Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 11/1/23 "All of the Saints"

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

Homily from the Solemnity of All Saints. One day, this day could be your feast day. The Feast of All Saints is offered to us as a day to praise God for all of the unnamed and unknown saints who have run the race well and have entered into the glorious and unadulterated Presence of the true and living God. Mass Readings from November 1, 2023}: 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.

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. 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 will 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. I should have a seat. So the second reading today is just remarkable. Right? It's from 1 John. And in 1 John, he has these words.

And the words are, See what love the Father has bestowed on us, that we may be called the children of God. And yet that's what we are. So one thing, on the Feast of All Saints, on this day, one thing to realize is that the Saints are not saints because they were perfect. The Saints are not saints because they didn't have flaws.

The Saints aren't saints because they figured out all their stuff and like that when you met them, they were just like a plaster statue of an individual, a human being. The saints are flawed. The saints are not perfect. I mean, again, just get this. I don't know how many times you hear stories of recent saints, Mother Teresa, John Paul II, stories of way old saints, St.

Augustine, St. Jerome, all these kinds of saints, St. Teresa Vavila, who, like, they were holy. That did not mean that they were perfect. It didn't mean that they were not flawed. The saints carried. their flaws through their whole lives. Some of those flaws were healed. Some of those flaws were dealt with. They carried their imperfections throughout life.

And some of those imperfections were healed and some of those imperfections were dealt with. It was not for lack of being flawed and it was not because they were perfect. It's not because they made the right decision in every situation that made them saints. What made them saints is exactly what St. John is saying here. In 1 John, Chapter 3.

Again, see what love the Father has bestowed on us, that we may be called the children of God and yet that is exactly what we are. We have to understand this, that a saint is not a saint because they're perfect. A saint is a saint because they belong to the Lord God. That's it. A saint is a saint not because they don't make mistakes,

but because they have surrendered their whole life to Jesus, including their mistakes. And this is something that so many of us can forget because we think that our mistakes, we think that our flaws, we think our imperfections, we think that because we're not there yet, we think that our sins actually disqualify us for me, God's children has qualified us from being God's saints.

But everything surrendered to God qualifies us to belong to Him. Because that's what a saint does. A saint simply surrenders everything to God, including their imperfections, including their flaws, including their bad decisions, and yes, including their sins. This is what we have to understand. That's one of the reasons why when St. Paul writes to various groups of people, the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Ephesians,

He calls them the saints, not because they were perfect nephesus or in Corinth or wherever they were from, but because they belonged to God, because God had, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he had made them his children through baptism. And so they've been set apart. They were consecrated. They were already saints. They just simply had to live it out. It's kind of like this. It's kind of like, I don't know if you've ever had teachers like this. Teachers who, when you come in on the first day, they say, okay, everyone, everyone starts off with an A. Not like everyone starts with a zero. Everyone starts with an A. It's yours to lose in so many ways when it comes. comes to the Lord after baptism, at baptism, he gives us an A. We all have an A. And we get to, we can live that way. And that, again, not perfectly and not without flaws,

not without making mistakes, but we can live it in the sense that I know I have a father. I know he's transforming into his beloved son or his beloved daughter. And as long as I continue to give him whatever I have, my strength, it's his, my success, it's his, my failure, it's his, my weaknesses, they're his. As long as I keep giving him whatever he has, for whatever I have, you still have that A. You're that saint. Let's go over this one more time just because it's really important for us to understand. A saint is not someone who has no flaws or perfection, doesn't make bad mistakes or bad decisions. A saint is not someone who doesn't sin. They strive not to sin. They strive to do their best. They strive for excellence.

A saint is someone who simply says, my strength is yours. My weaknesses are yours. My victories are yours, Lord God, my failures. My defeats are yours. The gift you've given me, they're yours. And the sins that I've committed, they're also yours. See how because of Jesus, it is not just possible to be a saint. Because of Jesus, it's kind of, I don't want to say it like this, but it's kind of easy to be a saint.

Because of Jesus, because he did all the heavy lifting, right? He is the one who reconciled us with the Father. He's the one who poured out His Holy Spirit with the Father to transform us into sons and daughters. of God. So now all we have to do, it's so simple. All that we have to do is let him have it. Our lives, our hearts. We don't have to be perfect. In fact, you've maybe heard this before it, but it's true. I think it was St. Teresa Vavila who said this. Could have been Catherine Siena. They're both really wise women. They're both doctors of the church, saying, God does not love us,

our sins, like that he sees us in a midst of our sins and like, yeah, but still, I love them. They're lovable. God does not love us in spite of our sins. He loves us because of our sins. That God loves us. His heart goes out to us. The more we need him, the more he's willing to give us his love. The more that we're in desperation, the more he pours out his grace. So it makes sense in some ways to pity those who are strong. In some ways, it makes sense to pity those who have never fallen down. In some ways, and not always, but in some ways it makes sense to pity those who have never needed God desperately like you and I have needed him. Of course, it's a grace to stay out of mortal sin, obviously.

The greater grace in some ways is to have fallen greatly, but to have been loved greatly in the midst of that fall, to have become deathly ill, and then to have been nursed back to life by the love of God. Your sins, your weaknesses, your failures do not disqualify you from being a saint. Saints are not saints because they didn't have those things. They're saints because of God's grace. Because they let God's grace touch every aspect of their lives.

That's why we're here today. And that's why we're celebrating this feast today because we have names of saints, but we know that there are just, we heard in the first reading from the book of Revelation, that there are so many unnamed and unknown saints. They're unknown to us, and only unknown to us right now. The day will come and we know all of them.

But every one of them is known to God. And this is their day. This is the day for all those who don't have yet a capital ST period in front of their name. This is their day. And they're cheering you on. They're here. We know that whenever we pray the Mass,

we are surrounded by every saint, we're surrounded by every angel, but also this. We know that the church is one, right? So the church gloriously, church triumphant in heaven, that's the same church as the church on earth. And the same church is in purgatory, right? Church triumphant, the church militant, us, we're on our way, right? We have to keep fighting for the Lord and the church suffering in purgatory.

It's one body of Christ. We're united and they are with us. And we're with them. And we need them. In fact, I tell the story every single whole saints today, but I can't not because it's too good. It's too important for us to realize that here as you're surrendering everything, my weaknesses, says, my strength, God, you get it all. You're not alone. We're surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses.

In fact, that's what the letter to the Hebrews says. He letter to the Hebrews chapter 12. It says, after the author talks about all the great holy men and women from the Old Testament, he then goes on to say, he says, therefore, since we are surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses, right? This is an incredible cloud of people who have said yes to the Lord. Since we're surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that's set before us, while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfector of faith.

And it reminds me of this, again, this, so back in the day, when I used to do like endurance stuff, my whole family did those things. And a number of times we did the Iron Man Rathlons. So the Iron Man Trathlon is a 2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike and a 26.2-mile run. And so my family, that was our family vacation growing up. We would, like someone would train for it,

and we'd all go and cheer them on. So I didn't do all of them. I think my dad has done the most, maybe, my sister, maybe after that, my little brother after that. I did two. But everyone has done more or less everyone has done one. In fact, my in-laws, in order to get married in the family, they had to do a triathlon. At least one Iron Man. I'm serious that you really had to do this. It just worked out that way. I don't think there was a... Back to our story. It's a long race, but it was one of these things where my family would come together.

One of my favorite races of all time was I think we had six of us in the family do this race. We all finished. So you have to start at 7 a.m. and with everybody. And you need to finish the race. 2.4 miles swim, 112-mile bike, 26.12 mile run. You have to finish by mid-minute. night that night. So it's a really, really long day for some people. So what we would do as a family is what a lot of people would do is you'd finish your race. You'd cool down, you know, shower, whatever, get some food, and then go back to the finish line to cheer on the people who are still out there because some people took them the entire time, took them until midnight to finish. And so go back there and it's this big parties. Now, we would go to this place called Penticton,

British Columbia. It's in Canada. I think they have the best Iron Man of all because not only it's in the mountains and it's just incredible, but because the finish, the run route is out, you know, half marathon and back half marathon. So as you're running back into town, they pull out all the stops. Like a ton of people will come to cheer people on. So like, I don't know, five miles to the finish, there's already people lining the streets. And so like those last five miles are really kind of kind of hard at the end of a long day. And so people are cheering you on as you go in. But as you get it closer and closer to the center of the town, it's not just one, you know, shoulder to shoulder. It's like layers of people. And then what happens is the last hundred meters or so is you take a hard

90-degree angle to the left. And then there's like there's bleachers they set up. And there's this big banner and like all these balloons and there's all this music happening. Someone's on the microphone like cheering you in and everyone's just going nuts. It's awesome. So what our families would do is we get as I said showered and rested and everything fed. And we get back to the finish line. I remember one year it was we're sitting in the bleachers right in front of the finish line. And so down the way was that the last hundred meters and back was the you know people running sound. So it's like 1130 somewhere 1145 something like this. The guys on the on the microphone, he's cheering people on.

And at 1145, he says, you guys, we just got word. There's a racer out there. He's two miles away. Just bring him in. And so I thought, like, wow, that's great. He's two miles away, but he's got 15 minutes to run two miles, which a person could do, but this person has been, I don't know if this person could do it because they've been out on the course this long.

I don't know if they can run that fast. But people, like, they jumped off the bleachers and, like, ran across a little park behind us and, like, started running. I'm like, good for you, guys, because I can't move my legs. And then later on, you know, however long later, the guy gets on. He's only a mile away right now. I was like, whoa, that's crazy because he picked up his face, clearly. Some more people jumping off the bleachers and running across the park to get to where he was.

So it's time going on. They're giving us these updates. And pretty soon, it's like 1159. We're 1159 plus. And remember so distinctly, from back and to the right, there was this like just growing, dull roar that's just giving louder and louder. and louder. And as of looking down the street, the main street, all of a sudden, you can see this guy, and he tears around this corner, like, he's leaning into the corner, like racing for everything he's got. And behind him, he's sprinting. This is the guy that they've been cheering on.

Behind him is this massive, like V-formation filling up the entire road of people who had completed the race, but they're cheering him on, running him into this thing. When he came across that finish line, everyone's going nuts. Everyone's going crazy. It was 1159 and 47 seconds. He did it with 13 seconds. despair. And remember just, I mean, again, everyone, I even, I tell the story all the time, and I mean, you get choked up because of the fact that, not just because this guy did this great thing, and I think it's really cool that he did this. But it reminds me of what is written here in the letter to the Hebrews. We're surrounded by this great cloud of witnesses. So let's persevere in running the race. I don't think that man could have finished the race the way he

did unless there were people who themselves they had finished the race. Went back and cheered him on. They couldn't run the race for him, but they could support him. And this is this mysterious way that that's what the saints do with us. They can't run the race for us. They can't live a life for us. They can't surrender our lives for us, but they can cheer us on. They can intercede for us. They can pray for us.

And they do. And so when you think, there's no way. There's no way I can finish this race. It's too far gone. There's no way possible that I can make it to the finish line. realize you're not running alone. And you're not just running with St. Augustine and St. Mother Teresa or St. Catherine Siena, all these big-name saints, you're also running with all those saints whose name you don't know yet.

This is their feast day. And they're running with you and they're interceding for you and they are praying for you because they know the truth and the truth is that one day, their feast day will be your feast day. One day, November 1st will not just be their feast day. One day, November 1st will be your feast day. This will be the day that your kids will celebrate the fact that you said yes. One day, this will be the day your grandkids will celebrate. Not that you were perfect, not that you didn't have flaws, not that you made all the right decisions.

celebrate the fact that you let God have it all. You let Him have all of the bad decisions. You let him have all the flaws. You let him have all the imperfections. You let him have all the sins. One day. This won't just be the feast day of people you don't know. One day this will be your feast day.

And that day we'll ask for your prayers. And that day, you'll be the one cheering us on on this feast day of all saints. Thank you.