Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 12/18/22 Closer Than You Think: When He Reveals Himself

Episode Date: December 17, 2022

Homily from the Fourth Sunday of Advent. What is our response when God does reveal Himself? We've been showing up and placing ourselves in God's Presence for the past 22 days. Sometimes we merely expect God to be silent and still. But what if God revealed Himself in a dramatic way? What would be our response? Mass Readings from December 18, 2022: Isaiah 7:10-14 Psalms 24:1-6.Romans 1:1-7 Matthew 1:18-24

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 1, verse 18 through 24. This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention when,

behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means God is with us. When Joseph awoke, he did as the ancient.

angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home. The gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. So over the course of these last, it's been 22 days, essentially, of having 29 minutes for 22 days so far, there's been a great grace. I think that hopefully that you've had the grace of this time of prayer. For myself, one of the things I've noticed is, has been that there's been the great quiet of just kind of, okay, Lord, I'm coming into your presence with no other agenda other

then, I just want to be with you. I just want to ask you to reveal yourself to me. And so basically, I come into prayer, right here, essentially, and just ask God, okay, come Holy Spirit, teach me how to pray. Because I don't know how to pray. I was just like, okay, God, come teach me how to pray. And then, you know, bring in my day, of course. What I'm trying to say is, my prayer has been kind of normal. It's been during, but it's been really quiet, but normal. But also, I know that it's been permeated by this thing that I invited everyone to do at the beginning of Advent, which is to beg God to reveal himself. And so I've been noticing something about myself. And I've been noticing that I'm like, God, I know how you work. I know you've revealed yourself to me. You do it gently. You do it

quietly. You do it subtly. You do it when I read your word. You do it when I just get to like kind of entrust my day to you, my trust my heart to you. Those are all the ways that I'm used to God revealing himself to me. But then I was thinking about the fact that here's, you know, Rick, who was on day 27. And God revealed that Jesus revealed himself. to Rick in a completely unique way, in kind of a dramatic way. And I was thinking about some other Bible people, other saints, other just normal people, who they prayed and God revealed himself to them in a powerful way. And I thought, what would I do?

What would I do? I was like, I'm right here praying. Like, what would I do if Jesus, like Faustina, like appeared to me? Like, what would I do if Jesus liked to Ahaz in the first reading, or God to Ahaz appeared to him? Or there's, there are only four people. I just want to look at it. Because there's four people in the Bible.

about two of them specifically today, but four people in the Bible, you know their stories, when God actually reveals himself and it takes him by surprise. And they all have a different response to him. And I was just praying about this myself and asking that question, how would I respond? So the first is Ahaz. Ahaz in the first reading today from Isaiah. So here's the thing. Ahaz, at this point, he's the king of Judah, right? So the two tribes in the south, remember the 10, 12 tribes of Israel, The 10 tribes of the North broke off. They're being the kingdom of Israel or Ephraim is another name for them. And Judah in the south is Judah and Benjamin, those two tribes.

So here's Ahaz. He's the king of those two tribes in the south. Now what happened is the north, Ephraim or Israel, they made an alliance with a country named Syria. And so what's going to happen is Syria and Israel or Ephraim are going to come into Judah and they're going to demolish the place. That's the whole plan. Now Ahaz, Ahaz, he has a plan too.

His plan is, I'm going to make an alliance with us Syria. And now, Assyria is like the long, long-term enemy of the people of Israel, and yet here is Ahaz. He's going to make an alliance with this human power. And it's at this moment that God shows up, and God reveals himself to Ahaz. And he says, Ahaz, ask me a sign. Ask whatever you want. Let it be as big as the skies, all the things. Whatever you want, just let me know.

And Ahaz says, I will not ask. I will not tempt the Lord, which on the surface, all these things, but all these things, But our responses to the Lord on the surface, they can either seem good or bad. Ahaz, sounds good, sounds like he's humble. I'm not going to ask. I'm not going to tempt the Lord. Now, what he's not saying is, he's not saying, truly, I will not tempt the Lord. What he's saying is, I already have a deal with Assyria.

I'm good. Basically, when God reveals himself to Ahaz, Ahaz's response is, yeah, I don't. don't really need you. Like I've got a Syria in my back pocket. We've made an alliance. Yes, here comes Syria. Here comes Ephraim from the north. I don't need you. I just wonder how many times, that's my prayer. How many times would the Lord want to reveal himself to me? How many, if God actually showed up to your life today and said, what do you need? How many of us would say, well, I don't need you. I'm doing it on my own. Because that's a real response. And that's actually a legitimate response. That's not legit, meaning it's very common

response that many of us have to the Lord's presence. He reveals himself. You say, I got it. I don't need you. No, there's another response, the story of Zechariah, right? John the Baptist's Father. Another moment, a huge moment where God reveals himself. We know that Zechariah was a priest. And so on the high holy day, Zechariah had the chance to not only go into the holy place. You get went into the Holy of Holy places, which is the high priest can do this only once a year. Only one person goes into the Holy of Holies. And this particular year, it was Zechariah's opportunity. Now, think about this.

Zechariah knew that he was going into the holiest place he's ever been in his whole life. He will never have a chance to do this ever again. It's drawn by a lot. You know, it's basically chance there of providence that he gets to be in God's presence in the Holy of Holies. So Zechariah would expect God to reveal himself. He goes into that holy of holy places. And God reveals himself through the angel.

And he says what? He says, well, even in your old age, you and Elizabeth are going to have a child. And Zechariah basically says, how can this be? I'm old, she's old, we're too old. In response to God showing himself, in response to God revealing himself in this completely new way for Zechariah, again, in the Holy Blah, he should have expected something big. Zechariah's response is, I don't try. you. Zechariah's response is, I don't believe you. I wonder how many times that's us.

How many times does God have to convince us that we can rely on him? How many times does God have to convince us? How many, how many more days in your life and in my life does God have to care for us, to provide for us? How many more days does he have to love us? So we would say, actually, I do trust you. I do believe you. When Zechariah had this moment, this moment of revelation, his response, I don't trust you. I don't believe you. Ahaz?

I don't need you. There's Joseph. Joseph is in today's gospel. You know, there are three theories, at least three theories, about when Joseph was told by Mary that she was pregnant, that Mary had told Joseph her husband. Now, betrothal, right? That's not engaged.

Betrotal is they're married, but they're not living together. So keep this in mind. Joseph and Mary are married. They're not just engaged. they're just not living together. They've not consummated their relationship. So Joseph knows that this child is not his. Mary comes to Joseph and says, yeah, I'm sure she told them the whole story.

Archangel Gabriel appeared to me the whole deal. There's three theories of why Joseph in today's gospel was a righteous man but wanted to divorce her quietly, did not expose her to shame. The first reason is because he didn't believe her. The first reason is that, yeah, he believed that she cheated on him in some way. Now, that doesn't make sense as much because it says Joseph is a righteous man, meaning literally what that means is he followed the law. But he decided to divorce her quietly.

If he followed the law, he would have to be the kind of person who would let her be stoned to death. So it's inconsistent that Joseph believed her. The second thought is that Joseph, you know, did believe her. That Joseph did believe Mary, but didn't understand. that Joseph did believe, but he was confused by the whole thing and didn't know what to do. That is a potential legitimate theory, that he's just kind of backing away slowly. I don't know what to do. I'm kind of just going to remove myself from the situation.

I guess that's another motivation. That could be another theory. There's a third theory, and the third theory is not only that Joseph believed Mary, I mean, think about this. Nazareth at the time of Jesus' youth was a town of about 300 people. So it is incredibly likely that Joseph knew Mary for her whole life. But Joseph knew this girl, and he would know her reputation. He would know her holiness.

I mean, think about this. If you know one person who literally is without sin, I think they would stick out a little bit at least, you know, kind of one of those situations. Joseph believed Mary. That's the theory. Joseph believed Mary, and he believed the whole story. He believed that God had chosen this woman, who is his wife,

to be the mother of the Messiah. and then he saw himself and thought of himself and he said, I don't deserve you. As God reveals himself to Joseph, that he wants to be in Joseph's life, that he wants Joseph to be the father, the foster father, essentially,

but the father of the Messiah that Joseph believed. What God said, but he didn't believe his own worth. Whereas Ahaz had said, I don't need you. And Isaac Reyes said, I don't trust you. Joseph would say, I don't deserve you. Now, how many times is that us? Is that us? How many times can we come into the Lord's presence say, I got it on my own, I don't need you? How many times we come to the Lord's presence? You'd be like, okay, I know you're here, but are you really? Are you really? And I don't trust you.

How many times can we come to the Lord's presence and disqualify ourselves when he reveals his love to us, where he reveals his choice, that he's chosen you. This is the reality. God himself has chosen you. That's what we're celebrating when we celebrate Christmas. But we say, well, I don't deserve you. We want to run. But there's a fourth person. That fourth person is our lady, right? The fourth person is Mary, whose story looks a lot like Zecharias at first, right? Because the angel comes to her. Hail, full of grace. Lord is with you. You'll be the mother of the son of God. And Mary, it looks like at first like Mary does what Zechariah does. It looks like at first, to the surface, it looks like Mary is saying what Zechariah said, which is, how can this be?

Basically, I don't trust you. But that's, again, the tradition has never understood that. What Mary's saying is not, I don't trust you. She's not saying, I don't believe you. Because she knows how this works. She knows how babies are made. Everyone would. What Mary is saying is there was a small tea tradition that Mary had consecrated herself to be a virgin for life.

But yes, she was going to marry Joseph, but that, Joseph also understood this, that Mary had been consecrated to be a version for life. And so here's Mary, who has a clarifying question. That's all it is. It's not saying, I don't need you. God, it's not saying, I don't deserve you. It's not even saying, I don't trust you. What she's saying is, I don't understand you.

And that's actually a pretty good way to talk to the Lord. How can this be, since I have no relations with a man? I don't understand you. So then the angel, we know this because the archangel, then, fills her in, right? At this moment, the archangel actually tells her what she didn't know. When it was Zechariah, it wasn't like the angel was having a bad day. And when he asked this clarifying question, he wasn't asking a clarifying question. What he was saying was, I don't trust you. What Mary's saying is, I don't understand you.

How is this going to happen? That's why the angel answers. The power of the most high will overshadow you. Holy Spirit will come upon you. The child to be born will be called holy, the son of God. Now, here's what we have to have to come back to ourselves. Now, this is the last thing. We come back to ourselves. We come into the Lord's presence.

We have another week. We have one more week of another seven days of just 29 minutes every day. Asking the Lord to reveal himself. We're going to be patient. Of course, we're patient with the Lord, patient with the process, patient with ourselves. But in whatever way he wants to reveal himself to you, and whatever way he wants to reveal himself to me, to be ready with a response.

If there's any temptation to say, ah, and that's okay, you don't need to reveal yourself to me. I don't need you. okay, I'm going to fight that. It's like, why do I think I can do it on my own? I can't. There's any temptation to me to say, like, I just, I don't trust you to be able to say, actually, God,

you've done more than enough for me to know that I can trust you. And even when it looks like humility, and we can say to God, I don't deserve you, he is declared once and for all that you are worth his life. You are worth his death. You're worth his conquering death. That's who he's declared over you.

So don't argue with the Lord and tell him, tell him that you don't deserve him. But you can speak the truth. You can be honest. And if you're confused, you need more clarity, you can say, I don't understand. The most important thing is I'm going to guard myself against I don't need you. I'm going to guard myself against, I don't trust you. I'm going to guard myself against I don't deserve you. I'm going to lean into this truth.

God is closer than you think. In all this, God is closer than you think. Here in the Eucharist, God is closer than you think. So whether it's I don't need you, I don't trust you, I don't deserve you, or even I don't understand you. The truth is, but right now, God, and right here, I have you. Thank you.