← Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
07/05/25 Signers
00:16:02
Homily from the Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time. There are some things worth risking everything for. Those who signed the Declaration of Independance risked everything. Every Christian who follows Jesus is risking everything in order to have the Lord.
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:02]
Fr. Mike Schmitz
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 weekly notifications. God Bless the Lord be with you. A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to Luke, chapter 10, verses 1 through 12 and verses 17 through 20 at that time the Lord appointed 72 others whom he sent ahead of him in pairs to every town and place he intended to visit. He said to them, the harvest is abundant, but the laborers are few. So ask the Master of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest. Go on your way. Behold, I am sending you like lambs among wolves. Carry no money, bag no sack, no sandals, and greet no one along the way into whatever house you enter. First say peace be to this household. If a peaceful person lives there, your peace will rest upon him, but if not, it will return to you. Stay in the same house and eat and drink what is offered to you. For for the laborer deserves his payment. Do not move about from one house to another. Whatever town you enter and they welcome you, eat what is set before you, hear the sicken it and say to them, the kingdom of God is at hand for you. Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you, go out into the streets and say the dust of your town that clings to our feet, even that we shake off against you. Yet know this, the kingdom of God is at hand. I tell you it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town. The 72 returned rejoicing and said, lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name. Jesus said, I have observed Satan falling like lightning from the sky. Behold, I have given you the power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy, and nothing will harm you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ Might you have a seat? So in high school I had one of my high school jobs was there was a man who owned a farm. He was a bachelor and he passed away and the guy who bought the farm purchased the farm. Different sense. When he purchased the farm he Wanted me to clean it up because the previous owner had a bunch of scrap metal all over the place and tires and all things, refrigerators. So my job in the summer was to go out with a truck and just like load up scrap metal, load up tires, the whole thing. In the course of that I played the radio and I got to know a guy whose radio program came on, I don't know, somewhere in mid morning during the day. And he had news and comment and his name was Paul Harvey. I don't know if you've heard of Paul Harvey, but he had this great show. It was Paul Harvey news and comment. And he also had the rest of the story. It was great. I loved it. But the thing is, he would give some news and then he'd have his comment, his commentary. At one point, Paul Harvey was talking about the fourth of July. Here we are just having passed the fourth of July. And he was talking about the signers, the original signers of the Declaration of independence. Those 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence. And I think right now, here we are in 2025. We look back and we think we have this critique of those men. We have a critique of their lives. And I guess there's stuff we could criticize. I mean a of lot they have the men of privileges. They're men of wealth, many of them who owned slaves. They're easy to criticize because they had their feelings. And I think we've all heard of those. But there's something I didn't know about those signers. There's something I actually didn't know about the Declaration. I've always known the first words of the Declaration of Independence. Right? We hold these truths to be self evident. The God is the Creator has endowed every man with inalienable rights. I did not know the last words of the Declaration of Independence. And these last words of the Declaration of Independence were signed by these 56 men, these signers. And the last words are. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. I never ever thought these men of privilege, these men of wealth again, even slave owners, these men who are easy to criticize, every one of them was risking their life to put their name at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence. Every single one of them. There was this massive risk. In fact, Ben Franklin, who signed the Declaration, he said this. He said we must all indeed either hang together or, most assuredly, we should all be hanged separately. But these men were willing to take that risk because they believe that there are some things worth risking security for. There are some things worth risking wealth for. There are some things risking your lives for. In fact, the same Ben Franklin, he once said this. He said, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Ben Franklin is the only signer of the Declaration who signed all those three original founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Paris and the Constitution. The only one who is willing to say no. There are some things that are worth sacrificing security for. One of those things is liberty. And those who are not willing to give up temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Why? Because what you value, you're willing to sacrifice for. Those 56 men. What they valued, they were willing to sacrifice for. You're willing to take a risk for. I think about that when it comes to the 72. We have the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence. We have the 72 who are sent out by Jesus. I don't know if you've ever stopped and thought, I've been praying about this for a while. Stopped and thought about the incredible risk that those men were taking to be sent out. I mean, it's easy to forget about the risk. There is no structure available. Like, there is no backup. There's no one coming to help you if you got into trouble again. Even as Jesus says, okay, take with you. Don't take with you any backup. No, no. No money bag. No second tunic. You can wear sandals. Okay, thanks, Jesus. But there is. They were risking absolutely everything. Why? Because they believed that there are some things worth risking for. There are some things that are worth risking rejection for. There are some things that are worth rejecting risking insecurity for. There are some things that are even worth risking your entire life for. All those men, they had no backup. They had no resources. They had no guarantee. All they had was Jesus, only Jesus, and the chance. The chance to take God's grace. To people who might just say yes to God's grace, they were willing to risk because they had something they valued more like St. Paul. St. Paul in the second reading today, St. Paul's letter to the Galatians, who says, man never boast in anything except for the cross of Jesus Christ, by which I have been crucified to the world. The world's been crucified to me. You know, there's another moment that Paul's writing and at One point, Paul kind of gives his pedigree. Paul gives a list of the things that he used to take pride in. The things that. That if anything, gave Paul security. If anything gave Paul, like, credibility. Paul says, I'm going to give up all those. In fact, he said this. He said, if anyone thinks he can. This is a quote from Paul said, if anyone thinks he can be confident in the flesh, like in what your achievements are, he says, all of them work. And I. He says, I was circumcised on the eighth day, right? I'm fully Jewish on the race of Israel, on the tribe of Benjamin. I'm a Hebrew, and Hebrew parentage in observance of the law of Pharisees. So, like, he's like, you can't be more Jewish than me, right? I am all in Pharisee, in zeal. I persecuted the Church in righteousness based on the law. I was blameless. He wasn't just someone who was born into the Jewish faith. He also lived the Jewish faith to a T. In righteousness of the law, he was blameless. But then he goes on to say, but whatever gains I had, these I have come to consider as a loss because of Jesus Christ. Like those 56. Whatever security I have, I'm willing to give these up because of liberty. Here's St. Paul saying, Whatever security, whatever credibility, whatever accomplishments I had, I consider all of them a loss because of Jesus, because he's the one. He goes on to say, more than that, I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ, Jesus, my Lord. And he says this line that just is incredible. He says, for his sake, I have accepted the loss of all things. And I consider them so much rubbish. Now, that word in Greek is the word skbala. He says all things, everything. I used to hope in everything. I used to trust in everything. I used to be proud of every one of my accomplishments. I consider them skubala, which literally means dung. I consider them just manure that I may gain Christ and be found in Him. Here's Paul who realizes, no, there are some things worth risking. There are some things worth letting go of. There are some things worth giving up when you find the one thing that you're made for. In fact, that's one of the reasons why St. Augustine. St. Augustine says something like this. He said, the one who has God and nothing else has everything, but the one who has everything except God has nothing. The one who has God and nothing else has everything, but the one who has everything except God actually has nothing. Saying Essentially, still, if I lose. If I lose everything, I still have the Lord. And it's worth it. Because the reality, as Christians, we can still lose everything except Jesus. As Christians, we can put our whole lives on the line and just be like, exactly like those 72. And we can lose everything. We can lose everything, like many of the 56. So as I'm sitting there or working out, listening to my car radio play, as I'm cleaning up this farm, Paul Harvey, he went on to describe who those 56 signers were, what they were like and what it cost them. He said it like this. This is a quote from Paul Harvey. He said, what kind of men were they? 24 were lawyers and jurists. 11 were merchants. 9 were farmers and large plantation owners. Men of means, well educated, and they signed the Declaration of Independence, knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured. Give some examples. Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw his ships swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay off his debts and he died in rags. He was one of the signers. Thomas McKean was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress without pay and his family was kept in hiding. His possessions were kept from him, taken from him, and poverty was his reward. At the end of the war, vandals or soldiers or both, looted the properties of Ellery, Clymer, Hall, Walton, Gwinnett, Hayward, Rutledge and Middleton took everything they owned. The Battle of Yorktown. Thomas Nelson, Jr. He noted that the British general named Cornwallis, he had taken over the Nelson home, his own, this man's home for his headquarters. And Thomas Nelson Jr. Quietly went up to George Washington and asked General Washington to open fire on his own home. His home was destroyed and Nelson died. Bankruptcy. A man named Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife and she died within a few months. John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she lay dying and their 13 children fled for their lives. All of his fields, everything he owned, was laid to waste. And for more than a year he lived in forests and in caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his children gone. A few weeks later, he died from exhaustion and a broken heart. Two others, Lewis, Norris and Livingston, also suffered the same fate. Five of these signers were caught by the British as traitors and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their sons in the revolutionary army. Another had two sons captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships during the Revolutionary War. That was the price of being a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Again, we can criticize them as men of privilege. We can criticize them as men of means. We can criticize them as wealthy people. But every one of them put their privilege to the service. They put their wealth to the service of others. Every single one of them put their lives on the line for the hope and the dream that is America, for the hope and the fight for something called liberty. They risked their lives, and it cost them their lives. And that's just for a country. Paul the 72. They risked their lives for God himself. Paul in 72, without any guarantee, risked their lives for the possibility of being able to set prisoners free. And Paul himself, he says in the gospel in the second reading today, he says, I bear the marks of Jesus on my body. We believe that Paul had the stigmata, right? The five wounds of Jesus, just like St. Francis of Assisi had or Padre Pio had, that he was signed because every one of those Christians, they were signers. And so are we. And this is the last thing the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were willing to risk security for liberty every time you and I make the sign of the cross. We are signers. We are signers who say that there is something worth risking. There's something not just worth risking my security, not just risking my wealth, not just worth risking my future, there's something worth risking my entire life. Like St. Paul, I consider my entire accomplishments, everything I could ever possibly gain, as so much rubbish for the possibility of gaining Jesus. So on this Fourth of July, this Independence Day weekend, to be grateful for the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, but to realize that you and I, as Christians, we are also signers. And every time we trace the sign of the cross over our foreheads, over our bodies, over one another, we are declaring as well that life without Jesus is not worth living. But a life with Jesus, even if I lose everything else, is worth everything.