The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 366: Special Leap Year Message

Episode Date: December 31, 2024

In this bonus leap year episode, Fr. Mike reflects on the transformative journey of the past 365 days and invites us to take the next step in our faith journey. He emphasizes the importance of remembering God daily and encourages us to strengthen our faith by learning to pray deeply. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Fr. Mike Schmitz and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. Today is day 366. If you are listening to this during a leap year, you are in luck because you've been blessed with one extra day. You're like, I thought I was done! Well, you would be done because you

know today's day 366. We have to realize that the way the Gregorian calendar works, we get this extra day. It's a bonus day and we thank the Lord for every single bonus day. You know, it's been a little bit of time since the Catechism of the Year was recorded. The podcast was recorded. And since then, I've seen this podcast change some lives in just incredible ways. And first of all, myself, and I want to note on this day, day 366, just a couple quick notes. One is how things started, another is how things ended. So, if you can recall, 366 days ago, when we started day one of the Catechism in a Year podcast, I don't know, you know, it was a different format. It is a different format from the Bible in a year.

And for me personally, it was one of those kind of situations where I'm like, it took me a bit of time to get into the groove. And it was one of those situations where if you ever listened to the Bible, you know that how we did it was here's the opening introduction, here's kind of an overview of what we're going to cover and then like launching in. And afterwards was a prayer and after that was the commentary essentially. And then of course, for the catechism, what you've been doing for the last 365 days has been slightly different. And one of the things that I found was so, but kind of challenging was like, okay, how,

especially in these first days, the first 21 days of the catechism, it was a situation where I was just like, I don't, are we, I know we're meant to be touching heads, right? We've talked about this so many times. Here is an information transfer. I know there's a lot of information, but how do we do this in such a way that hearts are touched? And it seemed to me that one of the things I discovered personally of going through

the Catechism in a year, from the beginning, was after I kind of settled in, it was like, okay, here's how we do this. It was a matter of every single day having some truth about God himself, or some truth about salvation, or some truth about God's grace, or some truth about merit, or some truth about the commandments, or the morality that God desires us to live

so we can have freedom. All of those things, it just seemed like, for me personally, every single day of having this touch point, remember God, and that was the thing, is remember God. If there's any two words that I can think of that really helped shape this last year for the catechism is remember God.

Because I think so often, it is the, God is the easiest one to forget. I mean, the most important being in the universe, outside of the universe, I guess, you know, the ground of all being, the source of all being, is in some ways the easiest to forget. We say, well, no, no, no, I know God's important. But then we just get busy.

We realize that, oh my goodness, I have not thought about God. I have not pondered the mystery of God in so long. Now for you getting today 366, that's not been the case for a year, for a year now at least. There's been a moment or a chunk of moments every single day

where you've been able to stop and realize, okay, God is real. Here's a truth about who God is. Here's a truth about what God does. Here's a truth about how God calls us to worship Him or how He calls us to pray to Him, how He calls us to live in this life. All of those just reminders.

Remember, God, that just keeps coming back again and again. And so, so powerful for me to be able to be the one to read this, to be able to be the one to try to explain some of these things, because there's something so powerful about simply remembering God. And if there's, if you've never done the Bible in a year, you would discover that one of the key injunctions of scripture is to just remember, remember God, because it is so easy to forget. I remember someone saying something along the lines of, we are leaky buckets. That sense of like, we constantly are leaking what we know to be the most important, what

we know to be true, what we know to be the most important, what we know to be true, what we know to be the most valuable. We just leak those out. So therefore we have to be continually filled or else pretty soon we'll be empty vessels. And yet for the last 366 days, including today, you've been filling yourself up. So my invitation, of course, is to not stop, to not stop filling yourself up. One of the things I find is that every time I go through the Bible in here, every time I go through the Catechism in here, there's always something new.

You know this, I mean, we all know this, that there is so much unsaid than was said. Like, in the sense of like the commentary, right? There's so much that I missed that was already there, that was declared, that was proclaimed. And so my invitation is, this doesn't have to be the last day, that was declared, that was proclaimed. And so my invitation is, this doesn't have to be the last day. Just a reminder, it doesn't have to be the last day.

Because how things ended in the Catechism, not just with Nugget Day, Anti-climactic Nugget Day 365, was the prayer. And I have to tell you that since I last recorded those reflections on the Lord's Prayer, I don't think that there is a, I don't want to say a day, but at least not a couple days, not a week that goes by where when I'm praying the Our Father, when I'm praying the Lord's

Prayer, that I don't reflect on what was shared in those pages here in the catechism. And I think this is crazy. I've been praying the Our Father every day, multiple times a day probably of my life as long as I've been able to speak. And yet, you know, going through the catechism and reading here's what we can think of, here's what we can be entering into

when we pray the Lord's prayer. It just has really transformed my heart, really transformed my prayer. And I hope it's done the same thing for you. You know, one of the things that we realize is that there is a desire in every one of our hearts, not just to know more about God, but to love God. Not just to talk about God, but to talk with God. And every one of us is made for prayer work because we're all made for a relationship. And prayer is our relationship with God. And therefore, we're all called to take that next

step. So again, it could be go through the Bible in a year again, it could be go through the catechism in a year again, or it could be go through the rosary in a year for the first time. The recognition of, okay, if God is calling me to pray, you know, of course, God is always calling us to form our minds because we cannot love what we don't know. And so we always want to know more and more about God. At some point though, we need to, at some point we need to look up. At some point we need to look up and say, okay, God, let me talk to you. I can talk to you about you, God. I can talk to you about me.

I can talk to you about the stuff going on in my life or in other people's lives and in the world. But at some point we have to look up from the page and talk to the Lord. And that's my invitation, is that on this day, 366, to be able to say, okay, take everything that you've learned from prayer in pillar four here and bring it into your life. And one of the things I'm convinced of, and maybe I said this before, but one of the things I'm very convinced of is a person who learns how to pray and knows how to pray in every season of life will never be alone.

The person who knows how to pray in every season of life and does it will not only never be alone, but will be able to weather any storm. You know, in so many ways, my desire for my students here on campus is that when they leave here, that their faith doesn't fall by the wayside. I mean, my prayer, of course, for all of you

in this catechism in your community is that day one tomorrow, your faith doesn't fall by the wayside. And one way to ensure that is to become men and women who know how to pray and choose to pray in every season. No matter what storms come against your life, you know, Matthew chapter seven, where Jesus says, the one who hears these words of mine and acts on them,

is like the person who builds a house on rock. The rains fell, the floods came, the winds blew and buffeted the house, but it did not collapse, it had been set solidly on rock. We know that whether we build our house on sand or on rock, the rains will fall, the floods will come, and the rains will, the winds will blow and buffet the house. We know that.

But to be able to set your house on the foundation of rock, the Bible, the catechism, and above all, prayer, means that when those storms come, the house won't be collapsed. It won't be completely ruined. That your life will be in the Lord's hands even until the very very end. So my invitation of course here is what now? What do I do now? Look up and talk to the Lord. Whether that's by listening to Scripture and talking to the Lord about that, listening to the Catechism and talking to the Lord. Whether that's by listening to scripture and talking to the Lord about that,

listening to the catechism and talking to the Lord about that, or listen to the Rosary in a year. And in the course of that program, to learn more and more each and every day, how to pray, how to talk to the Lord. Because the person who knows how to pray in this season will be able to pray in every season. Anyways, those are some of my thoughts here on day three 66,

this little bonus day, not a nugget day, but a bonus day. And please know, as I said yesterday, it was an incredible, incredible gift to be able to journey with you on these 365 now, 366 days. And every single day, I have been praying for you and I'll tell you this every single day I I will continue praying for you because I well I promised and so I'm going to do that I'm praying for you please pray for me my name is Father Mike I cannot wait to see you tomorrow God bless