Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 12/17/23 Main Character: Don't Wait

Episode Date: December 16, 2023

Homily from the Third Sunday of Advent. We won't be able to rejoice, pray, or give thanks always unless we rejoice, pray, and give thanks now. Main Character syndrome can lead us to believe that we are in control. But there are many circumstances that are out of our control. We can often only control how we respond to our circumstances. As Christians, we choose to rejoice always, pray without ceasing, and give thanks in all circumstances. Mass Readings from December 17, 2023: Isaiah 61:1-2, 10-11 Luke 1:46-50, 53-541 Thessalonians 5:16-24 John 1:6-8, 19-28

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 and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 33777.7. 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 John. Chapter 1, verses 6 through 8, and verses 19 through 28. A man named John was sent from God. He came for testimony to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to testify to the light. And this is the testimony of John.

When the Jews from Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to him to ask him, who are you? He admitted, and did not deny it, but admitted, I am not the Christ. So they asked them, what are you then? Are you Elijah? And he said, I am not. Are you the prophet? He answered, no.

So they said to him, who are you so that we can give an answer to those who sent us? What do you have to say for yourself? He said, I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord. As Isaiah the prophet said, some Pharisees were also sent. They asked him, why then do you baptize

if you are not the Christ or Elijah or the prophet? John answered them. I baptized with water. But there is one among you whom you do not recognize, the one who is coming after me, whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie. This happened in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing.

The Gospel of the Lord. Right you to have a seat. So we just got done this last weekend with finals. And there's another college in town that have finals this upcoming weekend. It's one of those interesting kind of situations where I think a lot of times when you have this thing that's kind of like a due date of some sort or a big task of some sort,

we put everything else off. It's like, okay, so here, all of our students, they're done now. At this point and this day, on this Sunday, they are done with classes. They're done with fall semester. And so now they should be able to be happy. I mean, because that's the thing. That's how we live, right? We say, well, I'll be happy when.

Like, I'll be able to relax when. I will be able to enjoy life when. Like, we just, we look to this kind of vague time in the future. No, with our students, it's not vague. It's like, no, on Friday, that's when I knew I'd be happy. But so many of us, we just are so future-focused, but not in the sense that we're looking forward with a plan. It's more like, once I get to this certain place in life, then I'll give myself permission

to be happy. Like, once I get to Christmas, then things will be different. Or even, not even just to be happy, but to start something. So, okay, I know I should start reading more. I know I should start walking more. whatever the thing is, I'll start on January 1st, as opposed to, again, just, why wait? There are times when we have to wait. And there's some times in our lives, we don't have to wait.

This is the thing. There's so many times. No, it's unavoidable. I can't do this now because it's just not the time. But there are so many other times when you don't need to wait. You know, we've been doing this series called Main Character. And something about the main character we talked about before is the main character has to be the star, right? Or the main character last weekend, the main character has to be perfect.

Something about being the main character where you have this sense that you need to be in control, that the main character is the one who has to make sure everything is going well. The main character means that if you're the main character, that everything has to go your way because you're, again, you're the star, you're perfect, you're in control. And yet, there's a reality in our lives that, yes, there are some things we can control. there's some things we can affect, some things we can influence, but there is so much in our lives that are out of our control. And so I think this is really interesting because, again, it's partly correct.

There are many things that we're in charge of. But one of those things is often not our circumstances. Again, to say it like this is, I'm often not in charge of my circumstances, but I am completely fully in charge of how I respond to my circumstances, especially as a Christian. Again, remember, here's John the Baptist, and I would say that we've probably even got the whole idea

for the entire series from today's gospel. Because, again, as we said last weekend, there's anyone who would think that he would be the main character or could be tempted to believe that he's the main character, it would be John the Baptist. And yet, what do we hear John say again and again all throughout this entire gospel? They say, are you the Christ? I am not.

Are you the prophet? I am not. Are you Elijah? I am not. that he knows exactly who he is, he knows exactly who he's not. And who he knows he's not, he's not in control. He's not in control of the circumstances. He's not in control of the environment. He's not in control of what other people are going to do. But he is, he is in control of how he responds to all these moments.

I mean, we know what's going to happen after this. He's going to be arrested. He's going to be held in prison. He's going to be ultimately beheaded. In all of those situations, he was not in control. And he had the freedom of being able to say, are you in control? I am not. Why? Because Jesus is God. I am not.

How can we as Christians have this same mentality of John the Baptist, where I can't control my circumstances? I can't control how other people are going to respond. I can't control what goes on around me, but I can control who I respond. Now, the answer is revolutionary. And it goes back to what St. Paul wrote today in the second reading. St. Paul said, okay, there are these three things. There's three things that every Christian has to do all of the time. And he even says it like this. He says, rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in all circumstances, give thanks. These three things, again, they are revolutionary.

Not only because they're revolutionary joy and prayer and Thanksgiving, but because he says to do these things always, at all times without ceasing in all circumstances. Like, what would our lives be like? Again, if we realize, okay, I am not the main character, I am not your God, I am not, but even I'm not in control. But even then, I have the ability to rejoice always. I am not in control, and yet I can pray without ceasing. I'm not in control, and yet in all circumstances, I can give thanks.

So let's start with the first one. Like, how is it even possible for a person to rejoice always? We have to realize, again, this is all revolutionary. Joy is revolutionary. Joy is something that I would say this. Before Christianity came on the scene, there was no such thing as real joy. There was happiness. There was pleasure.

but there was not real joy. In fact, that's one of the reasons why Jika Shesthetan, he had said this famous phrase. He said, joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian. That's what we should be known for. Why? Because if you're living in the Greco-Roman world, we talked about this the last series.

If you're living in the Greco-Roman world, the gods are fickle. The gods don't care. The gods don't love you. They're not just. This world isn't just. There will be no justice. There is just circumstances.

That's all you get. And so the gods would just as quickly, We curse you as bless you, and fate is completely up to someone other than you. So how in the world would you have such a thing as joy? But along comes Jesus, Christianity, and it gets revealed that not only is God won, he's good, he cares about you, he knows you, he loves you, and that's because of that, joy is actually possible. So Timothy Keller is a pastor, or the late Timothy Keller, he recently died, pastor and a great,

and an author, really good teacher. He was talking about this, the uniqueness of Christian joy, contrary to the world. And at one point, he was discussing the life of Leo Tolstoy, right, Russian novelist. So Tolstoy, for most of his life, was an atheist and was, you know, very, very talented, but he was part of the intellectual elite in Russia. When he was about 50 years old, he started asking the question that if God doesn't exist, why do anything? Yeah, I mean, we took him 50 years,

but he got to this place where he started saying, wait a second, if God's not real, if God doesn't exist, because he was an atheist, right? If God doesn't exist, then the day will come when I don't exist. When anyone I love doesn't exist, the stars will burn out, and everything will just come to an end,

and there will be no memory of anything that I ever did or anyone ever did. And so why be good? Like, why not be cruel? Because he realized that, wait, if there's no God, then nothing matters. Any kind of this deep funk of this? Because that's kind of a big deal. If there is no God, nothing matters.

Why even go on? I mean, that's that big question, why even go on? You know what his friend said? His friends looked at him and said, like, you know, we get it. You're deep. You're very morbid. and they said, just go to the beach. Just go shopping.

Basically, their answer to this question was, just don't think about it. Now, Tulsa was looking and realizing, like, wait a second, if there is no God, then at some point when you die, you just cease to exist. And they said, yeah, just don't think about it. His response was, what kind of view in the world is only livable if you don't think about it too hard? So ask that question again. What kind of view of the world? What kind of worldview is only livable if you just don't think about it?

If you just don't think about what it is, you believe. That you can be happy as long as you don't think about what you actually believe. Now, that's why Christianity is so radically different. Because Christianity says that there is a God, that He loves you. Not only what we're going to celebrate in Christmas just in one week from today, that God has come to us, that God's to us. as Timothy Keller said, that God came to us at infinite cost to himself, became one of us and suffered and died for us so that, not only,

so that we could live with them forever in heaven, but so that every choice you and I make in this life matters, not just matters momentarily, but matters eternally. And Timothy Giller points out, he says, if you think about that a lot, you have joy. That actually if you're a Christian and you don't experience joy, think about this. think about the fact that God is, that God loves you, that God cares about you, that at infinite

cost to himself, he became one of us so that you could have life with him forever because the alternative, God doesn't exist, there's no joy. But that's why the definition of joy I love is joy is the abiding sense of well-being. That no matter what my circumstances are, that's why St. Paul can say, rejoice always. Even if your circumstances are not great, rejoice always. Why? Because you know, always, in all circumstances, that God is. there, the God is present, you have this abiding sense of well-being. He also says pray without ceasing. So we can rejoice always. Why? Because God is there. But also he says pray without ceasing.

Now, here's the word we kind of get caught up on this. I think sometimes when we hear the word or the phrase, pray without ceasing, we think say your prayers without ceasing. Like don't stop saying your prayers. That is not the case. St. Paul is not saying, keep on saying your prayers. We get done with one of our father, go on to the next one. He's not saying that. What he's talking about is something very different. He's saying, be aware. Because that's what it is to be. pray. To pray is to pay attention to God. We think how simple that is. Because again, pray always is not say your prayers without stopping. It means just be aware always. Pay attention to God. That when you wake up, be aware, he's present. That when you go to work, be aware, he's present.

That as you live, just be aware. God is present. God is here. And so in order to do, that, we can't be oblivious. We can't be forgetful. Another way to say it is we can't be distracted. And this is the thing, I've been thinking about this a lot in the last number of weeks, the last maybe even number of months, is I've been praying about this, this reality that, man, Lord, my love for you, which is directly connected to our prayer, like my love for you waxes and wanes, not with just with sin, although that's obvious, right?

my love for you waxes and wanes with the distractions I introduce into my life. And not even the sins, but just the distractions I introduce into my life. If I'm unable or incapable or I don't even choose to just enter into silence on a regular basis, I just even mean you get in the car and drive one place. I'm always playing something. Or if you have to wait five minutes or something, like you pull my phone to do something here. As opposed to simply letting myself be undistracted and being present. present, just being aware. Because that's, if you really want to get down to it, that's what love is.

Love is, okay, you're the object of my love. Why would I distract my attention away from you? If St. Paul is saying that if you want to have the mentality of the Christian, like John the Baptist, who's like, okay, no, he is God. I am not. To pray without ceasing would simply to realize that God is here. That's why there's a man named Brother Lawrence of the resurrection. you might have heard of him. He was just a pretty humble monk living in a monastery at one point. But people noticed something about his life. They noticed that he seemed to have a kind of a relationship with the Lord that they could tell. I don't want to say they were jealous of, but they admired. At one point they just asked him, like, how is it? What is different in your life

versus, we're all monks? Like, how do you have this unique gift, this unique relationship with God? and he just started talking about this thing he called the practice of the presence of God. And all that is is no matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, to just in your mind have this awareness. Like, oh, God is present. The God is here. So right now, as you're listening to this, as you're watching this, or you're praying with us, realize, yet you might be somewhere else.

You might be on your phone. You might be at your computer, wherever you are. But God is present right now. Or when you're driving or when you're at work or when you're going for run or whatever it is you're doing, God is there. As you lay down to sleep, God is there. And Brother Lawrence said that that was the thing that completely changed his life, that when people saw him, they realized there's something different here. And that difference is he just

simply wasn't distracted from the truth that God is here, that the God of joy, right? The God who loves him is also present to him. So simultaneously, he could rejoice always and pray without ceasing. And then, of course, the third thing we have to do in order to escape that trap of control as main characters is in all circumstances give thanks. In all circumstances give thanks. So what does that look like? Well, I think to be able to give thanks, it means we notice, right?

We recognize that when a gift is offered, this is so important for us. The first step in giving thanks is to recognize or notice that there's been a gift. And the second step is simply to acknowledge the giver. So first thing, just notice. Again, it's ghost bags. They're all tied together. to be able to have this awareness, to notice when the gift is there, and then to acknowledge the giver.

But I think sometimes we're like, yeah, but it's not what I want. This could be the case. This might be the case some of you might say in a week at Christmas Day, like, oh, this is nice, but it's not what I want. So often in life, we are unwilling to rejoice or we are unwilling to give thanks because it's not the life I want or it's not the situation I want. There's a psychologist. His name is Dr. Adam Dell.

Dr. Adam Dell, he has this, give us long talk. but one part of his talk, he says, being a psychologist, you have an interesting day. He says, because I see like 10 clients in a day. And he said, you know, one client shows up at 8 a.m. and they're incredibly depressed. And they're so depressed that they've lost the will to live and they just want to die. At 9 a.m., someone comes in and the reason they're there is because they just received diagnosis of a terminal illness. and they have three months to live. And the knowledge of their impending death is so painful

that they just would do anything to live a little longer. Then at 10 a.m., a woman comes in and she needs to talk about the troubles she has with her children. And then 11 a.m., a woman comes in and she talks about her childless troubles. And he said, I noticed this. I noticed this as being a psychologist that everyone has the opposite problem.

Everyone has this beautiful, He says, this sad but sweet and human experience of just if my life could just be different. If I could just have that one thing, or if this one thing was out of my life, or if this thing could change, then I would be happy. Like, then I would be whole. Then my life would be meaningful. If this one thing was able to change. And yet here we all are in this life. Surrounded by gifts.

That's the reality, of course. the reality is if I'm waiting for something to change, if I'm waiting for something to be gone, waiting to get something in order to give thanks, in order to rejoice, in order to pray, then I'll miss out on what's being given now. I think that's one of the reasons why there's a man, he used to live in Superior, Wisconsin, which is okay, it's fine.

It's really close to Duluth, Minnesota. He also lived in Hudson, Wisconsin. I think he ended up in Detroit. His name was Brother Salinas Casey. He might have heard of Brother Salonis Casey. He's just saying, incredible holy man, kind of a little bit like Brother Lawrence of the resurrection, that he was a priest. He was very simple, humble man.

He was the porter, essentially. He took care of the door, people coming to the door of the monastery he lived in in Detroit. And he was remarkable for his holiness, not because his life circumstances were ideal, but because he was willing, like Brother Lawrence, to have this practice of the presence of God. He was able to pray unceasingly, but he was also able to give thanks. in all circumstances because he had this mentality, this phrase he would say. And the phrase he would say is, thank God ahead of time. You know, Dr. Adam Dell talks about these people like, but I just had this.

If I just didn't have that, brother Salinas Casey would say, well, thank God ahead of time. Before that thing changes, thank God. Even if that thing doesn't change, thank God. That to be able to, in all circumstances, give thanks, means that we're able to give thanks in this circumstance and this is the last thing. Don't wait so much of our lives as the main character is I have to be in control. And so when I can finally control things, when I can finally get things in order, then I'll be able to pray without ceasing. Then I'll be able to rejoice always. Then I'll be able to in all circumstances give thanks. But we realize that I can't rejoice always

until I rejoice now. And I can't pray without ceasing unless I pray now. And I can't give thanks in all circumstances unless I'm willing to give thanks in this circumstance. So here's this is the key for us. The mentality of St. John the Baptist, who was not in control, was not the main character, but could come before the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world and say, you are God, I am not. In this moment, I give thanks. In this moment, I rejoice.

in this moment, I pray. So much of our lives are spent waiting for circumstances to change. But I'm not the main character. And you're not the main character. So we don't need to wait for circumstances to change, to rejoice. We don't need for our circumstances to change to give thanks. We don't need for our circumstances to change to pray.

Don't wait. Rejoice now. Pray now and give thanks now. That's how we start. That's how we start rejoicing always, praying without ceasing in all circumstances, giving thanks.