Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 11/01/22 All Saints

Episode Date: November 1, 2022

Homily from the Solemnity of All Saints. Live so that this day will one day be your feast day. The Feast of All Saints is the day when all of those who are in Heaven are remembered and we ask them to intercede for us. They are the great "cloud of witnesses" that surrounds us and cheers us on. Mass Readings from November 1, 2022: Revelation 7:2-4, 9-14 Psalms 24:1-61 John 3:1-3 Matthew 5:1-12

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.

with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Glory to you, Lord. Chapter 5, verses 1 through 12. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and after he had sat down, his disciples came to him. He began to teach them, saying, Blessed are the poor and spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the land. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the clean of heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness,

for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you, when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me. Rejoice and be glad. for your reward will be great in heaven. The gospel of the Lord. So this piece of all saints, there's some of the kind of the same beats

we just take every single year. It's one of those that is, the question has come up like, what's a saint? And I think it's just really important for us to understand. There's kind of three ways we talk about saints. So in the scriptures, St. Paul says anybody who is baptized, anyone who is in Christ, is a saint. Because why?

because saint means holy and holy means to be set apart which means every every human being who's been baptized has been set apart if you've been baptized you're been baptized you're set apart you're made holy yet consecrated to the lord for a purpose as remarkable so yeah saint means anyone who's baptized essentially all the holy ones also saint does mean the capital st p.mptu period someone has gone through the canonization process of becoming a saint being declared a saint so st maximilian colby is st. St. Teresa Vavala, those saints are declared saints. That's another kind of category of saint. But in between those, between like the everyone who's baptized and those saints who went through the canonization process, there's this middle group of saints. And that basically means anyone

who's in heaven. And that's what today is all about. You know, St. Teresa of Avala, she has her feast day. St. Maximilian Gulp, he has his feast day. But for all those people who are in heaven right now, all those who live their lives for the Lord, we have this one day where we commemorate all the saints and what God has done in them. And that's one of the things, too, like the question can ask, people sometimes will ask, okay, it's okay, Catholics, I get it. So you have saints meaning these three different things, great. But why do you spend so much time, why do you spend so much emphasis? Why do you spend so much attention on these saints? And I think that's a great question. The answer is, why would you look at a sculpture by Michelangelo? Why would you just look at Michelangelo?

Why would you spend so much time looking at a painting by Van Gogh? Why would you just look at Van Gogh? The reality, of course, is that when we look at Michelangelo's sculpture of David, or we look at Van Gog's paintings, and we praise them, we're not just saying that the sculpture is amazing. We're saying the sculptor is amazing. We're not just saying the painting is amazing. We're saying the painter is amazing. So when we praise God for his saints, what we're doing is we're saying, God, you did that.

Because here's what God does. God takes ordinary, normal people, and makes them extraordinary. That's what it is to be a saint. to be completely natural, but to have God's grace inside one, you live an actual, really, truly supernatural life. Because the saints are literally just like us in so many ways, with one mark of difference. They said yes to grace. In fact, again, one of my favorite definitions or descriptions of a saint is it's so easy.

A saint is someone who says yes to God and then just never stops saying yes. So sometimes I think we think that being a saint is beyond our reach. But a saint is someone who says yes to God and then just never stops saying yes. And we have so many different examples of saints throughout the history of the church. People who live lives of great innocence and great purity and people who live lives that were just really, really broken. One of those examples of someone who lived a life of great innocence and great purity, St. Thereseeux of Lissue.

You probably, I know you guys know who St. Thereseeux who is St. Tres who, and entered the convent at the age of 15, that she had appealed to the Pope to enter, I think, even younger than that. And he said, no, we made her wait until 15. And then, which looks like, okay, well, she was holy from the beginning. That she didn't need any help. Well, Terese needed help simply to live. What I mean by that is she got to the convent because she had, you know, big aspirations of being a saint. She got there early, young, because she had great aspirations of being a saint. And she got there and she realized, I don't have what it takes. She got there and realized, I don't have the strength to even pray like the other sisters here. I don't have the

strength to be a great saint. I just don't have it in me. But rather than being discouraged by her weakness, she was encouraged by the strength that came from Jesus. Again, her weakness didn't discourage her. Her weakness, her, just that sense of like, she would fall asleep in prayer. And, you know, you might think, okay, if that's the least of your problems, like, let's move on to someone a little more intense. We will in a second. But if that's the least of your problems, then, or that's most of your problems, then we need some talk to about someone else. But for her, that was a sense of like, no, she wanted to love the Lord with everything she had, but she didn't have the capacity. She didn't have the ability to do this. Rather than become discouraged,

rather than quit, she kept trying. But she also knew this. She also knew that, okay, Lord, when I fall asleep in prayer, I'm going to place myself as your beloved daughter in your arms, O Father. Again, which is one of those things where I think what we would do is we beat ourselves up. We'd yell at ourselves. We'd call ourselves all sorts of names and say, like, why can't you be better? And Trez, she did try. She said, I'm going to take a nap and lay down horizontally. Like, she kept trying to pray, but she knew. But Lord, in my weakness, you still love me. Lord, my weakness, in fact, you might even love me best when I'm weakest.

And so if I fall asleep in prayer, I'm going to let you hold me as a loving father would hold his beloved daughter. Because that's who I am to you. I'm your beloved daughter. That's what St. John says in that second reading. He says, beloved, we're God's children now. What we shall be, we don't even know yet.

In heaven, we don't even have any idea yet. But right now, you're God's child. And so if you fail, what do you do? You allow your father to pick you up. if like Terez we fall asleep what do we do? Don't beat ourselves up but we allow our father to hold us and that's what she did. She allowed God in her weakness to hold her.

In fact, she even described her weakness. She said the elevator had just been invented at this time that Terez lived. It's one of the images that she had. She says some people are incredible. Some people are great mountaineers. Some people are strong and they're powerful and they're adventurous and they can climb up mountains.

She said, but I'm little and I'm weak and I could never do this. So what I'm going to do is I want to go to the top of the mountain though, but that's because she still was adventurous. I want to go to the top of the mountain. What I'm going to do is I'm going to let the Lord in his grace be like the elevator that brings me up from the base of the mountain to the summit. And he wants to do this.

She was convinced of God's love for her. He wants to do this because that's where he wants me. That's where he wants me on top of the mountain. He wants me in heaven and he wants you in heaven. And so here's Therese, who had this incredible confidence that even though I'm too weak to climb up the mountain, even though I'm too weak to scramble my way to heaven, the Father loves me so much that he will lift me up to heaven

if I just allow him to. And that's the same thing is true for us. In your weakness, God wants heaven for you. Rather than become discouraged at your weakness or discourage at your failures or your sins to allow the Lord to heal you, to allow the Lord to lift you up, to allow the Lord to forgive you.

Again, a saint is someone who says yes to God and never stops saying yes, which means that on days when you show up for prayer, that's you saying yes. Keep saying yes. In days where you fall and make a shipwreck of your life and you need to go to confession, he's inviting you to confession. Just simply say yes. At any stage in our lives, whether we're doing really, really well or really, really horribly, we can always say yes to God.

And that's exactly what a saint does. Nothing more and nothing less. Even in her weakness, Teres was able to say yes to the law. Lord. Another saint, this woman named Mary, St. Mary of Egypt is her name. St. Mary of Egypt, she lived in the early centuries of the church and she was from Egypt. Funny enough, her name was Mary. But St. Mary of Egypt, she described her life and she described she was a prostitute and she said that she was a prostitute not because she needed money. She said she was not a prostitute because of any kind of social economic situations. She said she was a prostitute

because she liked big a prostitute. At least she claimed that in her later life. At one point, Mary of Egypt heard about this group of people who take a pilgrimage, they were going to sail across the Mediterranean to the Holy Land. And so she just decided, I'll go with them on this pilgrimage. So she got on the ship and she even on the way, even on this pilgrimage with a bunch of other pilgrims, going to the Holy Land, a bunch of other Christians, going to the Holy Land, she basically paid her way on that ship by prostituting herself. to the other pilgrims.

So again, brokenness upon brokenness. When she arrived in Jerusalem, when she arrived in Israel, she said she gave herself fully over to all this stuff. And just kind of, again, because as she said, I just wanted to. And we all know this. We all know that scripture says, everyone who sins is a slave of sin. So Mary, she didn't know she was a slave at this point.

She thought, this is just what I'm choosing. I know it goes against everything that these Christians teach. I know it goes against everything that is right and good and holy. I don't care. Because everyone who sins is a slave of sin. Mary was a slave of sin, and she didn't realize that. At one point, there's this massive crowd going into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. That's the church where Golgatha is, where Jesus was crucified,

and where the tomb is where Jesus rose from the dead. And so with this crowd, they're walking through this door to enter into the church the Holy Sepulcher. And at one point, she tried to enter it, and she was prevented. Like she couldn't, there was like an invisible hand keeping her back from being able to enter the church. And so she thought, maybe I just need to fight harder. So she tried fighting harder. Maybe I just need to wait for the crowd to thin out.

She waited for the crowd to thin out and then approached the door and she could not walk through it. There was something preventing her, like physically preventing her from being able to pass through that door. And she just realized in that moment what kind of a slave she was. In that moment she realized, here's what I've done. I've actually separated myself from the Lord so fully I don't have access. She was a baptized Christian, but she realized I don't have access to this holy place. And she said she stood outside in this courtyard and just wept.

and wept, maybe finally coming to realize what she had done to herself that this repeated choice of sin had made her a slave and she had no longer had access to the Father, had no longer had access to grace. She was underneath an icon of Blessed Virgin Mary. And she said she just looked up at this icon, looked up at this image of Our Lady, and she just cried out asking for Mary's intercession,

asking that Mary would do something to help her break through and enter into this holy place. And then she wept and as she prayed, something changed and she got up and was able to walk through this door by Mary's intercession. And she went through all the things she needed to do, right confession, all the things being reconciled. Because why?

Because a saint is someone who says yes to God. In that moment Mary began saying yes to God. she then after she's reconciled with the Lord she then went out into the wilderness she became one of the one of the desert mothers and she spent the rest of her life in prayer and in penance

she spent the rest of her life largely in solitude but she also spent the rest of her life battling she said for 17 years regularly she was tempted to go back to remember all the wine she drank in Egypt regularly tempted to go back

back and have even, she's like, he wouldn't even drink water, but she was tempted so strongly to drink wine. For 17 years, she was tempted so strongly back to those sexual encounters. For 17 years, she just battled against this. And then at some point, there was another step where the Lord just brought her even greater freedom. And she left the, lived the reign of her remainder of her life, continuing to draw near to the Lord, continuing to, continuing to say yes to him. until the end of her life. And at St. Mary of Egypt, St. Trezlov of the Sioux, two very, very different lives. They started out and lived very, very differently, but they ended up very similar.

They both ended up glorifying the Lord. Because they both ended up saying yes to God and not stopping saying us to God. And this is for all of us. This is what God wants for every single one of us. There's a scene in the book, The Great Divorce, which is one of the favorite books by C.S. Lewis, and it's the difference between heaven and hell. And at one point, these ghosts, essentially, from hell are on the plains of heaven or like a kind of a version of purgatory.

It's kind of something like this, where they have a choice, where they could go on to heaven. It's a whole thing. It's not really Catholic. It's not really a Catholic idea about this, but it's C.S. Louis, it's great. At one point, C.S. Lewis himself is being given a tour, and he sees this woman. And actually, he hears her long before. he sees her because he hears us this music and these voices of young people just praising and singing and dancing all these animals and they're in this procession just praising this person and this woman

starts is walking behind all these young people all these animals and at one point c s louis says to his guide in on these plains of heaven he says wait is that meaning is that merry because there's so much joy there's so much life there's so much so many people surrounding this woman and praising praise to God for what he's done in this person's life, that C.S. Lewis is convinced this must be Mary. And his guide says, oh, no, no, that's not her. That's just Jane Smith or whatever. Anyways, that's just Jane Smith that lived on Canterbury Road. Just this simple woman who just loved whoever came to her door. This simple woman, whenever a child came to her door and needed something, she would give him something.

Whenever an animal came to her door, she would take care of the animal. Just this woman who is given over to love of God. Just this woman who said yes to God. And here's what God had done in our life. See, most of us, we will not ever have our own feast day. Most of us will never be known for when we said yes to God or how we said yes to God. And that's why we have this All Saints Day,

because this is the day that we realize, we have been, we have been surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses. And this is the last thing. And there's something I always say on All Saints Day because it's just so powerful for me. It's just one of those incredible things. In Hebrews chapter 12, the author says, he's just in Hebrews 11, has described all these great saints,

people in the Old Testament. And he says, therefore, since we're surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let's persevere and running the race that is set before us, keeping our eyes fixed on Christ. Again, shedding every encumbrance of sin that clings to it. us, but keeping our eyes fixed on Christ, let us persevere in running the race. And I always think, whenever I think of that, I always think of, it's a story I would tell a thousand times. I apologize if you heard it a thousand times. But it is, back in the day, my family and I, we used to do this

thing called the Iron Man Traathlon. In the Airman Trathlon, it's a 2.4 mile swim, a 112-mile bike, and a 26.2 mile run. And so you do all that thing in a day. In fact, in fact, the race starts at 7 a.m. and you have to finish the race by midnight that same day. And so where we would go, one of our favorite places to do this race was in a Pendicton, British Columbia. So one year, I think there must have been, I think, five or six of us in our family who had done the race. And so one of the things we had, you do is when you finish the race, you go home and get showered and whatever and come back to watch the finish. Because people are finishing up to midnight. And so here in British Columbia, it was awesome because like not only

the whole town would come up for this race, but people would come from all from all over the place just to cheer people on. So as you're running that last, you know, part of the marathon back into town the last six miles or so is there's people on the side of the road and as you get closer and closer to the center of town down main street it's like shoulder to shoulder like multiple like two deep three deep four deep and then what happens is you get the last hundred meters and the last hundred meters you take this uh 90 degree left hand turn left hand turn and then you walk you come through this and there's like bleachers on either side of the road and there's like all this music playing these loud speakers and there's like big you know finish sign over it so here we are and you know you run down take a

take it left and last 100 meters sprint to the finish and there's people saying, calling your name in and whatever, and everyone's cheering. It's great. It's awesome. So here we are. My family, we all got done with the race, took a shower, got some neat. Come back to the finish line. It's like 10 o'clock or so. We're sitting in the bleachers and just cheering people on as they're coming in. It's really party atmosphere. It's getting later and later and later. At one point, it's about 1145 p.m. And the guy and the announcer says, you guys, there's a guy out there right now and he's two miles away from the finish. Let's bring him in. And so what people did was they jumped off the bleachers and they ran across the little park behind us and started running down the

race course to run the guy in. I did not. I was not one of those people because I was like, A, I'm tired. I just did a whole race today. B, he's got 15 minutes to run two miles in. I don't think this can happen. He's been racing since 7 a.m. this morning. There's no way this person, whoever they are, can run these last two miles in 15 minutes. Well, A couple minutes passed, a bunch of time passes. And then it's about, you know, seven minutes to. And the guy gets on and says, you guys, he's less than a mile away. I'm like, that's crazy.

He did, you know, this second to last mile in like eight, seven, eight minutes. That's remarkable for the end of the race. More people jump off the bleachers and they run across the park and run down the road. I remain seated still. And at 1159 or so, I could hear back off to the right. I remember this so clearly, hear back off to the right, this like this, this, this, growing rumble that kept getting louder and louder and louder and louder. We're looking down this main street and all of a sudden this guy comes

cruising around the corner, he's like leaning into the corner and he's just sprinting for everything he possibly has is he's running on these last hundred meters of this two four mile swim. It's 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run and behind him filling up the entire road is this like the formation of all of these people filling up everything and running behind him. He ran across the finish line at 1159 and 47 seconds. He finished the race by 13 seconds, surrounded by all these people. I mean, everyone was going nuts. Everyone was just crying and cheering. It's so huge. But I remember thinking, this is Hebrews chapter 12.

When the author says, we're surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses. These are people who themselves have run the race. They can't run the race for you. And the saints, they can't run the race for me. They can't run the race for us. They've already run their race. run their race, but what do they still do? They still cheer us on.

They still urge us on. They still intercede for us. They still helping us. We're surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses. That's what we're celebrating today, this Feast of All Saints, this great cloud of witnesses that continues to cheer you on, that continues to intercede for you, that continues to run behind you. They cannot run the race for you, but they can run the race with you because they want for

you, what they have. What they have is this feast day. what they have is the Lord himself. What they are is they are saints in heaven right now. And today is their feast day. What they want is for this day to one day be your feast day. That one day your children and your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren on this day will say, this is mom's feast day.

This is dad's feast day. This is our grandpa's feast day. This is our grandma's feast day. The feast of all saints. This is their day because they ran the race. They kept the faith. And now this is their day.