Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 11/26/23 Based On a True Story: Unwritten

Episode Date: November 25, 2023

Homily from the Solemnity of Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe. Your part of the story (Act IV) remains unwritten. Jesus has bridged the unbridgable gap between God and humanity. We can believe that and remain unchanged. But if we are willing to respond, we can write the final act of the story. We can place ourselves under the Lordship of Christ and live an entirely new life. Mass Readings from November 26, 2023: Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17 Psalms 23:1-3, 5-61 Corinthians 15:20-26, 28 Matthew 25:31-46

Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz. Before we get started, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you so much. This last November 16th, we had our annual give to the Max Day. That's the day that up here at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, our Newman Center, the Bulldog Catholic Newman Center, that we take the opportunity to ask all of those who have been blessed by our mission up here, those who want to be part of our mission to participate in this mission to reach the hearts, the souls, the minds of college students on campus up here in Duluth, Minnesota. We ask them to support us.

And so thank you so much. for this last November 16th. Thank you for supporting us. I want to thank all of those, all of you who have said, you know, you care about college students, you care about handing on the faith

to the next generation. You've been praying for us. You've been praying for our ministry, been praying for our students, praying for everything we do on campus. Also, thank you so much for those who tuned into the Q&A session. We had a live stream

this last November 16th. Thanks to Ascension, I was so grateful for them to host that live stream for us. Thank you so much for tuning in and having questions. I'm sorry if we're going to get to your questions. And lastly,

I want to thank all of those who supported us financially this last November 16th. In order to reach college students, in order to keep this ministry going, we could not do it without the help of people like you. So thank you so very much. In the spirit of Thanksgiving, of course, the spirit of Thanksgiving, just thank you, thank the Lord. And I hope that this ministry continues to bless you as you have blessed us.

The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. chapter 25 verses 31 through 46 Jesus said to his disciples when the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him he will sit upon his glorious throne and all the nations will be assembled before him

and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats he will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left then the king will say to those on his right come you who are blessed by my father inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food.

I was thirsty and you gave me drink. A stranger and you welcomed me. Naked and you clothed me. Ill and you cared for me. In prison and you visited me. Then the righteous will answer him and say, Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothed you?

When did we see you ill or in prison and visit you? And the king will say to them in reply, Amen. I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me. Then he will say to those on his left, depart from me, you accursed,

into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, for I was hungry and you gave me no food. I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. A stranger and you gave me no welcome. Naked and you gave me no clothing. ill and in prison, and you did not care for me. Then they will answer and say, Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty

or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison and not minister to your needs? He will answer them. Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me. And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.

The Gospel of the Lord. Might you to have his seat. So for the last, you know, three weeks, this is our fourth week. We've been doing this series. The series is called Based on a True Story. And we've been telling the story of the gospel, right? So we went all the way back to it. And St. Paul proclaimed the gospel of God to the people in Thessalonica.

And what's the story he told them? Right? He told them these three acts, the story in three parts, right? First, Act one is that God is good. And that God made this world good and God made you good. that he made you in his image and likeness, he made you for labor, for leisure, for love, he made you for all these good things. Act two, of course, is the bad news, right?

That's the good news, is Ewangelian, was that God is good, he made us good. Act two is the bad news, and that we use that freedom, we use the gifts God had given us to break the world. Act three last week, Act three is even better news, right? This is the true gospel of God. It's actually fulfillment of what we heard in the first reading today. that God said, I myself will rescue you. And so the third act is here is what Jesus did, right?

So here is Jesus Christ. Again, this is this remarkable story in three acts. God is good. He made this world good. He made us and his life. We were made for relationship with him and for each other. But sin breaks this relationship. Sin breaks the world.

And so there's this unbridgeable chasm between us and God. And no matter how hard we work, no matter what we do, no matter how much we try to be perfect, we can never, ever cross that chasm from here. here to him. And so Act 3 is this incredible, remarkable thing where here's God becomes one of us, right? The word, in the beginning was the word,

and the word was with God, and the word was God, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is Jesus, who is both fully God and fully one of us. And the only one who is fully God and fully us can bridge that unbridgeable gap between God and us. That's Act 1, Act 2, and Act 3. And this is amazing, right? Remember how Father John Ricardo talked about this,

and I can't recommend enough his program called The Rescue Project. It's so important. Here's God, we're created. We've been captured. Now we've been rescued. Now, there's a fourth act. And the fourth act is, what's our response? Because we realize, here's the story.

This is the story we've been talking about for the last three weeks. But this last part of the story, this fourth act, it's the part of the story that remains unwritten. And in some ways, it's the part of the story. part of the story that comes down to us. Everything else is God's work, right? Being created, that's God's work. Are being captured, well, that's our fallen humanity.

But being rescued, that's God's work. Now, what's our response? The part of the story that's unwritten comes down to us. What are we going to do about it? Now, a lot of us, we do this. We grow up in church and we say that in a number of minutes, we're going to say the creed, stand up and say, oh, I believe these things.

Basically, what we're going to say is, I believe that story. Yeah, I believe that we've been created and captured and God rescued us. Yep, I believe that. I believe that Jesus Christ, because he is fully God and fully man, that he's the only one who can bridge the unbridgeable gap between us and God. I believe that. That's wonderful. That's amazing.

But that doesn't write anything. That's me just simply saying, that's a cool part of the story. And I know that God, I know you made this new life possible. God, I know you made this relationship with the father possible. But it doesn't do anything to simply say, I believe, I don't know if you know this. There was a study that came out of. a number of years ago, that only 10% of Americans are actually atheists, right? Only 10, it's a pretty low number considering how much noise they make,

but only 10% of Americans are actual atheists. They say God doesn't exist. And yet, Jopopjeanbalt the second, while he was alive, he pointed this out. He pointed out that many of us, though, are what he called practical atheists. That, yeah, we believe God exists, but for all intents of purposes, we don't live like he exists. Or you can even call it Christian atheists. That, you know, I look at the story. Yes, act one, act two, act three.

I believe that story, but act four, the part that's unwritten, we haven't responded to it. And this is what we have to talk about today. Because I can believe the story and remain unchanged. I can believe that there's a real relationship God made possible and remain unchanged. I can believe there's this new life God made possible and remain unchanged. I like the example of this. I sometimes use this example where imagine your parents at one point out of the blue, not your birthday, not Christmas, just because they love you. They buy you this incredible new guitar.

and not just an ordinary guitar, like a Gibson or a Taylor, a Martin, something like this, an amazing guitar, incredible guitar. Not only that, but they also make an arrangement, they say actually down the block, not too far away, like around the corner, there is one of the greatest guitar teachers in the entire world. We've have an arrangement with him that if you ever want lessons, he is available whenever you want. Not only that, but if your guitar ever breaks, if it wears out, we've made an arrangement that we will replace, we'll fix, we'll do anything it takes. If it breaks, we're going to replace it completely. Now, you've been given an amazing guitar. You've been given access to incredible lessons.

You have unlimited fixes on your guitar. Question, does that make you a guitar player? The answer, of course, is no. Why? Because you've been given this incredible gift that on our own, we could never actually utilize, we can never actually get for ourselves. It's been given to us. But unless we use it, unless we act, unless we respond, that gift has been wasted. and this is Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, created, captured, and rescued. Unless this fourth act response, if it remains unwritten, that gift remains wasted. And I sometimes wonder, like, why did God leave it unwritten?

Like, why did God leave the fourth act? Unwritten? Like, if he's going to rescue us, like it says in Scripture, or if he's going to do this thing, if he's going to bridge the unbridgeable gap between us, and him, he's going to conquer sin and conquer death and set us free, why not just, if he's going to rescue us, why does just restore us completely? Like, right? Why not, like, eliminate all trouble? Why not, if he's going to really rescue us, why not make it so there's

no more problems anymore? I think it's this. I think it's because, if you go back to the beginning of the story, right, Act one, when God created us, how did he make us? He made us for labor, leisure, and for love. He made us in his image and likeness. And so that is he put us in this world and he's given us, he doesn't just want robots, right? He doesn't just want pets. He wants people who can love like he does. He wants people not only who can, who are willing to choose to love like he loves. And so he's rescued us and given us the ability by the power of the Holy Spirit to actually live

like he is, to love like he loves. That by responding to his grace, by walking in faith, something happens, right? By walking in faith in this world that's still broken with our hearts that are to remain broken, but still rescued, something happens to us. Now, this has been a real rescue, but a real rescue demands a real response. Here's an example. Go back to the Old Testament, the book of Exodus.

You're the people of Israel, right? They're God's chosen people. And they've been enslaved by the Egyptians for 400 years. So for 400 years, all they know is slavery, kind of like us, that we're born into this world of darkness. We're born into this world of slavery, to sin, to death, to the evil one. And then after 400 years, what does God do? God fights for them, he rescues them.

Not only does he rescue them, but he has a destination in mind for them. He wants to lead them to the promised land. And they get to the promised land, and you know the story, right? They get to the promised land, but they're not ready to enter the promised land because if they're going to go into the promised land,

they have to know how to live free. They have to know how to be free, but they don't know how to live free. They've lived generations and generations for 100 years as slaves. And so what does God do? God leads them through the wilderness. Why?

Because they need to learn how to live as free. people. If they're made for the promised land, that's where he wants for them. But if they're going to enter the promised land like him, free, they're going to have to reject what it was like to live as a slave and learn how to live as someone who's been set free. You know, that sounds crazy to us. We look at the book of Numbers. Like this is one of the first challenges. Numbers chapter 11, actually here they are in the wilderness. And they're tempted, it blows my mind, they're tempted to go back to Egypt. In fact, in Numbers chapter 11, it says this,

they begin to complain. Now, again, God has rescued them, and he's leaving them. He's feeding them every single day with manna from heaven, right? But it says, would that we had meat for food? We remember the fish we used to eat without cost in Egypt, and the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions and the garlic,

but now we're vanished. We have nothing to eat but this manna. It's basically, here they are. They're like, okay, God has rescued them. He set them free. He's feeding them every single day, but they're like, yeah, but the melons. Like the leaks, I would go back to being a slave rather than living free.

This is why they have to wander in the wilderness. And this is us. This is us. This is why God did, when he rescued us, he didn't just fully restore us and bring us to heaven immediately. Because he wants us to learn how to live in his house. Remember last week, that image, that image that we ended with, that image of you live in a broken home. And this is a place of a tyrant. It's a place of violence.

It's a place where you're not free. It's a place where you are terrorized by living in this home. And then the dad from across the street comes over and he says, would you like to live with us? And again, you rise across the street and you're like, I have this new life and this new family. I've been transferred, right, from the kingdom of this tyrant and slavery to this home of a father and a family and freedom.

That new life I've been rescued. But here's what happens. Yes, we're in a place of joy now. and yes, there is a family now that I didn't have, and yes, there's a father I didn't have, but also there's rules in that house that I didn't have. Yeah, living under a tyrant, I was enslaved, but I could do what I want.

Now I'm living in the father's house. I'm no longer a slave, but there's rules here. We know this, right? We know that real relationships, if we've actually been transferred from the kingdom of darkness, like today is the Feast of Christ the King. We transferred to the kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus. And this is going to be a real relationship that we know this.

We know that real relationships, you're given real rights, but real relationships have real responsibilities as well. I think it's amazing. What is this new house? What's this new family? It's the church. We just have to understand this, that God established his family on earth.

He established his kingdom on earth. What does he say? He establishes the Catholic Church. Matthew 16. Jesus says to Peter, Peter, you are now rock. And upon this rock, I will build my church. And the gates of hell will not prevail against it. Jesus goes on to say, to the apostles,

he who hears you, hears me. He goes on to say, the apostles, I will send my Holy Spirit, and he will guide you into all truth. So what happens is that Jesus, when he, when he rescues us, he brings us into his family, which is another way of saying, and he brings us into his church. Now, I know people,

I know people that some people like, no, no, I just want the Bible. Like, I just want the Bible. Because I really like the Bible because here's the story. And I think that's amazing. I also think, how convenient. In fact, my little anecdotal evidence,

or anecdotal stories, I guess, anecdotes, I guess they call them. My experience with the Bible in a year podcast and the Catechism in the year podcast has been beautiful. It's amazing. There's been some just incredible, miraculous stories.

one of the things I found is that people I love the Bible because this is God's story and it's amazing, it's incredible and a little bit more resistant to the catechism which is still God's story and is still incredible

but begins to kind of make some demands on us because I can have the Bible and I can kind of keep the Bible at arm's length like yeah that's an old story I'm going to apply, it doesn't have anything to do with me but if there's a living church if there's a living kingdom, if there's an actual family that continues to teach me and I have to continue to listen to them, that's a little invasive.

And it's one of those things like we can ask the question, okay, well, yeah, but who gave us the Bible? Who accurately interprets the Bible? That answer is the Catholic Church, is what gave us the Bible, all 73 books. Who interprets the Bible? The Catholic Church, all 73 books. But as long as I can say, I don't know, I just have the Bible, the Bible alone, I can sometimes keep God at a distance. And I can protect myself from being challenged.

I can protect myself from being changed. I can protect my life for being invaded. and I can avoid the messiness. There's plenty of messiness in the Bible, but it's like ancient messiness, right? It's a messiness of someone else. To be part of the church, to be transferred into God's family,

is to say, I have to deal with the messiness now. And it's a messiness of a God whose church has the right to make demands on me. Because here's something we have to realize. The rescue mission has always an old. only come to us through the Catholic Church. This is so important. This rescue mission is only and always come to us through the church.

I mean, honestly, when it comes to us through the Bible, who gave us the Bible, the church. When it comes to us through new life and baptism, that's how we're actually rescued? How does baptism come to us? It comes to us through the church. How do we get fed for this journey through the wilderness, to the promised land, to the Eucharist? Which comes to us, how, through the church? When we fall, when we fail, when we sin, how do we get healed? The sacraments of reconciliation and anointing comes to us through the church.

How do we know how to worship God that comes to us through his family? The church at the Mass. How do we know what to believe? We are taught through the successors of the apostles, the bishops, which come to us through the church. Here's the crazy news is it is through the church that we have access to the Father. Of course, it's what Jesus has done, but by the power of the Holy Spirit, he established his church,

and it is then through the church we have access to the Father. And the reverse is true. It is through the church that the Father has access to us. Keep in mind, this is a real relationship. And real relationships have real rights and real responsibilities. There's real rights of the church, the God gives us in his rescue. We have access to him. And the real responsibilities is he has access to us,

which means he can make demands on us. So, he said, sorry that I, I would love telling this story about my little sister. She, years ago, was dating this man. Her name is Sarah. His name is Tanner. And at one point, they started dating. And we didn't understand Tanner right away at the beginning of their relationship. I think that my parents were kind of a little bit hesitant about Sarah dating Tanner

and they got more and more serious. I actually remember one time where my parents like flanked me as we had gone out to eat and their Sarah and Tanner were there, had this whole dinner. And everyone left the restaurant and they flanked me on the sidewalk. in Minneapolis and they both grabbed me by the shoulder like they were going to mug me and they were like you have to break those two up like what the heck are you kidding me i'm not going to break up my little sister and her boyfriend also that's not my job i don't i can't do that i won't do that anyways so long story short my parents had this kind of like hmm skepticism kind of suspicion

when i came to tanner long as i said long story short they ended up getting married amazing incredible like a year after they get married they're living in my hometown area maybe maybe three or four years after they get married, living in hometown area. We had a retreat at my parents' place on the lake, and it was in January. And what happened was on Friday night, we had all these students, like, I don't know, 40, 50 students, right? It was packed into this place. And kind of one out of maybe three bathrooms all of a sudden.

You know how when you have a toilet and you flush it? It's supposed to go down? You know how when you have a shower and you like drain, like it drains down? This was like someone had a lever and they pull it the opposite way. So when you flush, it would go in. and the stuff from the shower would come out. It was a mess. It was horrible.

Like raw sewage was all over the ground, the floor of this bathroom. So I wake up on Saturday, I'm like, wow, I'm going to call my dad. So I call my dad and he's like, something's wrong with your bathroom, you know. And so he's like, I'll be right out there. On his way out, my dad, he makes one call. He doesn't call a plumber, doesn't call my other brother-in-law. Doesn't call any of the brothers.

He calls Tanner. He says, hey, Tanner, I need you out. Meet me out at the cabin because, you know, something's wrong with Father Mike's toilet, you know. And so that morning, no, this is really interesting. Tanner had just worked, I think, like 10 days straight. That Saturday was his one day off. And you can imagine that he'd be on the phone with my dad and say, you know, Pete, I get it. But listen, I'm not married to you. I'm married to your daughter. I got stuff to do. Also, this is my one day off. I'm just going to, I'm going to, it's for me. Tanner didn't do that. My dad called and said, hey, I need you to come out

to the place, gets in his car, comes out. And honestly, this is. There's no exaggeration. Literally, Tanner and my dad spent all morning into the afternoon, like on their hands and knees in my family's stuff, like just in this raw sewage, and my family's garbage, we'll say it like that. And you think, like, this is remarkable. But this is what it is to be part of the family. So he has real rights. This is a real relationship. Tanner at any moment can't just go out to the, out of the place. He can go out, he can spend time with my dad, he can go out, he can do whatever he wants, but also real responsibilities Where my dad can say I know it's your one day off

I need help and the church does the same thing for us Like you might get no days off a week But the church says okay, it's Sunday it's time to worship God and we're gonna worship God here at the mass Like you can have all we can have all the things that we want to do but the church gets to step into our lives and say But here's what I'm calling you to do And if I'm going to respond to what Jesus has done for us and have a real relationship with the Father, real relationships have real rights and they have real responsibilities.

Because that's what God wants. Why does he rescue us? Why does he leave this act for unwritten? So we can respond and so we can have a real relationship. In fact, this is the thing that just kills me. It says it's amazing. It number of years ago, it was Easter, Easter afternoon because we had Mass here, the Easter vigil the night before.

And so after Mass year, I drove to my family's place and through having Easter dinner. And my dad was someone's confirmation sponsor the night before. And so that man's name's Andy. We're all sitting all these three, four guys just sitting at the end of the table. So there's me, Andy, the guy who just became Catholic, my dad, and then Tanner. And I just read this article about like the loneliness epidemic among American middle-aged men. And just kind of like how a lot of men in our age range, you know, they have a lot of people they know,

co-workers, might have family, but very few have actual like really, really good friends. So I just thought, let's talk about this. You're all the same age. Let's kind of talk about this. And so, what do you guys think about this loneliness? You know, how there's a crisis of friendlessness among American men. And so the guys were kind of like, I don't know, you know, maybe. No one really said anything.

No one bit. I wanted to talk deep stuff. They wanted to have ham. But afterwards, Tanner came up to me and he's like, you know, I've been thinking about what you asked about, you know, a lack of friendship. I mean, paused and he said, you don't, you're dad's, my best friend. I remember thinking at that moment, that's amazing. Because it didn't start out that way.

It was a real relationship, right? Tanner marries my sister. He's brought into the family. Again, not for place of slavery, it's a place of joy, but brought from one state of life to a new family. And because this is a real relationship with real rights and real responsibilities, because Tanner would say, yes, whenever my dad would call upon him, he was able to say, actually, your dad and I are so close that he is not just my father-in-law. He's my best friend. This is what God wants for us. This is what it is to live in this new kingdom,

to live in this family, to live in the church, is to be able to say yes to the rights, have access to the father, but also yes to the responsibilities. And I say yes to the father. And then what that does is that it makes us become like him. Right, it changes. In fact, I remember hearing this image

of what it is to live in the church. What is it to live and say yes in this fourth act, this act that's unwritten to respond and say, Jesus, you get to have my whole life. It's like taking an iron rod and placing it in the fire. What happens to that iron rod?

It doesn't stay the same. The iron rod begins to take on the properties of the fire, so much so that if you took it out and touched it to a piece of paper, it would burn the piece of paper. And that's what we're meant to be. That's how we're supposed to live. If we let Jesus Christ be the king of our lives, that he bridged the gap between himself, between God and us,

that a life in him changes us and makes us like him. We begin to take on the properties of God himself. and then we can actually participate in his mission. You know, at the end of Christ's time on earth, in Acts chapter 1, the apostles, they're looking at Jesus and they're saying, we know that you're the one who rescued us. We know that you are the one who has redeemed the world. And they ask him the question, Lord, are you at this moment going to restore the kingdom to Israel?

And Jesus, essentially, I'm going to paraphrase, he looks at them and he says, no, you are. Lord, are you going to save the world? You're going to bring your grace or hope your healing. Are you going to bring your love to the world? and Jesus basically says, no, you are. You're going to receive the Holy Spirit power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you

and then you will be the ones who bring me to the world. That's why I think in so many ways, Jesus in the gospel today, he says, if you don't, if there are people who are unclothed, you don't clothe them, if there are people who are hungry and you don't feed them, people who are sick and imprisoned, you don't visit them, then those are places that remain unchanged.

Jesus Christ has suffered, died, and rose from the dead to rescue us. But unless we participate in that mission, there are people who will go unclothed, unfed, unvisited, and unreached by the gospel. This gospel that hopefully has changed your life and my life. And this is, again, this is the part of the story. This Act 4 is the part of the story that remains unwritten. So here's the invitation.

This is the last thing, the invitation. Today's the piece of Christ, the king. We know that Jesus is the king of the universe. The question is, is he the king of your life? And so there's this exercise that sometimes we'll take students through. I really like this exercise. And here's some images. I printed these out.

So here's the first image. This image is this big circle. This big circle represents your life. And these little circles inside the big circle represent all the stuff in your life, right? Your family and your friends, your hobbies, your work, like whatever you're doing, your free time. It's all this stuff. Everyone's busy.

A full life. Obviously, the cross represents Christ. and so in this person's life, very full, very busy, Jesus is like there, but not really part of your life. That's one image. That could be your life. The second image is, same kind of thing, right? Here's the big circle, that's your life.

All the things in your life are there. Jesus is part of your life. So he's there. It's wonderful, right? Because that means that you have friends, you have family, you have work, you have hobbies, you have church, you have your relationship with the Lord, you have all the things you do.

And great news, Jesus is part of that. The third option, third image, is this image. Here's your life. Here's all the things going on in your life. Now, Jesus is here, not just part of your life. He's at the center. And because he's the center, a lot of these things are still there, right? These things like family and friends and hobbies and job and all these things.

But some things there might not be any room for in your life and they have to actually be displaced. and he's somewhere else. Now you see these, imagine these three images. The question, there's two questions. One question is, first question, which one of these most accurately represents your life right now? Is that Jesus isn't really part of it? That he's just a part of it or that he's the center of it?

Like which one, just, you don't have to say it out loud to type it in the comments or anything like this. But which of those images most accurately reflects your life right now? The second question is, Which one of these three images do you want to reflect your life? Not making a promise, like, here's what I'm going to do now, but which one of these do you want to most accurately reflect your life? This where Jesus isn't really part of it.

This is where he's just a part of your life. Or this one, where he's actually in the center. He's not just a part of your life, but he's the heart. You're the only one who can answer these two questions. And it's not even making a resolution today to say I choose number two, I choose number three. It's which one do you want? This fourth act is the act that remains unwritten. What do you want it to say at the end? What do you want the story of your life to read when it's over? Which one of these three images do you

want to be true? Because here we are. God has created us. We've been captured. He's rescued us. All that he's waiting for is our response, the part that's left unwritten. And a response that is based on a true story.