← Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
10/19/25 Moments of Consequence
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Homily from the Twenty-ninth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Persist through severity. There are big moments in our lives. We usually think of the beginning or the end of something as the moments of consequence. But the middle often holds the most impactful moments of consequence; times when we are called to persevere...to "remain faithful" to the decisions we have made.
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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 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 18, verses 1 through 8 Jesus told his disciples a parable about the necessity for them to pray always without becoming weary. He said, there was a judge in a certain town who neither feared God nor respected any human being. A widow in that town used to come to him and ask and say, render a just decision for me against my adversary. For a long time the judge was unwilling, but eventually he thought, while it is true that I neither fear God nor respect any human being because this widow keeps bothering me, I shall deliver a just decision for her, lest she finally come and strike me. The Lord said, pay attention to what the dishonest judge says. Will not God then secure the rights of His Chosen One who calls out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? The Gospel of the Lord Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. I should have a seat. So back in 1977 there was a movie that was released. 1977. I think about this 1977. I was alive for this movie. I remember seeing it. I remember loving it. I and it was came out over 20 years before our students were born. So I realized this is an old one. It's called Rocky. Now you might have I asked before mass, I said, you haven't seen Rocky. No one here in this chapel has seen Rocky. And it's made me sad a little bit because this movie won three Academy Awards in 1977. Do you know it won best picture, won best director, and I think best editing. But it was a significant film. And so since maybe you don't know Rocky either, the idea here's the champ. His name is Apollo Creed. He trying to his publicists want to have some kind of like to try to get more more attention more eyeballs on the TV screen. So they say, how about this? We're going to choose some kind of like local loser boxer to go against the champ. And just of course, the champ's going to demolish him and it's going to be this incredible, like, you know, just complete defeat. And so they choose Rocky Balboa, who was this kind of a low life. If you watch the movie, Rocky, the virginal one, he is going nowhere in his life. He is doing nothing. He is stuck. He's actually kind of a criminal as well. He beats people up for money, enforcing the mob in Philadelphia, that kind of situation. And he gets chosen and he has the whole training montage running through the streets of Philadelphia up to the steps and jumps on top of the steps and this whole kind of. It's a great movie, right? And the idea is he goes into the fight and no one thinks that Rocky could actually win. So that fight is just a. It's a big moment, right? It is one of those significant moments in a person's life. And I was thinking about this because recently I was able to be at a retirement of a four star general. It was just an incredible opportunity to be with not just this one man who's served this country so well, but he's surrounded by all these military soldiers and airmen and all these kind of people who have served their country. To be in the same room as this general is having go through another big moment, a big moment, his retirement. And in his speech he made a number of references. One of them, he referenced the fact that he's often lived by the water, he's often been stationed by oceans and so he's become a surfer. He and his family surf at one of his deployments or one. Sorry, not deployments. One of his, where he was stationed was in Oahu, in Hawaii. And he talked about how on the North Shore of Hawaii, if you're going to go surfing, you have to be very, very prepared because he said there's such a things as he said waves of consequence. And I thought like, you know, there's all the small waves you can, like a person like me maybe could hop on that wave and make it to shore. But he said, no, on the North Shore of Oahu, that's where you get waves of consequence. And he was talking about this in reference to people, you know, people. Some people are the people of consequence. You meet them and they change your lives in a huge way. But as he was talking about waves of consequence, these waves that like just they matter, they are significant, right? There is something could happen with this wave. Either something amazing or something devastating. My Mind started going back to moments, moments of consequence. And I was thinking, moments of consequence, right? We all recognize those big moments of consequence where here's Rocky in the big fight, here's this general with his retirement. This is a moment of consequence. We all are familiar with those moments of consequence. They look like that, the big game, right? They are. They have the big exam I have. This is the wedding day. This is the birth of the child. Like this. These are the big moments when something starts and we say really, really easily and quickly that those are moments of consequence. And they are. Of course they are. Or we say this about the end, too. Like that. Finish that, like completing the task. This guy's retirement, that's a moment of consequence. And it is, in fact Jesus at the end of the gospel today. He talks about the great moment of consequence at the end of time, where he asks the question, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth? I think that's such an obviously important question, but it's an important question for us right now. Why? Because I think a lot of times we miss the most critical moments of consequence. Because again, we think that the only moments of consequence are those big beginning moments or those moments of consequence are the big ending moments. And yet here's where we find ourselves right now, here in the semester, our students, we find ourselves in this place of the middle. Maybe you might find yourself in life in this place in the middle where there's no fanfare, right? There's no crowds, there's no big public event. The decision's been made. Like, okay, here you are. You're doing the thing. You just have to keep going. That. That decision, okay, I'm here. I have to keep going. That I would. That I would say, is the most significant moment of consequence. In the second reading today, St. Paul's letter to Timothy. The first two words of this entire letter are the words that I think sum up absolutely everything about these hidden moments of consequence. Where he says this, he says to Timothy, he says, remain faithful. Set. Remain faithful. You know, so many of us have started something, I think, of our athletes this fall. Here they are in the midst of their fall season, and the excitement of, like, summer training, all these things is a distant memory. And the excitement of maybe playoffs is just a hope in the future. Or even our students who are in the middle of the grind right now, this is again, the excitement of coming back to school, the excitement of being able to be done in finals. That. That is a long. Those are long ways off. Here we are Right in the middle of all these things. Or even just like, maybe you not in school, maybe you'd say, like, oh, man, you know, the wedding was. That was a big day. But it was a year ago now, or it was 23 years ago now, or, yeah, I started the job and it was very exciting. But now here I am in the middle. You know, over the last two weeks on our campus, we have had hundreds of students who were presented the gospel, you know, that invitation to. Here's the story, right? God is good. He made this world good. Sin broke the world. Jesus Christ came on a rescue mission to save us. And if you respond, if you want to give your life to him, you can have this new life. Hundreds of students over the last two weeks have heard that gospel and been personally invited to say yes. And that is a big moment, right? That's. If they said yes to that. That is a big moment of like, yes, Lord, I want to say this. I have faith. And now here is St. Paul saying to Timothy, that's wonderful. That's fantastic. You have faith now. Remain faithful. Remain faithful when it's difficult. Remain faithful when it's boring. Remain faithful when it's just a grind. And I think right now in our semester, a lot of our students are like, it's just a grind right now. That's when we have this invitation, this even command to remain faithful. There's another word for it. You hear it twice in the Gospel, and then in the second reading today, it's that word to persist, right? Persistence, which is interesting. Remain faithful. Persistence is to persevere. Like to have that gift of perseverance, which is. A gift means what? Well, I did some etymology study, and so the word persevere actually comes from these two words, per, which is through, and severus, which is severity. Right? It's through difficulty. So to persevere is to persist through severity or to persist through difficulty. So here is the Lord, who this weekend is telling us, okay, I get it. You're not at the beginning, you're not at the end. You're in this middle. So what do you do? Especially what do you do when there's obstacles? And the answer, I would say, is. The answer is remain faithful. The answer is to persevere. The answer is to persist through severity, which I think is one of the most difficult things. I think it's tough to commit, right? It's tough to start, but I think it's more difficult to remain faithful. Why? Because I would say this. I would say especially I've said This many, many times. But I'll say it again for anyone who comes to know that God exists, like, I know that that's true. Someone who says, also, I know Jesus is God. I know Jesus is who he says he is. And because of that, I know that he's established a church. And in this church, he's given us all the graces we need. He's given us baptism to become new children of God. He's given us the Eucharist to be able to feed and sustain us. He's given us reconciliation so that when I'm wounded, I can come back to Him. If we know this, if you know that God exists, that Jesus is God, he's given us the church and all the ways back to him, then the only way the enemy could ever get us to not be faithful anymore, the only way the enemy could ever get us to stop, he has one weapon is one tool. And that one weapon, that one tool is discouragement. That's it. That's it. I'm just so discouraged. I don't want to remain faithful. I'm just so discouraged. I don't know that I can persist through this difficulty. I don't know that I can persist through this severity. And I'd say there's three kinds of discouragement that we experience, especially when in the middle. We're discouraged by difficulty, we're discouraged by delay, and we're discouraged by defeat. What I mean by that is so often, I don't know if this is the gear case, but sometimes for me, like, I'm so excited, I want to start. I can't wait to start. And yet here I find myself in the midst of difficulty, and I become discouraged by difficulty. I remember when my little brother, he worked so hard to get into medical school, and some of our students are like this, too. He worked so hard all. I mean, all through high school, all through college, doing all the right things, doing, you know, shadowing doctors, taking all their practice tests, applying, all this work they did to apply and finally get to medical school and be like, oh, my gosh, this is so hard. This is so difficult. And it's really easy, especially for those who did well. If you got to med school, got to dental school, got to any kind of advanced school, you must have done pretty well earlier on. But then you find yourself in this new level, and it's, wow, I am surprised and sometimes even discouraged by difficulty. And you forget that in the midst of that grind, in the midst of that pressure, that, no, actually, this is what you prayed for. This is what you prepared for. This is actually what you wanted. And we realized this. We realize the truth is that pressure is a privilege. That pressure of being able to go through difficulty, that's not something everyone gets to do. In fact, there's a coach of the Boston Celtics named Joe Mazzulla. So Joe Missoula coached the Celtics at 2 back to back championships and he has won a couple amazing players obviously that win the championship. One star player, Jayson Tatum. One point, Joe Mazzulla was being asked about Jason Tatum and the interviewer said, he said, it seems to me that Jason has to deal with unfair criticism. That's what the interviewer said. It seems to me that Jason has to deal with unfair criticism. And then Coach Missoula stopped him and said, no gets two. He said what he said. He gets to deal with this is what he said. He said he gets to deal with it. He said, it's the ultimate compliment. And that's what we talk about. He's on the team. We talk about this. This is what you asked for. Talking to Jason who has to deal with unfair criticism. No, he gets to. This is what you asked for. You asked to be one of the best players in the NBA, on the best team in the NBA, an opportunity to be an icon for the league for a long, long time. So this actually is, is what you asked for. That pressure is a privilege. I can run away from it or I can actually say this is part of it. Like this is just part of what I said yes to this middle part where I'm discouraged by difficulty should be no surprise. Like there should never be a moment where I'm surprised by difficulty of getting through life. In fact, I remember I maybe used this example before, but it struck me so powerfully. There was a docu series called the Human Planet a bunch of years ago. The Human Planet was a bunch of different kind of temperature climates around the globe. People who moved into these climates or lived in these climates and continued to survive. One was in the Arctic. And remember at one point it followed this father and his son as they were, had their sled dogs towing this kind of big ice house for days. They rode for days and finally got to the spot where they took out this big ice saw and cut out this massive block hole in the ice and started fishing. The ultimately they caught a gigantic whale shark. I thought it was a mess. How are you even going to get this out of the thing? They hooked up the dogs to the whale shark and pulled it out onto the ice and. And I Remember thinking like, this is incredible. As they, you know, butchered the, the whale shark and loaded it back up to bring back to their home. And they said, the narrator said this. And I remember thinking, wow, they can survive now. This is incredible. The narrator said something that struck me and has stuck with me. The narrator said, this 2000 pound whale shark will feed their dogs for the next two weeks. And I thought, oh my gosh, like all of that work, like that they're going to feed the whole family for the rest of the winter. Like, no, this will feed their dogs for the next two weeks. Why? Because this is difficult. And to have perseverance is to be able to persist through difficulty. And so the invitation is this, the invitation is to not be surprised by difficulty. Why? Because pressure is a. It's a privilege. So I can find myself discouraged by difficulty. This is a privilege. Or else I can find my. I find myself discouraged by delay. Right. I can find myself in this place where I think, like, you know what? I thought that I'd be somewhere else. I thought that I'd be further along than this. I thought that, you know, things would be better. I thought the outcome would be other than what it is right now. Like maybe you've been in this place where it's like, oh my gosh, here I am just grinding away and I work so hard and nothing's happened. Well, number one, that could be an invitation to pivot. Like I could say, okay, let me just reassess the situation. But secondly, the fact that we meet resistance does not mean that we're doing the wrong thing. I would say it like this. In fact, I would say that God invites us into and allows us to be trained in perseverance by allowing us to encounter resistance. God trains us in perseverance by allowing us to encounter resistance. Why? Because you and I are at this place where we are walking in faith. St. Paul says, remain faithful. If we don't encounter resistance, our faith will remain at that same level. Go with me on this. So if I'm trying to walk in faith and I have no resistance, then the faith I started with is going to be the exact same faith I ended with. But what God wants us to do, he wants to actually increase our faith. He wants to actually grow our faith. We know this is true. The faith that has not been tested is faith that cannot be trusted. That if my faith hasn't encountered resistance, then it'll remain the same size, it'll remain the same depth, it'll mean the same strength that it was in the beginning, and we know this about ourselves, that the faith that it's going to take to say, when the Son of Man comes, will there be faith on earth? Cannot be. The faith that I originally said yes to the Lord with. I have to encounter resistance in order for my faith to grow. I think that's one of the reasons why in the Gospel, Jesus talks about this. He talks about persistence in prayer. Not because the one who hears us is bad. No. In fact, it's the opposite. Jesus uses that example of a dishonest judge who the widow grinds down through her persistence. And he's like, yeah, yeah, but the Father in heaven, you don't even need. You don't need to grind him down. He's good, he loves you. He's just. But you may still need to pray with persistence. Why? Because it's only through encountering resistance that our faith can grow. It's only actually by saying, like, it seems like I'm discouraged by this delay. Good, keep persevering. I'm discouraged by a lack of outcome. Good, keep trying. Why? Because faith that has not been tested is faith that cannot be trusted. So what I need to do is I need to do this. I need to actually make a commitment. And this has been one of the things for all of us when it comes to prayer, when it comes to following after the Lord, I need to actually make a decision. When I mean decision. I mean, here is when I'm going to pray, here is what I'm going to do. Make a commitment and then experience the resistance in keeping that commitment. This is just how life works. I make a commitment. If I don't make a commitment, then it's like, I'll pray whenever. I'll kind of follow the Lord when I feel like it. So I don't make any real decisions, no real concrete commitments. And then there is no resistance. Because when I feel resistance, I just don't do it. When I feel like I want to do it, then I do it. That's what discipline is. Right? Discipline is doing what I want to do when I no longer want to do it. To be able to have that kind of discipline that in the face of resistance, I can still persevere, I can still remain faithful. I can still move ahead. That's the only way that our faith is going to grow. So commitment is necessary to be competent. Right. Because I make a commitment, then I persevere in the midst of resistance and I become competent. That's why St. Paul is saying to Timothy, this is training, so you can Be competent. Why? Because even when it seems like nothing else is changing, when we make a commitment, we remain persistent in the faith of resistance, we become competent. What's changing is us. And we develop a self reputation. We develop that self reputation that I know I can keep the promises I made to myself. We have that self reputation that even if no one else knows this, I can keep the promises that I make to God. I can only do that if I'm willing to make a commitment and to not be discouraged by delay, not be discouraged by a lack of outcome. So I don't get discouraged by difficulty, the pressures of privilege. I don't get discouraged by delay. Because why? Because faith that hasn't been tested is faith that can't be trusted. And third, I'm not going to get discouraged by defeat. This is one of the things I think sometimes. I don't know if we talked about this before, but I think sometimes when we say yes to the Lord, we start walking. We have that beginning, that big moment, that moment of consequence where it's like, yes, God, I'm going to do this. I sometimes think that we think that life is just going to be this like, upward climb in the sense of like victory after victory after victory. I'm just getting better and better and better. And sometimes it is that way, but most times it's not. Most times what our experience is, is victory not after victory, but victory after defeat. Right? We say, God, I'm going to race after you. And then we trip over our shoes and fall on our face. You know, it's often what happens to us. I mean, we read stories about saints or hear stories about saints, and it seems like it just keeps getting better and better. And that's because, praise the Lord, we wrote down the highlights of their lives and no one wrote down their confessions, what they had to bring to the Lord again and again in the sacrament of reconciliation. We just noted that. What we noted that they didn't quit. Too often we are discouraged by defeat. Too often we're discouraged by saying, okay, Father, I go back to confession. And it's just this control C. Ctrl V. Right. It's cut and paste confession. Every single time I go back to confession, it's the same old thing. And I'm tired of it. I'm sick of it. I'm discouraged by it. We cannot be. We cannot be discouraged by defeat. We have to actually, in the midst of defeat, say, what? It's time to go. Because what is real victory? Real victory is not never being knocked down. Real victory Ultimately is asking the Lord to help us back up every time. You know the movie Rocky, I don't know if you know this, because these people in this chapel don't know this, because they never saw the movie Rocky. But at the end of the movie, Rocky, I don't know if you know this, he doesn't win. At the end of the first Rocky, the other movies, he all wins. He went. It becomes a whole franchise, and he keeps winning. But the first Rocky movie, he doesn't win. In fact, I was listening to a man talk about this recently and reminding me of the fact that, yeah, he said this. He said. He described the scene. He said that big moment in Rocky, you know, he's training. He runs again, runs up the stairs. Rocky, Rocky, whatever. Before the big fight, before that moment of consequence, he goes into the ring, it's all empty, the whole stadium. He sees all the. Everything is like, wow, I can't do this. Apollo Crete is a better fighter. He goes back home to Adrian and he tells her that. He actually even tells her, I can't beat him. And this person talking about this describes it and said, you know, it's funny. Instead of saying, you know, you can do it, Rock. She says, so what are we going to do? She doesn't give him a pep talk. She says, so, what are you going to do? You can't beat him. What are you going to do? And what he decides is this. He says, I can't beat him, but what I can do is I can stand there while he beats me. And as often as he knocks me to the ground, I'm going to get back up. Not to give away the movie, but it came out in 1977. Guys, you should know this by now. The end of the movie, Apollo Creed wins, but Rocky considers it a victory. Why? Because every time he got knocked down, he got back up. You guys, this is. This was the best picture in 1977. Why? What was it a picture of? It was a picture of someone who shouldn't have been chosen, who shouldn't been in. Who shouldn't have been in that ring, who couldn't possibly win. But the goal wasn't to conquer. The goal is just to not be defeated. The goal was, every time I get knocked down, I'm going to get back up again. When St. Paul says to Timothy, remain faithful, he didn't say, hey, be perfect. He didn't say, life's going to be easy. He didn't say, you're going to get everything you want. He didn't say, you're going to win. He just said that there are these middle moments that are moments of consequence. And whether you show up for prayer, that matters. Whether you show up for your Bible study, that matters. Whether you show up for work, that matters. Whether you show up for class, whatever the commitment is that you made earlier for you to keep that commitment now, that's the moment of consequence. That's what it is to persevere. Not only that, that's what it is to win. To not be discouraged by difficulty or discouraged by delay or discouraged by defeat, but to keep going. This is the last thing. Back in the fourth century, St. Augustine wrote about this. Actually, he wrote about the gift of perseverance, the virtue of perseverance. And one thing St. Augustine noted is this. He noted that perseverance is actually a gift of grace. What that means is it's not just grit, right? It's not just white knuckling it. It's actually saying, God, this is difficult. I'm frustrated by the delay and I'm defeated. So, God, I need your help. Here's just a word of encouragement. If you're hearing these words, know this. Know that the Lord God has grace for you. The Lord God wants to help you. It's like Moses holding up his arms and getting tired and getting weary and needing to sit down and having these people, Aaron and Hur, next to him holding up his arms. Here's God who says, listen, that's me. When you're in the battle, when you're in that moment of consequence, when you're in the middle of the middle and you need to persevere, you're not doing it on your own. You're doing it with the grace that Jesus Christ won for us on the cross. The deal is this. We've already started. That start was a moment of significance. Truth is, we're not at the end. And that end will be a moment of significance. But right now we can answer the question that Jesus, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? And the answer is yes. Yes. Provided that we do not become discouraged by difficulty or discouraged by delay or discouraged by defeat, Jesus will find faith on the earth. Provided that in these middle moments of consequence, you and I remain faithful. You and I persevere, you and I persist with God's grace through difficulty.