susan in chess. When she was about four or five years old, he took her to the, like the local chess hall. And all these pretty, pretty talented masters at chess were playing chess. And he said, can my five-year-old daughter play against you all? She cleaned all of them, out. In fact, Susan went on to become the first woman in history to win the world chess championship.

He became the first woman in history to become a chess grandmaster. She gave him the first woman in history to win the chess triple crown. She's incredible. Her next sister, her next daughter, was born in 1974, Sophia. Sophia was the, she was like the black sheep of the family. She only got as good as, I think, maybe top 100 in the world. She had one point, she had this game she played against a number of chess grandmasters all at once. It was in the city of Rome, and they called it the sack of Rome, where she defeated all of these chess grandmasters single-handedly by yourself, is ranked as one of the top five chess games in history.

But both Susan and Sophia were outstripped by their youngest sister, Judith. In fact, when you read about Judith, it talks about how there's not enough room. Every article I read about her says that, You can't begin to describe all of her victories, all of her accomplishments, all of her achievements. Among those achievements, she was the youngest person in history at the time to become a chess grandmaster. She became a chess grandmaster at the age of 15 years and two months. She was the first woman to ever beat the world reigning championship, Gary Kasparov, who had previously said that there was no way a woman could ever beat the world championship,

world champion, so that actually you can watch this online, watching her beat him, and he is very upset and he gets up and walks away. It's kind of funny. But Judith, she is the only woman to ever cross a score of 2,700 ELO points. So if you know what chess is, you know that's really big. And if you don't know what chess is, that's really, really big. So what happened was Laslo was able to demonstrate that greatness, genius, was something you didn't have to be born with.

And it wasn't at the result of a massive movement. It was a result of going to the motions. again and again and again. These girls, they said that our father never made us play chess. At first they played because they just liked playing. But when they had the idea that, wait a second, we can not just play chess, we could be great at chess. Then that became the goal.

That became their why. It's not just play chess, but to be great at chess became their why. And I just wonder, I wonder how many of us believe that greatness is possible. like how many of us actually believe sitting here tonight how many of us believe truly that God actually wants greatness out of us

that not only just in achievements in whatever your field of study is how many of us really believe that God wants you to be a saint and not only that but that it's actually possible for you to be a saint we say like yeah I mean I get it I can be a saint

I mean if I was born in the Middle Ages and I didn't have an iPhone I could totally be a saint but are we convinced that God actually wants you to be a saint and not only that, but God wants you to become a saint by simply doing the same things that every other saint ever did in history. What we're doing right now, we're in the middle of mass, right now. This is exactly the same thing that every single saint

that God ever raised up that transformed their world, they did the exact same thing that you're doing right now. And yet, of course, what does it feel? Does it feel like you're doing something saintly? Does it feel like you're doing something impressive? No, it feels so mundane, it feels so ordinary, feels so meaningless. Like, I don't know, hopping in the Jordan River seven times. But what happened when Neiman got in the Jordan River seven times?

We heard the story today. He came out and he was completely transformed. You know, every Christian, since the beginning of Christianity, when they heard the story of Neiman, all of them were like, oh my gosh, that's baptism. This seemingly mundane, seemingly meaningless thing, the same thing innocuous. I mean, if you've ever seen a baptism, every year we have people in RCIA

and they go through the process, they're becoming Catholic, and they get baptized at Easter Vigil, and it's one of those things you realize you, this is a huge moment you say, you guys can't wait until Easter Vigil when you get baptized, and what happens? They stand right there,

they kind of lean over slightly, and the bishop takes a little thing with water and says, I baptize you in the name of the father, trickle, and of the son, trickle, trickle, and of the Holy Spirit, trickle, trickle, and they stand up, and they dab their forehead with a towel, and it's like, ta-da!

It's hugely impressive. It looks like nothing happened. And yet, every time someone gets baptized, not only are they washed clean of original sin, not only are they made into a son or daughter of God, not only are they filled the power of the Holy Spirit, they are completely transformed. And yet on the surface, it just looks like meaningless action.

Or we even think about the other sacral, think about going to confession. Again, remember Neiman, he has all this strength, all the power, all the success. He's a good guy. It has one massive problem that he can't fix himself. And this is all of us when we go to confession. However blessed your life might be, however successful or powerful or fun or friendly, or how many people love you, when we find ourselves falling into sin, we realize there's something in me that I can't fix on my own.

So what do we do? We're going to one of these little rooms on the side. You say some words and then the guy waves his hand over us. Like, am I done? Am I good? It doesn't, again, it doesn't feel like anything's happening. And yet, in that moment, not only are all of your sins wiped away.

In that moment, not only are you completely reconciled to the Father and to the church, in that moment you were given a special grace, a special strength to get up and move forward. But it feels like I'm just going through the motions. And lastly, here, you have at Mass. We show up every Sunday. In fact, talk about duty, every Sunday is a holy day of obligation. And because of that, it can end up feeling like we're simply, going through the motions, just mundane and basic, negative, but yes, necessary.

But if you have a why, if you find a why to all of this, I'm telling you, I'm promising you, that going to confession will never, ever again feel like going through the motions. If you have a why, I'm telling you, I promise you that going to Mass will never, ever again feel like going through the motions. So maybe here's a why. I go to convention, why? Because I know this heals me, so my why is I want to be healed. It's good why.

Or maybe I go to Mass because I know that it gives me life. And my why is I want to be filled. It's good why. Maybe I go to confession and I go to Mass because I want to be holy. And so my why is I want to be holy. That's good. To want to be healed, to want to be filled, to be holy. Those are all really, really good whys.

But why did Naiman go into the water? Yeah, he wanted to be healed, but that's not why he went in the water. He went in the water because Elisha told him to. Even the ten lepers. Why did they go show themselves to the priests? They were on their way to show themselves to the priests because Jesus asked them to. And so, yeah, while I want to be healed, I want to be holy, I want to be filled, those are all good whys. The deepest why, though, the deepest why, the most powerful why is actually a who.

We're here at Mass. Why? Because at the last supper, on the last night, his last night on earth before he died, Jesus took bread and said, take this all of you and eat of it. This is my body. Took a chalice filled with wine. Take this all of you and drink from it. This is my blood. Then he said, do this. Why are we here? Because he asked us to be here. And again, we can fall back into duty. We can fall back into obligation. That might feel like a trap. Or, or maybe it feels like love. How many people here have ever seen the movie The Princess Bride?

Okay, good, cultured, we're cultured. What wonderful. So the movie The Princess Bride opens up with his grandfather who's reading his grandson, who's sick, a storybook. The story's called The Princess Pride. So then as he starts telling the story, it opens up on the two main characters. The female protagonist's name is Buttercup, and the male protagonist, he's the farm boy, his name is Wesley. And as the story begins, Buttercup keeps telling Wesley what to do. And every time Buttercup tells Wesley what to do, you know, farm boy, he has, you know, fetch me this.

Wesley always responds with three words. What are they? As you wish. Farm boy, make me some tea, as you wish. Farm boy, put some logs on the fire, as you wish. Farm boy, fetch me that picture, as you wish. And then it says, the day came, though, when Buttercup realized that every time Wesley was telling her, as you wish, what he was really saying was, I love you. Do this for me. Okay. I will, I love you. Do that for me. Okay.

As you wish, I love you. See, every time he did what she was asking him to do, it wasn't obligation, it wasn't duty, he wasn't a slave, he was in love. And every time he acted and said, as you wish, every time he did what she asked him to do, it was an act of love. And the same thing is true for us.

His why was a who. I'm only doing this because she asked me to. And our why is a who. We're here. The only reason we're here, not just to be healed, not to be holy, not just to be better. The reason why we're here is because he asked us to our why is a who, even if, this is the last thing, even if you don't know him yet.

Because I know this. I know that there are so many people who are raised in the church who have not yet met Jesus. So many of us who have not yet encountered the who's one in our hearts. We don't know him yet. If you don't know him yet, can your why still be a who? I think it can. I was talking to with a woman recently and she said that, you know, when she was growing up, She, like, physical activity, physical fitness wasn't really a big thing in her life. When she got to college, one of her Bible study leaders had asked her, okay, God willing, if you ever have kids someday? Do you want to have to be stuck on the sidelines just watching them do their thing?

Or would you rather be out there with them, be present to them, and moving and living and acting with them? She really thought about that. Yeah, would I rather, if I don't live a life of health, I will be stuck on the side lines, but if I actually changed some of the way I live, I'll be able to be there with my kids, be present to them. And so because of that, she started watching, just being attentive to what she ate. She started being attentive to how she moved. And if you were to look at her, you'd say, oh, this is what she's doing, this is how she's doing it. But you'd miss the point because

it wasn't what she was doing, how she was doing it, it was who she was doing it for, it was why she was doing it. Her why were who's who had not yet. even been born. She had not yet met her whose. And yet those who's who's who are in her future were powerful enough wise to change her entire life. And so if you find yourself here tonight, you're like, I don't yet know Jesus. Can he be my why? Yes. And this is the, as I said, last thing. We're asked to come to Jesus in the sacraments. We're asked, he asks us to come to confession. He asks us to come to Mass. And we show up and we do what we know to do. We do it how we know to do it.

But our why has to be a who. That I'm here because he wants me to be here, that you're here because he's asked you to be here. So we show up and we do these seemingly meaningless, seemingly mundane things, knowing that they're actually meaningful actions oriented towards a worthy goal because the goal is him,

because the why is love. And we know that we can actually grow through the motions because our why is a who.