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Welcome to Sunday Homilies with me, Fr. 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 and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up@ascensionpress.com Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe in your podcast app for for weekly Notifications God Bless the Lord be with you. A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke Glory to you, Lord. Chapter 6, verses 27 through 38 Jesus said to his disciples, to you who hear, I say, love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. To the person who strikes you on one cheek, offer the other one as well. And from the person who takes your cloak, do not withhold even your tunic. Give to everyone who asks. And from the one who takes what is yours, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. For if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend money to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners and get back the same amount, but rather love your enemies and do good to them and lend, expecting nothing back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be called Children of the Most High, for He Himself is kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Heavenly Father is merciful. Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and good gifts will be given to you. A good measure packed together, shaken down and overflowing will be poured out into your lap, for the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you. The Gospel of the Lord Why you should have a seat So, a couple confessions tonight. The first one is I don't always like Jesus. Clarification. I like Jesus. He's great. We love him. I don't always like what Jesus says. I just we're going to come back to that in a second. But just. I just. Let's be honest. Just sometimes it's just like, are you sure? Is this, is this like a commandment? Or is this A suggestion. That's what I want. All I want to know. Another confession is, so, the algorithm. Whenever I open up, like, reels, Instagram, whatever. I probably like you. There's a couple that pop up all the time. And some of them, some of them are kind of like your normal things, like, you know, squat University, great. Learn how to back squat. Other things, like allfails.com, super good, failarmy.com, yes, great. Children falling down. Great. All of it. All love it all. But the one that pops up more, I don't wanna say more than any. Have you guys seen the accounts that are like the instant karma accounts? You see, instant karma accounts are the mess around and find out accounts, right? So if someone does something stupid and immediately something bad happens to them and you're like, good, or someone's being a jerk and then someone bigger than them shows up and like, teaches them a lesson and you're like, yeah, that's how it should go. The insta commerce. You guys, you guys are so judging me right now. Jesus just said, judge not. I'm not getting that impression right now. I'm getting the impression that I am not safe. Okay? What I mean is there's something so satisfying about here's the bully, here's the person being mean, here's the person being cruel. And then they get what's coming to them. There's justice. They get what they deserve. And there's something in my heart that loves that. And my guess is, if you're a decent human being, you like it too. But there's also something broken in my heart that loves that. There's something good. Yes, it is good. I want them to get what they deserve. But there's also something that Jesus is saying. There's something that needs to be healed in that, you know, today's gospel, the Sermon on the Plain, Luke's Gospel. We read it, started reading last weekend. Jesus is revealing something in this sermon on the plane. He's revealing something about himself. He's revealing. He's teaching us who he is, and he's also teaching us how we're called to be. When he says be merciful. When he says be kind. When he says be forgiving. And I don't know if you've ever thought of this, so sidebar. I don't know if you've ever noticed. Have you ever said this like, you know, the God of the Old Testament is so different than the God of the New Testament? Sometimes people say that. Sometimes people say, like, I don't really like the God of the Old Testament, but I really like the God of the New Testament. Whenever someone says that, they say, oh, the God of the Old Testament is mean, he's vindicted. And the God of the New Testament is gentle and kind and merciful. Two things to that. Number one, anyone who says that, I don't think you've read the book, like, if you've said, like the God of the Old Testament is vindictive or vengeful or angry, and the God of the New Testament is gentle, you need to read the Old Testament and New Testament. Why? Because exhibit A, the responsorial psalm today. What's the responsorial psalm? The Lord is kind and merciful, that he's patient with us, that he's gracious with us, that he takes our sins as far from us as the east is from the West. That's from the book of Psalms. I don't know if you know this, but the book of Psalms is from the Old Testament. And so the God of the Old Testament is also kind and merciful. And no one talks about hell in the Bible more than Jesus, which is in the New Testament. So the thing we need to understand, first of all is that there's no conflict between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New. And the second thing is the question is, well, then why? Why in the Old Testament is God seems so preoccupied with justice and the New Testament God seems so preoccupied with mercy? Here's why. Because he's trying to teach us something. So when I was in college, I took a bunch of education classes and one of the things they taught us was what they called the plus one theory of learning or the plus one theory of education. And the idea was this, was that if you are at a level three in whatever subject you're in, you can understand level one, two, and three. But if someone tries to step in and teach you level seven, you have no idea. So only plus one theory. So if you're level three, I can teach you one, two, three, and four. But I can't just jump to seven. I have to meet every student where there are and say, okay, now here's where you're at plus one. This is what God is doing in the Old Testament. Here's God who he chooses. Abraham. And Abraham is living in a. You guys. If you ever do any of the study of what life was like at the time of Abraham, or what life was like in Egypt while the Israelites were slaves, or even what life was like before Judaism, Or Christianity came on the scene, you realize that life is difficult. Life is nasty. It is brutish. It is short. And your God chooses Abraham. And Abraham's a barbarian. Abraham is. He's rough even. Think about when God chooses the people of Israel. He sets them free from 400 years of slavery in Egypt. For 400 years, they've been treated as less than animals. And for 400 years, they realized, okay, here's what life is. Life is, you bite and you scratch and you kick and you claw and you get whatever you can. So if someone hurts you, you want to inflict the maximum amount of pain back on them. This is just the human heart. We all know this, right? We all know that someone hurts you. And it's like, I'm not just gonna equally get back to you. If someone hurts you, I wanna destroy you. If someone takes something away, I'm gonna take everything you have. That's why God steps in and says, okay, no, no, no. That's vengeance. Don't do vengeance. Do justice. So someone takes from you what they owe is what they took, not more. If someone hurts you, okay, what they owe you is the degree to which they hurt you. Nothing more. So here's God in the Old Testament, teaching the people restraint. He says, okay, someone plucks out your eye. Only one eye. Eye for an eye, man. If someone took my eye, I would want them dead. And God's like, no, no, no, Father Mike, stop. Just an eye for an eye. How about a tooth? They knock out your tooth. Just stop at a tooth. It's justice. One life. Someone takes a life of someone that you love. You want to destroy the whole family because that's what's in our broken human hearts. And God says, no, no, no. Justice. One life for one life. See, this is so important that God is teaching in the Old Testament. He's teaching people who would be like me and like you, if you hurt me, I want to inflict the maximum amount of pain back on you. And God says, no, I need to teach you justice. Which is what? Which is simply giving a person what they're owed. I think it's fascinating. In fact, in the Old Testament, God is teaching his people at least two things. One is justice. Give people what they're owed, that it's okay to fight. Number two is God is teaching his people their dignity. God is teaching his people that you're actually worth something. So not only justice. Yep, you can fight. But also dignity, which means you're worth fighting for. This is throughout the whole Old Testament. God chooses his people and reveals his justice and reveals their dignity. So here in the Old Testament, even a king does not have a right to violate the dignity of even the poorest person. And what happens is in the Old Testament, what God's trying to do is he's trying to get that into the DNA of the Jewish people. Justice and dignity. Why? Because if you get this, if you don't get this, mercy makes no sense. If you don't understand justice, mercy is simply a violation of justice. If you don't get your intrinsic dignity, then mercy is simply being a doormat. So another thing, another way to look at this. Here's what God is teaching in the Old Testament, what God is teaching is love those who deserve it. That's what God is teaching in the Old Testament. Love, right? Love is willing the good of the other. So God is saying, okay, love will the good of the other, those who deserve it, justice. So in the Old Testament, it's like, love who? Well, God. God deserves it. Love God. Love those who deserve it. Who else deserves it? Your parents. Okay, love those who deserve it. Your parents deserve it. Who else? Your children. Love those who deserve it. Your spouse. Love those who deserve it. Your country. Love those. Love those who deserve your love. That's simply justice. That's the first step. But it's remarkable. I think it's pretty remarkable that even in the Old Testament, God is taking the next step. Even in the Old Testament, God is doing the plus one theory of learning. Do you guys know that 20, 25, right now, this year is the a jubilee year. Have you heard that Pope Francis declared this a jubilee year? So what does that mean? Where does it even come from? It's not like a Catholic invention. In fact, it comes from Leviticus, chapter 25. Little background pop quiz, class. If there was a number in the Bible that you'd say is like super special, say a number between six and eight, what would it be? Any. Anyone? Seven. Exactly. So. So the number seven in the Bible is relatively special. So what do you have on the seventh day? Right, that's the Sabbath day. That's the day of rest, day of worship. The seventh month is the month of Yom Kippur, right? The month of the day of atonement, the day of forgiveness. I don't know if you know this, but every seventh year was meant to be a sabbatical year. A whole year where if you had crops you didn't farm at all, you lived off what you raised in those first six years and you let the ground lay, fallow you let the ground rest, and you entered into rest. But there was a time where you had seven sets of seven years, which would be 49 or 50, depending on which rabbi you talk to. And on that 49th or 50th year, it was what they call the jubilee year. So if the seventh day was a day of rest and the seventh month was a day of forgiveness, and the seventh year was this day of entering into this deeper time of trusting God, that 49th year or that 50th year, that Jubilee year was a day where a couple things happened. Number one, if you were away from your land or away from your family, you got to go home. No matter where you had gone in the world, on that jubilee year, you got to go home, you got to go back to your family. And the jubilee year, if you had any debts, all of those debts would be forgiven. You owed money to someone, all that justice would be superseded by mercy. And lastly, if you were a servant, if you were a slave, you'd be set free. So this jubilee year is a year of saying, okay, you not only have restoration of families, not only have forgiveness, you not only have freedom, but all of it is irregardless of whether you deserve it or not. Maybe it was your fault, you made a bad decision. Now you have debt. Doesn't matter. Maybe you sold yourself into slavery. Doesn't matter. Maybe you were kicked out of your home, or maybe you actually walked away from your home. Doesn't matter. So what God is teaching, the first education is love those who deserve it. This jubilee year means this. Love those who may or may not deserve it. Don't even ask the question whether they deserve it or not. Love those whether they deserve it or not. And then we get to today's gospel, where Jesus ramps it up and takes the next step. And what does he say? Okay, not only justice, not only dignity, but also he takes it into context. The context is what? If you're a Jewish person, your context is you have enemies. Your entire existence, from the moment the Jews had to face the Egyptians, they escaped the Egyptians, and they had to fight the Philistines. And then there's the Assyrians, and then there's the Persians, then there's the Babylonians, then there's the Greeks, then there's the Romans. And here is Jesus speaking to a people who are the Romans are occupying their land. And if a Roman soldier came up to you and hit you, you couldn't do anything about it. If a Roman soldier came up to you and took your stuff, you Couldn't do anything about it. If a Roman soldier came up to you and conscripted you into service, you wanted you to carry something for him, you couldn't do anything about it. The Romans are their enemies. And Jesus tells the Jewish people, love those who don't deserve it. Not only love those who deserve it, love those who may or may not deserve it, but love those who don't deserve it. Love them when they strike you. Love them when they take your cloak. Love them when they ask for anything of you. Now another sidebar. This needs to be guided by wisdom, because Jesus is not giving us a blanket statement when he says, give to anyone who asks of you or forgive all debts. We have to understand he's asking us to be wise as well. So what do I mean? Sometimes love requires justice. So if you're a judge, like literally a judge in a courtroom, it would not be loving to know a person is guilty and then let them go free. It's actually more loving to let them pay their debt. In fact, you may say, well, that's loving to the perpetrator, but how loving is that to the victim? How loving is that to the victim's families? There are some times when. When love requires justice. As many of you know, there's also many times when love means saying no. Right? Cause love is willing to go to the other. So love. Sometimes someone says, give to anyone who asks. Jesus says, give to anyone who asks. Yeah, what if an addict comes up to you and asks for their substance of choice? That would not be loving. To give them what they're asking for. Not be loving to enable them to continue down the road of self destruction. You don't give a drunk a drink. We don't do that. That would not be loving. So it's okay to say no. Sometimes love means saying no. I remember hearing a story about a man who heard about a single mom who had her kids and she was desperate. One of the things she needed in her life is she needed a washer and dryer. She needed laundry because it just was this burden on her life. And so what he had done is he took six months and he saved up his money to be able to buy her a washer and dryer set. Now, what if he had saved up all this money to buy this single mom a washer and dryer set? And on his way to, someone came up to him and said, hey, I see you have money. Could you give me that money so I can pay off my car loan? It's okay for that person to Say, no, this money isn't your money. This money is for someone else. Same thing is true when it comes to the reality that no parent is called to impoverish their child to help a stranger. You're not gonna starve your kids so that someone you don't even know have no responsibility. For now, we can say we can have less of what we want so someone else can be fed. But there are many times when love means saying no. What Jesus is saying is, as he's been talking about, love those who deserve it. That's justice. Love those who may or may not deserve it. That's charity. And now love those who don't deserve it. And that's mercy. So how do we do that? This is what I'm inviting you to do. I'm going to invite. It's easy. It's one thing to say, oh, the Romans, you know, those enemies of the Jewish people. Think of someone who's hurt you, like tonight, right now, in this church, who is someone who has betrayed you, who is someone who's cursed you, who is someone who's stolen, taken something from you. And they can never and they will never give it back. How in the world do we do what Jesus told us to do tonight? I'm so grateful because even though sometimes I don't like what Jesus teaches, he always comes through and he actually tells us what to do. You have enemies. Do good to them. You have those who hate you. Speak good of them. Those who persecute you, pray for them. Three things Jesus says in response to those who hate us, those who have hurt us. He says, okay, do good to them. I love the fact that Jesus doesn't say feel good about them because praise the Lord for that. I don't think it'd be possible. Doesn't say feel good. Doesn't have good feelings. He says, do good to those who hate you. I know for me, again, I'm tempted to hurt them if someone does something to me. I. I'm tempted to have a cold and resentful heart. And I look again, more confessions, you guys. I look for any attempt to get back at them. And Jesus says these words, I don't care whether you feel it or not. I don't care if you love them or not. Do good to those who hate you, even if you don't feel it. I was talking with Monsignor Ashe. He's the president of University of Mary in Bismarck just last August, and he. In the course of our conversation, he shared this story that he said that whenever New Students come to campus. He always shows them a movie. It's a French film. And I thought, well, I'm glad I don't go to you, Mary. Anyways, the French film called Paris, je t'aime, which means Paris, I love you. And he told the context of the story. The context of the movie is there's this man, he's married, but he's having an affair on his wife. He's cheating on his wife with his mistress. And at one point, he makes his decision. He decides, I'm going to leave my wife and I'm going to go off with my mistress. And he arranges to meet her, his wife, at a restaurant to tell her to break it off. So he goes. He sits down, and she comes and sits down. And she's very emotional. She's teary. And his thought is, oh, my gosh, she knows. She knows about the affair, but that's not why she's crying. She's crying because she just came from the doctor and she just got news that she only has a few months to live. And this man, in that moment, this man who had no love for his wife, he had no feelings for his wife, he makes the decision to leave his mistress and spend the last months, weeks and days of his wife's life just caring for her. And in those months and in those weeks, in those days of treating her as if he loved her, something changes in him. In fact, the line is, by behaving like a man in love, he became a man in love. This is true for us. Jesus isn't saying, hey, wait until you're healed and then start to love. He doesn't say, wait until you feel it and then start doing the. Start doing good. He says, just do good to those who hate you. Then he says, and speak good of those who hate you. He says, bless those who curse you. Do good and speak good. Again, what I'm tempted to do is if someone does something across me, I'm like, ah, what an idiot. What a moron. I can't believe that guy. And I'm tempted to have those words, whether it's to that person or about that person. And this is just in my heart. Yet Jesus says, no, no, no. Bless those who curse you. Speak good of those who curse you. In fact, in the New Testament, it says this. It says, never let evil talk past your lips, but say only the good things that people need to hear, things that will truly help them. And Jesus says the same thing to us. Here's someone who's cursed you. Here's someone who has talked evil about you to someone else. And Jesus says, okay, that person, speak good of them, avoid saying evil about them, but you can love them by speaking well. Massey says, you know, do good, speak good, and pray for those who mistreat you. And that prayer, actually, that prayer has the ability to change things. There was a story back like 100 plus years ago in France of a man named Henri Panzini. Henri Pranzini. Henri Pranzini was a bad guy. And at one point, Henri Panzini murdered three women. And he was caught and he was tried, and he was found guilty. And he was completely guilty of this triple murder. But he was also completely unrepentant of this triple murder. You know, the priest who came to his cell to hear his confession, to give him absolution, to even help his soul enter the afterlife, Henri Pranzini rejected the priest. Every attempt, rejected it. And so this was publicized. Everyone knew Henri Pranzini was guilty. And everyone knew that Henri Pranzini wanted nothing to do with God's mercy. But there was this young girl who was in a convent in a town called Lisieux. Her name is Sister Therese of Lisieux. Saint Therese. At 16 years old, Saint Therese in the convent hears about Henri Pranzini. She hears about the fact that not only is this man a bad guy, but he's also unrepentant. And so Therese just decides, I'm going to pray for Henri. Every day, she would spend part of her time in prayer for Henri. Every meal she had, she'd give up some little things she wanted just. And she'd say, this is for Henri. She'd get up extra early and say, lord, this is for Henri. She'd stay up extra late and just say, lord, take this and use this. This is for Henri. And she prayed for a man who was an enemy of women, a man who was an enemy of France, a man who was an enemy of humanity, a murderer. The story is that as Henri Franzini was led to the gallows, he was led up the gallows to stand on top. And before he put his head underneath the guillotine, he stopped and he turned to the chaplain and he said, please, please hand me your crucifixion. And the priest hands him his crucifix. And Henri Pranzini, this man who was completely unrepentant until this moment, took this crucifix and gently and reverently kissed the wounds of Jesus three times. His hands, his side and his feet as an expression of repentance. And why? Because Therese prayed for an enemy, and that's what we have to do. What's that prayer look like? That prayer looks like. We pray that God gives them what they need. This is so hard. We pray that God gives them what they need and not what they deserve. Justice would be praying that God gives them what they deserve. Mercy is praying that God gives them what they don't deserve. And this is the last thing. I don't know how many of us could do that tonight. Like, genuinely, I don't know how many of us right now could do good or speak good or pray for those who have hurt us. This is one of the reasons why all of this, what Jesus is telling us to do, all of this can only come from a place of strength. Because why? Because if I forget justice, then this is unjust. And if I forget my own dignity. If you forget your own dignity, then this is a violation of dignity. One of the things we have to remember is what is that? This is how you and I have already been loved. I'm gonna say that again. What Jesus is describing is how you and I have already been loved. The gospel today, Luke's gospel, it sounds like Jesus is telling us what to do. And yes, it is. But I think even more deeply. This is Jesus describes describing himself. This is Jesus describing His love for us. This is Jesus describing, this is how I've been loving you this whole time. Why? Because he says, I do good to those who hate me. I do good to you when you hate me. Jesus does good to us when we're indifferent to him. We could be bothered by Him. He blesses us when we curse him or when we curse in his name. He offers his cheeks to us. You know, Isaiah 53 says, he offered his cheeks to us to be beaten, his beard to us to be plucked. That's how he loves us. That God gives and expects nothing back. He lends and he expects no repayment. He loves his enemies and does good to him. Who are his enemies? Who here has been an enemy of God? You know, St. Paul says it in his Letter to the Romans, chapter five. It's one of my favorite quotes in the entire New Testament. He says, for Christ, while we were still helpless, yet died at the appointed time for the ungodly. Indeed, only with difficulty could someone find courage to die for a good person. Though perhaps for a good person, one might even find the courage to die. But God proves his love for us, and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. He goes on to say, indeed, if while we were his enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son, how much more, once reconciled, will we be saved by his life? God loves his enemies, does good to them. And I am one of his enemies and he keeps doing good to me. And I think the same is true for you. You and I have both have all been his enemies and he still does good to us. You guys, this is how you and I have been loved. And God did not give us what we deserved. God has given us what we need. Because that's mercy. That's what mercy is. Mercy is the love that we deserve the least but need the most. And that's how you and I have been loved. And that's all he's asking of us. Love those who deserve it, love those who may or may not deserve it. And love those who do not deserve it. Make it simple simply by doing good, speaking good, and praying for them.