Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 12/05/21 Abounding Love: What is Worth Your Heart?

Episode Date: December 7, 2021

Homily from the Second Sunday of Advent. Abounding love is focused love. Too often, we do not love well because we do not discern what is worth loving; we don't pay attention to the value of things. Because of this, our love becomes diluted. But when we truly appreciate the value of the moment or the value of the person, we develop an attitude of abundance coupled with an awareness of scarcity. And while we love with our hearts, we discern what is worth loving with our heads. Mass Readings from December 5, 2021: Baruch 5:1-9 Psalm 126:1-3, 4-6Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11 Luke 3:1-6

So one of the things I've realized recently, well, maybe I've known it for a while, but I came across it once again, is that you can pray about anything. Like, you can talk to God about virtually. I mean, we talked to God about, to God, about, like, important stuff, right? We pray about school. We pray about work. We pray about our family members, people we love. We pray about our future. Just, God, what do you want me to do with my life?

We pray about all these important things. But you can talk to God about anything. And I was reflecting on this because recently I was praying about game shows. I just like, it's just, I don't know why, but I, I, always think, whenever I think game shows, I think of a certain number of them. I think of like supermarket sweep. Do you ever watch this supermarket sweep? I always think about that one because my uncle was friends with the host of it. And I was like, oh, that's Dave.

I met him once, you know? Or, gosh, all of them. Wheel of Fortune is still on. Not only, this is remarkable. I was sticking this to prayer. Not only is Wheel of Fortune still a thing, but Pat Sejack and Van de White are still doing their thing. They haven't been replaced.

And even when they replaced people, like Richard Dawson was the original host of the family feud, right? The feud. Steve Harvey is awesome. Sometimes, I don't know if you ever have this where you on Facebook, you know, there's a thing called Facebook. I don't know if you guys use this anymore, but or on YouTube. Sometimes they have clips, like clips of Steve Harvey being hilarious on Family Feud, and I just will waste minutes and minutes of my life.

But there's that one. The one with Alex Trebek, where the contestants, they have these general knowledge clues in the form of answers and they have to phrase the response in the form of a question. Sorry, what is Jeopardy is the proper answer. I'm sorry, I was so glad you went with me on that one because I was just be wicket. waiting here and I meant to set you up to slam me. But all of those are so good. But then there's this one. The one that I think of from my youth,

I was on every morning if I was ever sick. I got to watch Bob Barker and the price is right. And I always thought, even as a kid, I thought, I could win. I thought it seemed like the easiest game to game, right? It seemed like the easiest game to like, you could totally play this and dominate. All you have to do is study the actual retail prices

of items that for business. It just go to a store. I just go through all. I just thought, I can do that. So I was praying recently. Lord, could I do that? Because all you have to, again, all you have to do is know the value of something. I was thinking about that.

I was thinking about all you have to, this is because my prayer actually went from game shows to life. Because right now we're in this season. We're approaching Christmas, you know, because of gifts. And to know the value of something. like the condescence on the price is right. You have to know the value of the thing. And I realize, maybe even spite of the fact that I thought, I could totally dominate this game show.

I don't know that I could because I find myself often not getting that right. I find myself often not understanding or not assessing the true value of things. In fact, even when it comes to presence, I can be staring something right in the face. I can be staring something of value right in the face and not realize what I'm looking at. So a bunch of years ago, I think I was a senior in high school, like 18 or so.

It was Christmas time, and my little brother, he's 10 years younger than me. And so he was like 7 or 8. And he was so excited. He had this present. And he said, Mike, I got you this present. You're going to love it. And my mom was even saying, yeah, no, he saw this.

And he picked it out specially for you. And so, like, every day my little brother would say, I can't wait for you to open your present. Like in the weeks leading up to Christmas. And I'm like, okay, buddy, you know, that's great. He was so excited. And the Christmas came along, and we opened presents as a family on Christmas Eve.

And so we went to Mass. and then came home and had some food, and then we opened presents. And Maddie, what happened to me? He's like, okay, here's your present. You know, Merry Christmas. Happy Christmas. What are English?

Happy Christmas, Rome. Happy Christmas, Harry. But he says, I want you to open this. And so I opened this up, and I opened up this, it was this black case with a zipper around it. So I'm like, okay, neat. I opened up the zipper and opened it up. And it was a fingernail trimming kit.

And I was like, what? And so I laughed. I was like, you know, I just, I laughed. I was like, what is this? That's great. I'm like, thanks, buddy. And then put it to the side. Because I was like, listen, I don't need the fingernail trimming kit.

I've got teeth, you know. But I remember, just put it to the side. He was so excited to give me this present. And I don't even know what his reaction was. Because I wasn't paying attention. Here's this thing that had so much value. Because here's this little kid who just had a present for his big brother, that he just, he wanted his big brother to receive and accept and just be happy about.

And I, looking at right in the face, I did not know the value of that moment. I don't know how expensive it was, but I know how much, even years later here, how much it cost for me to not recognize in that moment the value. Like how much it really meant. So in this advent, we started last week, we started a new series. if you weren't here last weekend, we started this new series called Abounding Love because we know that the season of Christmas

is a season of preparation, right? The season of Christmas is not only preparing to celebrate the original coming of Jesus as a baby at Christmas, the season of Advent is also to prepare for the final coming of Jesus as a judge. So we prepare during Advent for these two comings of Jesus to celebrate his original coming as a baby, but also to prepare our hearts for the final coming of Jesus

in our lives as a judge. And we know this. We know that he's a just judge. We know that he's a good judge, but we also know that he's going to judge. And one of the things, this man is named St. John of the Cross, he was a Spanish mystic, Spanish saint. He said, about that judgment, he said,

in the twilight of our lives, we will be judged. Yes, he says, but in the twilight of our lives, we will be judged on love alone. And I look at my life and I realize that I need to love better. If that's true, then I need to love better. Because I realize, I'm like the Grinch, my heart is two sizes, too small, too often.

And if at the end of life, if the whole point of Advent is to prepare ourselves for judgment. And if the twilight of our lives, we'll be judged on love alone, that I need, not only is it possible for me to grow my love, it's essential for me to grow my love. I think for all of us, too, we realize, oh my gosh, if that's what you're going to judge me on, Lord, then I need abounding love.

I need love to abound to my life. I need more love. So last week we talked about this, we said one of the things that keeps us, it keeps our heart, keeps us pusillanimous, which was the fun word of the last week, puselanimus, which means small-hearted, One of the things that keeps us small-hearted is that too often we don't have any room for love.

We don't have any room for people. We're too full. We have so much stuff going on in our lives that we want to love, but we just can't because there's no room in our lives for people who need us to love them. So we talked about this ruthless elimination of hurry, that we have to at least do two things. One is to learn how to say no so that we can say yes. But also to learn how to rest, like to learn how to actually take time and make space in our lives for people to interrupt us. But I wanted this week to be able to talk about this next step, and hopefully this next step is an encouraging word. Hopefully this next thing is one of those things that can fill us like, oh my gosh, at the end of my life, twilight of my life, I'll be judged by love alone.

Yikes. But here's what you need to know. We all need to know. In the first letter or the Paul's letter to the Philippians today, it's the second reading, he said this. He says, I'm confident in this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. So that day of Christ Jesus is right, where he comes to the end and we have to be prepared but be judged on love alone. Paul says, I'm confident of this. the one who began to put love in your heart

will continue to do this. So the good word of encouragement is this thing that we want to do over the course of this Advent, which is to grow our hearts, to have abounding love. God wants that too. He started it.

St. Paul says, I'm confident. He will continue to complete it. Like this is, I don't know about you, but I hear that. I'm like, okay, Lord, thank you. Because I know. Again, Grinch, grinch heart, two sizes too small.

I need God to help me with this. But here is what Paul goes on to say in that same rating, did we hear just a second ago? He says, okay, so I'm confident of this. He's going to continue. But he says, but my prayer is this, that your love may ever increase more and more.

Even Paul is praying for abounding love. Even Paul is praying that, okay, yeah, I get it. Your hearts are small. I'm praying for that exact thing. I'm praying that your love may ever increase more and more. And so I realize that one of the first things we need to do on this Sunday is we need to start praying for that. I need to actually ask God, please, give me that kind of heart.

Give me the heart that actually breaks the love. little thing in Grinch. You know, I keep referencing that. But like, God, you want that for me. I need to start praying for it. So he wants to do this, but the way he's going to do it might be a little bit of a challenge because, again, last week I shared last week that there were a couple

situations in my life in the last previous weeks where I just, I failed to love. There was a situation I recalled if you weren't here where there was a student who was in clear need. And it was really clear that this is the moment of where I I needed to step up and actually make a sacrifice. I had all these plans. I had all these tasks I needed to do.

I had all these errands I needed around. I had all these things I need to accomplish. And other people gathered around them and it was great. But I was kind of like, oh, I want to skirt out the door. Why? Because I just didn't have enough room. And I realized, looking back on that, that the Lord looking at that night, he's not going to say, hey, did you get the tasks done?

But did you accomplish that errand? He would say, why didn't you love that person? She was right there. Why didn't you have time for her? So it really pierced my heart. Like I felt so, the next day I went to confession. And because I just, I was like, oh my gosh, I have the worst heart in the world. Like I just feel like the worst priest ever.

So I went to confession to Father Seth. He's right up the road at St. Johnson. And as I was confessing this, I just thought, Father, I'm so sorry. And I even said, I said, Father, I want to be more like you. He's an awesome. He's a great priest. I want to be more like you. And the other priests here in the diocese because I,

see you guys, you do this all the time. I was telling him this in confession. I say, you do this all the time. When someone shows up, you just drop stuff and you're there for them. And I said, I want to be like that too and I'm not. And he looked at me and he says, yeah, that's okay. He says, it's really sensible, really no nonsense. He says, that's okay. You know, now that you're praying for that, God will give you a lot more chances to do that. I was like, oh. I was kind of hoping that I'd pray for it. He would like zap me and like, bam, I'd have agape now. Moving on. But he's like, no, no, no, now that you're asking for this, God will give you a lot more opportunities to love sacrificially. Because God just doesn't just, he doesn't just give us the grace, although he does give us the grace.

He gives us the opportunities. Like, if we're praying for patience, he doesn't just zap us with patience. He gives us chances to be patient. We're praying for kindness. He doesn't give us kindness. He gives us chances, opportunities to be kind. And we're praying for, to want more merciful hearts. He will give us the chance to offer mercy.

That's going to cost something. And if we pray for sacrificial love, we pray for agape, which is exactly what Paul was praying for. When he says, I pray that love may abound in you more and more, that word for love is agape, and that meaning of agape is self-sacrificial love. If I pray, God, give me agape, give me self-sacrificial love. God is going to give me opportunities for self-sacrificial love.

Our problem, of course, is not just that our hearts are too small. My problem is, I don't often realize this is the opportunity. I often don't realize that, oh my gosh, this is the moment. This is the person. God, you put in my life, this is the moment that you're actually calling me to love self-sacrificially. And again, it's not because I don't want to love. It's because I give my heart to so many things. Maybe you do this too.

We give our hearts to so many things that the love we have just becomes diluted. Like the love we have, we want to give self-sacificially. It's just, I give my heart to so many things that don't deserve my heart. And maybe this is true for you. you give your love, you give your love to so many things that they just don't deserve your love. And so what happens is your love becomes diluted. So let's go back to Paul's prayer. You're what Paul pray.

So he says, my prayer for you is this, that your love may ever increase more and more. But he goes on to say, the love may ever ever increase more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception. And here's the big line, to discern what is of value. My prayer is that the only way you can have abounding love is if you realize what deserves your love and what doesn't deserve your love. the only way you can have abounding love is to ask the question, there's a lot of good things, which one gets my heart? There's a lot of good things in this world, which one gets my love? Because there are some things that don't deserve your heart.

There are some things in this world that don't deserve your love. No, of course, some people say, well, you know, follow your heart. But Paul doesn't say follow your heart. Paul more likely says something like, let your head lead your heart. Because discernment is knowing what's of value. is knowing what a thing is worth. Yes, we love with our hearts, but we discern what is worth loving with our heads.

We love with our hearts, but we have to discern what's worth loving with our heads. I was reflecting on the word appreciate while I was praying about Bob Barker, and the word appreciate is to know the true value of a thing, to know the true value of a thing. I think, you know, I love the idea that we have an attitude of abundance. I think that one of the ways that we can walk through life as Christians especially

is when we have an attitude of abundance where we look around this world and say, oh my gosh, Lord, there are so many good things that you placed in my life to have the attitude abundance, but to really have appreciation, to really have the value of a thing is to have two things, not just in an attitude of abundance, but also an awareness of scarcity.

That's when we begin to know the actual value of a thing. We have the attitude abundance where we recognize, we know the things that are so good around us. At the same time, I have an awareness that these won't go on forever years, I don't know how long ago. Someone had brought up this, the idea, they asked the question, it was an interview, and I applied it to my life. The interview, the interviewer asked the interviewee, said, hey, how many times do you see your parents a year? And the person said, I don't

know, you know, five times, say, here's an adult and kind of a thing. And they said, okay, well, how old are your parents? They told them and said, okay, your parents have maybe 10, 15 years left of life. So let's do the math here. Your parents have 10,000. 10 years left of life, you see them five times a year. That means you're going to see them 50 more times in your life. So you see them at Christmas, okay, now you're going to see them 49 more times. See them in March. Okay, now only 48 more times.

So I think when we realize we have an attitude of abundance like, oh my gosh, this is valuable. With an awareness of scarcity, we realize, oh, this is actually how valuable this moment is. This is how valuable these moments are. This is how valuable this person and right in front of me is. I mean, especially even when it comes to people that we promise to love. So I heard a therapist talk about this. They said when it comes to marriage, one of the biggest things that just corrupts marriages isn't necessarily cruelty, isn't necessarily a lack of kindness,

isn't necessarily infidelity, all of those things, and more than that really hurt relationships. He said, the thing that more than all those other things breaks down and corrupts and corrods relationships, he said, is neglect. Here's this person right in front of me, and I don't even notice. Here's this person that is covered into their life to me, and I don't know the value of that. I don't have an attitude of abundance, and I do not have an awareness of scarcity.

But to do what Paul says, which is have abounding love, a love that grows more and more, because we discern what is of value, that means we have to discern what's a value. I mean, in fact, let's go back to Christmas movies because why not? Virtually every great Christmas movie is about someone who discovers the actual value of a thing, right? So the Grinch, once last time today, the Grinch, he values his silence, he values his life. He values quiet because noise, noise, noise. And so at the end of the movie, what's he value? He values people.

He realizes that, oh, being part of a family, being part of the community, is way better than being alone up in the thing with his little dog. Miracle on 34th Street, you have the female protagonist. This woman, she values work. At the end of it, she values family. You have, it's a wonderful life. The fave, the best. George Bailey, the whole time he values success. He wants to make something of himself.

And at the end, he realizes, I'm valuing the wrong thing. I want to value being here in this small town with the people that actually know and love me. We have the movie, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge. He values money. At the end of it, he values relationships. We're home alone. Kevin McAllister, right? At first, he does not value his family.

At the end, he values his family. Even Buzz. Rudolph, I have two more. Rudolph. At the beginning, no one values this. light on his nose. At the end of the movie, everyone knows that Santa would not have delivered his presence

unless... So the last one is Elf. Buddy the Elf is very indifferent because Buddy doesn't actually grow in value or Buddy doesn't have a change of value. Everyone around Buddy realizes that it's worth looking at life the way Buddy looks at life.

They have been valuing the wrong things. Almost every one of these stories is all about, I valued one thing and I realized this doesn't deserve my heart. There's something more valuable. So how do we need to be? do this? Like, how do we actually do this? Well, I think what it's going to look like is it's initially going to look like loving less. To actually have abounding love, it's going to look immediately,

initially, like loving less. So, the example, in the acts of the apostles, the beginning of the apostles, you have the apostles, right? And they have a number of people that are caring for, they're caring for widows, they're caring for orphans. And at one point, they realize, we can't do all of this. We can't actually evangelize as well as taking care of feeding people. And so they say, well, it's not right for us to neglect the word of God, proclamation of the word of God, in order to care for these widows and orphans. And a skeptical person will look at that and say, you're just trying to get out of the hard work. You want to be on stage, you're preaching the gospel and just trying to give that work to someone else. But that's

not what they're doing. It looks like they're loving less. But in fact, what they're doing, they're trying to focus their love. So what do they do? They select these seven men and ordain them deacons and say, okay, this is where you're going to focus your love on these people who need it. Here's where we're going to focus our love on these people who need it. What will look like initially to have abounding love will look like loving less, but it's not. It's loving focused. It's having focus in our love. It's having an attitude of abundance, but in awareness of scarcity, I can't do it all.

I can't love everyone. In fact, that's what the sermon is. The sermon is saying, okay, this, not that. What gets your heart? This, not that. This is normal for us, right? In fact, every good marriage has this, my best friend, Nick. My best friend, I don't know anyone who loves people more agape-like.

than Nick does. He's, I don't know anyone more available to others than my friend Nick is. And yet we were talking about this and he said, oh my gosh, yeah, this is so true because if I love my wife,

I can't just give my heart or my time or my love to just anybody. Because she gets it first. I have to focus that love. If I love my kids, I can't just give my heart or my time or my love to just anybody or anything. Why?

Because I have to focus my love. Again, this might look at first like loving less, but it's not. It's loving focused. We know, okay, big yellow thing in the sky, which we haven't seen for a while, we probably won't see for a few more months.

That big yellow thing in the sky is awesome. Its heat is diffused over the entire globe. But if you take a magnifying glass, you can focus that heat and you can start a fire. Now, it's good to have that heat diffused over the whole globe. It would be bad if the whole world was on fire. But to take love and to focus it, to take light and to focus it causes a fire.

That's abounding love. Abounding love is focused love. It's not just love that's sloppy all over the place, just to spill it everywhere. Abundant love, abounding love, is focused love. And in the twilight of our lives, we will be judged on love alone. In particular, how did you love the people

right in front of you? Not at all, how did you live the people halfway around the world? Not at all. How did you love the people in another? state, how did you love the people who are closest to you? Did I love them in a focused way, or did I just kind of have an indiscriminate sloppy love because we love each other, we love people with our hearts, but we discern what it's worth loving with our heads. This is the last thing. I don't know if we realize that, this, but this focus, this is how God

loves us. This is how we've been loved. The letter of John says, we love because he first loved us. that actually God has abounding love. In fact, the book of Exodus says this, the book of Exodus says, The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love. God himself has abounding love, but what's that love look like?

Well, in the first reading, Baruch says, at some point the people will rejoice. Why? Because they are remembered by God. When did that happen? The people will rejoice because they're remembered by God. When did that happen? Well, it happened.

at the moment we're going to celebrate in a couple weeks from now. What's Christmas? What is Christmas except the abounding love of God for us? In fact, let's say this. Christmas is not just the abounding love spilling over. It's the focused love of God. What is Jesus in the incarnation? God becomes one of us.

That is God's focused love in one particular place and one particular time that expands throughout the entire universe. God's abounding love is his focused love in Jesus Christ. So they rejoice that they are remembered by God. And we were remembered by God when he became one of us and dwelt among us. And in this Mass, oh my gosh, you guys, what is the Eucharist? It's the abounding love of God. All of God, the entire love of God, dwelling in a tiny white host.

That's abounding love. Focused love that God says, at the few moments he'll say, we'll say the body of Christ, and then the focused love of God, the abounding love of God will be placed in your hands or replaced on your tongue. How can we have abounding love? We pray for it. But even before we've even asked for it, how do we have abounding love? He gives himself to us in this abounding love, in this focused way.

And we rejoice that we're remembered by God. And abounding love is a love that is discerned what's of value. abounding love is a love that appreciates what is worth your heart and what is not worth your heart and an abounding love is a love that's focused and says I will give my love to this and not to that that