Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 4/27/25 Move On: Five Words

Episode Date: April 26, 2025

Homily from the Second Sunday of Easter, Sunday of Divine Mercy Five words that can change your life. Life is filled with change and uncertainty. But there is one thing that is stable and unchanging. Mass Readings from April, 27, 2025:Acts 5:12-16 Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24Revelation 1:9-11a, 12-13, 17-19 John 20:29

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.

The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Chapter 20 verses 19 through 31. On the evening of that first day of the week, when the doors were locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in their midst and said to them, Peace be with you. When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, peace be with you.

As the Father has sent me, so I send you. And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, receive the Holy Spirit, whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained. Thomas called Didamus, one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples said to him, we have seen the Lord, but he said to them,

unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger into the nail mark, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. Now, a week later, his disciples were again inside, and Thomas was with them. Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, Peace be with you.

Then, he said to Thomas, put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe. Thomas answered and said to him, My Lord and my God. Jesus said to him, Have you come to believe because you have seen me?

Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed. Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples that are not written in this book. But these have been written. That you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. And that through this belief, you may have life in his name. The Gospel of the Lord. Wait you to have a seat.

So we are in a new season, season of transition for our students. I don't know if you know this, but our students here on campus have one week of class starting tomorrow and one week of finals. And that's it. And then it's like, well, then what? That's a big question. Because no matter where they are in this whole system, it's time, it's time to move on. If they're an upperclassmen, it's time to either look at internships or graduation or gap years or applications or interviews or maybe more school. If they're underclassmen, it is maybe back home. maybe back home for the first time since they've been gone away,

or maybe it's transfer, maybe it's another gap year, whatever it is. That need to move on is almost always filled with anxiety because we recognize that this next step is uncertain, and it's unknown and it's unstable, and yet we realize that's life. So you might not be in school. You might not be a completely different season in your life, but you know this, you know that almost every season,

in life we're called to move on. And almost every season we're called to move on is uncertain and is unknown and is unstable. And there's sometimes there's, and that's life, right? But sometimes there's this desire in every one of us that sometimes I want to be settled, you know, just I want to be secure. I just want to know, right?

Sometimes it's like, okay, what if life was just calm? Like, right? What if life was predictable? What if it was just stable? and yet we realize that we can't have that because that isn't life. The great news and the bad news is that life keeps on going. That's great, but it's also a problem. And the great news and the bad news is when the time comes, every one of us, we have to move on.

And so we have this series for the rest of this semester. It's the reality that every one of us is in a phase, a place of life where we have to move on. So it's just called Move On. And this series will go past the semester's ending because we know this. Life keeps going. Even if they have moved on, our students, we invite them at least to listen to this

and to realize that God is in that uncertainty, that God is even in the midst of having to move on, there is something about the unknown, something about being unstable, that we know this. That when it's time to move on, you have to go. This is the reality. When it's time to move on, you have to move. And I wonder, I wonder this.

I wonder how many of us hate that. Like, right? I wonder how many of us just like, no, no, no, I just want life to be certain. I just want to know. I want life to be stable. I want to have control. And then when we don't have control, I think sometimes we can get a little bitter. Like when we don't have control, when things seem just like, this is not how it's supposed to go.

I think sometimes we can maybe even turn on God. There's a man to say, it's Timothy Keller. Timothy Keller was a Presbyterian pastor. He started Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Manhattan. In 1989, I think it was 40 years old. He moved there with his wife, Kathy, and their three boys. And after a lot of work, Redeemer Presbyterian became kind of this place for young professionals in Manhattan to go because Timothy Keller just engaged culture in a really

actually impressive and remarkable way. He was an intellectual person who just wanted to ask the questions and answer the questions that people around him, young people, were asking. And so he gathered a lot of people to his church. he wrote a bunch of books. I think I have every one of his books. I think I've read every single thing he's written. Obviously, we disagree on some things.

But I learned a lot from what he had to teach. And one of the things that he taught was how direct he could be when he spoke of my desire to be certain before I move on. You know, that we have this, again, this desire of, okay, God, if you just do things the way I want them to be done, then things will go well. In fact, he has this great quote. He says, he said this. He said, most of us actually feel like we know better than God how our life ought to go.

And if it's not going right, quote unquote right, we get anxious. We get filled with self-pity. We get scornful. We get skeptical. We get hard and cynical. But actually, he said, patience and the ability not to worry. and to not be really upset when things are going wrong in your life is essentially a kind of humility. He says, you want to know why?

He says, because this. Because it takes humility to say, well, I thought this was how my life ought to go, but I don't know. How do I know? How do I know what God can see? He said, I can't see from the end to the beginning. I can't see from my vantage point my entire life and what's best for me. I don't know. And then he said something so profound.

He said, it takes pride to be worried. It takes a lot of pride for us to say, look, God, I know how my life ought to go, and I'm afraid that God's not going to get it right. But humility says, well, I thought that this was what really should be happening, but I don't know. And then you want to say, but if you're a Christian, you have enough joyful hope. He said, for the Christian, joy is always on the way. Because the one in charge of us, the one in charge of the whole universe, is our father.

So here's a question. How can we have joyful hope? How can we have faith when it's time to move on and things are still uncertain and things are still unknown and things are still unstable? There's no magic wand and there's no magic word. But I went to this. There are five words. There are five words that can change your life. You know, last week, Good Friday, I was praying.

I went out after our Good Friday services and I was just, I was just, I was just walking around campus and through the woods, and I was just praying about what would it be like to have been one of the apostles and one of the disciples on Good Friday, on Holy Saturday? And I really just pretended like, what if I didn't know the end of the story? It would just be this unimaginable uncertainty. You have no idea. You have no idea what to do. You have no idea how do I move on.

In fact, okay, Jesus is dead, but not only that, one of you betrayed him. Like one of this close group of friends, another one of you denied him, almost all of you abandoned him. And imagine, here you are, he's dead and you're completely unprepared for the next thing. Why? Because everything is wrong. Like, all of this is wrong. You'd say this shouldn't have happened. You know, this can sit in that for a little bit.

All of this is wrong. This shouldn't have happened. You'd be so crushed and so uncertain about this unknown. and it's unstable. And then today's reading, right? And then today's gospel, all of a sudden, in the midst of that uncertainty, in the midst of that what's unknown,

in the midst of everything being unstable, Jesus is there. And he's like, peace and gives you the Holy Spirit. And then what happens? The next week, we heard it in the gospel today. Thomas is there with him. And Jesus speaks those words to Thomas. Do not be unbelieving, but believe.

And then Thomas falls to the ground, falls to his knees, and he says these five words. And these five words absolutely change everything. He says, my Lord and my God. Jesus is God. Jesus is God. He's not only his visit from the dead, he is the Lord of life.

He's the Lord of heaven and earth. And yes, we still have problems. And yes, we still have uncertainty. Yes, we still have the unknown because we still have life. And life still happens. happens and the next step still needs to be stepped. But all of this is different because those five words, the five words demonstrate this, they declare that the resurrection is real and that Jesus has God.

That's why at the end of John's Gospel we heard it today. He says, listen, these words have been written down so that you may come to believe and that by believing you may have life in his name. These words that Jesus, my Lord and my God, that you may come to believe that Jesus is who he says he is, and that by believing you might have life in his name. And that life, that's the grace that comes through baptism, that life, that's the joy that comes through this truth. Now, imagine the truth, you can build a life on that.

You can build a whole life on those five words, my Lord and my God. No matter what the next step is, you can move on with confidence. In the midst of uncertainty, in the midst of the unknown, in the midst of where things are unstable, even when things are painful, even when things are problematic, even when there's loss, even when there's disaster, you can live a life of joy because those five words are true. Again, even in the midst of loss and even in the midst of disaster. In 2020, Tim Keller had been serving that Manhattan church for years. And in 2020, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He spent the next three years. He taught and he preached and he served and he fought. And he fought

cancer that ultimately took his life in May of 2023. But before he died, he said these words about how he could move on knowing these five words. And he said this. He said, he said, one of his wife's name's Kathy. And he said, let me just say something that Kathy and I have talked about for the last year. This is this interview he was giving. And he just said these words from his heart. He said, we've been talking about for the last year, bang, bang, not being diagnosed with cancer.

He said, if Jesus Christ was actually raised from the dead, if he really got up, walked out, and was seen by hundreds of people, talk to them. If he was raised from the dead, then you know what? Everything is going to be all right. Whatever you're worried about right now, whatever you're afraid of, everything is actually going to be okay. Because you've got to remember, we're not just talking about resurrected people, we're talking about a resurrected world,

meaning he's wanted to say, he said, there's plenty of other religions that talk about an afterlife, which is a non-material world where you get kind of a consolation for the world that was lost. Christianity says that it's not just your bodies that are being resurrected, but the world, the material world, is going to be cleansed of all evil and all suffering and all sin,

and if Jesus is raised from the dead and the whole world is going to be, in a sense, resurrected, everything is going to be okay. everything you don't know how and I don't know how but it will be if these five words are true Jesus

my Lord and my God everything is going to be okay to have the power to have the faith to be able to move on of course you still have our problems we still have uncertainty in the unknown and himself like because we still have life life still happens that next step still needs to be stepped. But it's different. It's all different because these five words are true.

They're true. You know, we say this to our students all the time, that the only reason to believe anything is because it's true. The only reason to believe that Jesus is God, that he is my Lord and my God, is because it's actually true. One of my heroes, C.S. Lewis, wrote about this. He wrote about this in his book, Mere Christianity, about the Virtue of Faith. And he had this big question. He said, before I became a Christian, I never understood how Christians could describe faith as a virtue. Because he said, if something's true, why is it virtuous to believe that it's not virtuous to believe two plus two is four? It's why would you say faith is a virtue? And then afterwards, after became Christian, he said, I finally understand why.

He said, because when you come to the conclusion that Jesus is who he says he is, that he is my Lord and my God, living that out, is not just a matter of my reason, right? I also have my emotions. I also have my feelings. I also have my changing circumstances. He said it like this. He said, a lot of times when people leave the faith, they said, it's not reason that's taking away my faith.

On the contrary, my faith is based on reason, right? There's evidence for Jesus rising from the dead. He says, it's my imagination and my emotions. The battle between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other. I love this because this is one of the things as our students are being launched into summertime in the new situations and new,

life as they're moving on, one of the things that they'll find is the truth of Jesus, the truth of the Catholic Church, the truth of Christianity is stable. It is certain. It is known. But what's not stable, what's not certain, what's not known is my own heart. And the situations I get myself into and the fact that there are sometimes when I don't want this to be true. Lewis said it like this. He said, but supposing a man's reason once decides that the weight of evidence is for it, that Jesus really is, my Lord and my God. He said, I can tell a man what's going to happen to him in the next few weeks. There will come a moment when there's bad news, or he's in trouble,

or he's living among a lot of other people who do not believe it, and all at once his emotions rise up and carry out a sort of blitz on his belief. Or maybe there will come a moment where he wants a woman, or he wants to tell a lie, or he feels very pleased with himself, or he sees a chance of making a little money in a way that's not totally fair. some moment in fact at which it would be very convenient if Christianity were not true. And once again, his wishes and desires will carry out a blitz. Not talking about a moment when there's any new, any real new reasons against Christianity.

Those have to be faced and that's another issue. I'm talking about moments where the mere mood rises up against it. And this is what every one of us face. Thomas, I imagine Thomas even faced this. Seeing Jesus face to face, saying those five words that change everything, my Lord and my God, I'm sure there were times when Thomas was being tortured for his belief. Imagine when Thomas was just hungry and tired and alone because he was sent out to be an apostle of Jesus Christ where maybe he didn't want Christianity to be true anymore.

But in those moments, what did he do? in those moments he did what every one of us has to do. We stand on the fact as a foundation that Jesus is who he says he is, and he really is our Lord and our God. I would say this, maybe there are still moments when I don't know how to still walk in faith. Maybe there's some moments when I need five other words.

As I mentioned earlier in the Mass, today is Divine Mercy Sunday. And if you know anything about Divine Mercy Sunday, that a number of years ago, Jesus appeared to a Polish nun named Sister Faustina Kowalska with a private revelation to her about his mercy, about his heart, about his love for the world, his ability to conquer sin in every one of us. And he had a prayer called the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. We pray that all the time. It's such a great prayer. He also commissioned an image.

He asked, say, Faustina, to commission an image of himself and his divine mercy. And underneath this image of Jesus, stepping forwards towards the center with lights, blue, white and red light coming from his side, symbolizing baptism and symbolizing the Eucharist, symbolizing his mercy. Underneath that image are five more words. Those are five words that we can make a regular part of every single day. And if we make those five words part of our heart,

then even when our situations have changed, even when our moods have changed, even when I don't want this to be true, can live my life and build my life. I can move on in faith. And those five words are, Jesus, I trust in you. Jesus, I trust in you.

My invitation, here's the last thing. Pray this. My invitation is to live this. It's not magic, it's not a mantra. It is a moment of surrender to be able to say, my Lord and my God. Jesus, I trust in you even in tears. Shortly before Timothy Keller died,

He said this, he said, actually, you know, right now, I couldn't possibly be convinced that Jesus was not raised from the dead. Either intellectually or existentially. He said, I know it's true. So, by the way, Kathy and I, his wife, he said, we cry.

He said, we cried a lot last night. Sometimes the reality of the shortness of what we have left here just overwhelms us. And we were weeping together, and we were just crying. And then you say, If Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, it's going to be okay. And then you can wipe your tears, but you don't stop crying.

It's like salt in the wound that keeps the wound from going bad. We have tears that we can still move on. We have lost, but we can still move on. Even in the midst of uncertainty and the unknown, and when life feels unstable, we can still move on. move on. We can still say those five words, my Lord and my God. We can still say those other five words. Jesus, I trust in you. And we can say them unafraid and say them unwavering and say them undaunted. We say those five words. Now, because now once again, this is life and it's time to move on.