Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 12/27/20 Holy Families

Episode Date: December 27, 2020

Homily from the Mass of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Parents are not powerless. It can be so easy for parents to feel powerless when it comes to passing on the faith to their families. But there are four powerful tools every parent can employ to help their families become holy families. Mass Readings from December 27, 2020: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14 Psalms 128:1-51 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20 Luke 2:22-40

So I know that one of the things that happens when we hit the Holy Family is one of those situations where I don't know how you've been. It's actually over the last couple days since Christmas. It might have been one of those like, oh, family. Yeah, they're the best. Family is the best. Family is so interesting. One of the great blessings of life is family. And one of the great curses or burdens of life is the reality of family, not just having a family.

Also not having a family. It's so crazy how quickly we can flip-flop back and forth. There are people who have a family and there's just like, oh my gosh, just these people and the messiness of that. And the way that costs so much in your heart. And there's others who don't have a family and long for it. So I have one and don't want it. I don't have one and I want one. And so I recognize right now at this point that I don't know how your last couple days over the Christmas holiday over this weekend or just over life, what your experience has been when it comes to family.

but I do know this my guess is that you have not found pure happiness and family I'm just going to go on a limb and say that because a lot of us we sometimes think that that's the goal that's the purpose of family

is that it's a place where you find happiness or even marriage that marriage is where you find happiness that's where you find your joy and I always say that that's not true that marriage is a place where bad people go to die pause for laughter

what I mean by that is Or pause for confusion, wait, turn the channel. Marriage is where bad people go to die. What I mean by that is marriage is where bad people go to die to themselves in order to be able to be kind of people who know how to love. As I said, the beginning of mass, St. John Paul II said, marriage is a school of love. It's not where you go when you graduate.

It's where you go to learn how to love. And so marriage, what I'm trying to say, marriage and family, isn't a reward for loving life well, and it's also not the source of our joy. It's not the source of our happiness. It's interesting because I think that if we look for fulfillment in marriage or fulfillment in family, that we realize we're looking in the wrong place. I mean, even look at, okay, here's the Holy Family, right, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

I think sometimes that we have this image that that would have been like the easiest family to live in. And it might have been if you're Jesus, but not necessarily if you're Joseph. You have Jesus the Son of God and Mary, the Immaculate Conception, both of which were our, without sin and you think, okay, so maybe Joseph, they all looked at him. I imagine across the table like Jesus and Mary going like, really, this again, you know, kind of a situation, but probably not because they were holy and loved Joseph really well. It wouldn't be easy, though. It wouldn't be simple.

Why? I mean, gosh, as they're patroath before they lived together, here's Mary who has this big piece of news for Joseph. You can imagine that they would have some trust issues. Yes, an angel of the Lord appears to him, but still there's trust is real. And Joseph and Mary are both fully human. You have intimacy issues. I mean, here they are.

A husband and wife married, but never consummating their relationship. Imagine they have to have a couple conversations about how are they working through these intimacy issues. You have unemployment. I mean, gosh, how many people have been racked by unemployment in the last number of months? You have, in the gospel today, here is Joseph who the angel says go to Egypt, to a place you don't have a job, you don't have any family, you don't know the language. Just go there and raise the child and his mother. Like with what? Unemployment.

And also just imagine the great loneliness. Because even in the best families, even in the best marriages, loneliness is real. And so here is the Holy Family. Let's not mistake it to be this kind of like easy or idyllic kind of a situation because they would have to face the same issues you and I face of trust and of intimacy, of unemployment, of how are we going to find the next paycheck and of loneliness. But their one difference was they were rooted. they built their whole family, built their whole home off of the only beloved son of God.

Like that was, he was the end. He was the beginning of their marriage, their relationship. The goal of their family living was Jesus himself. I just think about this. Sometimes we end up thinking, again, the goal is getting married. The goal is even having a child. So in 1st Samuel, there's a story about this woman named Hannah. It's the very beginning of the whole book of 1st Samuel.

And Hannah is she desperately wants a child. she doesn't have a child. At one point, she is praying in the temple, and the priest Eli sees her praying. And basically, he kind of says this prophecy over her, where he says, in a year, you'll have a little boy. And the prophecy comes true, and she has a little boy. Now, she names him Samuel. You'd think that Hannah, then, she'd been praying so much for Samuel that now she'd say, okay, now God has given me Samuel. Now he's mine. Like that way, he should have this sense of possessiveness. Like, he's giving me what I wanted, and so I'm going to hold on to this as tightly as I possibly can and never give it away. But what she did was, after Samuel was weaned, essentially, when he was old enough to eat food himself,

she brought him back to the temple and she dedicated him to God. Imagine, here's this woman who spent years and years and tears and tears praying for this child, and once God himself gave her the child, she gave him back. You think that might be just absurd, but that is literally what every Christian parent does. Every Christian parent who brings their child for baptism is doing that exact same thing. They have probably prayed for this child, and now here's God who gave me this son or this daughter. And when you go to bring your child to be baptized, one of the things that happens is you're giving that child back to God saying, if you're the father of the child, you're saying, okay, I am the biological father of this child.

But now, from now on, until eternity, this child will always say that God is my father. You're giving your child back to God every time. What you do in the Red of Baptism, you trace the sign of the cross on this child's, forehead and say, I claim you for Jesus Christ with God as your father for all eternity. You know, it's so interesting that that's how it starts a lot of times, right? How it starts is you have your child to bring your child forth and you say, I want to get baptized. I want them to like thrive as a human being, not only thrive as a human being, I want them to

thrive as a Christian. And as we probably know really, really clearly, it is not always the case that our kids embrace the faith. In fact, right now in this culture, in this age, it's more. more often the case that our children reject the faith that you've given them. They reject God as their father. Even though, again, from that moment of just after they're born, he said, no, God is your father for eternity.

And in so many ways, they have said no. I mean, which brings us this hard word. And the hard word is that it is possible to fail as a parent. It's possible to fail as a parent. No, I know I say that. And here's this, I invite you to refuse to listen to the voice of condemnation and more just listen to the voice of conviction. It's possible to fail as a parent because we know this.

We know that the goal of raising a child is not just to raise someone who pays their taxes on time and saves out of prison and saves off the drugs. But the goal is to raise a child who becomes a saint, raise a child who loves God his father, who knows who Jesus Christ is and who lives that life out, lives that faith out in their life. And if they don't, then whatever role I had in that, I'm failing. Now, again, this is not me throwing stones because here's the deal. I live on this campus, and there are 12,000 students on this campus.

When they show up roughly every year, about 20-ish percent of the freshmen are saying that they're Catholic. And I've got to tell you that not 20 percent show up for mass. 12,000 people, 12,000 students are on this campus, and that's my responsibility. Like, their souls are my responsibility. My bishop gave me this responsibility, and so that's, and they're not all saying yes to the Lord. And what that means is that means that I am failing in some way. So this isn't meant me to be this kind of thing like saying,

okay, parents are like, you know, straighten up. This is like, parents, I know what you mean. I know what it's like to have that heartbreak of, man, you went on this retreat with us and you encountered the Lord Jesus and then you walked away, what more could I possibly do? And it's so easy, right? Isn't it so easy to feel powerless?

Now, whether your kids are little, teenagers and like, I don't want to go to church, or maybe they're sitting right next to you going, like, why do we have to watch Mass online? Or maybe this last Christmas was the first time they went to Mass in years because, like, Mom made us go, dad made us go. It is so easy because, again, I tell you, I know the feeling. Like, I'm doing everything I can. What the heck? It's so easy to feel powerless. It's so easy to be helpless.

But what I want to offer to all of us is that you're not powerless. and you're not helpless. In fact, you have within your grasp right now, you have four powerful tools, four powerful things that you can do right now that could change everything. You're not powerless. The first thing is, depending on how old your kid is,

how old your children are, the first powerful thing you can do is you can teach your child how to pray. And it doesn't have to be something dramatic, doesn't have to be something like extraordinary, doesn't have be something like we use like, okay, here's Lexiotevina, here's how you read scripture,

It was something so simple. So years ago, there was this book called Crossing the Threshold of Hope. It was written, it's an interview with St. John Paul II. And at one point, one of the questions was, how does the Pope pray? And the Holy Father said, he said, there's one particular prayer. It's a prayer to the Holy Spirit that he prayed every day of his life. So here he was, at this point he was like 80 plus years old. And there's one prayer, and he's a leader of the Catholic Church, he's a leader of the

church on earth. And he says there's one prayer that he prays every single day of his life. And the interviewer asked, like, where did you learn this prayer? And John Paul the second, he said, my father taught me this prayer when I was just a young boy. And imagine, it was just like a little prayer. And his father, who was just a kind of government worker in Poland, had taught his son this when he was just a little boy.

And now that little boy was the spiritual father of a billion people. So his father just taught him this prayer. And again, it doesn't have to be dramatic. I could just, sometimes like, hey, bringing him into a place of prayer. So a bunch of years ago, my oldest nephew, he's his senior this year, when he was three years old, so this is 15 years ago. When he was three years old, his parents brought him to Mass, and at one point he was standing between them, kind of on the pew.

I don't know if you like that or not, but that's where he was. And he was standing on the pew during the creed. So I believe in one God of Father Almighty that I have to literally read out of the book every single Mass because I'm like, I'm going to get the words mixed up. So he's standing there, he's three years old, and Max all of a sudden starts going, and I believe God, Father Almighty, does the whole thing. So much so that my sister and brother-in-law were like looking at them. I'm like, what?

And even the people standing in standing in front of them in the pew turned around. They heard this little three-year-old voice reciting the creed word for word. And they looked at my siblings, my sister and brother-in-law, like, what? And they were like, we don't know. I imagine they'd be like, well, he's a schmitz, that's why. But it wasn't something they sat Max down and said, okay, Max, you're going to learn the creed. This is called the NICO Constantin-Napolitan-Politan Creed. They didn't.

They just brought them to Mass. they said the creed and here's a three-year-old who just picked it up. And they taught him how to pray almost via osmosis. You know, it's so interesting. It's almost like that. Some of it's osmosis. Some of it's a struggle.

Remember when you had to teach your kids how to make the sign of the cross? Like, gosh, I remember so clearly all my nieces and nephews because I get to be around them. I'm so grateful for that. But I get to see them before mealtimes because every time we're sitting down as a family before mealtime, no one gets to eat until the youngest one can make the sign of the cross. And it's just like, father, you know, in the name of that? Okay. Father, it's just like, and they're all over, they're waving, they're doing, they're making

calling signals, they're stealing, steal third, this kind of thing. But it's just like, here, your parent just like, here's how to make the sign of the cross. And no, that's not just a small thing. It's a big thing. I don't know how many times I could tell you, you know, before I got to campus, I worked in an actual parish. And in that parish, I got to be in a place seeing a lot of people at the end of their life. And so often, you bring them the last rites, you bring them a holy communion, so often the last gesture of human being, a Catholic.

makes on this earth is that same gesture, the sign of the cross, that at some point their parents sat them down and said, okay, here's what you do. Take your right hand in the name of the Father and the Son and of the Holy Spirit. That's the last prayer. They pray physically on this earth. That's the importance of teaching your kids how to pray. That's the first thing. Teacher gets out of pray. It can be super simple. Second thing is mostly for dads. So this is for dads, but moms, you can pass it on. The power of a father's blessing. Just the power of a father's blessing. There is something ontologically different about a father's blessing. So years ago, we had a men's conference in our diocese and the guy presenting said, okay, fathers, if you're a dad, I don't care,

how old your kids are, you can do this. You can trace the sign of the cross with your thumb on your kids' foreheads. He reminded the parents, the dads, I mean, that in ancient Israel, if you were the dad of the family, you were the priest of the family. You're the one who could give the blessing. And so this was not too long ago. And so here's my dad who, at the point maybe said, 70 or so, who that's what he started doing. Whenever we were, I remember so so powerfully, at one point, he just turned to me at the conference and gave me this sign of the cross. I'm like, okay, this is weird, but thanks, dad, you know, thanks to the blessing of the father.

I remember so distinctly, we were in the kitchen. My parents' house, not too long after that. And one of the members of my family was just, gosh, we had a really deep conversation. It was really heavy. It was so difficult. It was not just a conversation. We call them conversations in my family, but it was hard. And at the end of it, my dad walked up to this sibling of mine

and put his hand on their head and just made the sign of the cross and just like, you could see something break in a good way. There was so much tension, there was so much this anger and sadness and just like, ah. And part of that is because like, okay, I'm still claimed. I can get mad and can have brokenness, but I'm still claimed by my father. But the other is because it literally is ontologically powerful. So a while ago, I was talking with an exorcist. Now you're like, okay, Father, maybe Christmas was the first mass you went with us.

And I talked about exorcism. You're like, is that all he ever talks about? No, I talk about other things, like possession. But at one point, I talked to this exorcist, and he was saying, he described this case what he was working on. This young woman, she was not much older than 20, 21 years old. And it was a really difficult exorcist. me said. So because every time the Lord Jesus was her, his power of the Holy Spirit was, was freeing

this woman. Her dad was cursing her. So actually that's how she got possessed was her father, her natural father, biological father, was cursing her. And so what that would happen is they would free her and then he would go curse her again. So it was this really, really difficult kind of thing. And now ultimately they, the Lord Jesus set her free through the exorcism. In fact, it's crazy to think. He mentioned this, little note, he said, he had seen pictures of this dad. And the dad looked like a normal 40- whatever-year-old man. But over the course of this time when he's trying to curse his daughter, he kept to like, he said he looked like he aged another 40 years because what happens was

he was commanding this demon to go against his daughter. And then the priest was commanding the demon to leave the daughter. And so the demon was going back and tormenting the man. This whole diabolical, honestly, does real stuff. So I was sitting there, he was telling me about this whole thing. I said, wait, is that the power, if that's the power of a father's curse, from a remote distance, a father who has no real contact with his daughter. What about the power of father's blessing? And he said, oh my gosh, absolutely.

He said, the power of father's blessing to set his children free is massive. What about even if they're not in contact with their kids anymore for whatever reason? He said, no, this guy was cursing his daughter remotely. He said, a father can bless their children remotely too even if they're not in their presence. That's the power of a father's blessing.

So you have teach your kids out of pray, the power of father's blessing. And the third thing you can do is basically it's the example of a Christ-centered life. That being one of the best gifts you could give your kids. Example of a Christ-centered life. I know stories that are always, especially around Christmastime, there are stories of parents who literally take out loans in order to give their kids' Christmas presents. And we might look at that and think, like, that's ridiculous and financially irresponsible.

But you get it. You get the idea of a parent's heart who says, I want to give my kid the absolute best thing I can give them. Well, the best thing we could give our children is what is a life of faith, is Jesus himself. So there's this man, St. John of the Cross, way back in the day. At one point, his dad died, and it was just his mom and his little brother. And she was so poor, she had nothing to give John. She had nothing to give his brother. She could just barely keep them alive, but she had this deep and profound faith in love for Jesus.

And she gave that to him. She gave him that to John of the Cross so fully that in the 2000-year history at the Catholic Church, there's only like 30-plus doctors of the church, some saints who are like up there. John of the Cross is one of them. His mom couldn't give him any material things, but she could give him Jesus and she did. That's John of the Cross. Another individual is my name J.R. R. Tolkien. You know J.R. Tolkien, he wrote The Lord of the Rings, the whole Simmerillion.

At one point, his dad died as well. his mother became Catholic because she was just convicted by the reality of the truth of the Catholic Church and because of that her own family and her husband's family completely rejected her and her two sons Tolkien and his brother

in order to make ends meet his mother worked so hard she said basically if you want to you want our support just stop being Catholic and you can get our support again and to refuse she knew this was the truth This is the church founded by Jesus. And so she was, I'm not going to turn my back on the church founded by Jesus.

And she worked herself so hard that essentially Tolkien said she worked herself to death. Tolkien, he actually considered his mom to be a martyr for the faith. Because rather than rejecting her faith or letting it go, she held on to it at the cost of her own life. And what she gave to Tolkien, she gave to him this living and powerful faith. In fact, Lord of the Rings, J.R. Tolkien said that the Lord of the Rings is he said, essentially a religious and a Catholic book. That even though his mom couldn't give him any material stuff, she could give him a life centered on Christ.

So you can have St. John Paul II. At one point, his mom died too when he, I think he was 12. And then his brother died when he was 20. And so it was just young Karevoy Tiwa, future John Paul II, with his dad. And he and his dad lived in a two-room apartment. Not a two-bedroom apartment. They lived in a two-room apartment.

Didn't have a lot. But one of the things John Paul II said about his dad, he said, I can't tell you the number of times I'd wake up in the middle of the night. They had to share a room, father and son shared a room. How many times I woke up in the middle of the night? And I looked across the room and there was my dad kneeling on the hardwood floor praying. It was for hours. And I look up in the middle of the night and there'd be my dad once again coming before God.

And I saw him live this life that was. was so centered on this. So it was centered on him. So he said later on he said, sometimes I would see him kneeling in the parish church. And my dad and I, he said, my dad and I, we never talked about a vocation to the priesthood, but his example was in a way my very first seminary.

Just watching his example was my very first seminary. Again, the power of a mom or a dad who lives their life centered on Christ, it can transform how many lives. So you have the teacher gets out of pray, the power of Father's blessing, the example of Christ's or like the fourth, the last powerful tool, powerful gift anything a parent can do is pray for

their child. You know, Hannah in the First Samuel. She prayed for a child, but then she prayed for her child. Like, she prayed to have him, but then she prayed for him. She lifted him up in prayer so often, so constantly that she reminds me a little bit of St. Monica. If you know the story of St. Monica, who she had a son, a couple sons, but one of them, his name was Augustine. And Augustine was a genius in back in the third and fourth century.

But he was a genius who dismissed the, church. He dismissed Jesus. He dismissed Christianity. He thought it was beneath him. He thought it was too unintellectual. And he went off on a bunch of different paths. And at one point, his mom, Monica is trying to convince him about the truth of Jesus, but he is so smart. He's running circles around her. Maybe you feel like that sometimes where your kids come back from college. They come back from some class that took in high school and they're like, oh yeah, well, what do you know? Monica felt exactly like this. So she knew she couldn't out talk or outsmart, Augustine. So she outprayed him and she outlasted him. At one point, she was praying.

in this church in Milan and Ambrose was the bishop of Milan, St. Ambrose now saw this woman praying and he said, why are you praying? She was weeping and she told the story of her son Augustine and St. Ambrose said it is impossible that a child of so many tears would ever be lost to God forever. Ultimately, St. Augustine had a massive conversion and he became St. Augustine. And so my last, the fourth powerful thing that parents can do, you can pray for your children. But you'd also not just pray for them by name and also fast for them. You know, Jesus had said, there were some demons. Again, here I go back to the demons.

Jesus talking about some demons can only be driven out by prayer and fasting. And sometimes in our families, we have their strongholds that the evil one has taken. And sometimes that can only be driven out by prayer, not argument, by fasting, not just convincing. So I know my mom does this a lot. before she got sick, she did it even more, but that she dedicate like the days of the week to her kids. Okay, on Monday, I fast for Beth. On Tuesday, I fast for Amy. On Friday, or Wednesday I fast for Mark.

On Thursday, I fast for Mike on Saturday. Or what am I getting any count days? Like, do one next day for Sarah, next day for Matt, third day again for Mark, because he needs extra help. But that recognition that you can do this. You can actually fast for your kids. Doesn't have to be like, does she never eat? Like, no, she just like gives up something that day. It can be like fasting from soda, fasting from coffee.

fasting from anything, just something I'm giving up on behalf and for the sake of my child. That power when you go to Mass and when you say amen, the body of Christ, amen. This is for my son. This is for my daughter. Teach your kids how to pray. The bless your children. The example of a Christ-centered life and then praying for your children. And I know this is the last thing.

At this point, it still can be easy to be discouraged. because it's still possible to fail. But take heart because here is God, who is our father. I think about this, there's no better dad than God. And his kids walk away from him all the time. There's nothing more he could do. If he could do anything more, he would have done it. And his kids walk away from him all the time.

So if you're one of those parents who's just like, what more can I do? We can do these four things, but then you can also get close to the father. if one of those parents is just like, man, I just, I feel like such a failure, don't hear a word of condemnation because you're close to the heart of the father whose kids walk away from him all the time. I know for myself, when I was far, far from the Lord, my mom and my dad didn't give up on me,

and neither did the father in heaven. So don't give up on your kids either. Because the father in heaven will not give up on them. This might be what this page looks like, this chapter in their story, this might be what this part of the story looks like, but the story, story is not yet over. So do these four things, these four powerful tools and trust in the Lord and never give up. Because we can't give up. He is God that our Father has never, ever, and will never give up on us.