Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 4/18/25 Pause

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

Homily from Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion This is not the end of the Story, but it had to happen for the Story to go on. The Passion of Christ is not the end of the Story, but we must pause and reflect on it. It is the lens through which we see: What love looks like when it costs everything, what sin looks like when we can see the wounds, and what mercy looks like when it refuses to give up. Mass Readings from April, 18, 2025: Isaiah 52:13—53:12 Psalm 31:2, 6, 12-13, 15-16, 17, 25Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 John 18:1—19:42

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz. I am so excited to be joining the Courage Under Fire Gala on May 23rd in Nashville, Tennessee, and I would love for you to be there too. I believe that this world needs people of faith who are willing to live with clarity, conviction, and compassion. That's what this night is all about, standing in truth, rooted in Christ and unshaken by the storms around us. You know this. We weren't made for comfort. We were made for courage. So go to the Courage Underfire Gala by grabbing your ticket at courage underfiregala.org. That's courage underfiregala.org. And God bless.

So this is one of those moments where we get to pause. I think it's one of the moments where we have to pause. I think that hearing this story again, this account of the passion of the real suffering and the real death of Jesus, the fact that he really died, We have to pause. I think that right now we have to just stop and look because I think maybe our temptation is like,

hmm, mm, kind of like take a glance and then move on. But we have to pause the story and look. Because we know this, we know this, right? We know that the story is not just a story. We know that the crucifix is not just a symbol. That the story is a window, right? The story, that the crucifix is a lens through which we see the truth.

The truth that we get to see what love looks like when it holds nothing back. We get to see what sin looks like when we see the wounds and we can see what mercy looks like when it refuses to give up. But those three things, right? If we stop right now, if we pause right now,

and look, we see those three things. We see what love looks like when it costs everything. what sin looks like when we can see the wound and what mercy looks like when it refuses to give up. The first thing is we see what love looks like when it costs everything. You know, yesterday we talked about this last night, right? At the last supper, we prayed with the fact that it said

Jesus loved having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. So we know what love looks like when it costs everything, right? That the fact that here's Jesus who loved them, Ice Telos, right? That Greek term that doesn't just mean to the end of the story. It means to the fullest extent. We get to see what love looks like when it loves to the fullest extent.

And ever since the fall, he's talked about the fall yesterday, but ever since the fall, human beings, us, who are made for love, God, who is love, ever since the fall, love always involves sacrifice. That's the remedy that's given to Eve, that she's going to love the children that she gives birth to, but it's also going to cause her pain because love involves sacrifice. And to Adam, that he's going to bring forth fruit from the earth, but it's going to cost him something because the love always involves sacrifice.

In fact, you might have caught this that at the end of the whole story of Adam and Eve in the garden, that they're cast out of the garden. We know this, but I don't know if you've ever noticed these two points, these two points of this,

is that as Adam and Eve are leaving the garden, he said, the Lord God then clothed them with leather garments. And that tells us two things. One of it tells us that God didn't abandon them. He didn't stay in the garden. He went out into the wilderness with them. So God is with us. God is with us.

And the second thing it tells us is if he clothed them with leather garments, how do you get leather garments? You get leather garments when something is killed. You can only make leather garments out of something that was alive, and now it's dead. Why? Because this resounding truth, that love always involves sacrifice. And today we get to through the lens of this story,

through the lens of the crucifix. We get to see what love looks like when it costs everything, what love looks like when it demands sacrifice. And I don't know if you ever thought about this, but it just struck me so powerfully of I'm so accustomed to my own twisted heart. My own twisted heart is this, I will love. I'm grateful for the ability to love. And yes, of course, it involves sacrifice.

But in my life and probably in your life too, whenever I love, whenever we love, we always get something back. I mean, typically we get something back. So here's the mom. She has a child, and it costs her something, but she has a child. The child hopefully loves her back. Here's a man who goes to work and he can do this thing. It brings forth fruit from the earth with pain and difficulty.

sacrifice, but he gets something back. The story we just heard, Jesus doesn't get anything back. What I mean by that is, is that there's nothing to this story, nothing to this action, nothing to the thing we just heard. That's for him.

I don't know if you ever thought about this. I've been praying about this for days, though, that the sense of, Jesus gets nothing out of this. And just sit with that. like to pause, to stop, and sit with that. None of this is for him. But this is the lens that we get to see what love looks like when it holds nothing back.

We also get to see what sin looks like when we can see the wound. I think so often we don't see the wounds. I mean, sometimes we do. Sometimes we see the consequences of sin. But so often in our lives, we're just like, no, sin kind of sometimes can feel just like, I broke a rule or I broke a law. And we know this. We know there's rules in our lives.

There's laws in our lives that you can kind of sort of fudge with. and there's no consequence. Like there's no kind of thing. You could go a little bit over the speed limit or kind of roll through that stop sign. And we're all fine. Everyone's fine. The world didn't collapse.

So I think we get accustomed to this notion that, well, sins are just rules or sins are just those laws that maybe I broke, but again, no one was hurt. But the story we just heard shows us what sin looks like when we can see the wound. We've heard it in the first reading,

Isaiah 52 and Isaiah 53 where it talks about this, who would believe what we've heard? He says, there was in him no stately bearing to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him. He was a man of suffering, acquainted with infirmity. One of those from whom people hide their faces, we held him in no esteem, and yet, and this is the cost of my sin,

yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured. What we thought of him stricken as afflicted by God, he was pierced for our offenses, and he was crushed for our sins. Just to sit with that for a second. that my choices nailed Jesus to the tree, that my choices put a crown of thorns on his head,

that my choices nailed his feet to the cross, that there was my choices that asphyxiated Jesus himself, and this is one of those things. The story, when we stop, when we pause, and we look, we can see the consequences of our choices. Again, I would say this, I say the crucifix or this story is the lens through which I can see what my choices have done. And because of that, we have to today, on Good Friday, we have to stop.

We have to look because this story reveals what love looks like when it costs everything and what sin looks like when we can see the wound. And thirdly, lastly, it reveals what mercy looks like when it refuses to give up. And we heard Jesus praying in the gospel, Father forgive them. Now, I just discovered this. It just blows my mind, is that the Greek, when it says, and Jesus said, Father, forgive them. The Greek is actually not Jesus said, like as if he said it once.

It was the Greek form of the word that means he said it again and again. Like this whole time, this whole time that Jesus' feet are being nailed to the cross, his hands are being nailed to the cross. This whole time, maybe even, who knows, as the cross is being stood up and he is hanging on the cross, he repeatedly said, Father, forgive them. He didn't just say, he kept saying, Father, forgive them. And we stop and look,

we can see what love looks like when it refuses to give up. I don't know if you ever paused and thought about this. If we look at the cross, we can see what love looks like when it refuses to give up. What did Jesus see from the cross? What did Jesus look at?

You know, the other day, we had confessions on Palm Sunday night and a number of people who are in OCIA, We have a big, huge class of OCIIA people coming into the church this year and some bunch of first confessions. And at one point, I was just struck by, here's just someone, you know, these people come into confession for the first time in years and years and years,

maybe sometimes people for the first time ever. I just kept thinking, oh my gosh, Jesus, this is what you saw. Like from the cross, Jesus, this is what you saw. You saw this moment. Because why? Because why did Jesus die for our sins? Sorry, why did Jesus die on the cross? He died to our sins could be forgiven.

What happens in confession? Our sins are forgiven. So here, I imagine, what Jesus saw from the cross. What we look at the cross is love that refuses to give up, mercy that refuses to give up the cost of our sins. What Jesus saw from the cross, I'm guessing. See, saw that moment. Like Palm Sunday night last week,

when someone went to confession and they let Jesus win. But Jesus on the cross could see you the next time you need to go to confession and you say, okay, Jesus, I will let you win. I will let you forgive me. So we have to stop. We have to pause in this story because when we pause in the story and look through this, this story is a lens to which we see, what love looks like when it costs everything, what sin looks like when we can see the wound and what mercy looks like when it refuses to give up.

We have to pause and we have to look. We have to stop the story. But here's the reality, of course, this is the last thing. The reality is this is just a pause. What I mean by that is this. today is not the end of the story. This is not the end of the story, but it had to happen for the story to go on.

We know this. The truth is this story didn't start with sin. It started with love. And this story doesn't end with sin. It ends with mercy. Of course, we all know that sin is a part of the story. The suffering and evil and death we just heard about, that is a part of the story.

We know that the passion and the story. cross, they stand as declaration that sin does not have the final word, the death, the death of those you love, that your death and not, and also even including Jesus's death, it's not the end of the story. Today we stop and we pause and we look at the crucifix because that's the lens and we look at the story and hear the story because that's the lens but we also know that this is not the end of the story. It happened so that the story could go on.