Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 2/5/23 Homeless: Different

Episode Date: February 4, 2023

Homily from the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Do what you would do even if no one is watching. So many of us have a fear of being different. We would prefer to be like everyone else. But we cannot afford to be the same as everyone else. Not because we are better, but because the world needs what Christians have: Jesus Christ. Mass Readings from February 5, 2023: Isaiah 58:7-10 Psalms 112:4-91 Corinthians 2:1-5 Matthew 5:13-16

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. 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 5 verses 13 through 16. Jesus said to his disciples, You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything, but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. You are the light of the world.

A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket. It is set on a lamp, where it gives light to all in the house, just so your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly father, the gospel of the Lord. So I've been thinking recently about, like, they're not backhanded compliments, but they're not like backhanded compliments. They're actually just cleverly disguised insults. You know, like we say these a lot in Minnesota, the land of passive aggressiveness, but also down

South. A lot of them come from down south. Someone will say something like this. Like, look at that outfit. I love how you just don't care what other people think. Like, that kind of a thing? Or if someone looks at you and says, oh, aren't you just precious? If you're older than five years old, that is not a compliment. Or this kind of sense of like, look at what you're wearing.

That's so creative. I could never pull that off. Again, one of those kind of situations. Or someone who looks at your shoes, those look like very comfortable shoes. That is... That is not. I don't care what anyone says. I think she's pretty in her own way.

Again, so mean. Like, just cruel. Down south, they have this one. Apparently, they tell me about this down. Texas is big on this one where, um, it sounds so nice. It sounds so sweet. It is not sweet.

It is, ah, bless your heart. And down south, they also say, if like, if someone says, I'm going to pray for you, that's like, oh, watch out. You just did something wrong. No, we're the same. Minnesota, we have our thing. Our thing, I think, all of them boil down to one thing Minnesotans say, maybe all Midwesterners say, but if there's something that we don't like, but we don't want to say it.

What do we say? We say, huh, that's different. 100% Midwest, Minnesota, Wisconsin, whatever it is. Like that sense of like, if this is an insult to look at someone, what they're doing, what they're wearing, what they're saying, how they're acting, and saying, huh, that's different, which is crazy that that's an insult. I mean, in the sense of this, in the sense that, like, I think most of us think that being creative is good. Like, I think most of us think that if you're your own person, that's great.

If you're an individual, awesome. Only you can be you. Yes, completely true. But why are we so afraid of being different? Like, why is that a bad thing? I think it's because this, I think because being different scares us. I think it's because of this. I think there's something in us where at the end of the day, we just kind of, we want to,

want to be like everyone else. I think at the end of the day, a lot of us, we just want to be like everyone else. Even like, even those people who are creative, even those people are like, no, I'm my own person, like I'm super individual. We knew them in junior high, right? We knew them in high school, the people who are so different. They're so individual. They're their own person. We know them because they all sat together. Like honestly, you have a group of people who are like, I'm so different. I'm like, no one else, I found a group who's just like me. Because that's, and that's not bad. It's just what we do. because I don't want to be different.

I actually ultimately want to be like everyone else. Like four weeks ago, we started this series. We're going through this series for the last month called Homeless. And the whole idea behind the thing is there's this massive biblical theme that runs throughout the very, from the very first pages of the Bible to the end of the Bible. And the theme is exile. The theme is, this isn't home, but we have to learn how to live here. The theme is, I don't belong here, but this is where I am.

This is where I have to learn how to live. And so we realized, right, all the way back from the first story of the Bible, here's God who's good, and he makes this world good, he makes Adam and even puts them in this home. But then what happens is we rebel, and what was supposed to be our home ends up becoming a place where we're exiled, a place where we don't feel like home. What was supposed to be home ends up becoming, we end up becoming homeless.

And this is a theme throughout the whole Bible, right? You have the Jews who are in slavery in Egypt. That wasn't home. They were exiled. You have the, of course, the story you've been following a bunch is when the Babylonians came down with the King Nebuchadnezzar, and they took all these Jews from Jerusalem and Judea, that whole area, and they brought them into the Babylonian exile. And they weren't home, but they had to learn how to live. And so if you remember this from last week where, historically speaking, if you're living in exile, you have two options.

That's it, right? Historically speaking, if you're in exile, your first option is either you just give up. You give in and you become like everyone else. The second option is you try to get home and you basically fight. So either it's compromised and assimilate or rebel, resist, and try to dominate.

Either become a Babylonian or never stop fighting against the Babylonians. Those are our two options. But if we remember, last week we heard Jeremiah chapter 29 and Jeremiah said there's a third option and the third option God is saying to these people the thing I want you to do is this. instead of just giving in and becoming like a Babylonian

or fighting against the Babylonians and resisting, I need you to build homes and live in them. I need you to plant gardens and eat from them. I need you to get married and have children. I want your children to get married and have children. You have to increase. You can't decrease. The whole message was this.

You have to start living right now. You can't wait until your situation changes to start living. Yes, I know that you're far from home, but you have to live now. And so the whole book of Daniel is a story of these incredible guys. right? Daniel and the bros, Hannah and I, Azari, Michelle, all four of them, they do this in an incredible way. Because they lived in Babylon for over 60 years. They were carted off to Babylon

when they were teenagers. And many of them lived until they were 80 years old. And they realized they didn't over the course of 60 years, they didn't forget that Babylon wasn't home. They never forgot for 60 years that they had home somewhere else. They never forgot that they were in exile, but they didn't wait to live. Why did they do? So what they do, they serve the king, but they served the king differently. And they lived in Babylon, but they lived in Babylon differently. And they did this by doing these small but powerful ways. And they would have to do this, right?

If anyone was going to face the temptation to be like everyone else, it'd be Daniel. You follow his story. Here he is as a teenager, and he's brought into the king's court. And he's offered this position of power. He's offered this position of influence, but this position is so precarious. I mean, think about if you've ever been on an internship, or a co-op. You've ever had a job where everyone's like, they're the established people, and it's like, okay,

how are people dressing? How are people acting? How are people working? You're like, I just want to live and want to act. I want to fit in. Because I might get promoted. Daniel was in this position of potential power in the temptation to just fit in, the temptation to just be like everyone else would be so overwhelming. But he didn't. He didn't give in to it. He realized that even though on full, far from home, even though I'm exiled, even though there's no way I'll maybe ever get home in my

entire life, I can still live like someone who's been chosen by God. This is the key. Because here's what happens. In exile, homeless, one of the most devastating things that happens to us is we forget who we are. Most devastating thing that happens to us, and we're homeless, we're far from home, we forget whose we are. And again, this isn't anything new. this actually, God knew this was going to happen. So what he did is he actually, he went ahead of them. And he said, here's what's going to happen.

You're going to live the rest of your life. Almost all of us are going to live our entire lives, exiled, our entire lives, homeless. So here's how to live. If you remember this, when the Jews were in Egypt, there were slaves. God set them free. And as they're wandering through the wilderness for 40 years,

God gives them a couple different books. One is the book of Leviticus. The other book is Deuteronomy. Like super good reading, a bunch of rules. So sometimes really dry for us, But for them, there's a list of rules that God was giving them. Why? He was giving them these rules because he was saying, okay, here's the deal.

After 40 years, you're going to be brought into the promised land. Now, the problem with the promised land is people are already living there. And there are the Jebusites and the Hittites and the parasites and all the whatever's. And the problem is when you get there, you're going to want to live like them. When you get to this place that I want you to live, you're going to be tempted to just become just like them. you're going to be tempted to say, I don't want to be different. So here's all these rules. Because you're going to want to live like them.

The problem is you can't. You have to be different. God is telling his people, once again, when you are brought into this land, you can't afford to be just like everyone else. Not because you're better than anyone else, but because you're mine. And so what does he do?

He says, okay, so when you eat, you have to eat like this. And when you wear clothes, your clothes have to be like this. And when you rest, the way you rest is going to be on the Sabbath. It's going to be like this. Even the way you cut your hair, it's going to be different. I mean, even think about this. God said, take my word and bind it on your arms. Take my word and wear it on your head.

Wear my scripture on your head. And it's interesting because these practices, they do three things. All these practices do three things. They find you, they remind you, and they cost you. When I say they find you, what I mean by that, is you don't have to go out of your way to find them, right? They're going to find you. Like, you don't have, if the rule is when you eat, eat like this,

you don't have to go out of your way to eat. Most people eat roughly every time, every day. So it's going to find you every single day. It's not something extra you're doing. It's going to find you. Also, it's going to remind you. So if you're wearing clothes that are different than everyone else, as you're walking down the street,

it's going to be kind of hard to think you're just like everyone else. Because you're literally going to look different. It's going to remind you that you're not like everyone else. And it's going to cost you. I mean, the very least it's going to cost is, like, all the people next to you are having BLTs, just having LTs. Super lame. But, and that's the least, it's going to find you these practices.

You don't have to find them. They're going to remind you of who you are and whose you are, and they're going to cost you. And this is what Daniel does. When you read the book of Daniel, chapter one, we already talked about this a couple weeks ago. In Daniel chapter one, he's going to eat from the king's table, and he decides, I'm not going to eat from the king's table. He resolved to eat like a Jew. So every time he sat down, he was reminded, I'm not like everyone else. Every time he ate and everyone next to him is eating something else and he's eating whatever his meal was, he's reminded, I'm not like everyone else.

In chapter 6, Daniel, it says, Daniel resolved his whole life to pray every day, three times a day. He said this. He said he would stand in his window facing Jerusalem and he bowed down to his God. every day for three times a day for 60 years. And so Daniel prayed. So he built in these practices in his life, right? That would find him, they'd remind him, and they'd cost him. Of course, we know this. We know that those kind of practices, sometimes there's a danger with those.

Sometimes there's a danger when we have a little checklist in our lives. One of them is that sometimes they can become superficial, right? They can just become surface things that we just kind of go through the motions. Another danger is we can end up doing them for the wrong reasons. we can end up having the wrong motive. The gospel today, the gospel today comes from a thing called the Sermon on the Mount. Some of you might know the Sermon on the Mount. It's chapter 5, 6, and 7 of Matthew's Gospel.

This is from Chapter 5, and we all know it, right? We all know Jesus who says, you're the salt of the earth, you're the light of the world. You've got to live like that. We like it, we know it. But there's a time later on in the Sermon on the Mount in Chapter 6 that I think a lot of Catholics have interiorized. It's a part of the sermon on the Mount where Jesus says this. In chapter six, he starts out by saying this.

We're going to hear this in like two and a half weeks on Ash Wednesday. Jesus says, take care about not to perform righteous deeds in order that other people may see them. Otherwise, you'll have no recompense from your father in heaven. He goes on to say, he says, when you give alms, do not blow a trumpet before you like the hippocates do so that to win the praise of others. When you give alms, don't give alms in public to win the praise of others. Don't let your left hand know what your right hand is doing. when you fast, don't let anyone know you're fasting to win the praise of others. Instead, wash your face and know what your head.

Right? So Catholics love this one. Like we have done this so well. We're like, you can hear that. You're going to hear it on Ash Wednesday. You're like, oh man, I do exactly what Jesus tells me. That's me. My faith is hidden.

Like, no one would know that I was a Christian if they watched me. And I'm just doing what Jesus told me to do. We say, okay, is it hidden or am I hiding? That's the big issue. Because we need to pay attention to the words. Jesus doesn't mind if people see. He says, don't do this in order to win the praise of others. That's the issue.

Jesus says, don't do this in front of an audience so that you get praise. That's the issue. And the question we can ask is, why is that an issue? Well, for two reasons. One is, well, if we do it to win the praise of others, the motivation is obviously self-centered. These practices are meant to actually make our hearts bigger. These practices are actually there to help us forget ourselves and just love.

The second reason is the fact that the kind of person who does good in order to win the praise of others will just as quickly cease doing good when the praise stops. You know the kind of person who does the right things to win the praise of others will just as quickly do the wrong things to win the praise of others. So the issue is not the motion. The issue is the motive. The issue is not who sees it. The issue is why we're doing it.

But again, but unfortunately, too many of us Christians, too many of us, we've taken this to mean, keep your faith hidden. In other words, it sounds like to us, like Jesus is saying, stop what you're doing if someone else is watching. That's not what Jesus said. Like, that's not the point. Essentially, Jesus is saying, do what you would do even if no one is watching.

again Jesus is not saying stop what you're doing if someone starts watching you he's saying do what you would do even if no one is watching this is what Daniel did this is how Daniel lived Daniel had resolved what to eat like a Jew so whether anyone noticed or whether no one noticed it doesn't matter

I'm gonna eat like a Jew Daniel resolved every day three times a day to stand in his window to face Jerusalem and pray to the Lord is God and if no one knows no big deal if anyone sees I don't care Daniel's basically saying I'm not telling any of you what to do. I know that I have to pray to God. And this is what great people do.

This is what great human beings do. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, there was a man in Austria named Franz Jagerstadter. And Franz, he was raised Catholic, but for most of his life, he's young life, he didn't care. He didn't care at all about the Lord. He didn't care about the church. He's kind of a ruffian, and at one point,

basically around 24, 25 years old, there was kind of a big thing that happened in his life and I woke him up and he met Jesus, changed his life. And he basically, at about 24, 25 years old, built his life centered on Jesus. So he got married and he had three kids. As I said, he was a farmer. When I mean he built his life around Jesus.

He built things into his life that would find him, they'd remind him, and they'd cost him. So as an example, he would leave his home and he'd walk out to the field. So he made a point of saying, okay, whenever I walk out to the field where I'm a farmer, I will make sure that I go past the Catholic Church and all just stop in for a few minutes on my way to work. On his way home, he went out of his way to go by the Catholic Church

and he'd stop in on his way home before he went to his family and he just pray for a few minutes in the church. These are just little reminders. They would find him, they remind him the cost of him. One of the things he did was there's a thing, you guys heard a thing called the Angelus? The Angelus is a pretty, a couple hundred years old prayer where basically you stop at 6 a.m., at noon and at 6 p.m.

And just pray a prayer that lasts about a minute and a half. and Franz Jagrister, every single day. At 6 a.m., at noon, and at 6 p.m., he would stop and pray that prayer. It was one of those things. Again, it would be the kind of thing that would find him,

because most days have a noon. And so it was one of those situations where he just built these things into his life that would find him, they'd remind him, and they'd cost him. In fact, one of the things that cost him

is he volunteered whenever there was a funeral in his village. He volunteered to assist the priest. He volunteered to be the one who was there to meet with the family. He volunteered to be there to help the priest pray, to help do the funeral. And he just made that time.

And it would, every time someone died, it would remind him of the fact that I'm connected. He'd remind him of the fact that I'm here to serve. And that practice, he built his life around, find him, and it would remind him. And it would cost him. Because it's ultimately, it's going to cost us. What Jesus tells us today to do,

what Jesus tells us today to be, man. I don't know if you ever thought about this. Have you ever heard the gospel to say? day when Jesus says you are the salt of the earth, you're the light of the world. You need to shine your light and have to, but do I have to? Sorry, I will tell you, when I hear the gospel and Jesus says, you're the light of the world, I'm like, oh, but come. I hear the deal.

I'm so selfish, I'd rather not be the light of the world. Like, I am so lazy. Then I'm like, but I don't, today do I have to again be the light of the world? But even worse, it gets worse than me and my little selfishness, my laziness. I look at myself and I'm like, okay, Jesus says the words to you and to me. He says, okay, be the light of the world. And I'm like, Lord, here's the deal. I'm a bad light.

This is just the truth. So I mentioned my friend Nick Davidson before. So Nick, my best friend, he moved off to Cambodia a little while ago. And he was sending me a video last week. He said that he's been going through some old homilies. So Nick is a really good preacher. He's an really good teacher, really good speaker. He says, he said, bro, or father, bro.

I, um, he says, I have like 20 talks. Like in my whole life, I give like 20 talks. When someone invites me to a place, I give one of those 20. He says, you like give talks, like a couple different talks every week. They're always different. And he said, I noticed this. You always like challenge everyone to like do something new that week. You always challenge people to pursue the Lord, pursue stainthood that week.

And he said, I was thinking, do you do that? Father, bro, do you do that? Do you do what you tell all of us to do? And I was like, I don't know. I try. But that's it. Like, I don't know. I try.

And I fail. I feel like so often like Franz Jagerstader, right? So go back to the guy in Austria. I mentioned his early life. Everyone in whom is the kid who got in fights. Like he lived there a pretty small town. If you were his age,

you were either beaten up by him or you beat him up. I mean, he was in fights all of the time. Later on when he was about 23, 24, he got to grow pregnant. and everyone knew about it. He offered to marry the girl. She didn't want to marry him. So he just ended up trying to do his best

to support her and raising this child. When he got married, that's when he had his conversion. That was the moment he woke up and realized life is more serious than I've been treating it. He got married to someone else, had three daughters, three kids,

and he actually even offered to adopt their daughter. And she said no. But you can imagine Franz looking at himself going like, but here, I can't be a good light. Here's everyone knows my story. You know, when the Nazis came to power, Franz Jagrastard stopped going to taverns, he stopped going to bars, not because he was against drinking, but because he would get in fights over Nazism.

He's like, I can't just have an argument. I have to punch someone. He just realized, he's like, I'm not a good light. So sometimes I don't want to be the light of the world because I know I'm not a good light. And sometimes we don't want to be the light of the world because, have you heard of a thing called Tall Poppy Syndrome? So Tall Poppy Syndrome comes from this ancient kind of Greek myth where here's this young king coming into his own,

and he didn't know how to rule, didn't know how to lead people. And so he asks his mentor, like, how do you lead? How do I lead as a king? And this mentor, according to the story, pulls out his sword, walks up to a field of poppies growing, and they're all growing different heights. And he took the sword, and he just like slices across the top of them, basically cutting down all the top ones, all the tall ones,

making them all the same height. And the idea behind the tall poppy syndrome is, don't stick your head up because you'll get your head cut off. You know, the nail that's sticking out is the one that gets the hammer. Don't do anything dramatic. Don't draw any attention to yourself. Just be like everyone else. Don't be different.

Because why? Because you're going to get cut down. So here's Franz. When the Nazis annexed Austria, some people were excited. But Franz as a Catholic realized, we can't be excited. In fact, one year, he had a horrible crop.

He lost all of his crops. And so there were government subsidies. They were going to pay him money. But the government was the Nazi government, and he refused money. Everyone was saying, listen, just take the money. They're giving it to you for free. You can feed your wife.

You can feed your kids. You can take care of your family. But he was like, no, this money's coming from the Nazi party. I'm not going to accept it. And a year or two later, in 1943, they tried to conscript him into the Nazi army. And we might think, like, to stand up against that is really obvious. It wasn't obvious in the moment.

Every one of his family members said, just do it. Just stay alive. Everyone of his friends said, just do it. Just stay alive. Even some of his clergy in his village said, just, just stay alive. Do it. Just stay alive. You have a responsibility to your wife. You have responsibility to your kids. But he realized as a Christian, as a Catholic, he had responsibility to the truth that he couldn't fight on anything affiliated with the Nazis. So in August 9, 1943, he was executed.

Because that's what happens when you're the light of the world. That's what happens when you stick your head up. That's what happened to Blessed Franz Jagger's daughter. That's the cost of being light. That's the cost of being salt. But we have to ask the question, what's the cost of not being salt? What's the cost of not being light? Just quick question. What would happen if you put flavorless salt on food?

What would happen if you lit a lamp and then covered it up? The answer is nothing. Nothing would happen. And what would happen if a person had their life changed by the love of God? It would happen if a person encountered Jesus and Jesus spoke to them in the depths of their sorrow and like healed something that was broken in their hearts? What would happen if someone encountered the love of Jesus

who found them at their worst and healed them of their shame? Like what would happen if a person was like this that Jesus stepped into their lives and gave them hope and then they just kept it to themselves? It would happen to all those people who we know what would happen to all those people that walk among us and they walk among us in fear and despair and discouragement and hopelessness.

What would happen to them? The answer is nothing. nothing would happen that's the cost of not being salt that's the cost of not being light this is the last thing Daniel um Daniel didn't set out to be heroic he was just homeless and he chose to be faithful that was it Daniel did not sit out to be heroic he was just homeless and he chose to be faithful even if it meant he would be different so what did he do he ate like a Jew What did he do? Three times a day, every day, for 60 years, he'd stand in his window and he'd face Jerusalem

and he'd pray to the Lord his God. And then what did they do? And then they made praying illegal. After 60 years of Daniel standing in his window three times a day facing Jerusalem and praying to the Lord, they made praying illegal. But Daniel didn't stop what he was doing because someone might be watching. And also he simply did what he would do even if no one was watching. And we all know it, right?

If there's any one story about Daniel, we all know. It's a story that Daniel didn't stop praying. He was arrested, and they threw Daniel into the lion's den. Everyone knows this. Everyone knows the story about Daniel and the lion's den. What most of us don't realize, what we don't pay attention to, is the story of Daniel praying in his room three times a day, every day, for 60 years. But that's where great lives are forged, doing that.

those simple things even in exile even when we're homeless to choose to say okay I'm doing this because it will find me it will remind me and it will cost me it's that willingness to be light essentially it's a willingness to be salt it's a willingness to do what I should do even if no one is watching when that takes is it takes a willingness to not be just like everyone else what that takes is a willingness to be different.