Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 1/1/23 Hold, Reflect, and Remember

Episode Date: December 31, 2022

Homily from the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God. Mary, the Mother of God is the model for how to live well. Mary is the Mother of God because the baby in her womb was the Second Person of the Trinity. She also shows us how to leave last year in the past and step into the New Year wisely. Mass Readings from January 1, 2023: Numbers 6:22-27 Psalms 67:2-3, 5, 6, 8Galatians 4:4-7 Luke 2:16-21

Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this in other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you.

with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. Chapter 2, verses 16 through 21. The shepherds went in haste to Bethlehem and found Mary and Joseph and the infant lying in a manger. When they saw this, they made known the message that had been told them about the child.

All who heard it were amazed by what had been told them by the shepherds. And Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. Then the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard. and seen just as it had been told to them.

When eight days were completed for his circumcision, he was named Jesus, the name given him by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. The gospel of the Lord. So as we just enter into this, well, happy New Year, A, one of the things when it comes to the ends of years, begins of New Year's, we have this all the time, right? We have the end of the school year.

We have the beginning of a new school year. We have the end of the church year, the beginning of the new church year. It seems like we're always kind of marking the passage of time, which is super important. And we're going to get to that, why that's so important in just a second? But one of the other parts is why are we celebrating this solemnity? In fact, why is this even a holy day of obligation? Thanks be to God, it's on a Sunday today. A little twofer for all of us.

But this dogma that we believe that Mary is the mother of God. It's interesting because I even find Christians who are like, I don't really, is that accurate? Well, sorry, yes, it's accurate. But why is it accurate? What are we saying? One of the things we have to be reminded of is whenever we have a dogma or a doctrine about Mary, it's always ultimately about Jesus. And so why would we have this dogma, this doctrine, this massive teaching that we have to believe about Mary? Well, because it's what we have to believe about Jesus. Here's what I mean. There was this guy back in the day. His name was Nestorius. And Nestorius started the Nestorian heresy. And because when you start a heresy, they name it after you.

So Nestorius had the Nestorian heresy in which he basically denied the fact that the reality, that Jesus, the incarnate son of God, was always God. That at one point, he wasn't fully God. He became God later on, more like an adoption kind of a thing rather than by nature. So here's what the church says. The church says, okay, wait a second, let's pause. How many gods are there?

There's one God. Got it. One God. There are three persons in God. So there's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. So there's three divine persons. One divine being, three divine persons. This is kind of like the mental, don't get a headache. But three divine persons, one divine being.

That second person of the Trinity, Jesus, right? The only begotten son of God, the son of God, the second person of the Trinity, took on a human nature. So here is, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, here is a being. Here's a person that has a human nature and a divine nature, but is a divine person. Does that make sense? So from all eternity, here is the second person of the Trinity, the son of God. From all eternity has existed. In time, he took on a human nature, right,

2,000 years ago, in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary. So the question is, what is in the womb? The womb in the womb of Mary is the God man, right? Divinity and humanity. But who is in the womb? Well, who is in the womb is the second person of the Trinity? is because if Jesus took on a, he became a human person, there'd be four persons in the Trinity. So Jesus remained a divine person with a human and divine nature. He was that divine person with the human and divine nature in Mary's womb. Therefore, Mary gave birth to the Son of God, right?

She gave birth to the second person of the Trinity. Now, he existed before her. So we're not saying Mary is the mother of the Trinity, but in a real way, the person that she, black of a better term, the person she gestated and the person she gave birth to is the second person of the Trinity is the only begotten son of God. Does that make sense?

Does that make kind of some sense? Okay, good. So because of that, to say anything less than Mary is the mother of God is not to deny anything about Mary, it's to deny something essential about Jesus. Last weekend, we celebrated the reality of the nativity that Jesus was born into the world. Today we're commemorating, okay, who is Jesus?

Who was born into the world? Who was born into the world is the Son of God, the eternal Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, the second person of the Trinity. Okay, that's the dogma of Mary being the mother of God. And the Council of Ephesus from the year 431, if you want to know, the Council of Ephesus said,

they declared this solemnly. So every Christian must believe this, not just Catholics, not just Orthodox, because we do profess this very clearly, but every Christian has to believe this. That's the dogma. But here, what do we want to talk about today? We want to hold that dogma, sacred, close to our hearts.

Mary's the mother of God. She's also a model. So Mary's the mother of God, but she's also our model. Especially as we come to the end of a year and starting a new year today, there's a scripture passage that St. Luke describes when he says, after the shepherds come to Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and they tell Joseph and Mary all that they had heard and seen. it said, Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart.

And one of the things you have to realize is that, you know, Luke, he wrote it, when he wrote his gospel, he said, I thoroughly investigated all these things. And we have to wonder if in his thoroughly investigating all these things, if he didn't actually go to the source. Luke is the only one who tells us these nativity stories that we get, like today with the visit of the shepherds or next weekend, like the visit of the Magi. You have to wonder if Luke didn't actually go to the source and ask Mary. So what happened?

And she was able to answer for this maybe one very important reason, how she lived. She kept all these things, reflecting on them in her heart. See, I think too many of us, we're so busy. Yesterday was to 2022. Today is 2023. And we're just moving on to the next day, the next day. And then pretty soon it's going to be the end of this year and it'll be the beginning of a new year. and we don't end up actually living.

We just end up existing. We just end up kind of going through life unless we do what Mary did. Mary kept all these things, reflecting on them in our heart. So here's the three things. My invitation for all of us, even just today, even if it's just today, I think it'd be worth it. One is when it comes to our experiences, when it comes to our thoughts, when it comes to our memories, to hold them. then to reflect on them and then to remember them, which are three kind of, maybe three different sides of the same thing.

But to hold them basically means to notice them. I mean, how much of life we just fail to recognize? How much of the good things and bad things do we fail to acknowledge? Just not, we just even fail to notice them. Because I can look back and say, okay, another year, 2022. I don't know if this happened to you guys, but during the pandemic, like I don't know what year it was. It's just kind of all blended together because big things happened.

and yet I didn't notice. Maybe I noticed at the time, but then they were forgotten. But to hold on to them means to notice, means to avoid failing to recognize. Not just failing to recognize the moments, but to recognize their value. There's a psychologist. He's talked about this.

When it comes to parents raising kids, he says, listen, you get your kids, you get them really small for four years. That's it. And then those four years are gone. And if you miss it, basically it's a tragic. Because you get those first four years, and I think of my siblings, I think of talking to other young parents who are just exhausted during those first four years.

If you blink, they're gone. You know, I think there's something so powerful that when things are hard, when things are bad, it seems like they'll never end. But they always do. And when things are good, sometimes it can seem like they'll never end. And they always do. We have to realize this about life. is that good times will never last, and neither will bad times.

It always keeps going. And unless we stop and say, wait a second, I understand, I'm noticing, I'm holding on to the value of this moment. I miss it. You know, I've been on campus here. This is the 18th year, middle of my 18th year on campus, and it's incredible. At one point, I remember always thinking, like, yeah, when the bishop asked me to move, I'll move whenever, it's no big deal.

Because the whole point was to be a parish priest in the first place. And then, I don't know, maybe eight years ago or so, Bishop Serba called me into his office one April day and said, Father, I'm sorry, I have to send you to this parish. I'm like what you're doing at the university, but there's a priest up in this parish, and his doctor told him that he has to retire. He's just getting too old, too sick,

and I don't have anyone else, so you have to go. I remember like, oh, I feel like it just, it literally, it not literally broke my heart because that would be a whole other issue. I just was so sad. I had not anticipated how, sad I would be. And I couldn't tell anyone. It was just for a whole week. I think probably people could tell because I was crying all the time. I wasn't really crying. But it was very just so heavy. And I remember thinking, oh my gosh, I just assumed. I just assumed that this would go on.

I remember looking at the freshman thinking, I just assumed I would be with you for the rest of your time. Looking at the juniors thinking like, I just thought that I would be there with you until you graduated. And it was just, it highlighted, this is valuable. I just thought it would go on forever and doesn't. The next week he called me and he's like, yeah, never mind. The priest got a second opinion from a different doctor and he said he could keep working, so I got to stay. But it highlighted something.

I highlighted the fact that too often I miss it. Too often I miss the value of a moment. And even the value of the challenge of the moment, you know, the value of the difficulty. Here's Mary in today's reading. She gave birth in a cave because there was no room. she placed she and Joseph placed their child in a manger we talked about that last

Sunday on Christmas it was not a good day but Mary held on to this because it was an important day that even struggles I think are worth noting so again a little story a couple well so a lot of times on Saturday mornings

I will go down to like a coffee shop and just like frantically scrambled to try to get a homily ready and all these kind of things and there are some days where I'll show up there and look around and all these people are just like sipping on their coffee and having their scones, like reading the newspaper or doing the crossword puzzle or even like reading a book for fun. And I remember looking around this room going like, these people, they don't understand, you know? Like I have to work this day. And one weekend, a couple summers ago, I was here in Duluth and I had an assignment, but it got canceled.

And so I thought, well, I'll go to my parents' place and no one was home, so I just stayed in Duluth. And it was one of those weekends where I got the weekend off. And it was completely unexpected. And I found myself like, okay, Friday, I don't have to stress. Saturday. I could go down to the coffee shop and just read a book. Like even Sunday, I got up and said mass and everything, if there were a couple students here, said mass for them.

But there was no pressure. It was great. But I got to the end of that day on Sunday. And I thought, okay, I mean, coming to here and praying and saying, okay, God, thank you so much for this weekend. I don't want to have another one of these for a long time. Because there was something, it was great. It was a gift.

It was like a, a, but sometimes, to have something to do, right, to have a task, to realize that this is important. It can be a burden, but at the same time, it is a burden that is an honor. It is a privilege. The reality is that someday every one of us will long for the days. In fact, I would say one day, we're going to miss the things that we complain about today. One day, pretty much almost every one of us, will long for the things that we complain about today.

So here's the first thing about Mary, which is, like, hold on to these things. They've noticed the gifts, notice the struggles to carry them. And then second is to reflect on them, right? Which is kind of the same thing, but it's just the next step. Because, again, we can be so busy. I'm preaching myself, by the way, right now. You guys all know this. They're like, Father, take notes for yourself.

Because I'm so easy to move on to the next thing. Okay, we did that. Great. Moving on to the next thing. instead of stopping and reflecting. In fact, some of my brother priests kind of, I don't want to say, lectured me. They were sharing.

They were sharing with me in the room that, while it's important, in fact, necessary for us to pray, they said, it is just as important to have time not just to pray and talk with the Lord, but to reflect. Like to stop and create space in one's life to just pump. wonder, right? Here's what Mary did. She kept all these things. She held them, right? And she reflected on them in her heart. Because we either, this is the truth is, we either live reflectively or we live reflexively. It's really one or the other. We either live reflectively and we go over their day and say, wait a second, I just reacted like that. Why did, why did I do that? What's going on in the

course of my heart? How many times do we go back to confession for the same thing? We confess the same sin over and over again, and we haven't necessarily stopped and asked, where does this come from? In fact, Sister Miriam James, amazing, amazing religious sister, she led this retreat here in Minnesota a couple months back called Healing the Whole Person Retreat. And one of the things that she had shared, she said, you know, our sins are not arbitrary. This was so powerful for me. She said, our sins are not arbitrary. Whatever your sins are, that's connected to something. Like, whatever the fruit of your sin is, it's connected to some kind of root. It comes from somewhere, especially those sins that we confess over and over again,

the ones that are always there. And if we don't take time to reflect on them, we're simply going to automatically default to them. We either live reflectively or we live reflexively. Unless I take that time and say, okay, what just happened? What is the weight of this? What's the gift of this? I'm going to miss it.

I would even say this. I would even say the people who take time to reflect. I have to kind of notice this a little bit in my life as I'm starting to do this. if you're a productive person or efficiency person, that this will be helpful because I think people who take time to reflect get more things done because they end up doing the right things as opposed to the most of us who live reflexively and we just do whatever's there.

But to live reflectively, to live like Mary, to hold all these things and to reflect on them in our hearts is to live with purpose, especially as we begin this new year. What was last year like? Let me reflect on that. How about this? What was the last week from last Christmas to today? What was that like? Let me reflect on that. Where was God? What was he doing? Where's he calling me?

To hold these things, reflect on them. And lastly, it's to remember them. You know, if you go back, today, today might be the day, January 1st, where you start the Bible in the year, maybe for the first time or maybe the third time. But when you press play, one of the things you're going to discover is all through the Old Testament, it. God has, I don't want to say God is just one word for his people, but there is a word that he says so many times, that he says himself, that he says to the mouths of his prophets, that just comes up again and again in the Bible, and that word is remember. Remember what the Lord God has done. Remember who you are. Remember whose you are. Remember, he says it again and again

and again. Why? Because we're so quick to forget. I mean, hold these things, might reflect on them, and then I'm on to the next thing. But we need to remember. In fact, I just rejoice. That's kind of a powerful word. I am happy about. That's more where I'm at. Just this last week with my family. I know they do this.

Whenever we get together, we all tell stories. In fact, we get this, I think, from my dad. My dad growing up, he is notorious for telling the same stories over and over again. But we know them all. Why? Because he keeps telling them. We're like, Dad, he loves a new person introduced to the family or introduce to it because he's like, okay, no one, someone who's not heard any of my story.

And we're all like, okay, here we go. But because he repeats those stories, A, we know him better. B, we've become storytellers. We've become people who when we get together, we're like, okay, this is one of the stories is like, yeah, when Amy and Beth, my two oldest sisters, when they couldn't watch Rudolph the Red Nose Ranger, that claymation thing one night because my parents were going out to eat, they had a babysitter, but the girls scraped their food into the garbage disposal, and they weren't supposed to do this. And so that my mom turned it off and they complained about it every single year. But I know this story because they're going to be.

They complained about it every single year. They tell the stories and helps us remember. To hold on to what God has done, to reflect on what God is doing, but to remember by telling those stories. Here's the big thing is, if I don't have someone I can share this with, how am I going to remember? If I don't have someone who shares their stories, how are they going to remember? And so we just have to listen.

What are the stories people are telling us? because this is what it's important to them. This is what they're holding on to. This is what they're reflecting on. What are the stories we share with others? Because this is what we're holding on to. This is what we're reflecting on. This is what we want to remember.

And if I don't have anybody, maybe I don't. I can write these things down. I'm so amazed. This is the last thing. I'm so amazed by how often we have our students or our missionaries who will say something like, you know, I went over my journal. I was going over my prayer journal.

from the last month or from the last semester, from last year, and I just realized here's what God was doing. And I think, oh my gosh, I should do that. I should really take the time because they'll do this on a regular basis. At least every day, or at least every week, if not every day, they'll take this time and say, okay, Lord, what do I want to notice? What do I want to hold on to? What have you done? What am I reflecting on? And then to write it down so that they can remember it and they go back. And it just, again, it convicts my heart. And as we begin this new year, it's one of those things that I want to do more because I want to live like Mary. Mary in whom God did his greatest work

was the kind of person who didn't just sleepwalk through life. But she lived life. And she did it because she held on to what was going on. She reflected on what God was doing in her life. And she remembered it because she pondered it deeply in her heart. Thank you.