Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 12/29/24 A Hidden Life

Episode Date: December 28, 2024

Homily from the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Make it your ambition to live a quiet life. In a world where so many people live their lives "on display," the Holy Family shows us what it is to live a quiet (and meaningful) life. Mass Readings from December 29, 2024: Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14 Psalms 128:1-5Colossians 3:12-21 Luke 2:41-52

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 Luke. Chapter 2 verses 41 through 52. Each year, Jesus' parents went to Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover. And when he was 12 years old, they went up according to festival customs. After they had completed its days, as they were returning, the boy Jesus remained behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Thinking that he was in the caravan, they journeyed for a day and looking for him among the relatives and acquaintances, but not finding him.

they returned to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished.

And his mother said to him, Son, why have you done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety. And he said to them, why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my father's house? But they did not understand.

what he said to them. He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them. And his mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus advanced in wisdom and age and favor before God and man. The gospel of the Lord. Wait you to have a seat. So a number of years ago I came across this, it was an article talking about how when you ask young people, what is it that they want to be when they grew up, how the answer has changed. And the article is making the case that said, in former generations, this is a while ago, in former generations, they said, people would say, I want to be an astronaut, I want to be a professional sports player, whatever I want to be, whatever my parents happen to be, I want to be a doctor, lawyer, whatever the thing is,

I want to be a teacher, a nurse. But the article said, but the most recent time, they asked these young people, what do you want to be when you grow up? The number one answer was famous. That the desire of the human heart had become something different. It's not simply, I want to, I tromple to this task is, I want to be famous, I want to be known. And of course, that's not all of us, and that's maybe not all the people out in the culture either.

But I think that we've kind of developed this thing in our lives, and we've developed this thing in our culture, that we have this temptation to live our lives on display. that that sense of we have the temptation to to post our every thought or to post or every meal or to post our every adventure or every kind of thing we're happening we're going through. In fact, I remember I came across a number of articles about this, about this fact that here we are as Americans or as people in the West at least who are living our lives on display. And they went through a number of posts that we would think are completely common. Like, you know, here's a spouse who knows that their husband or a wife never looks at a

social media, but it has to say, happy birthday to my wonderful da-da-da-da-da, spouse, who does all these things? And you're like, wait a second, couldn't you just look at your spouse and tell them happy birthday? But no, you have to post it. Why? We don't stop to ask the question, why? Or another post of, great date night with, you know, the love of my life, all these kind

of things. And here's a post of the food. Here's a post, maybe them, picture. Okay, that's fine, but, like, why are you posting your date night online? And again, I'm not immune to this. I remember years ago when Twitter just first came out, I worked at a Stubonville Youth Conference in Atlanta. And so I had Twitter.

And so I remember taking off in the plane. And I tweeted out something like, you know, thanks hashtag Stubby ATL, Stubby in Atlanta, you know, a great weekend, blah, blah, blah. And I landed in Minnesota, drove to Duluth, and a friend of mine held up their phone and said, what is this? You might have my tweet. I'm like, I don't know. It's a tweet. And I felt really uncomfortable. Like they said, why did you tweet like this?

And I was like, I don't know. It seems like what people do. and she stopped and said, no, no, no, that's how celebrities tweet. You're not a celebrity. You're a priest. Don't do that. And I was like, okay, because I just kind of assume like this is how we do it, right? This is what you do when you go online. You just post these things. You tweet. You live life on display. If I have a thought, we should share it. If I have a, if I've done a thing, I should share it. If I have a life, I should share it. It should be known somehow. And that's why I think like here is this.

Again, we might be participating in that to a great degree or to a little degree. We might desire that to great degree or to a less degree. but on this day the piece of the Holy Family, we have to ask the question, what would the Holy Family post? Like Jesus, what would Jesus post? The Holy Family, if there's ever a family that was actually, you know, maybe close to perfect, at least not very dysfunctional.

Only one person in the Holy Family was dysfunctional, is Joseph, and he's pretty good. He'd say quiet. But like, what would it be if we live like them? Because I don't think the Holy Family, if they were living right now, would live their lives on display. I think they live a lot more like what St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians.

In First Thessalonians chapter four, St. Paul says this. He says, make it your ambition to live a quiet life, to mind your own affairs and to work with your hands. In the last year or two, I heard a preacher who I respect, I'll preach on this, on this first Thessalonian chapter four. And he just highlighted this fact. He said, how unlike us is that? St. Paul, writing to the Thessalonians,

make it your ambition to live a quiet life. Make it your ambition to mind your own affairs. Make it your ambition to work with your hands. Make it your ambition to not be known. To not live a life on display. Now, he made a point, now I'm going to make it clear too, that that's not the same thing as not proclaiming the gospel. That's not the same thing as not doing great things for the Lord.

That's not the same thing because actually, in First Thessalonians, St. Paul writes to them and says, actually, word about you and your faith, your love for the Lord, has gone out to the whole world. And so he praises them because they have shared the gospel. They have become that example. They have become, they've lived their lives in such a way that they've borne witness to the truth, the goodness, the love of God. But there's something different between bearing witness to the truth and the love and the mercy of God and living one's life on display. Like to seek out being known.

To seek out, again, we said at the beginning, seek out being famous. In fact, I came across, I don't know if was a child psychologist or a family counselor. I don't know who this person was, but it resonated with me. And he said this, he said, it's good parenting. It's a sign of good parenting if your child has no desire to be famous. And the person interviewing them said, well, wait, why? And they said, because it means that they're in. they have an internal system of validation, rather than an external system of validation,

where they're not seeking to be known by strangers. You have to ask the question, to what degree am I seeking to be known by strangers? Again, at this moment, you might go back, I don't want to need to be known, but I do want to do great things. I want to, I want to, whatever God has called me to do, I want to do that thing. Well, yeah, of course, absolutely. But where do you live? Here's what I mean. it's very possible that among the people who are participating in this mass,

people who are listening to these words, that God actually does. God wants you to make an impact for the gospel on this world. However that is. And to say yes to that is so important. Because, again, just we don't glorify God by dimming our lamps. We don't glorify God by shrinking back. We don't glorify God by simply hiding. If he's asked us to step forward, we have to step forward.

If he's asked us to step up, we have to step up. If he's asked us to speak, we'll talk about this in a couple days. If he's asked us to speak, we have to speak. We cannot shrink back. That doesn't glorify God. Trinking back doesn't glorify God. But the question is, where do we live? Do I seek, do I make it my ambition to live a quiet life?

Or I'm known by, truly known by a few. Or do I make it my ambition? to live my life on display. I mean, just let's look at Jesus. Again, here's the Holy Family. What do we know about Jesus' life? Will we have this story from him when he was 12? Do we have any stories of him when he was 15?

What was Jesus doing when he was 19? What was he doing when he was 25? What was Jesus doing when he was 29 years old? We don't know. We assume that he was probably doing what St. Paul writes, that he was mining his own affairs and working with his hands. He was not living his life on display, but he was doing God's will.

I think sometimes we live life on display because we want to hide. I live my life desiring the approval of strangers because I'm afraid of being known deeply by the most closest to me. So, yes, there will be times, and there are times when God calls you, no, step up, stand out, do the thing, say the word, and maybe there's recognition, maybe there's being noted, maybe it's something great, that's awesome, but don't live there.

That there's something about sometimes God may give you a spotlight, but none of us are meant to live in a spotlight. We're going to live where we've been planted. And that life, that real life, that depth of life, is what St. Paul says, make it your ambition to live a quiet life. I mean, think about even Jesus when he was, again, in that three years of public ministry, you might know this, he spent 80% of his time,

it was public ministry, 80% of his time was spent in a five-mile radius. And not only that, but how many times are the crowds pursuing, you never see Jesus pursuing a crowd. The crowd's pursue him. What would he do? He got done healing, got done preaching, got done teaching, got done being with people and doing great things.

and then what did he do? He went off to a solitary place by himself because that's where he lived. After he's done with the crowds, what did he do? He spent that time with the 12 disciples, the closest people to him, because what is Jesus' desire? It seems like he made it his ambition

to, even in public ministry, to live a quiet life. It seemed that Jesus made it his ambition. I need to serve the many. I need to know the few. and be known by the few. And there's something, I think there's something really good

for us in that. Where, yes, we can make a breadth of an impact, maybe, by living life on display. But the depth of a life, the depth of an impact, we can ask like this. When was the last time that there was a significant moment where the person who was, you know,

there's someone who's given an award of some sort, right? They're noted for some reason. And they thank the celebrity who didn't actually know them. They thank the famous person who didn't actually come into contact with their lives. Versus saying, I need to thank my mom. I need to thank my dad. I need to thank the people who are actually within arm's reach of me and in my life. But because there's something we already know, we already know. If we bind into this lie that we can live our life on to and find fulfillment in that, then we're fools. We're not paying attention because we know the relationships that matter the most, the

conversations that matter the most, the life that matters the most is the life that St. Paul describes, is a quiet life, is that hidden life. And again, you may be called to step out, you call to step up, may be called to speak out or speak up, you may be called to do great things, but we can't live there. We have to do what Jesus and Mary and Joseph. We have to do what they did. And this is the last thing. Make it your ambition to live a quiet life,

to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands. Who are the people that God has placed in your life that He is asking you to love? Who are the people that he's placing in your life? He's asking you, hey, take care of them. Who's the people that God himself has put in your life? And he said, okay, these are the ones that I'm entrusting to you.

And then pause and say, if these are the ones that God has put it in my life to care for them, to love them, that he's entrusted them to me, then why am I concerned with the opinion of strangers? If it's my spouse's birthday, why don't I just tell them happy birthday rather than post it? If it's a, there's a date night, why not just enter the date night rather than post it? If I need help, Why not be able to reach out to those people closest to me that I trust rather than just throw it out to the world, to the strangers? We are called to make it our ambition to live a quiet life, to mind our own affairs, and

if we can to work with our hands. Because it's there that we begin to learn what it is to imitate Jesus and Mary and Joseph. Again, it's not to shrink back from being influential. It's not to shrink back from our responsibilities. There is no single person who has been more influential on this world than Jesus himself. And what did he do? He made it his ambition to live a quiet life, to love, to love the people closest to him. So that must be our ambition as well.