Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz - 9/21/25 Mini-Mediators

Episode Date: September 20, 2025

Homily from the Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time Don't let what Jesus did for you end with you. Jesus is the one Mediator between God and humanity. He has saved us. But God wills that all humans are saved. Because of this, He calls those who have been saved by Him to brings His salvation to everyone else. Mass Readings from September 21, 2025: Amos 8:4-7 Psalm 113:1-2, 4-6, 7-81 Timothy 2:1-8 Luke 16:1-13

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.

You're reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. Chapter 16 verses 1 through 13. Jesus said to his disciples, A rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. He summoned him and said, What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship because you can no longer be my steward. The steward said to himself,

What shall I do? Now that the master is taking the position of steward away from me, I'm not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do so that when I'm removed from the stewardship, they may welcome me into their homes. He called in his master's debtors one by one. And to the first he said, how much do you owe my master? He replied, 100 measures of olive oil.

He said to him, here's your promise ray note. Sit down and quickly write one for 50. Then to another, the steward said, and do you, how much do you owe? he replied, 100 cores of wheat. The steward said to him, here's your promissory note, write one for 80. And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently.

For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. I tell you then, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you may be welcomed into eternal dwellings. The person who is trustworthy in very small matters,

is also trustworthy in great ones. And the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth. Who will trust you with true wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours? No servant can serve two masters.

He will either hate one and love the other or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Mammon. The Gospel of the Lord. Wait you to have a seat. So my first wedding I ever did, it was a wedding of a woman I was a missionary with her after we graduated college,

and then years later, I'm a seminarian, I'm a deacon, and she's engaged. And I never met her fiance, your husband, before the wedding itself. But I was on the phone with them, and I asked them the question, how did you guys, what readings did you choose,

and how did you choose the readings? and they gave me this answer that is like shaped the way I approach this. And they said this, they said, every time we go to Mass, every time we go to church, someone else has already chosen the readings for us. They said, this is the one time we get to have our family and friends in Mass, and we're the ones who get to choose what story they hear. And so they said, they ask themselves the question, what is the story that we want our friends and family to hear?

So that's the, it's kind of the lens that I always, when I'm talking to marriage prep couples, that I always kind of propose, proposed to them of like, here's a way to look at this. What is the story you want to people you care about the most to hear? And so a lot of them have taken this to heart. One wedding I did in Phoenix of this couple, Tam and Audra, great couple. They said this. They said, a lot of our guests aren't Christian.

Like a lot of our guests haven't ever heard the gospel. So that's what we want. We want the story. We want them to hear the gospel. And so what they did is, so there's kind of this really simple way of showing in the gospel, it's in four parts. They said, okay, the first part of the gospel is what, is that God is good, God made this world good, and he made us in his image and likeness. So their first reading was Genesis chapter two, right? Where God's good, he makes Adam and Eve. And the very end of Genesis

chapter two, we talked about this last week, end of chapter two, we talked about this last week, end of chapter two, is the man and his wife, both naked yet felt no shame. It's awesome. It's like, great. This is all good. And they said, normally that's where people end. We want to go from chapter two into chapter three. Because chapter three, we all know this, right? That's when the serpent enters the garden and sin comes into the world. So the first two parts of the gospel are, here's God, he's good, he made this world good, he made us in his image and likeness. The second part is we took that freedom we were given and we broke the world. And they wanted that, they want all their guests to hear this, that we experienced now because of sin, this division between us and God, between us and each other.

And even in our own hearts, there's the division we can't fix on our own. And so the second reading was the third part of the gospel. They chose Romans chapter five, where St. Paul writes, he says, God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. The third part of the gospel is what? Here is this broken world. So God himself goes on a rescue mission to save our lives. The only person who could bridge to the gap between God and us is God and us, right?

Is Jesus who is fully God and fully man. That's the third part. That's what they wanted, proclaimed at their wedding. And then the gospel was the gospel from last week, John chapter 3, verse 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son that all those who believe in him would not perish but have eternal life. They said, because why?

Because the fourth part of the gospel is if we put our trust in Jesus, we can have new life. So he's the four parts, right? That God is good, made this world good, made us in his image and likeness, awesome. Second part, we broke the world. We took the world and drove it off a cliff.

Bad. But God did not abandon us, and he sent his son, Jesus, on this rescue mission to restore us to him and the fourth part being, if we want to, we can put our trust in Jesus. We have access to the Father, new life, reconciliation, all good things.

That's what they wanted. They wanted everyone of their family members and their friends to hear the gospel. Now, here's the question. I'm not going to ask you to raise your hands or nod along or anything like this, but I wonder how many of us, before I went through those little four parts,

if someone were to ask you, hey, what's the gospel? Like if tomorrow morning someone said, what's the gospel, if you would have been able to say, oh, well, by the way, God is good, made this world good, made us in his image like this, but we drove it off a cliff. And yet this is the good news. You guys, we hear that word, gospel, we hear that term good news all over the time. We even sometimes use it. And we might not even know how to articulate it or to say it because, you guys, it gets even better. It's not just, how can it get better? The second reading today, St. Paul's

writing to Timothy. And what does he say? he says basically that this gospel is for everyone. Here's what he says. Paul says Timothy says, God wills that everyone be saved and come to the knowledge of truth, the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Do we realize this?

Do we realize that God doesn't just want some people to be saved? He doesn't just want some people to be with him, that there's no person God has ever created, that he hasn't also destined to live with him forever. Why? Because God wills that everyone be saved. It goes on to say, because why? because there is one God. There's also one mediator between God and man, the man, Jesus Christ.

So keep in mind these two things. Number one, God doesn't exclude everyone, anyone. He wants everyone to have a relationship with him. Number two, Jesus is the one. Jesus is the way. He is the only way to the Father. There's no one else who can save us because there's no one else, no one else like Jesus, fully God and fully man.

And we talked about this last week, right, with the cross. And last week we talked about how, why did Jesus? Jesus come, he came to forgive our sins. He came to actually save the broken. So sometimes here's what we do. We say, well, I have sin, so I'm disqualified. Like, okay, knock knock, put in head. No, if you're broken, if you're a sinner, that means actually Jesus came for you, not for someone else.

Like the very reason why Jesus came to forgive sins, what happens in confession? Sins are forgiven. And so we ended last week with this invitation, or maybe even this prayer that says this, God, you did all this for me. All these four steps. You did all this for me. God, I don't want to let what you did for me go to waste on me. I don't want to let what you did for me go to waste on me.

I don't know if you know this. You probably don't. But last week, in the last seven days, since we talked to it this last Sunday, there have been so many people who have gone to confession. Like, why? Because I don't want to, God, I don't want to let you, you did free, go to waste on me.

So many new people came over to the Newman House in adoration, in prayer. Because why? Because they're saying, God, you did this for me. I don't want to let what you did for me go to waste on me. So many people have signed up for adoration slots. So many people have gone to Mass who had never gone to daily mass in their lives. Why?

Because they said, God, I don't want to let what you did for me go to waste on me. Because I don't want to waste it. It's all that you've done for me. I don't want to waste it. I don't want to squander it. You know, that word squander. We heard it in the gospel. Isn't that gospel weird?

Yes, you remember the parable of the rich man and the dishonest sewer? It's the weirdest parable. It's like, God. what are he trying to do? Like, because here's the thing. The guy is actually, he's stealing from the master, right? He's stealing from the wealthy guy. And it's not, Jesus commends the guy, so I know some of the business majors are like, okay, so Jesus endorses fraud. Okay, I like this. I'm coming back to this church. No, he doesn't endorse fraud. Here, let's, it's complicated. Well, let's narrow in. There's two main characters in this parable that Jesus tells, the rich man and the steward. It's important for

us to understand what is the relationship between the wealthy person and the steward. Well, back in the day, if you had a bunch of property, a bunch of resources, if you had a lot of wealth, what you typically would do is you'd put someone in charge of it. Like, whatever it is that either you inherited or what you had worked for, you'd say, okay, who can I entrust with all of my stuff? You're going to manage my property. You're going to manage my finances. You're going to manage my resources. Imagine this. Imagine the depth of trust you'd have to have to have to be able to say, okay, this is all that I worked for, all that I've done in my life, I'm trusting you to take care of it. And then to realize that the person you trusted just wasted what you gave

them. Imagine spending your whole life working for something. It's okay, everything that I've done, I'm trusting you with it, and then it just gets wasted, just gets squandered. Because this is us. I don't know if you know this. The rich man is Jesus. You and I are the stewards. And here's the gospel. Here's all that Jesus has done for us. And he entrusts it to you and to me.

In fact, Scripture says this. It says, we've been entrusted with all of the riches of God's kingdom. We've been entrusted with all, every amount, every ounce of grace that Jesus Christ won for us. that God has done for us, he then says, okay, I'm entrusting that to you. To do what? Well, not to waste it, but to do something with us. Remember, remember Jesus is the one mediator. He's the one mediator between God and man.

What that means is this, that if he didn't do what he did, we'd be up a creek. Like if he didn't do what he did, we would be totally stuck. But entrusting what he's done for us, entrusting it to us, what Jesus, the mediator does is he makes us into many mediators. Like he makes us into mini-me-deators. You guys, I thought I thought I'd have had a couple days ago, and I'm like, it's going to kill. They're going to love it. I was wrong.

Anyways, me-de-mee. He makes us into mediators. Why? How do I know this? Well, Acts chapter 1, you probably know this. Acts chapter 1, Jesus is arisen from the dead. He's been teaching his apostle for 40 days. He takes him to Bethany outside of Jerusalem.

And at that point, the disciples look at Jesus and say, Lord, they know who he is. Lord, are you at this point going to restore the kingdom to Israel? They're like, Jesus, you are who you say you are. You are God. Are you going to bring the whole earth to know you? Are you going to bring all of your grace to the world? And Jesus looks at them, I'm paraphrasing, and he says this. No, you are. Lord, you have all that you did God. Are you going to not bring it to everyone?

And Jesus says, no, he says this. He says, you'll receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And then you will be my witnesses here in Jerusalem throughout Judea. Samaria to the ends of the earth. That I did all these things, now I'm trusting it to you. And if you don't bring it to the world, it is going to be squandered because the world will not know what it is to live a life of grace. So Jesus says, okay, mini-meas, share the story. And then St. Paul says today to Timothy, what's he say?

He says, I ask of you. First of all, all supplications, all petitions, all prayers, all Thanksgiving should be offered for everyone. This is the job of many mediators. The job of stewards is twofold. These two things. We have two roles now. One, pray for everyone.

Two, share the story. Why? Because the good news is God has you and he wants everyone. I mean, the number of times that St. Paul writes to Timothy and the number of times he uses the word all or everyone in this scripture today is I was going to say he's astounding, it's four. But four times, St. Paul says, no, God wants everyone. He doesn't want anyone to be a lost.

He wants everyone to be saved. He wants everyone. He wants you to pray for all. And God has entrusted you and me with what he's done so that you and I can help make heaven crowded. Because that's what God wants. He wants us to be many mediators with him so that we can make heaven crowded. And here's the thing. That will only happen. It will only happen if we first say, Jesus,

I don't want to let what you did for me go to waste on me. But then if we also say, Jesus, I don't want to let what you did for me end with me. I don't want to let it stop with me. And if God is going to reach everyone, we have to be many mediators. We have to be stewards to say, I don't want it to stop with me. We have to do these two things. We have to pray and we have to share. I love the fact that St. Paul says pray for everyone, and then he gives us a couple people. When it comes to pray for everyone, that's a big task. I don't ever thought about that. It's kind of, where do I start?

Well, number one, Paul gives us. He says, pray for kings and those in authority. So what's that mean? Well, we don't have a lot of kings around. So how about this? Anyone and everyone who has influence. Who do you pray for? Anyone who has any degree of authority or influence?

So who do you know that you look up to? Who do you know that has a platform? Who do you know that has authority? I was going to use the example of going through the grocery store and looking at People magazine, and those are people who are the celebrities, I don't know. But you're like, what, grocery store? Called Uber Eats, just deliver it to your house, you know, whatever.

So basically anyone who comes across your feed? Who is that influential person? Who is someone who has authority? St. Paul says, pray for them. Number one, we pray for anyone who has influence. Number two, we all have people. in our lives that we're responsible for. So if you're a parent, you're called to pray for them.

If you're a sibling, you're called to pray for them. You know, if you're a becoming adult child of your parents, you need to pray for your parents because you're responsible for them in a unique way. The people you live with. Like, who are the people that are in your circle that God has given you some degree of responsibility for? The first people I need to pray for,

anyone who has influenced, second person, second people, are anyone that God has given me some kind of responsibility for. The people close to me. Number third is this, this is the hardest one. The third person, a group of people to pray for, are the people that I want to pray for least. The people that are hardest to pray for, our command is pray for them.

And it probably doesn't take a lot of work to pray, to figure out who is that person or who are those people I want to pray for least, but they're on the list. So those influence, those close to you, those you don't want to pray for. And the fourth, and this is a great one, the fourth is the people who just pass by you. The people that, I don't know if you've ever been,

if you've ever been driving on the highway and you're past someone because we're the same and we like to speed it a little bit, not a lot, a little bit. And we're passing people. And you just go by them, you kind of look over and you realize, man, everyone's going somewhere. At least everyone on the interstate. Everyone has somewhere to go.

To be able to drive by them and be like, hey, Lord, just be with that person. especially if they're in the if they're kind of slow in the left lane I'm praying something for them but like you know that you pass them on the right and you're looking over I'm praying for you right now but to pray for them like I mean you guys on campus what a gift imagine

sometimes people find it hard to find time to pray what if in the hallway you're walking past people like okay Lord be with that person Lord I don't know what they want but just give them what they need I don't know the story of their life, but just help them. Imagine what your between classes would look like. You'd stay prayed up. Marky Mark would love that.

Like that sense of being able to just constantly be able to say, I'm not only praying for those who are influential, not only for those who I don't want to pray for, not only for those close to me, but for everyone passing me by just, and this is what I do. You guys, this is one of the things that's changed my heart in so many ways. It's not a long prayer, it's a short prayer. It's just that sense of God.

I don't know what they want. Just give them what they need. I don't know where they're at. Just give them what they need. one of my prayers a lot of times is just, Jesus, surround their heart with your sacred heart. Jesus, just wrap their heart in your sacred heart. Then we pass by. But here's the thing, if we're going to be many mediators, we have to be willing to pray.

And then we know we have to be willing to share. I think some of the hardest things is, I don't know if you do this, but sometimes I disqualify other people in the sense of they're not interested. Like I know, they don't need to, they don't want to know about Jesus. They don't need to, they don't want to hear what I have to say about the Lord. And so what I can sometimes do is I can sometimes disqualify them. Not because I think that they're not worthy of the gospel, but because I don't think they're interested in the gospel.

He came across a story recently of, we all know Ozzy Osbourne died this last summer. Came across the story of a man who found out that Ozzy Osbourne, back in 2014, had said that he was a Christian, which is interesting because his stage title was Prince of Darkness. But he said he was a Christian and someone asked him, well, do you read your Bible? And he said, you know, I'd like to, but I pick it up and I can't understand it. And he said, my brain's a little addled at this point. And so I just, it's all, I don't get it. Well, this man heard about this.

And he was like, you know what, Oz Yarsborn is coming to a city near me and he's going to be at a convention. So he bought a meet and greet ticket. Before he went to the convention, he went to his local like Christian bookseller. and he actually embossed a Bible. He got a translation and he thought, I think Ozzy can read this and understand it. And then he put his name embossed on the Bible, on the front of the Bible.

He wrote him a letter, wrote a personal letter to Sharon and to Jack and Kelly, their sons, and got them all gifts, little tracks like explaining Christianity, met him at the table, and Ozzy Osbourne was overjoyed. He was like, he's showing everybody. He's like, my name's on the Bible.

He's like, and he opened up the Gospels, and he was like, I can understand this. This is incredible. So he talked to the guy about Jesus, his front of him, a bunch of minutes, then left. And the guy didn't know whether it made an impact on Ozzie or not, but a couple weeks later, he ran into Jack Osborne, Ozzy's son. And actually, Jack recognized the guy before the guy could talk to Jack. He said, you're the guy who gave my dad the Bible. He's like, yeah, does he like it? He says, my dad loves it. He said, actually,

that day, we left the convention center. We're on the elevator going to the hotel. They locked the convention center, shut everything down. And my dad was like, I left my Bible there. We have to go back. They're like, dad, it's shut down. It's closed. No, we have to go through security. We have to get my Bible because I need to read it tomorrow. They went back, opened the whole thing back up, got his Bible, came back to his room. He said the next day at lunch, because we all got gifts. They all got gifts from this guy. The next day at lunch, the topic of conversation was Jesus. And the lunch, all we talked about as a family was this Bible and the gospel. And he said, my dad gets gifts all of the time. And he's always grateful for them, but he never keeps any of them. He says, my dad kept your Bible.

And he has it on his bedstand. And whenever someone comes over to the house, he yells at my mom to go get the Bible so he can show his guests the Bible he has with his name on it. See, again, sometimes I disqualify someone. They're not interested in this. They don't want to hear about this. Oh, they don't want to hear about it from me.

But what if they did? What if I didn't disqualify? What if I actually believed what Paul wrote to Timothy and said, no, God wants everyone to be saved. God wants everyone to come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. What if the messenger was you? Because, you know, the sad thing is,

too many of us don't. Sad thing is, too many of us might hear this, and we don't do anything with it. This summer I heard another story. You know James Taylor? James Taylor, the singer, songwriter, awesome. There's this man who's a Christian, and he likes bringing the gospel.

to celebrities. And so he typed in Google, James Taylor Religion. Up popped a interview James Taylor had given where the interviewer asked him and said, Mr. Taylor, you read all these songs that seem to have these Christian undertones. Are you a Christian? James Taylor said, actually, I'm not. He said, both my parents were atheists. I was raised with no religion. He said, but if someone wanted to talk to me about Jesus, I would love that. I'm not, I'm not Christian, If someone would want to talk to me about Christianity, I'm open. So same thing. The guy found out.

James Taylor is coming to a town in his neighborhood. He gets off the bus, and there's a group of people waiting there for a meet and great, and he waited politely. As everyone left, he was the last one, and he said, Mr. Taylor, I saw an interview you gave where you said that you're not Christian, but if someone wanted to talk to you about Jesus, you'd love to have a conversation. He was like, yeah, absolutely. So he just, he said, for the next 15, 20 minutes, they had this great conversation.

about the gospel, at the end, James Taylor thanked him and said something devastating. He said, thank you so much for this conversation. But you know what's funny? I gave that interview 24 years ago, and you're the first person to ever talk to me about Jesus. See, this is where we're at, you guys. This is us. To be able to say, okay, Jesus, I know what you've done for me. I don't want to let what you did for me, go to waste on me, but I also don't want what you did for me, end with me. So what do we do? Here's the last thing. There's this camp that I'm part of every summer. It's called Camp Survive. It's a camp for middle schoolers, six, seventh, and eighth graders. This last year, on the last day of camp, I asked the camera, so, yes, we're sending you back

to your world. They're sending you back to your homes, sending you back to your family. Every single one of you, at the end, at some point today, when your parents pick you up or when you walk into the house, at some point today, every one of you are going to be asked the exact same question. At the end of a whole week of camp, every single one of you is going to be asked the exact same question. We all know the question, right? The question that you walk in the door and your parents say, what's the question? They say, how is camp? Exactly. Everyone, the sixth graders knew this. Everyone knew it was coming. Everyone knew. I'm going to say hi to my mom and dad, and they're all going to ask me the question, how is camp? And then I said, you guys, six, seventh, ninth graders, you are all

going to give the exact same answer. And what is the answer you're all going to give? How is camp? The answer is fine. It was good as you drop your bag on the floor and walk to your room. Like, that's it. And this is us, you guys. I mean, I said, you guys, you just spent five days learning how to hear God's voice in Scripture. You just spent five days getting prayed with and knowing how to receive God's prayers. You just spent five days in adoration, five days at mass, five days going to confession.

He spent five days hearing the gospel that God is good. He made this world good. He made you in his ministry like this. We broke the world with our sin. But Jesus came on a rescue mission to save all of us. And if we put our trust in him, we can have new life. You've heard all of these things and your answer to the question, how is camp is fine.

Tomorrow, at some point, every one of us is going to be asked a question. Virtually every one of us who has a conversation with any person tomorrow is going to be asked the same question. And that question is, how was your weekend? And we're going to say, fine. But what could you say? What if someone opened the door? What did you do this weekend?

We'd go through the list. Oh, I went hiking. I got caught in the rain, all these kind of things. I'm going to omit the church thing, move on. Or we could say, all the things. He went to Mass Sunday night. Oh, really?

What was that Mass? Well, they talked about the gospel. Really? What's the gospel? Funny you should ask. You could have a chance tomorrow to be that mini mediator. Here's the thing.

You guys, God loves you. A lot. God loves you so much that he doesn't want to let what he did for you go to waste on you. But also, here's the truth is God trusts you. Pause on that. God trusts you. And all the stuff that he's done for you, all the stuff that he's done for me, everything that he's done for us, he's also saying, I don't want to let what I did for you end with you. He is the one mediator. But you and I are the stewards. You and I are the mini mediators. And if we're not willing to share the gospel,

then what he did for us will end with us.