Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 11/30/25 Waiting Well: Engaged

Episode Date: November 29, 2025

Homily from the First Sunday of Advent. The process is the point. When we are waiting, we often want to be "done". We want to be "there". We want our waiting to be over so that we can start living. But life happens right here and right now. And God is doing something right now. We do not simply endure waiting, we engage during the waiting. The declaration of faithful waiting is: I am confident that this moment is crucial. Mass Readings from November 30, 2025: Isaiah 2:1-5 Psalm 122: 1-9Romans 13:11-14 Matthew 24:37-44

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

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Chapter 24 verses 37 through 44. Jesus said to his disciples, as it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. In those days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,

up to the day that Noah entered the ark. They did not know until the flood came and carried them all away. So will it be also at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be out in the field, one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding at the mill, one will be taken, and one will be left.

Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on which day your Lord will come. Be sure of this. If the master of the house had known the hour of night when the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and not let his house be broken into. So too you also must be prepared,

for at an hour you do not expect the son of man will come. the gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord, Jesus Christ. Wait you to be seated. So I was just talking to someone recently who is training for a marathon. It's Grama's Marathon up here in Duluth.

Grams is a restaurant. It's also a marathon where people run from two harbors, Minnesota, about 26.2 miles, roughly roughly exactly 26.2 miles to Duluth, Minnesota. And they were already starting to train for Grandma's Marathon.

Now, Grandma's Marathon happens the third Saturday of June. And yet here they are at the beginning of December, end of November, and they are already training for this marathon. And it's like, oh my gosh, it seems like a lot of time to have to wait. Have you said this? So like that seems like a long time to have to wait. And they had such a good perspective.

They're like, well, I'm not waiting. I'm training. I thought, oh my gosh, that's so good. That'll preach. I'm like, that'll come up in a homily someday because that's exactly it. Right now, we're in the season right now of Advent, right? The first step in season of Advent.

And one of the things we remember from Advent last year is that Advent is this time of preparation, right? It's a time of preparation for the Lord's coming. But it's also a season of waiting. But it's both at the same time. And I was thinking about this when it comes to not only preparation, when it comes to waiting, is like how much of our time, how much of our lives are spent just waiting. Like waiting for something to happen, waiting, waiting for life to happen,

and waiting for the next thing. And actually, I looked up, so I need some research and found out that, like, a lot of, a lot of our lives are spent just simply waiting. For example, you just wait, even waiting in lines. The average person, at least in the United States, the average person spends six months of their life simply waiting in line.

If you're talking about some people around the country, around the world, I mean, there are some people who spend up to five years of their lives simply waiting a line, which is a pretty big gap, six months to five years. But depends what kind of person you're speaking of that commuting.

There are some people who will spend only like, say, a couple months waiting for buses or trains, but there are some who will spend 3.7 years of their lives, not on the bus, not on the train, but 3.7 years of their lives actually in the action of commuting, just getting from home to the office

or office to the home, that we're waiting to see a doctor. We can spend up to 14 days across the course of a lifetime. If, on average, there's like a, I guess, a 19 minutes wait per visit, 14 days of our lives across a lifetime. All of us drive probably, and so roughly, in a normal American lifespan, we will spend six months at red lights. Again, this is not the whole commute. This is not how long it takes to drive from here to there. This is simply sitting at red lights.

Some people spend up to six months of their lives waiting for there. And when it comes to waiting for food to drink, a lot of us will spend, if you go out to eat a lot, you can spend 2.8 years of your life. Simply, again, waiting for someone to take your order, waiting for your food to get there. And I just think about this. Lastly, waiting for friends, waiting for families, waiting for people, other people. We can spend about 146 hours per year waiting for someone else. And that might vary depending on your significant other if they're a president who is on time or not.

but think about that, 146 hours per year, just waiting for someone else. And here we are in the season of Advent. And we ask the question that's waiting for other people, waiting in line, waiting and stoplights. What are you waiting for? Again, the season of Advent is a season of preparation, but it's a season of waiting. And what are you waiting for? As a kid, I remember how hard it was to wait.

Even in this season, when we hit Thanksgiving, we hit Advent. And the next season is Christmas, the next celebration is Christmas, and it was so hard to wait. And so I was waiting for Santa. I was waiting for a break from school. I was waiting for my family to come visit. And so we had all these tools. I don't know if you remember these tools, these tools that help you wait. Like, I mean, we have the Advent wreath.

Like, you had light one candle every single week and it helps you. I remember thinking, like, this doesn't help at all. This actually makes it feel like it's taking even longer because we lit that candle on Sunday or on Monday. And it's not a whole other week until we can light the second. candle is ridiculous. Or you might even have advent calendars, but oh my gosh, I remember getting an advent calendar for my birthday once. It had behind every door, it had a piece of chocolate. And that was torture. I was like, I'm right in front of this calendar that has all of these pieces of chocolate behind every one of these little doors. I think it won, one a day. It was torture. Paper chain.

People have the paper chain. You know, right? You fill it off. It's red and grain. Each day, take off another link on the paper chain. You're getting closer and closer to Christmas, which I was frustrated me, what I would do is I would just wait for like a couple days and then take off three at a time or four at a time because otherwise it just seems, it seems so slow. Why? Because I just wanted it to be over. I wanted the weight to be done. I wanted to be there. You know, I'm sure you heard of the 1970s marshmallow experiment. They had this, they brought a number of children into one room, one at a time, and on the side of it front of the table, and on the table was a plate, and on the plate was one marshmallow. And the conductor

of the experiment said, okay, if you want, you can have, I'm going to leave the room. If you want, you can have this marshmallow now. But if you wait, when I come back in and don't eat it, when I come back in, you can have two marshmallows. And you can see this redone over and over again with, you know, hidden cameras and whatnot. And the torture that these little souls, little hearts are going through as they're like, someone just like eat it right away. Like they don't care.

They don't, they don't care at all. They're just going to eat that marshmallow as soon as they can. Others, it's torture for them to wait, like sitting on their hands, covering their eyes, looking away, I mean, turning, literally physically turning around in their chairs so they don't have to see this thing right in front of them because it's really so difficult for us to wait. We hate waiting. Because why? Again, I want it to be over because I want it to be done.

A lot of times we have to wait to know something, but I don't want to wait to know it. I want to know now. I want to have what I want and I want to be or I want to be. and almost so often for many of us, where I want to be is just somewhere other than here. For so often, for so many of us, I want to be there. Again, I want to be done. And yet, here we are.

Just waiting. And one of the things it does to our hearts is it convinces us that when we're waiting, we're just simply wasting our lives, that we can sometimes see waiting as a waste. Just a waste of time. And so it's possible that waiting is difficult for us because we don't know how to wait well. So that's what we're going to do.

Over the course of this advent, we're going to learn, like, how do we wait well? Because if so much of life is spent waiting, how do we do that well? We can also look at what do we normally do when we wait? If you would look to yourself and said, okay, when it's time for you to wait, what do you do? I think normally when we wait, we worry. like we wait with anxiety or or while we wait we whine we complain about what's going on um while we wait I think one of the ways we do it right now is we doubt we doubt God's goodness or what we wait we try to take control I think sometimes maybe the biggest way we wait is we just check out

biggest way we wait is we want to sleep through it that that that I mean think about this sitting in line or we're standing in line or we're standing in line do we do, pick up our phones. And we choose in that moment to be somewhere else. That's exactly what it is. We're doing, I'm sitting here, I'm waiting, I'm standing here, I'm waiting, and I pick up my phone, and I'm choosing to be somewhere other than here. And I think the problem is this, with all those different ways that we do this, we don't wait well because we think waiting is passive. But waiting is not passive. We think waiting is something we simply endure. So we numb ourselves, we distract ourselves, and we say like, okay, well, wake me up when we get there. No, don't

give me wrong. There's something highly satisfying about getting on a bus or getting on a plane and as it takes off or drives away, you fall asleep and you wake up at your destination. That is really, really nice. Sometimes, sometimes we need to rest. The problem is when we find ourselves sleepwalking through entire seasons. Because we thought that waiting was simply passive. We thought that waiting was a waste. And so we pretend that we're already there. I mean, think about this. As of Thanksgiving, it's time to think Christmas girls. As of Thanksgiving, it's time to have. parties as of Thanksgiving. It's time to, it's time to give presents as of Thanksgiving. We act as if we're already there, but we're not. We need to be present. This is what it is to wait.

It's not simply to endure. It's to engage. I'll say that again. Waiting is not simply to be endured. Waiting is something that we need to engage. Waiting well means that I'm engaged. Waiting well basically means this. Waiting well means that I'm an active participant in this moment because I may not know what's going to happen, but I do know that whatever this moment means, this moment actually matters. And this is the Declaration of Faith. That you guys, for Advent, this is the Declaration of Faith that every single Christian makes during seasons of waiting. The Declaration is this. I am confident that this moment is crucial. I'm confident that this moment matters. And so I can't just check out. I can't just worry. I can't just worry. I can't just

just whine. I have to be here. And that's what every Christian has to declare. I'm confident that this moment is crucial. But if that's the case, again, let's ask the question. If that's the case, then why do we minimize the now in pursuit of the then? Why do we do that? Why do we check out? Why do we have our eyes fixed on then instead of letting your eyes rest on here and now. And I think one of the reasons is because, for me, at least, I don't like uncertainty. Like, I genuinely, I want to know. I don't know what's going to happen. And so I just want to know. I'll do this. I'll do this when I'm watching TV. I'll do this when I'm watching, like, on the internet. I'll do this through movies. Like, I will stand there at my iPad watching a movie

that I'm enjoying and I'll scrub through it. Like, I'll fast forward through certain parts. Like, okay, I got it. Next scene. Okay, I get it. Next scene. And I'm like, that's ridiculous. The whole point of the story is to engage the story, not just to know how it ends, but to live the story, and yet here's what I do. I scrub through the story. How many times do we find ourselves scrubbing through life? This doesn't matter. This doesn't matter.

I'm going to get to the end of the story and miss the whole story. Remember I did this once? There was this TV show that this man wakes up in a hospital bed. He's a sheriff who wakes up in a hospital bed, and there's been this like zombie apocalypse, and he wants to know if his wife survived, and he wants to know if his wife did reunite. And so I watched a couple episodes.

I thought this is really fascinating. but I really want to know if he finds his wife. And so I went to Wikipedia, just like looked it up. Does he find his wife? And no, I don't have to watch it because I just wanted to know. That was the thing. I skipped to the end. And yet, we have to be here.

I want to be there. In order to be there, we first have to be here. The declaration every Christian makes is I'm confident that this moment matters. I read a post recently of a parent who had a child in the Nick who was in the neonatal intensive care unit. And this parent was talking about how, in this post, had described the great kindness of the doctors and nurses and staff of the hospital caring for their family

and for their child in the NICU. But they didn't go on and on about the doctors and nurses great patients or great generosity or great gentleness. The kindness of those doctors, the kindness of those nurses, they said this was the fact that they had taken years of their lives during school and prepared themselves to be able to take care of my child right here in the NICU. She said, the great kindness of these doctors and nurses wasn't, again, and just that they were gentle or they were patient or they were generous.

It was all of those hidden years they used and they became the kind of people who could take care of her infant who is in crisis. That's what I just invite all of our students to be able to realize too, that even in school, okay, this moment matters. Why? Because it's helping me become the kind of person I need to be. You have to know that waiting matters.

Why? Because this moment is helping me become the kind of person that God needs me to be. The declaration of every Christian in Advent is, I am confident that this moment is crucial. So, because waiting is not passivity. It's not endured, but it's engaged. We know this, waiting well is the way.

Now, the way to say it is, the process is actually the point. The process is the path. Even when I just want to be there, and this is the last thing. Even when I just want to be there. You know, I mentioned Grandma's Marathon. People training already for Grandma's Marathon. Imagine, imagine this. Imagine race day comes along.

The third's Saturday in June. And you start the race. You start running from two harbors, Minnesota to Duluth, Minnesota. and someone pulls up alongside of you and says, hey, I can give you a ride right now. Like, wait, why would I give, why would I take a ride? Well, no, you want to go to Duluth, right? Yeah. Well, just let me give you a ride.

You can be right there. Imagine who in the world would say, I'll take the ride. Well, yeah, the point is to get to Duluth. No. The destination is Duluth. The destination matters. But so does how you get there. It's actually that process of, I didn't just get from two harbors to Duluth, I ran each step

from two harbors to Duluth. Yes, it does matter. That one gets there. But it also matters a whole heck of a lot how we get there. That's why, this advent, to begin to take this first step is not to race to Christmas. And just like life, it's not just to race to the end. because it does matter where we're going. Christmas matters.

The end matters. But how we get there also matters. Why? Because something is happening here. Something is happening now. This moment matters because this moment right now is necessary to get to the next moment. And we declare this. God is doing something now.

So as Christians, we have to look around and say, this advent what is happening now how am i engaged now what am i waiting for and how how in this moment can i wait well