Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 11/15/20 Roadmap: Checkpoints

Episode Date: November 16, 2020

Homily from the Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time. What have you done with what you've been given? No one ever sets out to lose. But losing is entirely possible: in business, relationships, and in the spiritual life. It is possible to lose one’s soul. No one wants to lose, but many people do. Even with a great roadmap, we need regular checkpoints to make sure we are on course and haven’t gone off track. Mass Readings from November 15, 2020: Proverbs 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31 Psalms 128:1-51 Thessalonians 5:1-6 Matthew 25:14-30 Download the Homily Study

Hi, this is Father Mike. Man, I hope that this roadmap series has been a blessing for you. It has actually been a real blessing for me as well to put the prayer and the time into kind of developing the steps of this series in such a way that hopefully every single one of us can get to that goal of being who we are and being that well-being the saints God made us to be. Before we have today's homily checkpoints, I want to invite you once again to pray about our annual fundraiser that we do to keep this ministry moving forward. this week, this Thursday, November 19th, there is this online giving event throughout the state of Minnesota. It's called Give to the Max, and it's the Give to the Max Day.

While we can accept and need support all year round, this day, November 19th, this week, has been the one day, the one time, essentially, that we ask those who have received something from this ministry to maybe even pray about giving something to this ministry. But I hate the hard sell. If this ministry has blessed you, I simply invite you to pray about offering something. We always need prayers. I know that I personally do and that our students definitely are in the midst of, you know, the fight of their lives.

We're always grateful when people share the podcast with friends and social media. And we have a number of ways we know we need to grow this ministry on campus that can only happen with financial support. So if you're interested in supporting this ministry financially, you can go to the website givemn.org, like give Minnesota. That's the Minnesota give website, givemn.org, and search for a UMD Catholic campus ministry or even just type in Newman. I think we're at the third one that comes up.

Or you can go right to our website, which is bulldogcatholic.org. Because we're at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, bulldogs, bulldog Catholic.org. He clicked the donate button. There's a bunch of donate buttons on that homepage, so it will not be hard to find them. You can either donate on November 19th

or any day leading up to the 19th or really any day after the 19th. But the 19th of November is our target date. Once again, I hope that this ministry has blessed you. I know that your prayers, the prayers of the community, our online community, our virtual community, our podcast community have been so helpful for me. And your encouragement has been so helpful for me. So please know of my prayers for you. Our students pray for you on a regular basis. And please keep up the prayers

coming this way. So without anything further, I hope that you get a lot out of this next installment of our roadmap series, Checkpoints. So a question, do you all remember, remember Kodak? like the Kodak camera company it was one of actually one of the most successful companies of all the time

in 1883 George Eastman he invented he invented the basically the personal camera and he invented and patented

all the technologies that go into like film production and all this whole thing over the next hundred years the Kodak camera company

became again as I said one of the most successful companies of all time it actually it created an industry that did not exist

but George Eastman invented, not just a camera, he invented and created an industry. He created a company that was worth tens of billions of dollars every single year. But by 2010, the camera and film market was dead, and by 2012, Kodak declared bankruptcy. And it's interesting because people will know, they'll say that, well, Kodak was never really a camera company. It's more like a film company, and so they didn't ever add a shot. They couldn't have possibly hoped to keep up with the digital world, the digital camera world, except for the fact that the Kodak camera company invented the digital camera that in 1975.

Before anyone had even thought of digital cameras, Kodak had invented it. They patented in 1978. In fact, the first digital camera that came out for consumer use was created and sold by Kodak in 1995. In 2001, they had one among the very, very first point and shoot, like simple to use easy, personal digital cameras. And so people wanted what Kodak could have offered could have given more than almost any company in the entire world. People wanted that. In fact, the year Kodak declared bankruptcy, Facebook bought Instagram for over a billion dollars. And at that time, Instagram had 18 employees and Kodak had thousands of employees.

So the question is, when did Kodak decide to lose? I know that people say, well, it's more complicated than that, bother you to understand. It's a lot of moving parts. It's not that simple. It's not that easy to keep a business afloat when you have a radically changing kind of environment. I understand all of that. But the fact is, they still lost. So question, when did they decide to lose?

I think there's a harsh reality of life. And the harsh reality of life that we typically don't like to think about is this fact that it is possible in life. It's possible to lose in business. No matter how hard you work, it's possible to lose. Possible to lose in relationships. No matter how faithful and how good you are, it's possible to lose as a parent. It's possible to lose as a spouse.

it's possible to lose as a priest, right? You can, like, wreck it the whole thing. And yet, when you, we see this around us, right? We see failed marriages. We see failed families. We see a failed priest. We see failed businesses. And yet, no one ever sets out to lose.

Like, no one gets married with the idea of one day, I can't wait to wreck this relationship. No one wants to be a parent with the idea that one day, I will alienate my kids so much they will never want to visit or talk to me. No one sets out, It starts out with a business saying, like, and one day we're going to declare bankruptcy. And I will tell you this, I know a lot of priests. I don't know any priest who's ever set out intentionally to sabotage their priesthood.

But it's possible to lose. And in the gospel, we get this, again, this reality, it's possible to lose. In fact, it wasn't not just today's gospel, last week's gospel. Remember the five foolish virgins that Jesus, the Lord God says, I don't know you? It's possible to lose our salvation. Today, the gospel, where Jesus says the person with one talent, no, throw them outside. It's possible to lose next week, you guys. At the last Sunday of the entire church year,

I told you about that already, Matthew Church chapter 25, where Jesus separates at the end of time. God says, I'm going to separate all humanity between the sheep and the goats. The sheep, come on in. The goats lose. It's possible to lose life.

Like the one reason why we're here on this planet, it's possible to actually try and fail. That's why we're doing the whole series, right? This whole series, roadmap series, because we need to understand, first of all, what is the goal of life? What is winning in life? And winning in life is to St. Francis of Sales, to be who you are and be that well.

The winning life is being a saint. And so we need a how, right? We need a map. We need a road map. We need a rule of life. How to get there. So then is a little review. So we also talked about we need to remember always who we are.

Because identity always comes first, that you are a child of God who's been adopted by the Father who has inscribed his very image and likeness into you. You can never lose it. That's who you will always be for all eternity. But we have to live our lives with a new why. So we live our lives reclaimed and repurposed. We can always ask every single day, okay, Lord, ask, be present here,

offer this as a gift to you and resolve to accept. Then we have to ask the question on a roadmap, on a rule of life, where am I and where are the places where I go off the rails, so I need guard rails. And last week, we finally ask the question, okay, when? Meaning when in this rule of life, when in this roadmap, am I going to create those spaces, those moments of encounter with the Lord,

the prayer times, essentially, every single day. And that's what people do. I mean, that's what Christians have done for 2,000 years, is they've had this kind of rule of life where they have their guardrails and they have their repurposed life and new why and they have their prayer time. The question keeps coming up, though, so how can a person have all these and still lose? How can a person have all these? How come so many people still lose their way? Because I know the question that God will ask of me someday. the question God will ask of you someday. It's the question we essentially heard in the gospel today. At some point, God will say to all of us this question, he'll ask this question,

so what have you done with what you've been given? That's going to be the question. We have to, at some point, answer, what have you done with what you've been given? And so we have to, on this roadmap, in this rule of life, we're going to have to keep coming back to this question if we're going to stay on track. Because I think it's so easy, right? It's so easy. to have a great set of intentions. It's really great to have, it's really easy to have this incredible roadmap or rule of life, this pattern of life, and still get off course because life isn't simple. Life isn't straightforward.

Life keeps changing. It's dynamic and situations keep coming at us. And so our roadmap needs this piece. Our roadmap needs checkpoints. Like this rule of life needs checkpoints. Like a way that we can tell if we're on track or if we've today veered off track, off the course. So we're going to talk about checkpoints in a bit. But before we talk about that, I just, I think it's a important.

important for us to reestablish why we're here. Like, what is that goal? And if I'm committed to that goal or not committed to that goal, because I think it's vitally important for us before checkpoints to ask the question, have I actually decided yet? What to mean by that is, have I actually decided to have chosen Jesus Christ as my number one? Like, is he actually number one? If you're just kind of, he's pretty important to me. Or is he actually? So there's a guy My name is Mike, Mike Flint. Mike Flynn is a professional pilot. And he was incredibly successful.

He flew Air Force One, he flew Air Force Two. He had one point, Mike Flint was the private pilot of Warren Buffett. Warren Buffett, one of the most successful investment bankers of the United States history. So at one point, Mike Flint went to Warren Buffett and he said, Warren, at some point, your next plane, the one I fly, it should be this plane. Because they cycle through new planes all the time when you're Warren Buffett, you can buy new planes. And Warren Buffett says, well, when do you think we should get that new plane? He said, oh, don't worry about it.

You won't have to get it for another 10 years. And Warren Buffett looked at Mike Flint and he said, Mike, if you're still working for me in 10 years, then I have failed you as a boss. Because you should have bigger goals than Just a Fly for me. And Mike Flint said, well, I thought this is a pretty good gig. It's pretty good job. How do I go, how do I move forward from here? And Warren Buffett said, do this.

Take a piece of paper. Take some time. And write down what are your top 25 professional goals? What are the top 25 things that you want to? to do with your aviation career. So Mike Flint took the time, did the really hard work of writing out top 25 goals, things I want to have accomplished in my life by the time I retire, and he presented them to Warren Buffett and Warren Buffett said, look, this is a great list.

Now, here's what you need to do. You need to pick five. Out of this is 25, pick five. And those are your top five. Not only are those your top five, but here's what he needed to do with those other 20. Those other 20, you're going to be tempted to say, okay, that's my side hustle. On that other 20, those are what I do on weekends. That's what I do after work.

That's what I do with my free time. And he says, absolutely not. Never ever touch those other 20. Because if these are your actual five, then any time you're spending any time with those other 20, you are wasting your time. If this is actually your top five, anytime you spend any time with those other 20, you are wasting your time. Because you have to decide. And this is the truth for us, too. As Christians, we have to decide.

Like, not just like, oh, nice homily, father, like nice series, the whole roadmap thing, really cool. Be a saint? Yeah, I like that. I like that idea. But we actually, you and I have to decide, is it the goal of my life? Is it truly the reality that the goal, the number one thing of my life is to be a saint and to not have been a saint is the only tragedy? St. Therese was just, she was 24 when she died.

She was 24 when she became a saint. She said it like this. She said, you cannot be half a saint. You have to be a whole saint or none at all. Like that's 100% commitment. Speaking of a 100% commitment, there's a man. He names Clayton Christensen. Clayton Christensen is, he works at Harvard Business School.

He was named by Forbes as one of the top 50 most influential business theorists in the last 50 years. He wrote this incredible book called How Will You Measure Your Life? But he tells the story about when he was in college, he had an opportunity to study over in England. And he played basketball as well over in England. And one of the things he did on that team, they made it to basically the English equivalent of the NCAA Final Four, the championship game. Unfortunately for Clayton Christensen, the championship game was on a Sunday. And when he was 16 years old, he had decided that as a faithful person, he would, he decided he would never play in a championship game or never playing a game on a Sunday. That was one of his rules.

His personal rule was I never play basketball on Sunday. And here is the championship game. for the entire nation on a Sunday. He said he wrestled with this. Finally came to this conclusion. This is what he said. He said, I went to the coach before the tournament finals, and I explained my situation.

He was incredulous. He said, I don't know what you believe, the coach said, but I believe that God will understand it. Isn't that something we tell ourselves a lot? Like, God gets it. He understands. He knows me. Coach said, God will understand.

Every one of the guys on the team came to me and said, you've got to play. Can't you break the rule just this one time? and Clayton says, he says, it was this is his words, his words, it was a difficult decision to make it in so many ways it was a small decision. It involves one of several thousand Sundays in my life. Only one, several thousand Sundays in my life. And in theory, I surely could have crossed over the line that one time and then never done it

again. But looking back on it, resisting the temptation of in this one extenuating circumstance, just this once, it's okay, has proven for me to be one of the most important decisions of my life. And he concluded this. He said, it is easier to hold on to your principles 100% of the time than it is to hold on to them 98% of the time. It's easier to be 100% committed than it is to be 98% committed. And we think about it, no, no, that's, I mean, 98's pretty good. I mean, 90, it's kind of high up there. But he says it's easier and it's better for us. Why? Because even if I'm committed 98%, I haven't really decided. If I'm only even committed to,

98%, then when I get to that crosswoods, that crux, that moment of decision, I still actually don't know what I'm going to do. But if I've gotten to the point where I'm saying, no, this is who I am, this is what I do 100% of the time, then the decisions made. In fact, Michael Jordan had said something along along these lines. He said it's so easy to commit 100% because you commit once and the decisions made. You don't actually ever have to like wrestle with it again. You've already decided. Especially when people say, but there's always extenuating In this case, but in this moment, maybe you need to like compromise. And that's what Clayton Christensen talks about.

He said, to when people talk about, he says, quote, resisting the temptation of in this one extenuating circumstance, just this once, it's okay. He said, resisting that temptation has proven to be one of the most important decisions of my life. Why? Because life is just one ending stream of extenuating circumstances. That's what it is to be alive, is to come up with new opportunities to compromise. But if I make that decision, then I have.

I don't have to ask over and over again, will I do it this time? Like to have that 100% decision. Like this is who I am. I belong to Jesus. I'm a Christian. You know, at the same time, obviously, if that's my decision, then I will absolutely need checkpoints. Like that's because it's not just one and done, right?

It's not just like, I made the decision once, I never have to make it again. I need to make checkpoints to say, am I still on course? And so what St. Francis DeSales, right, he's been our guide this whole time. What St. Francis DeSalle said about like those checkpoints, even after 100% commitment, here's what you need. He used this really technical kind of theological term for checkpoints. He called them morning and evening. Pause for laughter.

Okay, sympathy. Great. What St. Francis's sales is that, okay, every morning and every evening, those are your checkpoints. Every morning, every evening that's your morning offering and your evening examination. And the question we get to ask every morning and every evening is, okay, God, today, what have I done with what I've been given? He says, you can say it like this. Every morning, you ask the question, what have I been given? And every evening, you ask the question, what have I done with what I've been given?

It's one of those things that, like, so often we don't even know what we have. So every morning, I need to ask the question, okay, what have I been given? I don't know if you guys know Dave Ramsey. I'm a big Dave Ramsey fan. Dave Ramsey's all about helping people get out of debt, giving people, helping people pay down their loans and all these kind of things. And when people call into Dave Ramsey, the very first two questions Dave asks. They're like, Dave, help me with my loans, help me with my debt, helping me with all these things.

my mortgage, he always asked the two questions, okay, what is your income? What are your expenses? Basically, you need to know what you're working with in order to know what you're working with. But I'll talk to so many people who are, like, in debt, who have student loans, maybe even in this room,

and ask like, what do you owe in student loans? What do you owe in your debt? And they don't even know because they're afraid. They're afraid to look at, here's what I'm working with. Here's what I have to pay off. Sometimes we can actually go through life like that. Like, I don't actually question,

what have I been given? I don't know, a bunch. instead of saying, okay, these three categories, what are the opportunities I've been given every day? What are the resources I've been given every day? What are the abilities I've been given every day? You might think, well, I don't have a lot. I'm like the one guy in the parable today with like the one talent.

I got like one. I got one. And we can think sometimes that that one is small. You guys, we don't understand what talents are. Talent in the ancient world was the equivalent of 15 to 20 years of daily wages. So one talent is worth up to 20 years of daily wages. So if you assume that, say, maybe $50,000 a year is a yearly wage, let's say that. 20 years of $50,000 a year, that's a million dollars.

So the person given one talent, it's not like, oh, here's a, you know, here's a $5 bill. It's that person with one talent was given a million dollars. And we can look at ourselves and say, well, I don't have a ton. You're alive. you've been given every day. I mean, every day is worth more than a million dollars. There's not a billionaire alive who would not give their billions

for one extra day. And here we are today. That's why St. Francis St. St. St. St. St.S. Pointing to the morning and saying, we're the first thing we do. We look at what are the opportunities I have? What I mean by that is, what are the things on the calendar? What are the tasks?

What are the meetings? What are the events? Who are the people I'm going to encounter today? What are my opportunities today? So before you even start the day, to stop and say, what are the opportunities I have? The second is, what are my resources? Like, what do I have at my disposal? What are the tools I've been given?

What's the tech I have opportunity, access to? Who are the people that in my life who want to help me? What are my resources? And third, what are my abilities? Like, everyone here is so gifted. To be able to stop every morning and measure up, like, okay, this is the gift I've been given. The opportunities, the resources, and the abilities that I have been given,

and to do these three things with this. to have a moment of gratitude, of rehearsal, and resolve. So the gratitude is, what have I been given? And I invite you to use those notebooks and write down, here are the gifts, here are the opportunities, here are the resources, here are the abilities that I have going into today. And the second movement is rehearse. What I mean by that is if I know that I'm going to have like a difficult conversation today,

And maybe I need to rehearse. Like, there's a moment where I'm going to need a lot of courage to say what needs to be said or do what needs to be done. So I'm going to rehearse and I'm going to pray for courage. Maybe it's not the conversation where it's difficult and I need to be courageous. Maybe it's a difficult conversation and I need to be gentle because I know this person is sensitive. So I'm going to rehearse gentleness in that conversation. Maybe it's, okay, I've carved out these moments of encounter, these prayer time.

I'm going to rehearse. Okay, this is where I'm going to be faithful. I'm going to be faithful to that prayer time. Maybe it's a situation where you hate interruptions and you like lose it when people interrupt you. So rehearse that and be able to say, okay, this is not on the calendar. But when I get interrupted, because I know what's going to happen, I'm rehearsing patience. When I get interrupted, I'm going to rehearse. Like, I'm going to see God's hand at work in this interruption.

Maybe you know that you're going to go out for drinks after work or after at the end of school with some people that you know, like, typically I overeat or I over drink. And so I'm going to rehearse, temperance. I'm going to rehearse. Like, when I get to that point, this is when I say no. I'm just actually going to practice this kind of thing. Or maybe procrastination is the thing that holds you back from actually accomplishing what the Lord has in your, in goal, in mind for you. And so, okay, when I come up to that moment where I have to knuckle down, I have to actually focus on work,

where I know I'm going to be tempted to procrastinate, I'm going to rehearse turning the thing off. I'm going to rehearse actually being focused. Or even people who, gosh, there's so many people in this world, maybe even in this room who suffer like chronic pain, who are suffering even just like not just physical pain, but even like broken heart pain. And that's one of the things that you are looking at the day going, this is what I've been given, Lord, I've been given this pain, I've been given this heartbreak, I've been given this suffering. So maybe for you, you need to rehearse, offering it up.

You need to rehearse redemptive suffering. Maybe you need to rehearse courage in the moment, fortitude. Or you know on your calendar that you're going to meet someone that you find it very difficult to trust. You find it very difficult to love. Maybe someone who's even hurt you, someone who's betrayed you. I'm going to rehearse mercy. So this is the three steps.

There's gratitude, what have I been given? Then I rehearse. Then I resolve. In fact, a guy named Mark Cooper Smith, he was a senior fellow at UC Berkeley about Kodak. He said, they failed to rehearse. Like they actually failed to ask the question, what if we did this? What if we did that? And because they failed to rehearse, they chose to lose.

They decided to lose. So if in the morning it's gratitude, what have I been given, rehearse, what am I going to do? and then resolve, like you make that commitment. At night, super simple. It just changed one word. It's gratitude, review, and resolve. So gratitude, again, over the course of this last day, what have I been given?

What has the Lord entrusted to me? And then review, how did I do? Like, what are the areas that I said yes? I like, yeah, I actually did it. I was gentle in that conversation. Or I did it. I was patient. I did it.

I refused to be distracted to review that. Or I didn't. I crashed and burned. And okay, then I resolve again. So in the morning, that step of saying, okay, what have I been given? Gratitude. Rehearse and resolve in the evening.

Gratitude. Review. What have I done with what have been given and resolved? And this is the last thing, because the keyword that Francis de Sales says is that last word. The key word is resolve. Because it says a lot of times we can do the rehearsal thing and then go back to how we normally would do it. Or we can do the review and you're like, and next time I'll do better than we don't. And so he called it this.

He said, above all, when we do this, you must be careful to retain the resolutions that you came to. He said, without this, this whole process of gratitude, rehearse, and resolve, or gratitude, review, and resolve, he said, without that, it becomes not only useless, but actually hurtful to us. Because in our mind, we think, oh, I'm getting better. In reality, we actually haven't just made the decision to get any better. In my mind, I'm thinking, I'm making a checkpoint. And I find that I'm off course, but I haven't actually decided to get back on course. So it goes on to say, we should always endeavor to put these resolutions into practice and seek every occasion for doing so. example, if I've resolved to win over those who annoy me by gentleness, then I will seek

the opportunity of addressing them kindly. And if the occasion doesn't come up, I don't even see them, then I will speak well of them and I'll pray for them. Like I'll make the opportunity happen. I'll make the occasion happen. In all this, I just want to remind us all. In all this, you don't have to do this perfectly. Like this roadmap is there because we're going to get, these These checkpoints are there because we're going to get off course. So in all this, you don't have to do this perfectly, but we do have to do this faithfully. I don't have to do it every single morning, every single night perfectly, but I do want to do this as often in the morning and as often in the night as I can faithfully.

Because avoiding the checkpoints is where people decide to lose. Where did you decide to lose? was by avoiding that morning of going, what have I been given? It's avoiding the evening of saying, what have I done with what I've been given? I would say this, I would say that without checkpoints on this roadmap, we are bound to lose. But with these checkpoints, not perfectly, but faithfully, there is no way that you can't win.