Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 11/11/18 Come to the Altar: Hollow Worship

Episode Date: November 12, 2018

Homily from the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time. Offering first-fruits reveals and increases the depth of trust. The temptation to experience worship as hollow or empty is universal. God’s solution for our hearts is the invitation to offer Him our first-fruits. Sacrifices that are intentional, consequential, and representational have the power to transform our hearts and fill up what might be hollow worship. Mass Readings from November 11, 2018: 1 Kings 17:10-16 Psalms 146:7, 8-9, 9-10Hebrews 9:24-28 Mark 12:38-44 Download the Homily Study

Hi, this is Father Mike Schmitz. I hope that you're enjoying this series come to the altar. It's been a huge blessing for me, knowing these things, and so it's such a huge honor and privilege to be able to try to do my best to communicate some of these massively important things about what it is to truly worship in the Mass to all of you who are listening. I hope that you're getting blessed by it. This is the last little kind of blur before the homily that we're going to do for a while. As you may have heard last couple podcasts we've done, that this upcoming November 15th, this Thursday of this week. We have our Minnesota Give to the Max Day. It is what we use at UMD Bulldog or Bulldog Catholic or U.M.D. Newman. Up here in Duluth, this is kind of the major fundraising day that we

have throughout the course of the entire year. Basically, it's where we just ask all those people who have been blessed by this ministry, if they prayerfully consider supporting this ministry, not only with their prayers, but also financially so that we can keep reaching out to more and more students and bring more and more souls to Christ not only through the on-campus ministry, but also through the online ministry. So if you are at all interested, if you would at all be willing, if you wouldn't mind, asking the Lord if he is asking you to pray for us in a special way, like to kind of devote your prayers and fasting, maybe your your mass to this ministry, or if the Lord's calling you to support us financially, that would be massively beneficial.

for us. Again, give to the max day is November 15th. If you want to support us, you can go to givemn.org. It's g-I-V-E-M-N, as in Minnesota.org. You can do that any time. You don't have to actually give on that day. You can schedule your gift for this Thursday. If you miss the date, it's not like, oh, shoot, we don't, we couldn't benefit from that anymore. You could go to bulldog Catholic.org. That's our website, UMD, Duluth is, or, you know, University of Minnesota Duluth are the Bulldogs. So we are bulldog at Catholic.org. Just go to that home page and there's a little button that says donate any time of the year if you feel called by the Lord to do that. And over the course of the last year, I have met a number of people who have let me know that,

oh, you know, I met them here or there. And they said, oh, I just want to let you know. I've supported your ministry financially. And oh my gosh, you have no idea. In those moments, I'm just, I want to kind of cry. I want to fall to my knees and me to speak. Thank you so much. Those of you who have prayed for us, those of you who fast for us, and those you who have given us financial resources, you have no idea the lives that have been changed because of your gift that we could not have done. Because when I first got here at UMD, we had virtually no financial support at all, except for what the diocese was offering us, which was great, but it wasn't very much.

And to see the way the ministry has been able to grow because of the generosity of people like you who are listening, I just, I can't even begin to thank you. So when people come up to me and say, hey, I sponsor or support you guys financially, I'm just like, oh my gosh, thank you so much. If you're willing to pray about what the Lord's asking you to do this Thursday or any time throughout the course of the year, I just thank you so much as well because you don't even have to pray about this. You don't even have to give, obviously.

But those of you who are willing to ask the Lord, those of you who are willing to give, I'm just so grateful for your willingness. So I'm going to stop this little note, and hopefully you can enjoy this homily. It is coincidentally, honestly, I'm just telling you it's not, was it planned this way. It's about first fruits and giving your first fruits, but that has nothing to do with Minnesota give.org unless you wanted to, in which case, hey, why not? Thank you so much and God bless. So a number of years ago, we had a missionary who proposed to another missionary.

It was a wonderful and joyous occasion. That was very formal. It was really great time. I remember looking at the ring for the first time and going like, dude, you got her an incredible And he was like, yeah, you know, you know, that's what they say, you know, three months salary, this whole kind of thing. It's a big deal. And he said, but it's, you know, I don't know if you know this, but like the whole diamond

ring industry is kind of a racket. I'm like, yeah, you kind of got ripped off, you know, the overcharged. He's like, no, it's actually a racket. And so I had to do some research. And I found that out that actually is. Like the diamond ring industry is, it's, here's the story. So in the 18, up into the 1800s, like diamonds were pretty rare. You find them like maybe a couple dry riverbeds in India.

That was it. but in the mid to late 1800s in South Africa, they found these massive diamond mines, like tons and tons of diamonds. And so basically it flooded the market, and diamonds were no longer precious. They were no longer rare. They were no longer valuable. They lost all worth because they had so many diamonds. So what this ingenious corporation did called the De Beers Consolidation Diamond Corporation,

they basically consolidated all diamonds in the world. And then they said, we have the whole supply. we can limit the supply of diamonds. We can actually manufacture, we can make them more valuable by limiting how many diamonds are in circulation. But still no one was buying diamonds. In fact, about 1930s, the average diamond engagement ring

was about 80 bucks, so you're thinking about shopping, gentlemen? If only you were 80 years older. So what they did, what the De Beers people did is they came to New York City and they hired this marketing firm that started one of the most incredibly successful marketing campaigns in history. Because here's the De Beers people. They had the supply, but there was no demand.

And this marketing company created a demand by basically marketing diamond engagement rings as something you had to have. And there was this massive thing. They didn't market like a certain brand. They didn't market a name. They just said, you need to have diamonds. Diamonds have become the symbol of true love. Diamonds are the symbol of devotion.

Diamonds are forever. Thank you, two of you. Diamonds are forever. But, I mean, they went to high schools. They gave talks to senior boys. Like, guys, if you ever get serious with the woman, to demonstrate your love for her, you need a good diamond engagement ring,

and you need to look for the four Cs or five Cs, when you know, quality cut, color, all those things. And they went in and talked to all the ladies. And like, if you're a guy, if you really cares about you, he's going to get you this diamond engagement ring, and it's going to cost three-month salary. That's the baseline. That's kind of the idea.

They would go around and they would highlight the diamond engagement rings on the celebrities, on royalty, on anyone they thought was important. And in the space of just a few years, the beers had the supply and they had artificially created a demand. The most successful thing, I think, is how they came into Japan. In the 1960s, Japan still had arranged marriages. And so there were only 5% of marriages that had engagement rings because it was a... Western thing and not a Japanese thing at all. The beers came in at the end of the 1960s. And within 24 years, it went from 5% of Japanese couples having diamond engagement rings

to over 60% of Japanese couples having diamond engagement rings. Right now, it's a multi-billion dollar a year industry in Japan alone. They created a market where there wasn't even any market. That's genius. It's also kind of creepy. But the reality, of course, is that the diamond itself, it's worth nothing. Like it really is it's worthless

There are so many of them that it's just another rock Now here's the problem Not not if you're one of those guys Like dude I've been shopping for the last Hover long I just spent three months salary What are you trying to say

Or maybe you just got engaged And now you're like covering up your left hand Like I was so proud of myself walking in I have to tell you this I know all this to be true I know it's a racket Like I know the whole thing is just manufactured, but I also know myself, and if I were to get engaged, promise I will never

get engaged. But if I were to ever get engaged, I know myself, I would go and get the best ring I could possibly afford. Like, I know it's a racket, but I would, and I know it's three months salary. Here's what I would do. I'm telling you right now, I would say three months salary, not good enough, six months salary. This is, why? Because I'm a chump. That's why, but also because of love. I would still do it. I would still get the best ring I possibly, even maybe more than I can afford, because that's what love does. Like, that's what love wants to do. You might even say, like, yeah, but she can't eat it.

It won't feed anybody. It won't help anybody. But this is a sign of my love for you. So why wouldn't you give the best you possibly could give? Even if it's not worth anything, but it means something. What does it mean? It represents the sacrifice I'm willing to make for the person you love. It represents it's a sign of your love.

And the more thought you put into it, like the more effort you put into it, even the more it costs, the less hollow it is, less empty it is. What could really be an empty symbol and an empty gesture, an empty offering, ends up not becoming empty at all. Why? Because of love.

Because love actually fills up that empty gesture, that hollow sacrifice and transforms it into something else. We're in the second part of this four-part series called Come to the Altar, all about worship. And we talked about last week how Catholics, we come to Mass, right? We come to worship because the heart of religion is worship. We know that. Heart of worship is sacrifice. We know that.

But so many of us, we come to worship and we don't know how to do it. We come to worship, and what do we experience? How many times have you ever walked away from Mass being like, I don't know, I just felt nothing. It felt empty to me. Even though we know that this is the worship that God gave us to give him. the mass. He gave us the mass to give him this worship, and yet we can still walk away and say, I know it's not empty, I know it's not hollow, but it felt empty, and it felt hollow. If that's ever been in your experience, you're in the exact right place, and actually you're not the first,

because all the way back, it's almost the very beginning, that same kind of experience of, I come before you, God, with all these gifts, but it feels empty and it feels hollow, and it feels I should be giving you something more, and God's like, I know, I know why. It's kind of hinted at in the letter to the Hebrews, the second reading today, where it says the high priest enters into the temple with blood that is not his own. Think of the thing about this, he enters into the temple with blood that's not his. It didn't cost him anything. So what happens?

It feels empty. So this is one of the reasons why, from the very beginning, in the Old Testament, God asks his people, when you come worship me, yes, you're going to offer up what I'm asking you, but I'm also asking you to bring this specific thing with you, and it's called the first fruits. Have you guys ever heard that phrase? The first fruits? So what it is, in the Old Testament, God would ask,

okay, if you were a farmer, so you raised wheat, you would give God the first fruits of your crop. So the first 10% of the wheat you took in, the first good 10%, you would bind it up and you'd bring it to the temple as an offering. It would be a sacrifice. Or maybe you raised grapes. Same kind of thing.

The first good batch, 10% of the, that, their first fruits, you'd gather that up and bring it to the temple, that'd be your sacrifice. You raised animals. The first-born male, you would take that male, and you'd bind it up and you'd bring it to the temple, and that'd be your sacrifice. That's the first fruits. The idea behind this is a willingness to give your first fruits, before you got any second fruits, right off the top, before taxes, the willingness to give God your first fruits, it reveals the depth of trust. and dependence you have on God. It reveals how much you trust him.

Because you think about this, your heifer, heifer is the female one, right? Your heifer, yeah, okay, good, thank you. Your heifer just gave birth to the firstborn male. You just gave it away, you just gave it to God, you gave God your first fruits. There might not be a secondborn male. So your willingness to give the first fruits reveals,

do I really trust God or do I not trust God? willingness to give your first fruits reveals the depth that you trust God and depend on him and it does something else. It also increases the depth of trust. Imagine year after year, bringing in the crops, taking that first 10 percent, those first fruits and saying, God, I'm going to trust you again and next year, I'm going to trust you again, and the next year I'm going to trust you again. No, okay, why would God need first fruits? Not because he needs wheat, not because he needs grapes, not because he needs the firstborn. He doesn't need any of that any more than your fiancé. needs a diamond ring. Actually, even less than your fiance needs a diamond ring. Does God

need any of those things? Why does he ask for the first fruits? Because we need it. Because if we don't give God our first fruits, our worship is going to feel empty. Our worship is going to feel hollow. Think about what it would do to your life and to your heart and to my heart. If instead of giving God our first fruits, we just regularly gave him our leftovers. I think this is how most of us live with God, right? A lot of times our relationship with God is he doesn't get my first fruit, he gets whatever's left over. The God, he gets my time when I don't have anything else to do. The God, you get of my stuff, you get whatever I don't want anymore. God, you don't get my first fruits, you don't get my best, you get whatever's left. What does that do to our heart? What does that

do with that relationship? Ladies, imagine long before the engagement ring, the first date, the guy invites you on a first date, takes you know, and takes you to a really nice restaurant, And then you're sitting down, he's like, no, no, no, I'll order for the two of us. Like, oh, wow, very suave. And he orders one meal. And the meal comes, and he's like, listen, here's the deal. We'll split this. I'm going to eat until I'm full.

And you can have whatever I don't want. Run, don't walk, away from that relationship. If a guy was going to say, listen, you can have the string beans. Why? Because I don't really want them at all. Is that a recipe for a great relationship? Is that a recipe, in fact, for a 10? terrible relationship. Absolutely. But think about how we live our lives when it comes to God.

God, I know you're calling me to pray. I'll pray when I'm done with everything else. God, I know you're calling me to give and to serve. I will serve when I don't have anything else to do. God, you get to have all you want from what I don't want anymore. No, no, God, seriously, it's, my life is yours as long as I don't have any use for it. What does that do to our hearts? That's one of the reasons why God says, no, give me your first fruits. Now, first fruits, clarify this. First fruits doesn't mean like the first eight hours of your day need to go to God in prayer. What I mean is when it comes to scheduling even prayer in your day, God gets your first fruits. That means that's the first thing you schedule. When it comes to Mass, it means for the weekend,

the first thing I schedule over the weekend is, okay, which Mass am I going to go to? Am I going to go to? That's giving God your first fruits. It's giving Him first dibs. Not your leftovers, not the rest, but you're giving him the best. So here's a big question. How do I know if I'm giving God my first fruits or not? Like, how can I, can I tell at all? Well, yes, you can, because there's three markers for a thing to be first fruits. First fruits are always going to be intentional.

It's always going to be consequential. It's always going to be representational. That's the longest word. Representational, right? So it's always intentional, always consequential, and it's always representational. When it's intentional, what I mean is it's not an afterthought. It's not like, oh, God. God, you can have whatever I've got on hand.

It's like when you play, you ever play collection roulette? Collection roulette is when they pass the basket around, and you know you have like a dollar, a $5 bill and a $20 bill in your pocket, and you're like, okay, God, I'm going in. Whatever you want, you can have, like, let it not be the 20, not be the 20. You also don't want the one, because you know if it's a $1, you have to go back in there.

That's pretty cheap. So like, you play that collection roulette. It's like, whatever I have on hand, God, that's not intentional. That's giving as an afterthought. But something that's intentional, something that's decided upon, it's planned ahead. I don't know if any of you've ever donated to locks of love. I know a lot of people who donate to locks of love, like you grow your hair out on purpose so that when you go to your haircut, you can donate that for, you know, wigs for someone who's lost their hair or whatever.

What would it be like to have growing your hair out, you know, all you're doing is going in to get a haircut? And you're like, no, just chop it all off. And the person is saying, well, as long as I'm chopping it off, do you want to donate it to locks of love? You're like, oh, yeah, sure, why not? That would be nice. That would be a nice thing for you to do. But it's not intentional. So it's also not meaningful because it's just like an afterthought.

Versus almost every time I've ever spoken with someone who's donating to locks of love, typically here's how the conversation goes. I say, wow, your hers getting super long. It looks awesome because I'm a very complimentary person. So yours getting super long looks awesome. And like, oh, yeah, I'm growing it out so that I can donate it. If you've ever done that, you've ever had a friend who's done, that's the same thing. I'm growing it out so that I can donate it.

Like this is intentional. This is on purpose. This is planned. This is decided upon. This is not an afterthought. I'm doing this so that I can give it away. You know what happens? The day you go in to get the haircut, the day you go in to actually give it away, it doesn't matter how you feel then.

Like I got my haircut and I donated it to someone who really needed it. But I don't know. I didn't feel anything. It doesn't matter. Because the intention was there, and you offered up a meaningful sacrifice because it was intentional. It was your first fruits.

Because that's the beauty about having this intentional kind of first fruits. Even if you don't feel it in the moment, it's significant across the board. So if you plan the proposal, it doesn't matter what you felt. If you planned the wedding, doesn't matter what you felt.

If you planned the ordination, it doesn't matter how you felt that day. A little quick story about my ordination. So the date was, It was June 6, 2003, in case you wanted to send me a card. And I remember waking up that morning, and I only had two goals that day. One was to get ordained. The other goal was, I had always seen this black and white photo of John Paul II.

He was a couple of popes ago, but when he was a young priest, and he was in a kayak, and he was praying his office, praying his bravery. It's a morning prayer kind of thing. And I'm like, dude, I want to do that the day of ordination. So that's what I did. Went down to the lake, got in the kayak, paddled the cross, prayed it in the reeds. It was like super cool. No one was there to take a photo, but whatever, I'm over it.

At one point, though, I look behind me to kind of get the rudder all set because it's one of those kayaks. And I ever do this where you turn your neck and all of a sudden there's like chakong like in the side of your face and it goes like from the top of your head like across to your collarbone. And usually it goes away in like two minutes. This stayed the entire day. I couldn't like turn my head to the right for the entire day. So here I am at my ordination. Like this is a big day I've been planning my whole life for this day. This is the day I get ordained a priest of God.

And I'm like, my neck hurts so bad the whole time. I mean, I was present. I knew what I was doing. But I'm like, if I was crying, it was not tears of joy. It was because at one point in the ordination, right, all the priests who are in the diocese, they give you an embrace, they give you a hug. And every time they hugged me, it was like, oh, oh, I was like, tears are flowing. I'm like, this hurts so bad.

But it was intentional. It didn't matter. It didn't matter if at the moment I felt it in the, I felt it in my neck. It didn't matter if in that moment I felt it in my heart because I had decided. long before that one day. This is what I'm going to give, Lord. I want to give everything this day. That's the difference about giving God our leftovers

versus giving God our first fruits. If you plan on it, it doesn't matter. So that first fruit has to be intentional. It also has to be consequential. What I mean by that is it has to cost something. It's consequential. It has to cost something. It has to be something that actually matters to me.

For the first fruits to be consequential, it has to do something. So again, go back to the ancient world and you give your firstborn male calf away to the Lord. You offer that as a sacrifice. If you don't get a second one, you're in a tight spot.

There's a consequence to that. It's actually living in risk. First fruits are all about intention, but they're also about living in risk. Because there's a consequence to this. I might not get this back. And so what happens with our first fruits is it has to change the way we live. It has to be a consequence.

It has to be consequential. Now, here's the little key thing. It's intentional. It's consequential, but it's also representational. And what I mean by that is sometimes we can approach the sacrifice. We can approach the gift. And we can think, I'm offering this thing so that I don't have to offer myself. Like I'm giving the first fruits so that I don't have to give myself.

I'm going to give God this time of prayer so I don't have to give him my heart. I'm going to give God this gift of money so I don't have to give him my heart. I'm going to give God this work so that I don't have to give him my heart. That's the wrong way looking at it, by the way. In the gospel today, what happens? There's this poor widow and she comes forward. She doesn't give a lot. But Jesus looks at her and he says, I mean, she gave the least, but she also gave the most.

Why? Jesus said she gave all she had at her very self so those two copper coins weren't God I'm giving you these copper coins instead of my heart but Lord I'm giving you these two copper coins as a sign of my heart

these representationales now a lot of times little Bible lesson here in the Bible there's this history of something called a substitutionary sacrifice So the substitutionary sacrifice is the idea of, I just said, I offer this thing instead of myself or in place of me. So come before the Lord with this lamb, to the temple. And I'm giving this to God instead of myself.

So he's going to take this sacrifice and receive it instead of receiving me. That's not bad, it's not terrible, but it's incomplete. Because here's Jesus. We hear about it in the letter to the Hebrews today. that Jesus entered into the heavenly realms. He actually entered, why? When he offered himself. Sometimes we think that Jesus was on the cross

or that Jesus gave himself to us in the Eucharist at the last supper in place of us, like instead of us. That he's saying, okay, Father, I know your wrath, your vengeance, like you want to take it out on these sinners out here, but no, no, he's the son. So he's like, no, no, take it out on me. Sometimes he can imagine that that's what happened.

That Jesus is saying, Father, I know, your raft needs to pour it out on somebody. You need your vengeance on somebody. So instead of taking it out on them, just take it out on me. I'll suffer in place of them. That's not actually accurate. Because the father didn't need to take his vengeance out on anybody. In fact, Thomas Aquinas talked about this and he says,

it wasn't how much Jesus suffered on the cross that saved us. It was how much he loved on the cross that saved us. This wasn't about the father pouring out his vengeance. on Jesus, this is about the son pouring up his love to the father. So it's not necessarily substitutionary sacrifice, it's representational sacrifice. Meaning, it's not instead of, it's on behalf of. I don't know that makes any sense, but that sense of being able to say, here's Jesus saying like, no, no, Father, I'm offering up myself, not instead of them, I'm offering up

myself on behalf of them, for them. And this is what we come when we come to the Mass. what we do. We offer up representational sacrifice. What I mean by that is we represent the sacrifice of Jesus back to the Father on behalf of ourselves and on behalf of everyone you love. We represent the sacrifice of Jesus back to the Father. That's what was going to happen in a few moments. We're going to lift up the sacrifice of Jesus in the Eucharist back to the Father. Say, Father, this is the gift of love that Jesus gave for us. We represent it to him on behalf of who? On behalf of yourself and on behalf of everyone you love. That's one of the key secrets of the mass

that we miss and we just end up watching the mass instead of worshipping at the mass is what we're supposed to do is say, okay Lord, I'm giving my first fruits. I'm laying myself down on this altar because there's things in my life that are overwhelming. There's things in my life that are too powerful for me and I've tried, I've done my best, but Lord, it is bigger than me. I need your help. And so I'm going to lay myself down in this altar as well. representational on behalf of myself. But I also know this. You are all people who are here who love a lot.

And you have people in your life that you've tried to help, people in your life that you've tried to lift up, people in your life that you've tried to get out of bad situations. And it's like, God, nothing's happening. What do you do at the Mass? You lay them down here. You offer the sacrifice on their behalf as well. If you've ever felt like you just watch,

the Mass instead of worshipping in the Mass? You're about powerless in the Mass? One of the reasons why is because we don't realize that we're representing the sacrifice of the Son to the Father, but we're also laying down everyone's needs on this altar for what, on their behalf? Because first fruits have to be intentional. They have to be consequential and they have to be representational. So here's the thing. When we bring our first fruits, that's a tangible way of connecting with what Jesus has done and with what Jesus has offered with what we offer here. It's not watching, it's worshiping. This is the last thing. Let's go back to engagement rings. Wedding rings. They have to be, if they're going to mean what they're supposed to mean, they have to be intentional. Have to be consequential and they have to be

representational. That's why it's not instead of, it's not take this ring instead of my love. Again, if that happens in a wedding, run, don't walk. It's not the groom comes before the bride. The bride comes up. Be over the groom and says, take this ring instead of my fidelity. Nope. Take this ring instead of my heart. It's representational. Take this ring as a sign of my heart. Take this ring as a sign of my love.

Take this ring as a sign of my fidelity. That's what actually in the wedding, right, it says that. Take this ring as a sign of my love and fidelity. On behalf of my heart, on behalf of my love, on behalf of my fidelity. And then what do they do? They go and live it. What they say at the altar is, is this is a sign of my love, and now I'm going to love you.

This is a sign of my heart. Now my heart is yours. This is a sign of my fidelity. Now I'm going to go be faithful to you. It would mean nothing. It would be empty. It would be hollow. If a bride said to a groom or grooms had to a bride, take this ring instead of my love, instead of my heart, instead of my fidelity, and then went and lived their own life. That would be empty. That would be hollow. And you don't want that. So when we offer up this first fruits at this Mass, the same thing is true. You don't say take this instead of my heart, Lord. We say take this as a sign of my heart, Lord. Now I'm going to live this, the rest of my life like this.

When we give the first fruits to our Lord, it reveals our trust. When we give the first fruit to our Lord, it increases our trust. When we give the first fruits, it helps us to stop watching and start worship. And that's why we offer the sacrifice of Jesus on this altar with our own first fruits. And every time we do, we worship. And every time we do, we give him our heart. And every time we do, we're transformed. Every single time we're willing to take his sacrifice and ours and come to the altar.