Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 11/22/20 Roadmap: Expect Delays

Episode Date: November 23, 2020

Homily from the Solemnity of Christ the King. What you do with the delay makes all the difference. We have a destination: to be who we are and to be that well. We have a Roadmap and a Rule of Life. What remains is one last question: Is there any room in your Rule for the Ruler? Mass Readings from November 22, 2020: Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17 Psalms 23:1-3, 5-61 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28 Matthew 25:31-46 Download the Homily Study

Hi, this is Father Mike. I just wanted to take one moment to thank you so very much. This upcoming Thursday, obviously, is Thanksgiving Day. And one of the readings that we typically read on Thanksgiving at Mass is the reading where the 10 lepers get healed and one comes back and gives thanks to the Lord for what he's done. And Jesus says, 10 were healed, were they not? Why has only this foreigner come back to give thanks? I want to be that foreigner. I want to be that one who comes back and thanks you. I know for the last couple weeks I've said, please help us, please support us.

And this weekend, I just want to give God praise. I just want to thank you so much. Thank you for your prayers leading into this Give to the Max Day. Thank you for your financial contribution, your gifts that help us to continue this ministry on this campus. You know, when I first got to campus, we had like the definition of a shoestring budget. And over the last couple of years when we've had these Give to the Max asking for people to support us, It has done nothing but given us the opportunity to do so much more ministry for our students. And so thank you so much.

I promise you that I am committed and our team here is committed to being incredible stewards, the best kind of stewards we can so that I know that every single gift that was offered, every dollar that was offered is a dollar that you worked for, that you did not need to part with, that you worked for, that you did not need to hand over to us and entrust to us saying, please do some good with this. I knew you didn't have to do that, and you worked hard for that money. And so I just want to let you know

that we will do everything we can to honor that gift, to be great stewards of that gift, and to thank God and thank you by using it well. I know that our students all week, they were just blown away by your generosity, and that encourages them to be even more generous people too. And so I'm so grateful for the alumni from UMD who have come back.

And this is kind of the first time we have some alumni coming back, these last couple years and have supported us as benefactors now. And that is, it is such a joy to see, not just because it helps us, but also because it is a witness. It's a witness that, you know, what we tried to do on this campus has really taken root. When you see people serving, when you see people giving, when you see people pursuing the Lord after they leave this campus is really when we just, man, my heart just gets, I'm so proud of them, so proud of you and so grateful.

So I just want to praise the Lord right now. And thank you so much. I hope also that this roadmap series has been helpful for you, and especially that this last installment expect delays is a blessing to you on your pursuit of sainthood. So a quick question. Have you ever gotten into the situation where you underestimate the time, underestimating travel time?

Like this is a thing that I'll do all the time. So here's what I mean. We underestimate travel time or I do this constantly. So I know exactly that it takes from the Newman House to the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. It takes two hours and 30 minutes. That's how much time it takes. And I know this. Google tells me this.

Apple Maps tells me this. My experience tells me this. But then when it's time to go, I'm like, I think I can make it in two hours and ten minutes. Like, I don't know what it is. Like, you've ever done this where you know exactly how long it takes for you to get from your house to your work or whatever for your house to school or something like this. And maybe one time, one time in ever, you maybe made it in 15 minutes. That was the fastest you've ever done. and so now in your head that's the time, but it's not really the time.

15 minutes isn't the time. Now you're like, it's about 10 minutes. This is this the thing you've ever done? I do this all the time. And even though I know that it takes 15 minutes to get from home to work, home to school, whatever it is, I don't even factor in the fact that one time it took 15 minutes. I had all green lights. It was like 4 in the morning, so there was no traffic.

There was nothing that got in my way. And I think that, oh yeah, 15 minutes. It's about 10 minutes. And when we do this, and when we do this, or when I do this, then I end up so frustrated on the road. And when I end up frustrated on the road, there's a number of reasons, the things that cause me frustration.

One is, well, actually, I think the thing that probably causes a lot of us, frustration when we're driving, is really simple, all their drivers. When it comes to, like, if they're driving fast, that crazy maniac who's driving so fast, or if they're driving slow, that stupid idiot who's driving so slow,

or the person who's like, I can see you looking at your phone, what the heck are you doing, looking at your phone? or any number of things. Because out on the road, I've got a place to go, and everyone else is getting in my way. Everyone else is causing some kind of delay.

Even worse than this. It's one thing to have people cause delay. But I've ever seen those signs that say, like, road construction ahead, expect delays? Or like maybe, you know, bad weather up ahead, expect delays, or it's Thanksgiving. You know, a lot of people are on the road. Expect delays.

I think it's so interesting. Whenever you see those two words, expect delays. I don't know. there's something inside of me that just gets so anxious about, like, I don't, but I don't want to expect delays. Listen, I've got a destination. I've got a place I need to be, and I have a particular amount of time that I need to get there in. I don't like expecting delays. In fact, this is the same thing when it comes to life.

You know, for the last six weeks, we've been talking about this reality that doing this series called Roadmap, right, where there is a what that our lives are made for? There's something that you are made to be, that you're made to be a saint, right? St. Francis de Sales, he says, to be who you are and be that well. That is our big what. That's our big goal. That's our destination. And so we have a roadmap. We have a how to get there.

And so for the last six weeks, we went from like, how to get there. So I need to remember who I am, my identity. And I need to know that, remember that I made a God's image and like this. You've been claimed by God as his daughter or as his son. We have to remember who. Then we have to remember that we can need to repurpose

and reclaim our lives. We live with a different why. And then we ask the question, okay, where are my cliffs? Where are my potholes? Where are those spaces in my life where I need to build some guardrails? Then we asked the question, when?

When am I going to carve out those spaces of encounter so I can make time for Jesus in my day? And then we talked about those checkpoints, right, in the morning where I get to ask the question, what have I been given? And in the evening, I have to ask the question, what have I done with what have been given? And so it's really important for us to have a roadmap

because we have a destination. But the problem again is God shows up a sign, throws up a sign, and he throws up this sign today. at Mass and he says, okay, on the roadmap, on the way to your destination, expect delays. And again, I have to tell you, I hate, I hate delays, especially when you have somewhere to go. Because delays can, delays can throw us off. Delays can make us into the people we don't want to be. In fact, there was this psychological study done in the 1970s

at a place called Princeton Seminary School of Divinity. So it's in University of Princeton, right? at the School of Divinity, so all these seminarians and these two psychologists, they wanted to know the degree to which Christians, the degree to which even seminarians, would be willing to help someone in distress. So they had worked with some of their professors, and they gave him an assignment. The assignment was to study the parable of the Good Samaritan. We know the parable of the Good Samaritan, right? There's the guy journeying, Jesus tells the story, man journeyed from Jerusalem to Jericho,

on the way he gets basically mugged, left for dead, and the priest sees him and walks by, and the Levite sees him and walks by, but then the Good Samaritan sees him, he's moving with compassion for him, so he stops and he helps the guy. So this was their assignment, to study the parable of the Good Samaritan and then write a sermon about it.

And they had the part of the experiment was this. You have to give the sermon, but they were dried into three groups. The first group got a note, a message, saying, you are late to give the sermon on the other side of the campus. You need to get there now. You're late already.

The second group got a message that said, you need to get there now. If you leave now, you'll be right on time. And the third group got a message saying, you have plenty of time. It's coming up, but don't worry, no rush. Just get there over there right now. So the first group thought they were in a hurry.

They were late. Second group, they were right on time. The third group, plenty of time. And what the researchers did is they hired a man to basically stand in. He was an actor, to stand in as someone who planted himself in the hallway, dressed like a homeless person who had just been assaulted,

who was in need of distress. And he was in a four-foot-wide hallway. seminarians in order to actually get to the place where they were going to give a sermon on the Good Samaritan had to make a decision. They either stopped and helped this guy or they had to literally step over his body in the middle of the hallway. They didn't do so well. In fact, the majority of them stepped over the person on their way to give a sermon on the Good Samaritan. They failed to be Good Samaritans. But the remarkable thing wasn't that these people were callous, wasn't that they didn't care about people.

In fact, they all had the mind of Christ. They all had the vision of like, I want to be able to see Jesus in the poor person. I want to be able to see Jesus in the distress. They all had that mind of Jesus. You imagine they had the heart of Christ where they wanted to care for this person. But the interesting thing was none of them

or very few of them expected to be delayed. In fact, the way it was broken down was this. Those who were told they were late, out of those who were told they were late, only 10% stopped. Those who were right on time, 45%, almost half of them stopped. And those who had plenty of time,

about 63 to 65% of them stopped. And so the only difference was not that, you know, that group of 10%, those were the really mean seminarians. Like, no, they were just the ones who were in a hurry. And it wasn't that those who had more time were the really nice ones.

No, they just believed they had more time. They believed that they actually had room in their lives to stop. I think this is too often this is me. Too often, I think this is us. In fact, there was an article written by a priest named Father Paul Scalia. Father Paul Scalia, his father

was former Justice Antonin Scalia. Father Paul, just a genius like his dad. And he wrote this article on in defense of Pharisees. We think of the Pharisees, right? We think of like the enemies of Jesus. We think those people who are like, they were awful. They're the ones wearing the black hats, right?

If this is the Western, they're the bad guys. And I guess they do conspired up with Jesus to death. So they are kind of... Anyways, back to our story. We imagine sometimes that everything about the Pharisees was wrong. But Father Scalia points out, he's like, actually not too much about the Pharisees is any different than us. Why? Because what we've been doing for the last month and a half

is we've been working on creating a roadmap, creating a rule of life. And that's exactly what the Pharisees had. They had a rule of life. In fact, their rule of life wasn't just something they made up. The rule of life was called the law, like the law of Moses. Their rule of life were the commandments bound in the Bible. And so what they thought,

they thought they were doing the right thing. They just didn't realize that they had grabbed onto the law so much that they didn't have any room in their law for the lawgiver. And too often this could be us. We might be holding onto a rule so much that we haven't left any room in our rule for the ruler.

Because I think we just don't expect delays. I just want to, I need to get there. And even more so, I think when we don't expect delays, we miss out on the actual value of delays. We miss out on the value of delays. Because I'll say this, what we do with the delay makes all of the difference. And this is completely true in the gospel today, right? This is Matthew 25.

Now, an important thing to know in Matthew 25, this is Jesus' last public teaching. It's the last thing he says to all the people before he begins his passion. So this is a kind of important thing. What does Jesus say? The last public declaration that he makes to the world and to his disciples is, when I needed clothing, you gave me clothing. When I needed food, you gave me food. When I needed to be visited, you visited me.

Like clothing, feeding, and visiting. And in each one of these occasions, what does it require? What does it require to do that, to feed, to clothe and to visit, it requires that we see, that we stop, and that we do something. That costs something, right? To actually see the people around us, to stop and to do something. That costs us something. What it costs us is it costs us the delay.

And we hate to be delayed. But we have to ask the question, what if the delay was the point? like what if the delay was the point? What if what we did in the midst of the delay is the thing that makes all the difference? In fact, the scripture today reveals this. What we do with the delay is the difference between winning and losing. Like what we do with the delay is the difference between heaven and hell.

What we do with the delay is the difference between being the saint God made us to be and failing at life. Because we know this, God is making it so clear to us, the delays are going to interrupt your plan. The delays are going to interrupt your roadmap. the delays are going to interrupt your rule. They're going to slow us down. But what happens in the delay is what's going to make all of the difference.

Whether or not we hear those five words. What we do with the delay makes all the difference, whether or not we hear those five words from the mouth of our Lord. You did it to me. He will either say that or he will not say that. So to expect delays, it means making room in our rule for the ruler. How do you make room in the rule?

How do we make room in our rule for the ruler? Back in 1993, there's a woman named Anne Herbert. Anne Herbert came up with this phrase that just spread across the world like wildfire. The phrase was this, practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty. Have you heard this? The idea of the random act of kindness. We know this. Oprah Winfrey made it really popular, the random act of kindness.

You get a car and you get a car, that kind of thing. That was Oprah, which is a great idea. The idea of like practice random acts of kindness is, it's awesome. It's really beautiful. And I just think that it doesn't work. Here's what I mean. I think the idea of random acts of kindness, it assumes too much. I think it assumes that we're better than we are.

I think the idea of random acts of kindness assumes that our feelings of generosity and benevolence will match up more often than they actually do with people's needs. Because we've all experienced this, right? We've all been at that place where we pull off the highway on the ramp, and there's that person sitting next to the stoplight. And they got the cardboard sign. And see, I need help. There's a person on the street, and they have the cardboard sign and says, I need help.

And in those moments, what do we do? We freeze. We're like, ah, I don't have anything to give. I don't have any cash. Even if I had cash, I give cash. I don't even know what to do. And I don't know I have anything to give. And I don't even know what I would give if I had something to give.

I think a lot of times what we do in those moments is we either ignore it and we look away. we don't see or we avoid we don't stop or we could do a third thing instead of ignoring and avoiding we could actually choose to expect delays

because we see that person with the cardboard sign happens once it makes sense give yourself some grace like if you don't know what to do in the moment that makes sense happens twice maybe I should start noticing this if it happens a third time or a fourth time

or a fifth time I should now realize that I can expect delays. And I would think that rather than random acts of kindness when it fits into my rule, why not practice regular acts of kindness as a part of my rule? Again, rather than just random acts of kindness

whenever it fits, happens to fit, why not practice regular acts of kindness as a part of the rule? So I have a friend his name's Mike. Mike lives down in Nashville. And this was his experience. He has a massive heart for people. And he was pained by the fact

that he would see people regularly at the stoplight, and they'd be panhandling, they'd be begging for money, begging for food, begging for something. And he was so frustrated that he didn't have anything to give. And so what he did is he took it to prayer and took it to, gave some real thought. And he decided, I want to be ready the next time someone asks. So he started putting together these bags, the little baggies. And in the bags, he was like, I live in Nashville, so people, they need water. It's hot down here, so he has a bottle of water in there. And he has like an energy bar because they need some food. And he has a little card with some money on it, a gas card with some money on it.

because a lot of times hear these people, they just need some money to get to the next town or to get to work. He has a gift card for a restaurant. Put some socks in there because I know that people need socks. And he has these bags, and he made a bunch of these bags, and he puts them behind the passenger seat. And so in that split-second moment,

when he sees that person on the off-ramp, when he sees that person at the stoplight, he knows what to do. Why? Because he expects delays. And when he wants to make sure that what I do in the delay, it actually makes the difference. In fact, it makes a big difference, not just eternally.

It actually makes a difference in people's lives right now. I know this family, they are from Florida. One of their oldest daughters, her name is Mary Margaret. She moved up to Chicago a bunch of years ago. She got a job downtown Chicago, kind of professional woman, really successful, high-powered, kind of really driven type A person. And she noticed that when she was driving to work

on one of those off-ramps, there was every morning, there was the same guy next to the same stoplight at the same off-ramp. Begging. After a couple days, she knew she had to make a decision. So when she was making her own lunch,

she just split it in two and put half her lunch in a different bag so that when she drove, pulled up to the stoplight, she could roll down the window and hand this man half of her lunch. Got to know his name. Got to have that one or two word exchange in every day. And she did this on a regular basis.

Whenever she had her lunch and she was going this place, she would split it up into two and hand him half. In fact, sometimes when she knew she was going out for lunch, she would make him a lunch because she knew that she wouldn't have anything to give him. And she did this almost every day for a pretty long time. Eventually, her business, her employer, they moved office spaces, and she no longer went off to that exit.

Almost a year, maybe nine months passed, and she was out to lunch again with some coworkers. And this man came up to her. He was the busboy at a fancy restaurant, this bus boy comes up to her. And he says, I don't mean to interrupt your lunch and not want to pry. I don't want to distribute you at all. but I don't know if you recognize me. She looks up, she's like, oh my gosh,

she absolutely did recognize him. She remembered his name. He says, what's going on? He said, I just, I got this job. I have a place to live. Like I'm getting my life back together. He said, but for, as you know, but for months, I had nothing, but for months.

Every morning, you'd pull up to that stoplight. You'd pull up to me, and people wouldn't ignore me, they wouldn't look at me, they wouldn't stop, they wouldn't see. but you every morning would roll down your window and you had something for me and you would see me and you would stop and you did something and that kept me going. You imagine that this made all of the difference

in this man's life and you guys, this is who we are supposed to be when we're at our best. This is what the Catholic Church is supposed to be when we're at our best. This is what the Catholic individuals are supposed to be when we're at our best. So when I was a seminarian,

we have a sister-dice. He's called St. Vincent and the Grenadines. It's a Caribbean island nation in the Caribbean, where they keep the Caribbean islands. And so I got a sign there for a summer. It's a rough life, and I do what I can. So St. Vincent and the Grenadines is 6% Catholic. And I lived at the cathedral down there,

and every day, all night, all day, the doorbell was ringing. People were knocking at the door because they would come by and ask for help. There was this old, old nun down there named Sister Augustine. And Sister Augustine was, I think she was from Trinidad. She was a, kind of your typical heart as nails, no nonsense, none. Under five foot, maybe even under four. I'm not sure, but she was just like a force, like a force to be reckoned with. And I remember one time I was in the office with her, and this man came by and he needed, he wanted food,

and he wanted some money to buy lumber to build a house. And so, Sister Augustine says, so young man, have I seen you in church? No, sister, don't go to church. How come you don't go to church? He's like, oh, sister, because no one invites me. No one invites me to church. And Sister Gusin looks at him and says, Really? Who invited you to come to the office to ask for money?

I'm like, oh, sister, that's awesome. Like, who invited you to come to the office? We can pay for lumber for your house. And this man looked at her and he, you know, because he knew she was just giving him a hard time. And he said, but sister, everybody knows. if you need help you go to the Catholic Church.

Just think of this. On an island where 6% of the population is Catholic, 100% of the people on this island know, sister, everybody knows if you need help, you go to the Catholic Church. Like, what if that was us?

What if that was true in Duluth? What if that was even just true about ourselves individually? Because we know it's not always the case, right? But for Christians who have a rule of life, Christians who have a roadmap, we need to expect delays, which means we have to have a different way of seeing, the different way of seeing where we hear those five words, you did it to me, where we actually practice regular acts of kindness and make room in our rule for the ruler. You know, I've seen this so many times in my family members who are medical, who in the middle

of dinner in the middle of downtime in the middle of just fun times, they get a call, they get a text, they get a page, and like, sorry, I got to go. someone's in need, and just willing to drop everything and go. That pager goes off, I've got to go, someone's in need. Actually, I've seen this so many times, and so humbled by our brother priests, the priests in this diocese, they're remarkable. I mean, so many times when I've been hanging out with some of these brothers, and the text message goes off, or the phone rings, and it's the hospital,

and they're like, hey, sorry, I've got to go, someone's in need. And they're willing to drop everything. They've made their whole life this expecting delays. and seeing that when I get interrupted, it's not an interruption from anyone. This is actually an interruption from Jesus. And so I need to clothe. I need to feed.

I need to visit. I need to see. I need to stop. And I need to do something. And this is the last thing. Expect delays. What does it mean to see the sign, expect delays?

Many things it means, but one of the things it means is that when you actually get delayed, you shouldn't be surprised. Like when you see the sign saying, hey, construction ahead, expect delays. When there's actually a delay, we shouldn't be like, what the heck? Where'd this come from?

We should be like, yeah, they told me to expect delays. And so as Christians, we're getting told by the Lord tonight. Okay, you have a roadmap. You have a destination. You have a how to get there. Expect delays. It should never shock us. Because remember, all of this is about be who you are and be that well.

And apparently, according to Jesus, this can only happen if we have room in our rule for the ruler. It can only happen when with our roadmap we expect delays. Not the kind that take you away from your goal, but the kind that actually end up becoming the shortcut to the goal because they are the moments. It's the delays that are the moments when Jesus actually shows up. You imagine the day when he looks at you and he says, come. You who are blessed by my dad into the inheritance that I have prepared for you from the foundation of the foundation of the world because you saw and you stopped and you did something and what you did with the delay has made all the difference.