Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 6/4/23 Blank Tablets

Episode Date: June 3, 2023

Homily from the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity God, you get to tell me who You are. We have been made in the image of God. The common temptation that we all face is to re-make God in our own image. We can be drawn to the idea that we can simply worship the God whom we prefer rather than the God who has revealed Himself. Mass Readings from June 4, 2023:Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9Daniel 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 562 Corinthians 13:11-13 John 3:16-18

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 33777.7. 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 John, chapter 3, verse 16 through 18. God so loved the world, that he gave his only son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish, but might have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not. believed in the name of the only Son of God, the gospel of the Lord. So we're just going to spend a little bit of time with the first reading today. The first reading is just kind of remarkable and you might know the

context for this. This is Exodus chapter 34. And in Exodus chapter 34, it highlights the fact that Moses is going up Mount Sinai again and he says he has two tablets in his hands. I want to highlight those two tablets. He walks up this Mount Sinai. He's got two not just two tablets. He has two blank tablets in his hands. And this is unique because if you know the story, that in Exodus chapter 32, two chapters before this, what happens? Moses goes up the mountain of Mount Sinai. And he's there for 40 days, 40 nights. He's fasting. He's praying. And in that time, God carves out. God takes two tablets and he carves on those tablets with his own finger. He carves the Ten Commandments. Right. So that's that story. Here's Moses coming down Mount Sinai with two Ten Commandments that God himself had

carved out of the rock that he had written with his very finger of God. You know, that image of being intimate there. The very finger of God wrote the commandments, and he's carrying them down the mountain. And what happens, right? He gets close to the camp and he hears that they are starting to worship the golden calf. Now, this is so phenomenal. This is just, this is our hearts. What we get in this moment is all of our hearts. What happened when it came to the golden calf is you probably know this already. I used to think like when I was growing up that the story of the, you know, Aaron, Moses, his brother and the golden calf, this whole thing, that I can't believe how quickly the people of Israel turned away from the Lord God to worship whoever they wanted. But that's not actually

what they do. They fashioned this golden calf right out of all the jewelry that the Egyptians had given to them as they were fleeing from slavery. And then they bowed down and were worshipping this golden calf. What they said was, here, oh, Israel, this is the Lord your God. This is the God who saved you. So they didn't think in their minds. They didn't think that they were turning away from the Lord God. They weren't turning away from the true God into a false God. They were just, what they did is they just made a God in their own image. They made a God that they wanted. So what happens? Moses sees this. That's idolatry, this refashioning of a God that they wanted. Here's a real God who set them free. The real God who was faithful to his promises. The real God who brought them through the Red Sea.

The real God who was actually providing for them in that moment. And on Mount Sinai at that very moment, the real God was revealing his real self. But the people, what they wanted was that, no, no, no, we want a God of our own choosing. We want a God of our own making. We want a God of our own inventing. We want a God in our image. And then when Moses sees this, as you know, the story, he smashes the Ten Commandments. And now we have chapter 34. After all this, Moses took two tablets that he himself had taken, that he himself had taken out of the ground. And so he walks on Mount Sinai with two blank tablets. This is what scripture makes very, very clear at the beginning of Exodus 34. The Moses was walking up that Mount Sinai once again. But he was, this is a

is so important. He was walking up with blank tablets. And that's the image. That's the image of how you and I are called to approach God. All of us, we sometimes approach God with these preconceived ideas about who God is. We approach God with these preconceived ideas about the life he wants us to live. We approach God with even preconceived ideas about who we are. But when Moses walks up the mountain, even the second time after having encountered God himself, after having spent 40 days, 40 nights on top of Mount Sinai, and after having God reveal himself, Moses still had the humility to say, no, when I walk up this mountain, I'm walking up with blank tablets. And there's something so important about this.

Why is he saying? What is he saying? He's saying, God, I'm going to let you tell me who you are. This is the openness. This is what we're all called to. Again, we all approached God with our preconceived ideas. Well, I heard once, someone said such and such about God. Or I heard this nun once told me.

A priest once told me, my religious ed teacher, my parents once told me this thing. A lot of us, we walk up to God. We approach God with these preconceived ideas of who God is, as opposed to Moses, who has blank tablets. And he's saying so clearly, God, you get to tell me who you are. God, you get to tell me who I am. Our temptation is, I come looking for the God I want. My temptation, all of our temptations, right? When it comes to even, when it comes to Sunday, a lot of us are like, no, no, I like the worship that I want. I want the Sunday service that I like, that I prefer, as opposed to, God, what do you want? And I'm not, I'm not innocent of this. Like, there are so many times, I remember I was

filling in for a parish at a parish one summer. I remember it must have been like the Saturday night vigil mass I was filling in for. And they sang the Gloria in Latin, which is great. It's beautiful. And I was kind of like, I don't, I know English pretty well. I know Spanish. Okay. I know French a little, very, very little. I don't know the glory in Latin. It's not memorized. And I didn't have like the book with me. And so I just kind of got to just kind of be there as everyone else was singing the Gloria. And I thought to myself like, okay, I mean, I know the beauty of this, the dignity of this. awesome. It's the ancient language of the church. So good. I don't know it. And so in that moment, I remember being a little salty. I was being a little bit like, that's not the worship that I want.

And how many times we can fall into that trap? We can say, well, that's not what I was looking for. That I expect myself to fashion worship rather than letting worship fashion me. I want to shape it like I want rather than what is in so many ways. Worship is for God. In every way, worship is for God. but also one of the things that worship does is it shapes us. It shapes our hearts. I think this is one of the beautiful things about having Latin in the mass or even having the Latin Mass. One of the most beautiful things about that is that it transcends us, right? We recognize, okay, this is not about me. It's not about my preferences. This is not about the worship that I want. This is about the worship that God presents to us. And I don't fashion the worship. The worship fashions me. So here's Moses. And he walks up with these blank tablets,

just like we're meant to approach the Lord, these blank tablets with these open hearts, saying, God, you get to tell me who you are. God, you get to tell me who I am. And what does God do? The very first thing he says in Exodus 34 is Moses walks up with blank tablets and he says, he says his name simply Lord. In our translation it says, Lord. But in the original Hebrew, it's the sacred name of God.

He utters his name before God, before Moses with a blank tablets with open heart. God, you get to tell me who you are, who you are. And God reveals his name. And that name, of course, is the holy name. It's Yahweh, I'm telling you who I am. Every time we approach the Lord, every time we approach Scripture, every time we approach to the mass, we have blank tablets. We're meant to have open hearts.

And what we find there is we find a God we did not invent, we find a worship we did not create, we find the Lord himself. And what happens? When Moses encounters the real God, it says this, it said when he says his name. With that open heart with those blank tablets, it says that Moses made haste to bow down his head and worship. God, you get to speak. That's so, so powerful in all of our prayers. God,

you get to speak first. I have a blank tablet. I have an open heart. You get to tell me who you are and you get to tell me who I am. That's why Trinity Sunday is so powerful, so incredible, because God reveals about himself as something none of us could ever possibly imagine that God is a trinity, right? So here's one God, one divine being, three divine persons. The God is one eternal what, right, he is God, but he's three eternal whose, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That the Father is not the Son, the Son is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Father, but they all are God, and He reveals himself to us. He says, not only who he is, he says who we are, that he's not made in our image.

We're made in his image, and that's one of the most incredible, most incredible pieces of, it should make us fall down, bow our heads like Moses and worship. Because the Catechism says it like this. is one of my favorite quotes in the catechism. It says that in Jesus, God reveals his innermost secret. I remember when I first read this, I remember thinking, okay, what's the innermost secret to God? What's the deepest secret that God ever could possibly have?

And it says this, in Jesus, God reveals his innermost secret that he is an eternal exchange of love. That's the secret. God is an eternal exchange of love. And I remember at the time I'm going like, want, won't, because I was just like, isn't there more than that? I knew that already. But no one knew that before Jesus.

No one knew before Jesus, that God was an eternal exchange of love. No one knew that God is a Trinity of person's Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. That is His innermost secret, that the innermost secret is that God is love. We all say that now, like almost everybody, even if you don't have to be Christian, people say, oh yeah, God is love. That was never known before Jesus. What's one of the implications of this, if we have this blank tablets, open hearts,

and we'd say, okay, let God, you tell me who you are. You're a Trinity, you are love. What's one of the implications of that? One of the implications of that is that we realize that we're not necessary. Like, we realize that God doesn't need. you. God doesn't need me. Sometimes we have this image right of God of like, he's just, from all eternity, he has a long time

just to be by himself. He's just, I'm lonely. I'm bored. Like I just, I want to make some pets. I want to make some play things. I don't make, you know, people on my image or likeness, so I have to do things, I can do things with them. That is not God. He has never, he has never been bored for an instant. He is constantly pouring himself out in love, father to the son, son to the father. That love between them is so real. It is the Holy Spirit. It's another person. He is love.

He doesn't need us. He doesn't need us. but he does love us. There's freedom there. God doesn't need you, but he does love you. Years ago, I remember talking to a brother priest, and he was sharing how he had a bunch of brothers that, blood brothers, blood, easy for me to say,

blood brothers, who their dad set them down for the talk. It was the priorities talk. And this father sat his sons down and said, okay, sons, you need to know, I need you as your father. I need you to know my priorities. He said, number one is God. Number two is your mother. you boys are number three.

Like those are my priorities. And he lived that way. And I remember telling up to some people and they're like, oh man, that's so sad. Like these boys hearing that they're not number one, they're not number two, they're number three. But talking to this priest, he said, oh man, for me and my brothers, that was the best.

It was so good because my dad lived like that. He said, we're number one, we're number two. We want our dad to love God more than us. We want our dad to love his wife more than us. And he said it was so freeing because we realized that our dad's happiness was not determined on our success or failure, that our dad's sense of self

was not determined by our winning or our losing. And they said they had so much freedom. They had so much freedom to fail. They had freedom to lose because they realized, like, no, our dad is placing all of his hope in Jesus. He places his love in our mom. And we're third. We're free.

Dad doesn't need us, but he does love us. Imagine the freedom of this of knowing that for yourself, whether that would be with your own. parents, or even with the Lord, realizing that God doesn't need me, but he chooses to love me, that God's happiness is not dependent on whether or not I win or whether or not I fail, that you're now free to fail. The truth is, God loves you without needing you. He reveals himself. And into revealing himself, God reveals us. In revealing his identity as Trinity, he reveals our identity. Because this, if you're made in God's image or like this, think about this,

is amazing, it's incredible, that you and I are made in God's image and likeness. And the deepest mystery of God is that He is love, what does that mean about your deepest identity? It means your deepest identity and my deepest identity is love. Because we're made in the image and likeness of this God who has revealed himself. And we're most like God when we love. Meaning we're most like God when we give ourselves. And we look around us and we see where is there a need? I'm going to choose to meet that need. You know, we just passed the graduation season. Maybe you're still in the midst of it in some schools that get out in June, but how many commencement speeches are out there about how you got to go out and you have to like grasp life for yourself.

We have to get out there. You know, in fact, they yelled at a survey. They talked about, they asked a question of graduates. And the number one question graduates were asking was not, I'm basing my career on what will make the world flourish. Like I'm not basing my choices after graduation on what will make the maximum number of people the healthiest, the happiest, the most blessed. they're making their decisions after college based on what will make me the happiest.

That makes sense. That makes sense for us because I want to be happy. I think we all want to be happy. But if you're made in God's image and likeness and I'm made in God's image and likeness and the deepest identity of God is more than just that, is love. Then our life has to be that. Our life has to be love. We have to ask the question, not how can I make myself happy,

but how can I bring the gospel to the world? How can I bring love to the world? How can I bring this truth that God so loved the world that he gave his only son that all those who believe in him might not perish but might have eternal life? How can I bring that to the world? Because God has spoken. This is the last thing. God has spoken.

And if I already have a bunch of writing on my tablets, then his identity is going to get lost on me. If I have a full heart, then his identity might get lost on me. But if I have blank tablets, if I have an open heart. And if God is an eternal exchange of love and if you and I are made in his image, and we get to ask the question, enjoy every single day, okay, God, what do you want me to do with this now? Because you're not made in my image.

I'm made in yours. And your deepest identity as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is love. Therefore, God, every day, this day, this week even, you get to ask the question, God, who do you want me to love? Where do you want me to come before you with my blank tablet so you can write your identity and my identity on those tablets? Where do you want me to come before you with an open heart

so you can tell me who you are, you can tell me who I am, and so that I can bring you, and I can bring your love into the world. Lord God, if my deepest identity is love, show me. Who do you want me to love?