Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 11/6/22 Carry the Fire

Episode Date: November 5, 2022

To “give to the max” and support UMD Newman Catholic Campus Ministries, find out more here! Join us for a “Day of Thanks” on Nov. 17 at 7pm CT on the Sundays with Ascension YouTube channel! Subscribe to the channel here! Homily from the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time. The things one needs to die well are the same things one needs to live well. As we walk through life, we will all walk into darkness and sufferng and pain. We can still walk in hope, courage, and perseverance. We can be the kind of people who can carry the fire into the darkness. Mass Readings from November 6, 2022: 2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14 Psalms 17:1, 5-6, 8, 152 Thessalonians 2:16-3:5 Luke 20:27-38

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz. I want to thank you so much for listening to these homilies and being part of this community. One thing, this upcoming November 17th, that is a Thursday, we are having Minnesota give to the Max Day. It's basically a day where all nonprofits or many nonprofits in Minnesota get supported in order to continue their ministry. Our ministry of Newman Catholic Campus Ministries of the University of Minnesota, Duluth is no different. Basically, we ask those who have been blessed by our ministry to maybe think about and pray about blessing our ministry. So if this has been a blessing, if this podcast has been a blessing to you, please pray for us and also pray about if the Lord is calling you to support us financially.

If he is or if you'd like to, you can support us by going to give mn, that's givemn.org, give mn.org, not just on November 17th, but anytime throughout the month of November, all the way to the end of the year. This year, we have some people coming together and they are going to match your donations up to $250,000, which is incredible, which basically, means if you give for any time from now until the end of the year, it gets doubled, which is phenomenal. So just go to givemn.org. Lastly, on that November 17th at 7 p.m. Central Time. On the Sundays with Ascension YouTube channel, we will be online, basically. We're doing a virtual front pew

day of thanks where myself will be live streaming as well as our lecters, people who have put on that virtual front view mass. And some students of ours will be coming together. So you can get to know them. You can ask questions. They will introduce themselves that tell you the stories of what God has done in their lives. So please join us on the Sundays with Ascension YouTube channel. Thank you so much and I cannot wait to see you then. God bless. The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke, chapter 20 verses 27 through 38. Some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, came forward and put this question

to Jesus saying, teacher, Moses wrote for us, if someone's brother dies leaving a wife but no child, his brother must take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first married a woman but died childless. The second married her and the third married her, and likewise all seven died childless. Finally, the woman also died. Now at the resurrection, whose wife will the woman be for all seven had been married to her? Jesus said to them, the children of this age marry and remarry. But those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage.

They can no longer die, for they are like angels, and they are children of God, because they are the ones who will rise. That the dead will rise, even Moses made known in the passage about the bush when he called out Lord, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac,

and the God of Jacob. And he is not the God of the dead, but of the living. For to him, all are alive. The Gospel of the Lord. So a couple summers ago, I had one of those days where, okay, I have to give you some backstory. So it was summertime, and so people weren't around, but I was traveling a bunch, and I got back from being like, I don't want to exaggerate. But it was like more than a week of just back to back to back travel, and I had a day where there wasn't a lot going on.

All that being said is I watched two movies in one day. Okay, so I'm just, I feel guilty about it even now. It happened years ago. But you guys, I was really tired. Okay, so here we go. That's my excuse. So on one day, I watched these two movies, and the two movies were like really, really similar. There are both these post-apocalyptic movies about a guy who is trying to go from one place to another place.

So one movie is called The Book of Eli. Have you ever seen it? It has Denzel Washington in it. And the other book is called The Road, or the movie is called The Road, and it's Vigo Mortensen. And so these movies are so similar because they're, again, both post-apocalyptic movies. They're both about these guys traveling to get to a destination. I remember watching them, and they're so different ultimately. Right? So if you've ever seen, also, by the way, I'm going to spoil the ending of the both movies, which I don't feel badly about because they're old, and it's not my fault. You have not seen them yet.

Okay, back to our story. So, the book of Eli, this kind of journey is, like, the earth is, everything's over-exposed, like everything's hot, everything's, there's no water, everything's dry, and here is Eli, and he's on this journey, and he has to get from basically one coast to the other coast. At the end of the movie, basically, you realize that the entire journey, the entire way, the entire story, he has been guided by God. The entire story, he's been guarded by God. So at the end of the story, it is incredible. He dies, but you're like, that was amazing because God was with him the whole time. That God was actually guiding and guarding him the entire time.

The road is the opposite. So the road has this man and his son. In fact, in the story, he's just known as the man and the boy. and this post-apocalyptic world is just everything is gray, it's all ash, it's all cold, it's all damp, it's all wet. And this man, he's taking his son from where they lived, the mom has already died, and they want to go to the coast,

and they have to evade all these marauders, they have to evade all these slavers, they have to evade all these cannibals, because this world has become incredibly, incredibly dark. And the man says to the son, this whole time he keeps going back to this phrase, son, we need to carry the fire. We need to carry the fire, which means we have to be the good guys,

which means we have this world that is dark, this world that is broken, this world that is difficult, and we have to be different. We have to carry the fire. And that means, among other things, like we don't kill people and we don't eat people, which apparently in post-apocalyptic world, the bar is really low for being a good person.

And so here's what happens. They get to the coast. They survive the journey on the road, they get to the coast and there is no better. There's no home. There's no done. They get to the coast and there's no safe. There's just more road.

And then the father dies. And there's this family that picks up the kid. And that's the end of the story. Like that's the end of the movie. And I remember watching and thinking, oh my gosh, these two stories are so different. The one has hope. The one is like, yeah, God was there the whole time.

The other one is just like, you know, what's the point? Because that's it, right? All it was for this man and his son was just an exercise and futility. All it was is just keep walking. And they have to ask the question, is that the whole point of life, is just keep walking? Is that the whole point of life that it's all just meaningless and nothing actually matters? You know, there's people I know. Maybe people you know, too, that that's their worldview.

That's actually what they think. I know both young people and old people, that's what they think. Young people who, you know, here we are at university or wherever you are right now, so many people around us were like, yeah, I got them with high school. here I'm doing this thing. After this, I'll do the next thing. After that, I'll do the next thing. And then it doesn't mean anything.

And then I just die. And they have the sense of like, what's the point? It's not just young people. One of my dad's best friends told him this. My dad shared this with me not too long ago. His best friend told one of his best friends told him, yeah, you know, when I get older, if I have less ability than I have ability,

I'm just going to end it. That his friend told him, like, yeah, you know, if I get to the point where I'm kind of like fading, I'm just going to call it. I'm just going to pull the plug on myself. Because that's that sense of like nothing matters. In the fact, this man is an atheist, you know, in the book, in the movie, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, the wife, the woman, that's what she says. Basically, she looks at all of, this whole thing and she says, what's the point? Just stay alive? For what?

And then she ends up killing herself. And the crazy thing is, for an atheistic worldview, that makes sense. Like in a world that God doesn't exist, that actually is the only real choice. In fact, there's an atheist philosopher who is very influential, and he said this. He said, for the atheist. In a world without God, the only important question is, why not suicide? Because this world is dark. Because this world is so difficult, this world is so challenging, that if there's no

point, then why do it? Like, if there's no point to it, then why go through all of this? In a world without God, there is no inherent meaning or purpose or reason for anything. But for those of us who know that God exists, you know, we still experience darkness, obviously, right? We still experience suffering. We still experience pain. We're not spared those things. But we also know that there's some very important truths, like today in the gospel, Jesus is declaring there is such a thing as the resurrection, which means something. If the resurrection is true, then this life is not all there is. The resurrection is true, this life is not all there is.

And if this life, this life is not all there is, there might be some things that are worth dying for. If this life is not all there is, there might be some things that are worth living for. We even see this in the first reading, right? Second book of Maccabees, Chapter 7. So the background on this, book, of Maccabees happens a couple, a few years before Jesus' time. And what's happened is there's this king that named Alexander. Some people think he's pretty great, whatever. To Alexander, the great, he conquers the known world by the time he's 30 years old. He has some successors. And one of those

successors is a guy named Antiochus Epiphanes. And Antiochus Epiphanes, and he was kind of like live and let live. He was kind of like, you know, whatever, keep your culture. Antiochus epiphanes was the opposite. And he wanted to make everything Greek. And so he came to the Jews, basically, and saying, I want to strip you of your religion, I want to strip you of your language, I want to strip you of all your customs. And so what he did was he wanted to force people to violate their law, right? So you heard this story today, where you have these seven sons and their mom. And Antiochus Epiphanes basically brings these people in front of everyone and says, just eat a piece of pork and you can go home. If not, we will torture you to death.

If you just stop for a moment and think like, what, what is like an exercise in futility. Like what? Like, how senseless would it be to not eat the pork? Like, how pointless would it be to not eat the pork? All you have to do is just have the piece of bacon and then go home. Like, have the piece of bacon, and then you can keep being a family. Eat the pork, and you can go worship God, eat the pork, and you get to just keep on living. And this might sound backwards because we're just affirming the value of life. But what this story reveals to us, among other things, is there are worse things than death, and there are better things than life.

And that first brother, he knows this. That first brother, what does he say? He's looking at the king and he says, what do you expect to achieve in questioning us? And then he says this line, he says, but we are ready to die rather than transgress the laws of our ancestors. We are ready to die. What does that mean?

Even stop and ask the question for myself, for ourselves, today, am I ready to die? What's involved in being ready to die? I think it involves at least three things. It means being willing, being prepared, and being able. To be ready to die, it means being willing, being prepared, and being able. So if I'm willing, it means I know the truth. It means I have a worldview that says,

I know that there is more to this life than just this life. If I'm willing, it means life is a good, but life is not an absolute good. Because of that, I have hope. I know there's more than this, I have hope. So in order to be willing, I need to have hope. But also means I'm prepared. And how do we get prepared? We're prepared for anything because we say, okay, I have done what I needed to do in order to be ready to take this next step. That's what it is to be prepared, right? I've done what I needed to do to be ready to take this next step. So it means I have courage. So I'm willing to do this. I have a worldview that gives me hope.

I am prepared to do this because I've done what I needed to do I had courage and I'm able which means not only do I know this is true I have hope, not only can I act I have courage but I can endure

those three things hope and courage and endurance that's what I need to have in order to be ready to die and it strikes me like this it strikes me that these three things that it takes to be ready to die well are also the three things that it takes

in order to be ready to live well. I can't actually live well if I don't have hope. I can't live well if I don't have courage and I cannot live well if I don't have endurance. Because if I have hope, you know, without hope, I don't think we would act at all. If I didn't have hope, I wouldn't even move. You know, hope is an incredibly practical virtue.

Sometimes we think of hope as like a wish or a dream. Like, I hope things get better. That is not what hope is. Hope acts. Hope moves. Hope is a declaration in the face of the temptation to futility that declares this matters. That's what hope does. That's what hope is. Hope declares in the face of difficulty.

Hope declares this life matters. Your choices actually make a difference. They matter. Hope is the willingness to act in the face of difficulty because you know that this matters. So in Maccabees chapter 7, that son, that brother comes forward and he says, look at my hands. He's, you want to cut off my hands. Well, it was from heaven that I received these hands. God gave me these hands.

And from him, I hope to receive them again. It is my choice to do this. How with the hope that God gives? Because hope is a willingness to act in the face of difficulty because hope is relational. It's relational with God, which means, here's my definition for hope. Hope is trust in another extended into the future.

But I know I can trust God now. hope is, I trust in another, I trust in God, extended it into the future. I can trust him now. I also know that no matter what happens in the future, he will be there, and I can still trust him. You know, every one of us, when we sin, we wrestle with discouragement. Don't we, isn't that kind of normal thing?

Like, when we sin, we just have to wrestle with that discouragement. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't believe I just did this again. Everyone who sins wrestles with discouragement, and everyone who goes to confession is choosing hope, a willingness to act in the face of difficulty, knowing that I can trust God in the future. That's why the second thing necessary to be ready to die and ready to live well is courage.

Like to be prepared. Why? I'm prepared because I said this already, but say it again. I'm prepared because I've done what I needed to do. So St. Paul's letter to the Thessalonians today, he talks about this, because if things were bad with the Greeks and the Maccabees, things were bad with the Christians and Thessalonica.

So St. Paul's writing to them, and he says this, he says, may God encourage you. your hearts and strengthen them in every good deed and word. He says, you're already acting. You're doing good deeds. You're doing good words. I need you to receive the encouragement that comes from God. Again, not just the willingness to act in the face of difficulty, but the ability to act in the face of difficulty, the power to act in the face of difficulty. And here's the thing. We need courage in order to live well. And we absolutely need courage in order to die well. Too many of us. We die too many times. What I mean by that is William Shakespeare wrote this play called Julius Caesar.

If you're familiar with it, you know that there's a moment where Julius Caesar, he's about to be assassinated. He's about to leave his home. And someone comes up to him and says, basically, you know, hey, the signs are that if you leave your house today, you're going to get killed. So I invite you to stay home today and avoid death. And Julius Caesar says this line that is so powerful and so profound. When I first heard it, it just cut me to the heart. He said this. He said, the coward dies a thousand times before his death.

But the valiant tastes death but once. The coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant tastes of death but once. What's that look like? I think what that looks like in my life is, man, there are so many things I put off. It's going to be hard to do it. And so that thing just hangs over your head.

And the thing that if I just did it once, it'd be done once. you'd be over with. But I mean, think about this. How many times don't we do the thing we need to do and therefore we're not living? Even something as simple as like, hey, make the phone call. You know, pick up the phone and just dial and like, yeah, but later. And so every time I come, that thought, I need to do this thing comes back to my mind, it's another little death. Instead of just, you know what, be brave, be courageous, pick up the phone, die once. Or the thing of like, get out the door, how many times you're like, I just know what's a

time to leave. I know I need to go. I want to live. I want to, you know, I want to step up my door and actually be alive. But, eh, that's the sound I make. That's the sound of cowardice. And we keep putting it off and putting it off, rather than just like, rip off the band-aid. The coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. I hate to say this on a Sunday night, but write the stinking paper. How many times over the course of this weekend? You're like, okay, it's Friday, but no, I'll do it later. Okay, Saturday morning, okay, I'll do it later.

Saturday night, I'll do it later. It was Sunday morning, extra hour, daily savings, great, I'll do it later. And here we are tonight, and you're like, I can't think of anything except for this stupid paper, this hanging over my head. The coward dies a thousand deaths before his actual death, but the valiant taste of death but once. See, we can't be ready. We can't be prepared unless we have the courage to act. To do what you know, to do what we know we need to do. And even that, even that's relational.

Even that comes from God. Because we realize, okay, all of this came from him. All of this is actually for him. So no matter how difficult it gets, no matter how dark it gets, it is not the end. To have that kind of courage, right, to know, no matter how difficult life gets, no matter how dark life gets, this is not the end. How we face this moment matters. Even tonight after mass, if that's the thing you need to do.

how you face this moment matters. I think that's why St. Paul writes to the Thessalonians tonight. He says, we are confident that what we instructed you to do, you are doing, and you will continue to do with the endurance of Christ. And that's the last thing, right? Hope, courage, and endurance. What's endurance? What's perseverance? It's to continue to strive for the good, no matter how much it costs.

That's what endurance is. that's what perseverance is. Perseverance gives us the power to continue to strive for the good no matter how difficult it might be to attain it. To continue. Right? Like to keep going. We need that. We need hope, right? We need to know this matters. We need courage that I can do what matters, but we also need endurance. We need to be able to keep walking. Every one of us in this church tonight, we need to be the kind of people who can carry the fire. We need to be the kind of people who can carry the fire into a dark world, even if we don't win. You know, there's an author Ralph Ellison. You probably know of Ralph Ellison. He wrote the book Invisible Man back in the 1930s and 40s

about what it was to be a black man in this country in the 1930s and 40s. And he knew that battle. And you know what it was like to be in the midst of a battle that it felt like you could never win. Ralph Ellison wrote this. He said, life is to be lived. not controlled. And humanity is one by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Life is one. Humanity is one.

By continuing to play in the face of certain defeat. To choose to be the kind of person who refuses to stop. This is what you can be. This is what we can be. We have to be because of Jesus. To be the kind of person who refuses to quit.

To be the kind of person who refuses to allow darkness to overcome the light. be the kind of person who chooses to carry the fire. You know, so after I watched this movie, this is the last thing. After I watched this movie The Road, I decided to read the book because glutton for punishment. And it was so depressing that I thought, why not have more depression? It's a book by Comerick McCarthy, and it's just remarkable because the way they told

the movie was almost like shot for shot. It's very dark, it's very bleak. And at the end, it's the same ending. they don't reach safety. They get to the coast and it's not better. They're not done. But there's something that's in the book that the movie misses, or maybe I missed it when I watched the movie.

It was that the road did something. Again, there was no better. There was no done. There was no safe. There was no home. But the road itself did something. That the father, the man, had taken the boy on the road for a purpose. And he told him to carry the fire for a purpose

because that time. time on the road, while it didn't lead to safety, the time on the road taught the boy how to hope. The time on the road taught the boy how to be courageous. The time on the road taught the man, that young boy to become a man, how to be, how to have endurance. That it wasn't wasted. It wasn't meaning us. It wasn't futile. That time that his father spent on the road with his son taught the boy how to carry the fire. And your life and my life is no different. The end of our lives, there might not be a place of better

before we get to heaven. The end of our lives might not be a place of safety or a place of home. But it's not meaningless. We know that there is more to this life than just this life. We know that Jesus didn't just teach on the resurrection. Jesus proves the resurrection by rising from the dead. Therefore, we know there might be some things

that are worth dying for. And there are some things that are worth living for. That in this world, that seems futile and is often so dark. You and I can walk in hope.

We can walk in courage. We can walk in endurance. And we know that every step means something. We know that every time we try, it means something. We know that even that every failure means something because you and I can be the kind of people who are able to carry the

fire into the darkness.