Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 6/11/23 The Heart of the Matter

Episode Date: June 10, 2023

Homily from the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ (Feast of Corpus Christi) Love is the best thing in this world. We are made for love. God is love. We are therefore made for God. And God comes to us in love in the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus Christ at every Mass. Mass Readings from June 11, 2023:Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14b-16aPsalm 147:12-13, 14-15, 19-201 Corinthians 10:16-17 John 6:51-58

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 in your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you.

A reading from the Holy Gospel according to John. Chapter 6, verses 51 through 58. Jesus said to the Jewish crowds, I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever, and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world. The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, how can this man give us his flesh to eat?

Jesus said to them, amen. Amen, I say to you. Unless you eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.

Just as the living father sent me and I have life because of the father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and stayed and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever. The Gospel of the Lord. Might you have a seat. So I'm sure most people are probably familiar with The Wizard of Oz just the musical or the play.

Is it a musical? I don't know. The TV show. It's called the movie. But if you ever read the book by El Frank Baum that it's based off of, it's, there's a depth to that book that the musical or the movie is good on its own. But there's a depth to this book that, in fact, there's a, there's a poignant scene. What I mean by that is we think of like the scarecrow or the Tin Woodsman and the Cowardly Line

and there's kind of like these characters or caricatures in the movie. But if read the book, they all have backstories. In fact, the backstory of the Tin Woodsman is remarkable. He wasn't always a Tin Woodsman. He just was a woodsman at one point. He actually tells the story about how he got all, you know, rusted and needed the oil can in the middle of the woods. And he tells the story how he began as a woodsman.

And he was in love. And he was in love with this munchkin maiden. And so he set to work, and he set to work so that he could marry her. That was the whole point that he would go into the woods every day because he had this love for her in his heart. But there was a wicked witch who didn't want the Munchkin maiden to marry the Tin Woodsman. And so she cast a spell on his axe. And as he was chopping away, it slipped and he cut off his leg.

And so he went to like a smithy, someone who worked in metal and built him a new leg. And so he went back to work. And then he cut off the next leg. Went to this the person Made a tin leg for him and he went back to work and then as he tells the story. It's kind of funny because he cut off an arm Cut off Cut off a other arm At one point he says actually split himself down the middle and Frank Baum writes the book. He says and then I thought I was a goner for sure

Like when he cuts himself in half But the the the smithy the person working in tin Was he able to put him back together So unfortunately when he put me together He made a chest for me he left out the heart and so I kept working, kept chopping wood, but I no longer had a heart and so I no longer had any love for the munchkin maiden for whom he had lived his life. So he said, so I'm going to go to the wizard and I'm going to ask for a heart because

that's what I need. You know, the scarecrow says something all in the lines of, listen, that's fine. I need a brain though because what good is a heart without a brain, which is a good point. But then the Tin Woodsman says, that's a good point. He says all the same, I'm going to ask for a heart because without a heart you can't love. And love is the best thing in the world. Today is the feast of Corpus Christi. It's the feast of the body and blood of Jesus.

It is the sign, I would say, the sign of God's love for the world. I mean, think about John 316. What does Jesus say? Jesus says, God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son. We could continue that and say, and the son so loved the world that he gave his very body and blood. You know, Mother Teresa, way back in the day, she said, you know, when you look at the crucifix, you can see how much God loved you back then.

You look at any gaze upon any crucifix. You can see that's an image of the love of God. You can see how much Jesus loved you back then. She said, but when you look at the Eucharist, you can see how much Jesus loves you right now. The Eucharist is the love of God for the world in so many really unique ways. Before my mom died, she was the master of email forwards. And basically at her funeral, I made a joke about the fact that probably everyone in this, you know, packed churches, beautiful, it's really powerful.

Probably every one of them had something in common. And that wasn't just that they love my mom, was that they got an email from her. That we said we have special seating for those who have ever gotten an individual email from my mom. Because no one, I've never gotten an individual, like, Dear Michael, I've never, never, I just got the forwards. Her last email forward was a talk by Monsignor Shea from You Mary in Bismarck.

And her talk on the Eucharist. And she just had asked, all of us, just listen to this, listen to this man talk. And who's incredible, Monsignor Shea is a amazing. amazing. And he was giving a talk for the preparation for the Eucharistic Revival that's underway, basically. It's beginning, it's ongoing. It's the whole thing. I don't know when it exactly starts, but I know next summer is going to be a really important season for this Eucharistic revival. Anyways, Monsignor Shea is giving this talk. And one of the things he said is he said

that in preparation for that talk that my mom has sent to us. He said, oh, a lot of people wrote to me knowing that I was going to give a talk on the Eucharist. And they said, listen, you need to tell your brother priest, you need to tell the bishops that they need to start talking about the Eucharist and that the Eucharist is truly the real presence of Jesus. That really is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. And Mons Zier Shea said, as if my knucklehead priests and bishops, they don't already do that. Like as if they're too dense or too dumb or too faithfulness, they actually do that.

He said the reality probably is that most priests do preach about the Eucharist. Most bishops do clearly teach about how the Eucharist at every single mass, it truly is the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus. The question is, do we hear? not just do we hear the words, but are we listening? Does it actually the kind of thing that actually changed our lives? Because I think about myself, and I've told the story a thousand times I don't need to go into it. But when I was about 16, I remember coming upon this teaching about how Jesus is truly present in the Eucharist.

I was reading a book that my mom had. And I just remember running downstairs to the kitchen. I'm like, you guys, do you know that that's really Jesus and the Euchar? And my brothers and sisters are like, yeah. I'm like, no, no, it's really, really him. They're like, yeah, moron. We went to Catholic school too. And I went to Catholic school.

I went to Mass every single Sunday. I don't know why. I'm sure someone said it. I'm sure that everyone said that. I'm sure every person, every teacher ever told me that really is Jesus. And I just didn't make a difference. So here's Monsignor Shea saying,

you just need me to tell you this thing. You don't need me just to tell you this. What we need to do is we need to pray for a miracle because we realize whenever there's a conversion, that's always a miracle. Whenever someone opens themselves up to a truth of the faith, that's always a miracle. In particular, the miracle of Jesus truly present in the Euchar,

To be able to be convicted by this, I'm convinced that when someone is convicted by this truth, regardless of what obstacles they'll ever face in their life, regardless of those, how many fails and how many sins, how much of a shipwreck they can make of their life, they will know there's no other place for them in the world. That is part of my story as well. I was so convicted by Jesus' true presence in the Eucharist that I was like, hey, I want to give my whole life, I want to study this, I want to learn more. I went to a college and I've told this story too. I don't mean beat a dead horse. If I went to this college,

went to a Catholic school, and by the time I graduated, I was going to Mass every single day because that's the Jesus and the Eucharist. I was a missionary at a Catholic mission, and I hated the Catholic Church. But I wasn't going to leave because, well, the Eucharist. So I was one of those kind of like, you know,

I guess you might say a cafeteria type Catholic where I was like, no, the Eucharist is true. The other stuff is optional. And I'm so grateful to the Lord for that because I would have run away. I would have walked away if it hadn't been this deep abiding conviction that this is truly Jesus in the Eucharist and if it's not, this is the miracle thing. If it's not, what are we doing? Not just we're wasting

our time. If this is not Jesus, it's not like we're wasting our time. I mean, think about, going back to the Robert Bellarmine, he was a saint at the time of the Reformation. He was one of the counter-reformers, basically. So Martin Lutheran's mothers had pointed out real corruption in the church. They put out real brokenness in the church. And so it wasn't like the church was like, no, we're fine. The many in the church were like, yes, you're right. There is a brokenness. There is. real corruption, Robert Bellman was one of these guys. At the same time, his solution wasn't to abandon the church. His solution was to be converted himself and then to help other people be converted. His solution wasn't leave the church. His solution was lead the church in conversion. And so Robert

Berleman is having this debate with a Protestant reformer who was basically denying Jesus as presence in the Euchar. And he's saying, this is not his body. This is merely a symbol. And Robert Billerman is kind of a jokester. At one point, he got up and he said, okay, let me sum up your argument. your argument is this is not Jesus' body. He says, but in the Gospels, Jesus says very clearly, this is my body. So he said, you're saying this is not his body. Jesus said this is my body. If you or me, who do you think I should believe?

Because that's what comes down to, it comes down to, like, this is Jesus or it's not. It either is, at every mass, the body, blood, soul, the divinity of Jesus, or it's not. And the stakes are not, again, like we're just wasting our time if it's not. The stakes are higher. We run a camp every summer with junior high students and high school students work there, students and adults. We all work together. It's an incredible couple of weeks. It's not a Catholic camp. The camp we put it on is Catholic, but the grounds are not. They belong to another Christian domination. And at one point, the director of the camp, he came up to me and said, yeah, you know,

father, the board of directors, we had a meeting and they're really concerned that we host Catholics at our camp. It's like, oh, how come? And he said, well, one of the members of the board stood up and said, you know, that they believe, those Catholics believe that at every mass, really is Jesus. They worship bread and wine as if that is God. They're committing idolatry on our campground, like in our facility. Do we really want people to commit idolatry in our buildings at our camp? And he was like, and I told him, like, no, it's not that big of a deal. Actually, I looked at him. I was like, he's actually correct. Like, those are the stakes. You're right. He's right. That what we do, if it's not really Jesus, then we are the worst idolaters

in the history of humanity. Because at every Mass, what happens? Every mass, not only does the priest say, behold, the Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world, but when you come forward to receive Holy Communion, the priest or the extraordinary minister of Holy Communion raises that host aloft and says, the body of Christ, and you and I, we say amen,

which doesn't just mean, uh-huh, or thanks, it means essentially. Well, it means, I believe it is so. Ultimately, though, it means I stake my life on that. Every time you and I approach our Lord in the Eucharist, and we hear the body of Christ, the blood of Christ, and we say amen. What we're saying is, I stake my life on that being Jesus.

And if it's not Jesus, then I'm literally condemning myself because I'm committing idolatry. I'm committing one of the gravest, worst sins that's prohibited all throughout the Old Testament, all throughout the New Testament. But it's at the heart of everything we do. Because the Eucharist is the heart of everything we do. The Eucharist is the heart of everything we do.

You know, I've heard it said that all the sacraments are the action of Jesus. All the sacraments are the work of Jesus in this world. I mean, so whenever we go to confession, that's the work of Jesus. That's the action of God's mercy. When we have anointing of the sick, that's God's work of healing. When we get confirmed, that's God's, that's Jesus. It's that work of Jesus.

It's the work of Jesus, sending His Holy Spirit upon us. Like every sacrament is the work of Jesus is the action of Jesus. But the Eucharist, the mass, isn't merely the work of Jesus. It is Jesus. So every other sacrament is a something. The Eucharist is a someone. Yes, it is the work of Jesus in the sense that is himself offering us, himself to the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit.

But the Eucharist is Jesus. Every other sacrament is a something. The Eucharist is a someone. It is the God who is love. And love is the best thing in the world. And still it's one of those moments where we still come to the Mass and we're like, yeah, but I don't feel the love. Like I come to Mass and I'm paying attention, I'm praying, I'm distracted by all the things

going on outside of me, inside of me, and I'm trying, I'm trying to give the Lord my heart. But I feel like I don't get anything. back. I don't understand that. But we know we do, right? Like we know we do get something back. We don't get just get something back. We get someone back. We get him himself. It's hard because he's hidden. It's hard because it's really Jesus, body, blood, soul, and divinity, but under a disguise, right? It's under the accidents of what looks and feels and tastes and smells like bread and wine. But there are sometimes when Jesus pulls back the veil. There are sometimes when God himself has said, okay, I want you to know that this really is me. I want you

to know that this really is my love. I want you to know that this really is my love for you, my heart for you. This happened a number of times. I just want to talk about two times briefly. In like the 700s, there was a priest in the town called Lanciano, Italy. Maybe you've heard of this. Lanchano, Italy, there's a priest who was celebrating Mass and he wasn't, he was struggling with the idea of transubstantation. He was struggling with the idea that spread in his hands as he was saying, this is my body, the wine in the chalice, this is my blood. That was really, really, really Jesus, and as he pronounced those words in Latin, this is my body, this is my blood, in his very hands, the bread didn't just transubstantiate, it transformed into flesh in his hands.

And the wine didn't just transstantiate, but it transformed into blood in the chalice. This was 1300 years ago. Immediately, of course, they stopped the mass and they, if you go to Lanchiano, you can see where they have preserved the Eucharist in a reliquary. essentially. It's above the altar and it's is incredible. In the 1970s, 1980s, it actually allowed scientists to examine a sample of this Eucharist that had been transformed 1,300 years ago. And the scientists, as they looked at this, they discovered a number of things. They discovered this is true human flesh and this is true human blood. And the type of the blood was A.B., which is the universal

receiver. They found some other things as well. But I want to add that story in the 700s and the 1990s or 1980s to a miracle that happened in Buenos Aires Argentina I think I don't know the date exactly I think it was September or August of 1996 there was a host that was discarded it was left on the ground or left on the candle so someone found it gave it to the priest then consume it they put it in some water and put it in the in the tabernacle for a week and after week it hadn't dissolved because that's what normally do he just let it dissolve and it ceases to become the Eucharist because it's no longer bred it's no longer anything

then you can dispose of this. But after a week, it didn't dissolve. In fact, after a week, they started to have, like, blood that was coming out of the host. And so the priest took it to his bishop, and the bishop said, okay, let's hold on to this for another month. And then another couple of years, they took care of this host in distilled water for three years. In 1999, they sent a sample of this host to a doctor at Columbia University in New York. They didn't tell where it came from. So just examine this and tell us what you see.

And the doctor was like, okay, well, here's what I found. I found that, yes, this is the blood type is AB, it's the same blood type. This is real human blood. This is real human flesh. But they also found the same thing that they found in Lanchiano. It wasn't just flesh from any part of the human person, of the human body. It wasn't like just skin, wasn't just from a leg. It was flesh from a human heart.

In fact, it was from the inside wall of the left ventricle of the myocard. They found that the doctor said this, the heart muscle was inflamed and it contains a large number of white blood cells. In fact, the thing that was confused him the most about all this stuff is that the white blood cells were still alive. You typically white blood cells are dead within minutes or hours after the person, they're removed from a living body, living tissue. Yet these were for years.

They still had living white blood cells. As he's looking at examining this tissue, he found that the person whose heartless was, This sample was collected while they're still alive, he said. And the heart was traumatized by someone beating this person, particularly beating them around the chest. Later on, they were told that this sample came from a consecrated host from a Catholic Mass. And the doctor in charge said, how and why a consecrated host would change its character and become living, human flesh and blood, will remain an inexplicable mystery to science, a mystery totally beyond her competence. But upon further reflection, one of the things that is absolutely,

clear. Here is the blood type A-B. Universal Receiver. You know, we know this. There is no one for whom Jesus Christ has not died. No one who's ever lived is living or will live for whom Jesus Christ doesn't have room in his heart. Universal Receiver. Coming from the left ventricle, which is the part of the heart that pumps fresh blood, oxygenated blood to the rest of the body, comes from the heart because you and I are made for love. And we recognize that every time we come to the Mass, we're receiving the very heart of God. Every time we come to the Mass, we're receiving the very love of God. Every time we come to the Mass, we are receiving from the God who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, and the son who so loved the world that he gave

the world his body and blood and soul and divinity, that at every single Mass, on this feast day of Corpus Christi, we're reminded of this truth. At every single mass, we receive the very heart of God. At every single mass, we've received the very love of God, and love is the best thing in the world.