Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 9/13/26 Blind Spots: Anger

Episode Date: September 12, 2026

Homily from the Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time There's angrily resisting reality...and there is saying "yes" to Life. Anger as a Blind Spot doesn't necessarily mean "rage" or "seething". But sometimes the Blind Spot os anger is the subtle, chronic disposition towards Life. Rather than responding to Life, a person can choose to embrace the attitude of resenting Life. Mass Readings from September 13, 2026: Sirach 27:30—28:7 Psalm 103:1-2, 3-4, 9-10, 11-12Romans 14:7-9 Matthew 18:21-35

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

and with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Glory to you, O'Whorne. Chapter 18, verses 21 through 35. Peter approached Jesus and asked him, Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive? As many as seven times? Jesus answered, I say to you, not seven times,

but 77 times. That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants. When he began the accounting, a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount. Since he had no way of paying it back, his master ordered him to be sold along with his wife, his children, in all his property and payment of the debt.

At that, the servant fell down, did him homage and said, Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full. Moved with compassion, the master of that servant let him go and forgave him his loan. When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a much smaller amount. He seized him and started to choke him, demanding, pay back what you owe. Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him, be patient with me, and I will pay you back. But he refused. Instead, he had the fellow servant put in prison until he

paid back the debt. Now, when his fellow servants saw what had happened, they were deeply disturbed and went to the master and reported the whole affair. His master summoned him and said to him, You wicked servant, I forgave you your entire debt because you asked me to. Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant as I had pity on you, then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers until he should pay back the whole debt. So will my Heavenly Father do to you, unless each of you forgive your brother from your heart. The gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. Might you to have a seat? So I was talking with my physical therapist relatively recently. I see her quite often. And she was a college athlete and high school, I think college athlete. She still is an

athlete. She still competes. And one of the things that she was talking about was the power of, power of our attitude, right? Whether it comes to like an injury or when it comes to something challenging or it comes to working out, whatever the thing is, the power of our attitude. In fact, they've done a number of studies on this that how we interpret a situation or our posture, our attitude towards a situation can change, literally change how our bodies, respond to it. So when people say something like, okay, my body's preparing me for this challenge rather than saying like, well, something is wrong. Their physiology adapts. So there's a research out of Harvard Business School that before some of these students would take a test, if they would say

something like, I am excited, that would actually help shift them towards like an opportunity mindset. This mindset that would be, I'm excited not, I'm scared. I'm excited not. I'm worried. I'm worried. I'm excited. I'm excited not this is going to be hard. It actually changed things. In fact, not just their mentality shifted. There's another study of cyclists, right, of bicyclists that they were trained to use like motivational self-talk during their sessions. That kind of sense of, okay, this is tough and I'm and I can do it. Or this is hard and I'm built for this kind of thing. I've trained for this kind of thing. The more they approached reality like this, more approach their situation like this.

They, in fact, increased their time to exhaustion by 18% simply by saying yes. In fact, that was what my physical therapist was telling me about. She said, you know, before you do something, before you start a workout, before you take the test, before you do that difficult thing, she said, sometimes people just do this. They'll simply say, yes. Here's the workout today. Yes. Or here's the hard thing I have to do today.

and then just simply say yes. And I thought that is fascinating, that to have that kind of posture towards life. And I was thinking about this in relation to, you know, we're in the middle of a series right now. The series is called Blind Spots. We highlighted that last week that in Psalm 19, the psalmist says,

from hidden faults, oh, Lord, acquit me. That there are sins in my life, there's sins in your life. There's some sins we see, some sins that we feel them, we're embarrassed by them, we're ashamed of them, and there are some sins that are kind of like socially acceptable sins. They're the ones that are the invisible vices. They're the ones that are blind spots. Now, when I say blind spots, I don't mean that you don't know they're there. The term blind spot typically means you don't know it's there. In this case,

though, when I'm talking about these invisible vices or these acceptable sins, it's more like this. It's more like the sins that we know are there, but we just ignore them. Or there's the, there's the sins that we know they're there, but we just, we give ourselves a pass, right, because they're acceptable sins. So last week, we talked about one of the acceptable sins being gossip, that's something that it's the kind of sin you would use, gossip is the kind of sin we would use if we're giving an example of, I went to confession and confessed gossip five times. We're not embarrassed by it. They're acceptable sins. Not because they're small sins, but because we have socially acceptable excuses for these sins. Gossip is a good example of a blind spot that

is an action. I'm making that choice. I'm doing, I did something. I gossiped. But some of these blind spots aren't actions. They're more attitudes. And sometimes those attitudes are even more dangerous. They're more deadly because they slowly suffocate us, our joy, and the people around us.

And the one we're going to talk about today is from the book, the first reading today, book of Syrac. Syrac says this. He says very clearly, he says, anger and wrath are hateful things, yet the sinner holds them tight. We're talking about anger. Today, one of the blind spots that many, many of us have is anger. Now, when I say anger, I don't mean like rage. I don't mean having a short fuse. I don't mean having a quick temper. Although those are also real, obviously. That can be a blind spot for some people. But I think sometimes to have a short temper, to have a quick fuse, that's not a blind spot. That's one that's, wow, I'm embarrassed by that. I'm ashamed of the fact that I lost my temper. I think when it comes to temper, just for one second, to take a moment, some of these things we're going to talk about are essentially just negative emotions. And it might be that you might think, well, I need to get rid of all my negative emotions, like fear or worry or anxiety or anger. Arthur Brooks writes about this, right?

He's the happiness professor. And he writes about how negative emotions are not bad. People say, I only want to feel good, I don't want to feel bad. He said, no, we have negative emotions, we have positive emotions, and we need both of them. We need positive emotions, of course, but we also need negative emotions. We need to experience fear at times. We need to experience stress. We need to experience anger.

Why? Because though things keep us alive. Fear keeps us alive. It keeps us from going down the dark alley when we shouldn't go down the dark alley. Those negative emotions, they steer us away from danger. The negative motion, even of anger sometimes, can move us to take action. Now, sometimes you've heard people say this. If you're not angry, you're not paying attention.

Well, fine, sure. There are some things worth being angry about. For example, last Friday, we commemorated the 25th anniversary of attacks on America at 9-11. That's worth being angry about. But the thing about that is with that kind of anger, that's meant to move us to take action. It's meant to move us to do something if we can. There are some things that are worth getting angry about.

But the fact also is there's other things that are not worth getting angry about. I just, I hesitated to share this, but I'm going to share it anyways. A couple weeks ago, on Sunday, we had a thing called the main event. And so we had, like, we had hundreds of students over here, so we grilled hundreds of burgers. We were grilling out. It was like epic carnival. We had all these games, all these prizes, all these good things. kind of things to do. Super fun. And so there was grilling. And so here's the thing. Whenever we

have a Newman event, I'm the grill person. I'm the father of this, spiritual father of this. The spiritual father of grills. That's what happens. But we also had a bunch of other adults from the community help us out. And it was fantastic. One of these guys shows up. His name is Brett. Brett's a great guy. But Brett shows up, walks over to the grill, walks up to the grill, puts on his like grilling apron. Like what's Brett doing or the grilling apron? puts on a grilling hat that even has the words meat master on top of his hat. I'm like, wait, Brett thinks he's grilling. Like, wait, I'm the griller. And so here's what I did. So there's things not worth getting angry about. I'm preaching to myself right now. Because I'm like,

what do I do? And I didn't like go off the handle and flip a table. I just did this thing that, you know, us rational people do. I started huffing and puffing and I was walking around. Like, what the heck? And then I even, like, you know, said some snide comments to other people. like, who's organizing this thing? How come no one knows? I'm the grill person. You know what I could have done? Here's, I could have done three things. Number one, I could have realized, hey, I'm an adult. Brett's an adult. We could have said, hey, Brett, you're an adult, I'm an adult. We have to make hundreds of burgers. We're both assigned to this. How do you want to figure it out? I could have done that. Number two is Brett and I are actually friends. Brett is one of the kindest men I know.

He's super fun, super chill, super laid back. I could have gone up to my friend, Brett, and said, hey, hey, Brett, we're both adults and we're friends. And we have to grill hundreds of burgers here. we're both assigned to this. How do you want to work this out? Could have done it like that. Also, I could have just been like, you know what? It's grilling. It's going to be fine. There are some things that are not worth getting angry about. We figured it out. We're all worked out. But I think this, I think Syrac in the reading today, he's not talking about seething, right? He's not talking about passion. He's not talking about rage. He says this. He says, anger and wrath are hateful things, but the sinner holds them tight. He's not describing someone who's rageful. I think he, I think what he's describing,

he's describing what we might call an angry person. Like we all know people like that, right? We all know angry people. And now pause, once again, there's no wrong emotions. Like emotions are just, they're morally neutral. If something bad happens, I can be afraid. If something positive happens, I can be happy. If something scary happens, I can get uncomfortable. I can get angry. Angers, emotions are not morally good or bad. They just are. But Syrac is saying this. He's saying, the person holds on to anger. Actually, holds them tight. What he's describing is, he's describing this subtle, chronic disposition towards life. We know people like that. Again, he's not describing an action. He's describing an attitude.

Because we know people. We know people who it's like, there's always something wrong. There's always something wrong. And so, you know, when they come over, you go over to the house, you kind of have to brace yourself. Like, who am I going to get? Like, which version of them are I going to get? Are we going to be able to have a good time?

Or are we all going to be on eggshells? Again, we know this. Maybe it's ourselves. Maybe it's someone we know. The people who, they walk into a dirty room and they start, like, aggressively cleaning, like picking stuff up as if like each thing they pick up, each eye. item they picked up has personally offended them in some way. Or the person who's like, it's their turn to cook and they're like, they're not happy about it. So they're banging cupboards and slamming down

pots and pans and like, what is going on? Or those people, like, they're turned to do the laundry and they're folding laundry. They're snapping out those shirts as if like that t-shirt has murdered their entire family. Like, what is wrong? And realize, looking at all those things, you could step back and say, what, those are just things that have to get done. Like, that's all they are. Yep. They've got to. to clean, I've got to do the dishes, got to make supper, I've got to clean, do the laundry. That's all they are. But how does the angry person react?

That's just big sighs, roll under the eyes, that little cough thing. I have to do this again. Or another one. Driving. If you're like, wait, am I one of those people? Am I one of those people that's just something's always wrong? If everyone out on the road is always getting in your way, then maybe that's a a sign that there may be a sign that something something's amiss internally. Like, you know those people

who, every other driver either falls into one of two categories. They're either a moron or they're crazy, right? They're driving too slow. What, moron? Or they're driving way too fast. Like, guys, crazy, he's driving way too fast. The common denominator in all these situations is you. Is it really possible that everyone else is the problem? It's possible, but is it plausible that maybe I'm the problem. The person where something's always wrong. You could say it like this, you know, if I'm not happy, no one gets to be happy. Now, you might hear that and say, that's not me. I don't do that. I'm like, oh, okay, okay, sure. How about this? If I'm not happy, everyone gets to know about it. Something's always wrong. And no, someone could say,

well, father, like, I need to be me. Like, should I just fake it? Should I just, like, pretend like everything's okay? And I would say no, but I think there's usually one reason why people are angry, like why they're an angry person. There's usually one, I mean, yes, this world is full of sorrow, this world is full of real suffering, this world is full of real pain. And there's a lot of reasons someone could be angry. But the person who's like the angry person, I think there's one main reason why people are not happy. And it's simply that they don't let themselves be happy. Maybe the number one reason why people are an angry person is because just like Syrac says, I cling tight to it.

Remember, the blind spot of anger is the subtle chronic disposition or attitude towards life. That I wanted things to be other than they are, right? I wanted things to be different. In that case, you know, your problem isn't the traffic. If that's you, your problem isn't work. Your problem isn't the mess. Your problem isn't other people. If that's you, your problem isn't your circumstances.

Your problem is reality. That my problem, when I'm like this, my problem isn't that things keep going wrong. My problem is that things keep not going the way I wanted them to. My problem, or our problem, is that reality keeps refusing to consult me before it happens. And the reality is that reality wins 100% of the time. I mean, and even this, you know, getting old is no cure. Like age is no solution to the person who is just choosing to be angry. I used to think, I used to think when I was a kid that when you get older, you just get more patient,

just get more peaceful, just kind of more accepting, just kind of like that things rule. I found out that is not true. That when you get older, you just have more reality. You just have more could have. just have more should-habs, you just have more what-haves, when you get old, there are more things wrong with less chance of fixing them. So getting old, you don't just grow out of it. Getting old is no cure. And yet we have to be cured. Why? Because again, Syrac says this. Syrac says, can anyone nourish anger and expect healing? Anger, that blind spot, can I nourish anger and expect

healing? Something has to be undone in me. And what is it? I think the remedy is, for something always wrong is comes from a man named Father Romano Gordini. I love Father Gordini's work. He has an incredible book called Living the Virtues that Lead You to God. I've heard it all the time. But Father Gordini would say, if you find yourself being that kind of person that is constantly, something's always wrong. We need two things.

We need acceptance and patience. Now, when I say acceptance, I don't mean resignation. Somebody who's like, you need to just accept things. You need to accept reality. That doesn't mean a resignation. Here's what Gordini said. He said, acceptance is the necessary starting point for any real change. That before any effective, like moral effort, before any attempt to change what's wrong, he said this. He said, you need to have the acceptance of what is. Acceptance of reality. He said, your own and that of the people around you and of the time in which you live. Sometimes we look at ourselves and like, oh, I don't like how I am. Okay, just start there.

But how are you? Or the people around me, they're just not the people I want them to be. Okay, but you, if we're not going to just be bucking against reality, we have to just accept them. That's who, that's who I'm dealing with. That's who I'm working with. Or the time in which we are. It's hard to live like this.

It's hard to be a Catholic right now. Okay. I need to begin by accepting reality. In other words, to say it is this. Where do we begin? well, I have to say yes to life. That's where we start. I have to say yes to the fact that reality is real

before I can do anything faithful with it. And I need to stop resisting what is true so I can begin to respond to what's true in a faithful way. How many times have we had these real pains in our lives are real inconveniences? You get a flat tire. And you're on the side of the road and you're just like, you're so mad, you're kicking the tire, throwing the stuff around.

as opposed to like, okay, I didn't want this to be true, but I have a flat tire. No amount of me being mad at this moment is going to fix this moment. Or you have this situation where, yeah, there's chores to do. This happened like a year ago, maybe two years. It's happened me twice now where, you know, the cop making coffee. And the coffee pot isn't put all the way into the coffee maker. And so the coffee is being made, but it's not going into the carafe, it's not going into the little pitcher thing.

And it's going all over on the floor. And it's one of the situations where I'm here walking up and going and just being like, no, I smelled the coffee. I walked into the kitchen. I was like, oh, this is great. And then saw it everywhere on the counter all over the floor. And no amount of outrage, me standing there, wanting this not to be the case, would put one drop of coffee back into the carafe. It was a situation where like, okay, this is now a cleaning situation. Or someone's late. And what do we do? We just repeat, they should be here, they should be here, they should be here. Yes, we've already established that. The question is not, should they be here? The answer is yes. They should

be here. The question now is, how do I respond to the fact that they're late with patience? This is just, this is the fact that, now, in all these things, none of us is saying this is good. All we're saying is, this is real. And the Christian, this is where the follower of Christ, we lean, in those moments, we lean into God's providence. In those moments, we lean into God's goodness. You know, St. Paul in the second reading today, he says, whether we live or die, we're the Lord's. Whether this good thing or bad thing, question mark, happens, were the Lord's.

That sense of whether things go all my way, I belong to him. If they don't go my way, I belong to him. See, everything, everything about this, everything about these blind spots have to do with God. Because every moment is his. All of reality is his. All of reality is under his dominion. And so the angry person keeps demanding a different reality.

but the accepting person is willing to begin working with the reality that God is given. And that's patience. You know, the blind spot of holding on to our anger is so deadly. The gospel, we see this, right? Especially deadly for us Christians. It is especially deadly for church people. Because church people can be among the angriest people. Church people can be, not like they're flying off the handle.

not that they go into a fit or into a rage, but just constantly sour. Something's always wrong. Yet how could something always be wrong if we've experienced what they experienced in the gospel? In the parable today, here's this person who owes this debt. He could not possibly pay back. And the master says, your debt's forgiven. I release you from your debt. That has been, that's our experience with life.

Our experience with life is that I owe a debt to the Lord God that I, could not possibly pay back. And he's looked at every one of us as Christians and he said, I'll pay it. Your debt's forgiven. How could we take that? How can we be touched by grace? How can we be touched by God's acceptance? How can we be touched by God's patience? And not become vehicles of grace, not become vehicles of acceptance, not become vehicles of patience. That's the thing Gordini talks about when it comes to patience. I thought this was fascinating. He said, God is the preeminent patient one. Why should we be patient?

Because God is the preeminent patient one. He said that not only did God create this universe, not only does he continue to sustain this universe, he says this, God does not grow weary of each moment in this universe. That every day God says again. Every day, he says, again, again. It's just the sense of what's God's posture towards reality? God's posture towards reality is yes.

Gordini says, we can resist change. We can resist or change many things according to our wishes, but basically we must accept what comes and what is given to us. To understand that and to act according to that is patience. And this is the last thing. Acceptance and patience. To live like that is to continually say yes to life. Here's the last quote from Father Gardini.

He says, who does not love life has no patience with it. Let's pause on that for a second. If something's always wrong, anger and wrath are hateful things, but I hold them tight, something's always wrong. What that ultimately reveals is I do not love life. Because life includes all of it, right? Life includes ups and downs. Life is laughter and tears. Life is rest and chores. Life is having tidy spaces and it's having messes. Life is that adorable little child that just laughs at everything and that kid who won't stop crying. He who does not love life has no patience with it.

But if we choose to love life, if that becomes our new posture, not clinging to anger but acceptance, like not resenting reality, but responding to it, They have the patience that teaches us how to love, that teaches us how to be cheerful. Even when reality is not what I want to love life enough to repeat again and again and again, just like God. Yes. To life.