← Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
03/02/25 The Place of the Way: What Reveals and What Trains
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Homily from the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Silence reveals our hearts and silence trains our hearts. As we enter into the place of training, we realize that there are certain things that reveal the condition of our hearts...trial, tribulation, speech, and silence. But we need to consciously enter into these if we are going to know ourselves and be trained in the way of Christ.
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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 and with your spirit. A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke Glory to you, o Lord. Chapter 6, verses 39 through 45 Jesus told his disciples a parable Can a blind person guide a blind person will not both fall into a pit. No disciple is superior to the teacher, but when fully trained, every disciple will be like his teacher. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother's eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own? How can you say to your brother, brother, let me remove your splinter from your eye when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye? You hypocrite, Remove the wooden beam from your eye first, then you will see clearly to remove the splinter in your brother's eye. A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its fruit. For people do not pick figs from thorn bushes, nor do they eat grapes from brambles. A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good. But an evil person out of the store of evil produces evil. For from the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaks the gospel of the Lord. Might you have a seat? So I don't know if this is just me or if this is. I think it might be a 90s thing. Maybe it's a 90s thing. But like one of my favorite parts of movies, like in the 90s, action movies or inspirational movies, sports movies. My favorite part of all those movies was the training montage, if you know what I mean. Like, the training montage would be like even like a recent movie called Whiplash. It's about the kid who plays plays the drums. There's a training montage where he's like playing the drums, he's like bleeding because he's blistering and all these kind of things. Like, that's so cool. Like when someone is even more than like the big competition at the end or the big thing at the end. I love the training montage. Mulan. I'll make a Man, out of you. That's an example of a great training montage, that kind of thing. Maybe my all time favorite training montage is from the Rocky movies. Not only. I mean, the first one is great, right? You get Philadelphia Morning, gets up, he runs up the stage, there's the library or whatever that building is, and jumps to the top. Second Rocky movie, great as well. Good training montage. Third Rocky movie, really great training montage that was in California with training, with Apollo Creed. But you have to realize that the Rocky movies reach their apex. Perfection of training montages in the fourth movie. Because in the fourth movie, there's not just one training montage. There are two training montages separated. I time this separated by 70 seconds. That's it. There's one first training montage, and then Adrian shows up. He's in Russia, he's training by himself. Adrian shows up. And then the second training montage. It's perfection. It's incredible. Even as a kid, I remember the Karate Kid, right? Daniel San and Mr. Miyagi. That training of just being able to. I mean, just even. I think about this as a kid. How incredible would it be to be trained by someone like Mr. Miyagi and like his own, like private dojo, like personal dojo, and have someone like a master, a teacher who would say, I'm going to teach you everything that I know about this. In this case, karate, right? I'm going to make you be as good as I am. I'm going to help you become as good as I am. I'm going to help you become like me. I think about that. I think about the Gospel today. Jesus says, he says, no disciple is superior to his teacher. But when fully trained, every disciple becomes like his teacher. So here we are on the 8th Sunday of ordinary time. In a couple days from now, it'll be Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. And I wanted to jump in. I want to give you all a head start. And what I mean by that is sometimes Lent already starts. And it's the first Sunday of Lent. And we're like, hey, here's what to think about going into Lent. It's already started. I want to give you a head start so that we can actually look ahead and say, okay, what is the goal of this time? We have these 40 days starting this Wednesday. I think a lot of times our goal is, well, I want to be a little better. I want to get rid of some bad habits. One of the goals is I want to live healthier. Whatever. The thing is, those are all fine. But the goal is, in today's Gospel, when fully trained, every disciple will become like his teacher. So for all of us, we recognize that the goal of Lent is to become like Jesus. We can only become like Jesus unless we're fully trained. So Lent is a time of training. So obviously, like the disciplines of Lent are prayer, fasting, almsgiving. Those are all things. They're all good. We give up something, we give something, we pray more, we do something. Those are things called, like, asceticisms. Right? I haven't even heard the church word asceticism. I think when we think asceticism, we think of again, those penances. We think of those practices, abstaining from whatever, fasting, doing something extra, giving something away. That's true. But the word asceticism actually comes from the Greek word asesis. And it doesn't just mean giving stuff up. It doesn't just mean doing extra. Asisis is a Greek word that means training. So here you and I are entering into this season of Lent. It's a season of training. And that's something very specific. I mean, you probably know this. There's a difference between, like, just working out and training. They're both good. Like, working out is healthy. It's good for you. It's exercise. But if a person is training, they're typically training for something. They're training, they have a goal in mind. And so for us, we recognize that for this Lent, this is not just exercise. This is not just working out. This is training. In fact, there's a man, his name is Saint Jose Maria Escriva. And he said this, he said the beginning of Lent. He said, we're at the beginning of Lent. It was a time of penance, purification and conversion. And he says, lets us know. He says it's not an easy program, but then Christianity is not an easy way of life. It's not enough to just be in the church, letting the years roll by in our life, in the life of Christians. Our first conversion is certainly very significant, but the later conversions are even more important. That's where we are right now. We're not just rolling through another Lent we want to do is we want to walk on the way. So that's what we're doing, actually, this Lent. We're joining with Hallo who and we're doing this, these 40 day prayer challenge and the 40 day prayer challenge. We're following a couple different people, obviously following Jesus first of all. But one of those people is Saint Jose Maria Escriva, who's a Spanish priest who's the founder of Opus dei, who wrote a number of books and one of those books of thoughts. His collections of just teachings to reflect on is called the Way. Because we recognize that in order to be trained, we have to follow the way. The way of Jesus, the way of Christ, the way of the Cross. The other person we're going to follow is a man named Takashi Nagai, who is a Japanese Catholic. But he didn't start out that way. Takashi Nagai, he began as life as a Shinto, and then he became atheist in high school and college, where he started taking science classes back. Back in the 20s and 30s, he became an atheist. Said science is everything. But after a number of events, he became a radiologist and became a Catholic. We'll talk more about him as the Lent goes on. But he became a radiologist there in the 20s and 30s, into the 40s, knowing that the study of radiology and the study of helping patients, because there was a proliferation of lung diseases in Japan at the time. And so he knew that if he didn't, if he wasn't willing to investigate X ray, essentially people's lungs, they could possibly die. Even though he knew that he was endangering his life every single time he went near the X ray machine. But he still did it because he was a Catholic, because of his Catholic faith. And During World War II, the end, America dropped an atomic bomb almost directly over his home. It was only 500 meters from the cathedral in Nagasaki. It instantly ruined his life. It instantly destroyed his home, the lives of many of his neighbors, killed his wife. In an instant, Takashi Nagai lost virtually everything. But in those hours and days following the explosion of the atomic bomb over Nagasaki, Takashi Nagai, bleeding and injured, put himself to use and just served people. But he looked around at the devastation. He looked around again. Everything being gone, all these people being. If they weren't destroyed immediately, they were being burned alive. And he kept having this line from Scripture going back again and again through his mind. And the line was, even if heaven and earth pass away, my words will not pass away. Even if heaven and earth will pass away, my words will not pass away. And this man lived a faithful life until his death. Because why he was following, just like Jose Escarval, he was following the Way. It was one of the reasons why this series is called the Place of the Way. The reason why it's called the Place of the Way is because in Japanese dojo, right? I'd love to have a private dojo with Mr. Miyagi. A place where the teacher. The teacher, the master would train you in this particular way. Dojo actually means the place of the way. And so as we're walking through Lent, we have kind of our private dojo with Jesus. And where does he train us in the place of the way? How does he train us? He trains us in those places, like Tekashi Nagai experienced. He trains us in places of desolation. He trains us in. In places of tribulation. Because we realize this. At that moment, everything Takashi Nagai had lived for, everything, he had been following the way after Jesus. In that moment, when the atomic bomb destroyed so much of his life, his heart was revealed. His faith was. His true faith was revealed. His true love, his true heart was revealed. In fact, it's like Sirach, chapter 27. The first reading today says this. The test of what the potter molds is in the furnace. Think about that. You can look at a clay pot that hasn't been in the kiln yet. It looks great. It's amazing. But it's not until it experiences the fire of the furnace that you really see, okay, has that been crafted correctly yet? Goes on to say so in tribulation is the test of the. Just because the fruit of a tree reveals the care it has had. And every one of us goes through seasons. We might not go through a season like Tekashi and the guy did with a bomb, taking away everything we own, but every one of us goes through those moments, those seasons, those furnace moments, or those tribulation seasons. And what those furnace moments do, what those tribulation seasons do, or they have the potential to do two things. Those tribulation moments, those furnace seasons, have the ability to reveal our hearts, and they have the ability to train our hearts as we know this, right? The furnace reveals, as I said, the potter takes this clay thing that looks good, puts it in the furnace, and the furnace reveals whether that was crafted well or not. I don't know if you know this, but if you have a precious metal, you have silver or gold, a lot of times it has impurities in it. And you might just look at the hunk of gold and say, it looks great. But it has to be put in the crucible, right? It has to be put in the furnace. And in the furnace, what do you start to see in the furnace? You start to see the impurities. You start to see the things that. That shouldn't be there. And the same thing is true for us when it comes to that crucible. When it comes to that furnace, something in our heart gets revealed. I don't know if you've ever had that experience that where it's been, here's something I don't want to happen. And that reveals the littleness of my heart. Because I can be all good when things are all good. But when things don't go my way, all of a sudden you can see my selfishness, Things don't go our way and we can see our small heartedness, you can see our fragile egos, you can see that sense of self. And sometimes in the furnace, I can see how deeply I trust God or how deeply I don't trust God. From the big things to the small things, from devastation to minor inconveniences, those things have the power to reveal my heart. And the crazy thing is I don't have. You don't have to. We don't have to wait. We don't have to wait till the devastation happens. We don't have to wait to train. Why? Because here we are, entering in the season of training, this place of the way. It's like what Sirach says again. Sirach says one's speech reveals one's heart, one's speech reveals one's faults. To realize this, that our speech actually reveals what's in our hearts, that what we say, what comes out of our mouths, oftentimes reveals what's there. It's what St. James, St. James was writing about this in the New Testament. St. James says if a person is not able to control their tongue, their religion is false, they're deceiving themselves. Why? Because he's not just talking about someone who like curses or someone who swears. He's talking about the fact that if I can't control my tongue, if I can't control what I say, what is the brokenness that's in my heart? Gossip or complaining or grumbling, criticizing. What are those things? That's brokenness that's in my heart. It's one of the reasons why I love the reality or the rise of like the long form podcast, like the podcast interview that is really popular up until now. Like you just had to go on a show and if you had kind of your soundbite, you have your 30 seconds or 60 seconds worth of comment, that's fine, that's great. It's rehearsed, it's scripted. But with those long form conversations, okay. At some point it's just you. At some point it's just actually here is what you really think. And that's one of those situations where if you start talking and you go off to script, what do you start to say? A lot of times, maybe not you, but a lot of times we find ourselves really guarded in how we speak. What happens when I go off script? When I go off script, that's when my heart has been revealed. And I realize, oh, my gosh, that's there. I hear myself talking. I'm thinking, oh, gosh, that's what's in there. Because why? Because our hearts are so often full of something. We're so distracted, so constantly. We fill our hearts with so many things, fill our minds, our ears with so many things that sometimes I would even say this, sometimes we don't even know what we think. Because speech will reveal the condition of our heart, but so will silence. And again, we don't have to wait. We don't have to wait for some devastation to happen, to enter that place of the way, that place of training, to enter into silence. And again, I'm guilty of this. Where I will listen to an audiobook or podcast constantly, or listen to music constantly and have to ask myself the question, is there any silence? Because why? Because tribulation reveals and tribulation trains. Speech reveals, silence reveals, but silence also trains. St. Jose Maria Escriva, in the book the Way he said it like that, he said, silence is the doorkeeper of the interior life. Which means I have to actually walk through this doorway if I'm ever going to know, if I'm ever going to become the person I am. I mean, just pause on this for one second. How can I ever know what I think if I'm always putting someone else's thoughts in my mind? Like, if I always have to listen to a podcast, I always have to listen to someone else's song, someone else's music, someone else's thoughts. How can I ever know what I think if I'm constantly listening to someone else's thoughts? If I can't be alone with my own thoughts, then how will I ever know what I actually think? Again? The furnace reveals and the furnace trains. The tribulation reveals and the tribulation trains. The speech reveals, but the silence reveals and the silence trains. So here's the invitation. The invitation is this. Lent. I don't know what you're going to choose to do when it comes to walking these 40 days, starting on Ash Wednesday. My invitation, though, is that you begin walking in silence. That as we begin this way, right, that the place of the way, the way of the cross, the way of the Christian, the way of Jesus, that dojo becomes the place of silence. And I think that's our first step. Our first step is. Is one that's taken in silence. I think we do it kind of easily. I think one thing is, you know, Jesus said, out of the store of the heart, the mouth speaks. You have to ask the question, okay, what did I put in the heart? If it's a storeroom, I had to put something in there. And we put something in. We put stuff in our storeroom all day. Sometimes it's good stuff, sometimes it's bad stuff. Sometimes it's like that indifferent, like, really annoying, like earworm of a song that just gets stuck in your head. It keeps rolling, and you're like, wow, that's there for whatever reason. My invitation is this, to put something good in your mind. So you're not just starting with a blank slate, but to maybe put something that the Lord said, put scripture into your mind, and then pause that and enter into silence. Put God's word in your mind and then enter into that silence that reveals and that trains. And you don't have to do it in the chapel. You don't have to just do it in prayer. I would say do it anywhere. Do it when you're exercising. To go out for a run without any earbuds in. To be able to drive without any noise, to cook a meal without the distraction. How about this? To shower or to get into bed without something also playing at the same time. Here's an invitation. This week, just go for a walk. Go for a walk by yourself, in silence. And in that silence, let the Lord reveal what's in your heart. Let him train you in what's in your heart. Because you don't have to do this alone, right? St. Paul writing to the Corinthians today, basically says, you're not alone. Jesus has conquered death, therefore his grace is yours. Because Jesus has conquered death, we enter into Lent not on our own. We enter this place of the way, not on our own. We enter into this training, not our own. Christ has conquered death. His grace is ours. Now we just have to cooperate with it. Because what he's going to do is something remarkable. And this is the last thing you probably know, that when the refiner takes that silver, takes that gold and puts it in the furnace, puts it in the crucible again, the impurities bubble to the bubble, to the surface. And he doesn't stop there. He doesn't stop when he sees the impurities, right? He keeps on going, keeps on actually refining that silver or refining that gold. Until when? Until he can see his own face. And this is what you and I get to do. This Lent, to be walking this place of the way. This Lent to be walking in this place of training and to realize that God has conquered. Christ. Jesus has conquered. And we get to be a part of that victory. As long as we take our place in his training. As long as we take up residence in the place of the way.