Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 12/22/19 Available and Capable

Episode Date: December 22, 2019

Homily from the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Emmanuel. God is working with us to save the world. God does not need us. But He has demonstrated that He does not want to heal, transform, or save the world without our help. He only needs us to be the kind of people who are willing and able. Mass Readings from December 22, 2019: Isaiah 7:10-14 Psalms 24:1-6Romans 1:1-7 Matthew 1:18-24

So, you know, we hear these stories about how God has worked. Like every time we come to Mass, we hear stories about how God has done something. Every time we open the Bible, we're like telling, we hear more stories about how God has worked in the world and how God has done something incredible in the world, how God has saved us. The whole story of Christmas is that, right? It's the whole story of how God is working, has worked, and wants to work in the world. And I just, you know, at the beginning of this Mass, I have this question, do we still believe that? Do we still believe that God wants to work in this world? Do we believe that God still has something he wants to accomplish in this world?

Or is it kind of like, what's done? I mean, we just kind of show up and we hear the old stories. Or am I absolutely convinced that God still wants to do something in this world? Because the fact of the matter is that if I think, if I believe, if I'm a Christian, that means I believe that God not only has done stuff in the world, I believe he wants to continue to do things in this world right now. But I think one of the remarkable things about this is whenever you read the stories, whenever you hear that,

I mean, even there's no nativity up yet, they're going to set it up after Mass, and it's going to be beautiful, we'll come back on Christmas, and there's this thing. And the nativity, you don't just have a baby sitting there by himself. It'd be a couple sheep. But you have a baby, and then there's the wiseman,

and then there's the shepherds, and then there's his mom, and then there's his dad. Every story of God doing anything in history always involves him doing something with us. Like it always evolves him working with us. He always wants to do something. God almost rarely, rarely, except aside from like the creation of the world. He didn't really need us for that.

But almost every other story in the Bible is God saying, listen, I want to do something in this world, but I don't want to do it by myself. I want to do it with you. And this is one of the mysteries of the name that gets revealed in Isaiah 7, the first reading today. He says his name is going to be Emmanuel, which means God is with us or God with us. In the gospel today, again, you'll name him, Emmanuel, God with us. And it doesn't just mean God with us, like God, he's present with us, although that's awesome, thank you, God.

But it also means, his name is God who wants to work with us. He isn't just want to do it on his own. He actually wants to do it with us. Every step along the way, God has revealed that, yes, I have saved, I have redeemed, I have changed the world, and I want to do this now, but I do not want to do it alone. want to do it with you. So the only question really is not does God want to do anything in the world. Does God want to still save the world? Does he want to still redeem the world? The only question is, will I let him do it with me? I mean, in the first reading, it's that, you know,

God comes to Ahaz and says, yes, here's the deal. You are the king of Judah, and the kingdoms of Ephraim and the kingdoms of Syria are going to attack you. I want to help you. I want to fight with you. And Ahaz says, no, I'm good. That's what he says. I promise you. I'm Emmanuel. God with you. I want to fight with you. We heard in the Luke's gospel that Angel Gabriel comes to Mary and says, listen, here's the deal. The eternal God, the son of God, is going to become a human being, and he wants your help. I want to do this with you. Behold the Ham of the Lord. And in today's gospel, you have this story, right? It could have been like, okay, so Mary's already said, yes, we're good. We got that taken care of. But God says, no, Joseph,

Here is the thing. I need you too. I don't just want to do this with Mary, and that's it. I want to do this with you as well. That's one of the reasons why I believe this weekend, I call this Father's Day. So welcome Father's, this is Father's Day weekend, because I know we have our National Father's Day, but in this gospel, Matthew's Gospel, about the angel coming to Joseph and saying, here's God's plan.

God doesn't just want to, like, collaborate with you. He actually wants you. He's calling you to be his father. on earth. And this is the day. We're going to talk about fathers today. But this has to do with all of us, too. Because God wants to work with all of us.

But in a particular way, he wants to work with every man here who is called to be a father. And that's the thing is, if you're a man, you're called to be a father. Whether that's a biological father or that's a spiritual father. The thing that distinguishes men and women, this is the most important thing, maybe you could take away. How can you tell the difference to you in a man and a woman?

What's the big difference? What's the big takeaway? A man is the kind of human being that's capable of being a father, and a woman is the kind of human being a mother. That's it. It's not like men are big and tough, and women are gentle and small. No, I know a lot of big and tough women. I know a lot of gentle and small guys.

At the heart of it is, what is it to be male and female? A man is a man, a person who's capable of being a father. It doesn't have to be, but he's capable of it. And a woman is a woman who's a person who's capable of being a mother. She doesn't have to have been a mother, but she's capable of this. This is the distinction. So, okay, back to our story. If God wants to work with us, what kind of person do I need to be?

If God's plan is, I still want to do stuff in the world, but I don't want to do it alone. I want to do it with you. What kind of person do I need to be? And the answer is, you don't need to be perfect. If you read, like, one page of the Bible, God almost always, he only collaborates with one perfect person, and her name was Mary, fine. She's our mom. we love her very much. But she's the only perfect person

that God ever collaborated with. Every other person is flawed. So you don't need to be perfect. What you need to be is two things. What we need to be, if God's going to work with us, we need to be available and capable. That when he steps into our lives, we need to be available.

Yeah, God, I'm here. Go ahead. And we need to be capable. That when he asks us to move, we're able to move. We need to be both willing and able. That's the thing. They realize so much, so much is riding

on those two things in us. Am I the kind of person that God can work with? Well, two questions. Am I available to him? And am I capable of moving when he tells me to move? Am I capable of acting when he calls me to act? Everything. The history, the future of the world is dependent on us being that kind of person. Someone who's available and someone who's capable. Because I've got to say, to be the kind of person who's capable, the kind of person who's able to act when you need to act, That's strength. That kind of strength, that kind of strength, it changes the world.

This is what, go back to Joseph. We're talking about Joseph a lot this morning. Father Don Calloway, some of you know Father Don Calloway. He's a priest, I think out in California. He had written a book that he shared the manuscript with me, but I don't know, four months ago, called Total Consecration of St. Joseph. And I was like, total consecration of St. Joseph, listen, dude, I'm consecrated to Mary. We're done.

I don't know if you double consecrate. So I didn't really read the book. but in the last couple of weeks I picked it up and it has changed my perspective on St. Joseph. For example, one of the things about St. Joseph, I don't know if you've ever noticed this, in a lot of depictions of art of St. Joseph, he's almost always an old man.

Here's Mary, who's like, you know, the teenager, and here's Joseph, her husband, who's this old guy. In doing the research on this, they discovered that Joseph's age is never described in the Bible. There's no source of this. But people started to depict St. Joseph as an old man in order for one thing to protect Mary's virginity. Well, if Joseph's an old guy, then he's now not interested in that anymore, blah, blah, blah.

And so that's the reason why Joseph is depicted as an old man most often in nativity scenes and in pictures and in icons and in art is because basically if we make Joseph weak, then we make him safe. If Joseph's too weak, then he won't be a threat to Mary's virginity. And this is absolutely 100% false. Fulton Sheen even says like this. He says, why do we imagine that senility would be more of a protection than adolescence? But think about how that infects our culture right now.

Have you noticed that in our culture we have this crisis the last couple of years with people and talking about this all the time about toxic masculinity? And so for many people, in response to this, like this reality that men have used their strength to abuse other people. What people have proposed as a solution is, well, let's just make men weak then. because if we make them weak, then we make them safe. If we make men weak, then they're no longer dangerous. But here's the deal.

Moms, if you're raising boys, you want your boys to be dangerous. You want your sons to be dangerous men. This is one of the things that we're actually called to be. I mean, think about this. Men, would you rather be nice or would you rather be good? Would you rather be fine or would you rather be dangerous? There's on our campus, we have a young man to him's Carl. When people meet Carl, they're like, oh, Carl's a nice guy.

He's not. Carl's not a nice guy. Carl is a good man. There is a difference. Sometimes they overlap. Okay, bend diagram. Sometimes they can be the same. But listen, Carl has cultivated a strength in him that if you did the wrong thing,

Carl would let you know. Carl has cultivated a strength in him where, like, if it's time to stand up and say something and put a stop to, certain kind of behavior, Carl will let you know and be able to stop it. He's not a nice guy. He's a good man. Why? Because he has a danger in him. Now, I don't mean reckless. We shouldn't be reckless. That's not a call to, it's not, it's not virtuous to be reckless and just do whatever. But it's also not a virtue to be weak. It is not a virtue to say that the only reason I haven't done the wrong thing is because I wasn't strong enough to do the wrong thing.

True strength, true virtue. Virtue simply means strength. Virtuous means manly. strength. True virtue means, I have the strength to do what I want. I'm going to use that strength to do what I ought. Dr. Leonard Sass, he's a sociologist and psychologist who wrote a book the last couple years called Boys Adrift, about the crisis of young men in our culture. One of the things he said is our culture proposes two models for young men. These two models are both flawed models. He says either you're the bully or the brute, right? You have your strength and you either like, you know, exert it to overpower others, or you just spend it on yourself so you get to be like the dude.

You're either the bully or the brute or you're the slacker dude. You just kind of like waste your strength by playing video games, hanging out, not doing anything great, not doing anything dangerous, not doing anything dangerous, but not doing anything great either. And Dr. Leonard Sass says, he says, he's, think about this, both of those are the wrong things to do with your strength. To be a bully or brute is to use your strength to dominate others or to use your strength for yourself.

To be a slacker dude is to waste your strength needlessly. It's what Dr. Leonard Sass proposes, is there's an alternative. It's not to waste your strength, and that's not to use your strength on yourself. It's to cultivate that strength and use it at the service of others. To actually become as strong as you possibly can

and as smart as you possibly can as wise as you possibly can and to use that in the service of others to actually use that strength to serve people. And this is St. Joseph. You know, a couple years ago, my mom, she was going to buy a nativity set. She was going through the Internet and all the different kind of nativity sets. And she called me up because she had this question about which kind she should get.

And she said there was some nativity sets have Joseph kneeling next to the manger. And some nativity sets have Joseph standing next to the manger. She's like, she asked me, she's like, you know, I'm the church guy. So she's like, which one is more theologically appropriate? Like, Mom, I don't know. Actually, they both are. they both are very liturgically theological appropriate

because Joseph kneeling at the crib of the only begotten son of God made flesh of course Joseph would worship he would use his strength to worship but also Joseph would stand guard because that's why he was chosen Joseph would stand guard

over his son because God chose a dangerous man for a dangerous task think about this from the moment Jesus is brought into the world Joseph has to protect him from King Herod Joseph, sure as heck, better be dangerous. Joseph's going to have to take Mary and Jesus

into Egypt, a foreign land where they know nobody. Joseph, sure as heck, better be dangerous. He better be ready to move when movement is needed. And this is so important because, you know, Jesus only describes himself once in the Gospels. Jesus only describes what he's like once in the Gospels. He says he's the good shepherd. He says he's the gate and the vine, all this things.

But only one time does he describe his personality. where he says, come to me all you who labor and are burdens, I will give you rest. Because I am meek and humble of heart. The only time Jesus ever describes himself, he uses these two terms. He says, I'm meek and I'm humble. Too bad, we don't know what the word meek means. Because in our culture too often, I think we think that meek means weak, because it rhymes or something like that.

We think meek means weak, but meek does not mean weak in any shape or form. You know, I came across this made me in the last year or two, that if you had a stallion, like a horse, that had all this power, all this strength, all the stamina, all this hoarseness, right? That's just like wild and untamed. If you were to tame the horse, you would meek the horse. You don't take the horse's strength away.

You don't take the horse's power away. You don't take the horse's ability away. You take all that power, all that strength, all that ability, and you bring it under control. That's what it is to be meek. Is all of the power you possibly could have, have, but under control. Jesus, when he says, I am meek, he's not saying I'm weak, he's saying, like, listen, in me is all of the power of the divine being under control and at your service of

those who need to be protected. That's how Jesus spent his youth. That's how Joseph spent his youth. Joseph was a young man when he protected Mary and Jesus. Think about this. Do you remember your dad when he was young? I mean, just remember your dad when he was young? Now, maybe some of you had really terrible dads, you don't like thinking about that. And I understand. I don't mean to bring up bad memories, but I know, it's so interesting to think when your dad was young, he was the strongest guy you knew. When your dad was young, he was the smartest guy you knew. He knew more than anyone else that you possibly knew, and then you became a teenager, and he knew nothing. He was stupid. But think about these, what good dads do is, they use the strength

their youth. They poured out for their wives. They poured out for their kids. I mean, there's a lot, many of you can be old dads and something. There's the dignity of the old father is that he spent his youth on his wife and on his kids. That one of the great things about old dads is that they've been poured out. One of the great things about old dads is that they poured out, they poured out their strength, they poured out their youth, they poured it all out for their wives and for their kids. And they're no longer young. they're no longer strong because they spent it. Or, or unfortunately, they're no longer young,

they're no longer strong because they wasted it on themselves and on their hobbies and on their jobs. Or even they allowed it to be stolen from them. They allowed it to be taken from them. And this is one of the great dangers we have right now. You don't realize this. Satan, the evil one, he hates fatherhood. Satan hates fatherhood.

He also hates the motherhood too, so it's equality. You know, he hates our lady, she crushes his head. But Satan hates God the Father. And every man is an image, it meant to be an image in this world of God the Father. And so what does he do? He's trying to take you out. He's trying to take your strength away from you.

But he's so sneaky, so subtle. He doesn't just try to destroy us outright. St. Peter, he writes about this. In 1st Peter chapter 5, verse 8, he says this. He says, be sober and vigilant because your opponent the devil is prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. So resist him solid in your faith. Again, he says, Satan, the enemy is like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

I watched a documentary a little while ago about how lions interact with each other. So every pride has a top line, like the alpha lion kind of a thing. And that male kind of leads and protects and provides for the rest of the pride. But there's these young lions that come up. And at some point, young lions need to challenge the old lion. These young lions, they want to be the top dog, or top line. And what they'll do is they'll have to challenge. And it's so interesting in this documentary revealed how they challenge.

They challenge a lot like human beings do. They don't just come up and attack. What they do is they walk by the old lion, give them a little shoulder. Guys, you've ever been to a bar, and some guy does that? You're just standing there all of a sudden somebody walks by, this little shoulder like, oh, are we doing this? Okay. What's happening next?

That's what the lions do. They walk up to the old guy and just say, give him a little shoulder. say, okay, what are you going to do? If they decide to fight, this is remarkable. If they decide to fight, they don't go after each other's throats. They don't go after each other's faces. They don't go after each other's arteries. The two male lions, if they're fighting for top position, they go after the other one's genitals. Because they know, I don't have to kill you. If I can take you out there, you're done. That if you can know long, father, you can no longer be dad to this pride, you're out. I know so many young men and so many

middle-aged men and so many old men whose strength has been stolen from them through pornography, whose faith has been stolen from them through pornography. They don't live terrible lives that are robbing banks and they're killing people and they're doing it. All it is is just scrolling to the phone, scrolling through the phone, scrolling through the phone. And it's taking them away from our church, taking them away from our Lord, they know he's who he is. They know the truth of God who rescues them, but they don't want to show up in mass anymore. Why? Because the devil is a prowling lion, and he's castrated them. This is one of the most harmful effects of that particular sin. Men who could be world changers, men who could be game changers,

men who could change the history, the future of the church, have been neutered, rendered ineffective because of this sin. And so when it comes to, are you available? Yes, I want to be. Are you capable of moving? I wish I was. But not anymore. That's why every one of us, men, women, all of us,

we need to actually ask for St. Joseph's intercession. Why? Because you want of St. Joseph's titles is St. Joseph, Terror of Demons. How bad ass is that? Sorry, how awesome is that? But when we're talking about things that are this serious, it's got St. Joseph, terror of demons. Because, yes, Mary, she would bear the son,

Joseph, he would name the son. Therefore, Joseph is the father. You realize that there's only one human being that Jesus ever referred to as dad? Joseph. I realize that God, the Father, from all eternity, chose one human being to be his representative to his only begotten son while he was on this earth. Joseph, that God the Father is the source of all fatherhood, and St. Joseph is the model of all fatherhood.

And what is he? Perfect? No. He's available, and he's capable. He's willing, and he's able. And this is the last thing. Capable of doing what? Well, a couple things. He's capable of working. And so it's so remarkable. You know, in the Genesis chapter 3, the curse of the fall, it says, okay, man, what you're going to do is you're going to live by the sweat of your brow in thorns and thistles. I imagine Jesus, as he's on the cross redeeming all of us with thorns and this whistles, the sweat of his brow, blood coming down from his brow, and his calloused hands being pierced thought of his dad on this earth,

who so often would come in from the workshop with sweat pouring down his, face with these calloused hands that Jesus had just like his dad on this earth. Because you know, some people say that Joseph was a carpenter. That's fine. The actual Greek word is the word tecton, which means laborer. He might have been a skilled carpenter. That's possible. But it's very, very likely that all he did all day was just hauled rocks. That's what he did. But if he was available and he was capable to haul rocks and he was called to haul rocks, then he hauled rocks. His work was redeemable. even if you're like, wow, my work stinks, my work has no meaning.

Listen, I'm sure you're doing something more than hauling rocks. And that is what the human father of Jesus Christ was called to do. He also taught Jesus how to pray. This dangerous man, this dangerous Joseph, this terror of demons, taught the only begotten son of God how to talk to his father. Have you ever taught anyone how to pray? Asked St. Joseph for his intercession. He can teach you how to pray.

Teach you how to teach people how to pray. I know that in all this there can be this temptation to say well again I'm not perfect how can I do this or I'm not a guy I mean you're talking to all the guys today I'm talking to every one of us today because God wants to use every one of us today

Emmanuel is God with us and he wants to work with us men and women single and married old and young he doesn't care he just wants to work with you and so you're not disqualified because of your imperfection why because if you're someone who is available

and capable, that means that even when you fall, you're capable of moving. Even when you fail, you're capable of getting up. Even when we sin, if you're able and willing, that means you are able and willing to get back to that room there right after this Mass. Because God doesn't call perfect people. He can't. There aren't any. But he can call people who are available. Is that you? He can call people who are capable. Is that, is that you? He can't call perfect people because perfect people don't exist, but he is God with us. And all he needs from us is to be willing and able to be with him.