← Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
11/17/24 Made for Worship: On the Field
00:37:18
Mark Your Calendars! Donate Today! Give to the Max Day: Thursday, November 21st, 2024 http://www.bulldogcatholic.org https://www.givemn.org/organization/Newman-Catholic-Campus-Ministries-At-Umd Day of Thanks Livestream Event: Thursday, November 21st, 2024 7PM CST http://www.youtube.com/ascensionpresents</p> Homily from the Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time. At Mass, you are not in the bleachers. You are on the field. You are in the game. We are kingdom priests. But do we know what we are saying? Do we know what we are praying?
Loading summary
Transcript2 lines
- [00:00]
A
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz. You know, years ago, back in 2007, we started this weekly homily podcast as an opportunity to extend the ministry that we do here at Bulldog Catholic at the University of Minnesota Duluth to our students who have graduated, or to our students who have over their summer break, or to our students over their Christmas break. And now here we are in 2024, extending our ministry to you, to the world, or whoever wants to listen. I am so grateful that you have listened to these homilies and I'm also so grateful to you for being an extension of our ministry. Maybe you've been blessed by these homilies. Maybe they've touched your life. Maybe they've offered you some kind of support, some kind of solace, some kind of direction in your life. Maybe they've helped you get closer to the Lord. And maybe you've shared these homilies with your children or family members or friends and they've grown closer to the Lord through this podcast. If this ministry has blessed you in any way, I would just ask you, I would invite you to consider being a part of blessing this ministry on Thursday, November 21st. Again, the date is Thursday, November 21st. There's an event here in Minnesota called Give to the Max Day. It's kind of the one day of the year that we ask people who have been blessed by our ministry to, I don't want to say return the favor, but to consider offering a financial donation to Bold Eye Catholic. Now, you might have heard we have some other exciting projects that are going to be happening in the next couple months and years. But your Give to the Max donation would be used for the day to day operations and the ongoing ministry of reaching out to evangelize college students on multiple college campuses here in Duluth, Minnesota. So if you're interested at all, you can follow the link in the description of this podcast. You can visit bulldogcatholic.org or you can visit givemn.org, that's Minnesota MN givemn.org and when you're there, you can just search for Newman Catholic Campus Ministries at umd. It would be an incredible blessing for us. Again, go to bulldogcatholic.org or to givemn.org, both websites have links to donate. It would be incredible. For the fourth year in a row, this is big news. For the fourth year in a row, we have someone who's generously willing to match your gift up to $250,000, which again gives us the chance to reach out to as many college students as we possibly can, and by extension to reach out to people across the country and around the world. Please join us. You're also invited to be part of a live streaming Q and A event with me on Thursday, November 21st at 7pm Central Standard Time. The event will be hosted on The Ascension Presents YouTube channel, which you can find at YouTube.com ascensionpresents you'll have the chance to meet our students, our staff. There'll also be an opportunity for Q and A with me. Maybe it's a question about the Bible, maybe it's a question about the Catechism, or maybe it's just a you question. But please join us on November 21st at 7pm@YouTube.com ascensionpresents Again, please thank you. Please receive our thanks and please keep us in your prayers and know that.
- [02:55]
B
We'Re praying for you. God bless the Lord be with you and with your spirit. A Reading from the Holy Gospel according to Mark Glory to you, Lord. Chapter 13, verses 24:32 Jesus said to his disciples in those days after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken, and then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky. Learn a lesson from the fig tree when its branch becomes tender and sprouts leaves, you know that summer is near. In the same way, when you see these things happening, know that he is near at the gates. Amen. I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but only the Father. The Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ I should have a seat. So there's a question and I just, I think about this a lot. Where, when it comes to, like, if you thought of your favorite, your favorite band or your favorite sports team or your favorite concert, whatever. The thing is, where would you, where would be the ideal place to watch that from? Like, if you absolutely were in love with this band, this singer, if you're in love with the sport, whatever the thing was, or just some kind of event, where would you, where would you most want to see it from? If you, like, had a ticket to the Super Bowl. Would you, like, want to watch the super bowl from home? If you had a ticket to Taylor Swift, would you want to watch that from home? Or would you rather be, like, at the stadium? Would you rather be in the auditorium? I think we'd say I'd rather be in the stands. And not just in the stands, not in the nosebleeds. You probably want to be close. Like, if you had the opportunity to. To not just be there in the auditorium, not just be there in the stadium, but actually be on the sidelines of a game, like, that would be kind of amazing. What if even further, like, if you loved. I think everyone has that dream, right? If you played a sport and you went to one of those professional games, at some point, they're like, hey, we need a picture. Like, hey, kid, get out of the stands. Like in, you know, that one TV show or that one movie. Or, like, that sense of, like, here's Taylor Swift, and she's singing her song, and she's like, anyone here know the lyrics? Want to sing with me? Like, call her up on stage. Kind of one of those situations where you're called out of the stands, you're called out of the. From the sideline onto the field. You're called onto the stage. I think that is, like, the dream for a lot of people, but it also could be the nightmare for some people, right? That. That sense of, like, a lot of people might. That might be their ex. Their exact fear, because they look at this and say, okay, so I can't do that. Whatever they're doing on the field or on the stage, like, I wouldn't know what to do. I would embarrass myself. I mean, in fact, I will typically, I regularly will have dreams where I'm cast in a play and I have no idea my lines. I have no idea where I'm supposed to, like, the blocking of the play. And so I'm just. It's a stress dream. I also have stress dreams over homilies where I just, like, I have nothing to give. It's one of the situations where, like, it would be amazing to be in a play. It'd be amazing to be on a stage. It'd be amazing to be on a. On the field of play. But not if you don't know what's going on, because then you have to hesitate. The reality, of course, is when it comes to Mass, if you're sitting in the pew, those aren't the bleachers. Like, keep this in mind. Like, everyone sitting here, everyone sitting in church, if you're in the pews, you're not in the bleachers, you're not in the stands. That's actually the pews are on the field. So like the sanctuary area is, is. It's a unique place where action happens, but where people are sitting in a church, it's called the nave. And it comes from the Latin word navis, which means ship or boat. And so you realize this, that every time you walk into a church and you take your seat, you're taking your seat on a working ship, like you're taking your seat on a working vessel. And so this thing is basically, if you're sitting in the pews, you are not in the stands, you're on the field, you're not watching someone else pray, you're here to pray, you're not watching someone else worship, you're here to worship. But oftentimes again, what happens is we don't know what the point of the whole thing is. We think maybe the point of Mass is education. And so if the priest isn't very educated, educatable educating, it's like a failed Mass. Or we think sometimes the point of Mass is to be entertained. But if there's not enough jokes or if the music is bad and then we're not entertained, or we think the goal is to be inspired and that if that's not there, then it's a failed Mass. Neither of those things to be educated, entertained, inspired, none of those are the goal of the Mass. What's the goal of the Mass? The goal of the Mass is to worship. The goal of the Mass is to offer the sacrifice. And so that's why we've been for. This is the fifth week of this six part series of Made for Worship. Because we realize this, we realize that the heart of religion is worship and the heart of worship is sacrifice. We realize that you can know the worth of a thing by what someone is willing to sacrifice for that thing. That we come to Mass and it's not about what we get. You come to Mass and it is 100% about what we can give. And then when we come to Mass, we give God our best. And the best thing we have is the sacrifice of the Son to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit. And that sacrifice does two things right. It glorifies the Father and it saves the world. And lastly, we talked about the fact that if you've been baptized, you are a kingdom priest, which means you're not only never meant to watch someone else pray, you're made for worship. But if you're a kingdom priest, you're also a kingdom sacrifice. So these are all of the things that we've been talking about. And I wonder how many of us like really interiorize this. I wonder how many of us, when we go to Mass, that's what we're thinking. So this last summer I was filling in one of those country, in the lake country parishes in Minnesota. We have a lot of places that are vacation area. And so this was one of those parishes where it was packed in the summertime because people going up to the lake, they're going up to their cabins. And it was early. It was like an 8am Mass on Sunday morning. And it was. I just, I was in the parking lot as all these people, individual people, couples, families were walking into church. And I was like, this is awesome. This is great because I'm really glad that they all on vacation still showed up and were going to Mass. But there was this thought in the back of my mind as I watched everyone walk into mass and I thought, I wonder if they're just here because they're like, hey, I made it. Like in the sense of it, you know, it is truly right and just our duty and our salvation. Look, I'm doing my duty. Like, I'm here to show up. I'm here to go to Mass. I'm here to watch the priest pray. So I'm going to take my spot and sit down and watch him pray. I'm going to kind of sort of pray. I was kept wondering how many of these people, as they're walking across this parking lot, walking into the church building to take their seat in the pew right in the nave in that. In the ship? How many of them know what they're doing? How many of them realize I'm here to offer the sacrifice? How many of them realize that they're Kingdom priests who are meant to unite their prayers with the ministerial priest who's uniting his prayers with Jesus, the great high priest. How many of us really know how to pray the Mass? So here's the question. How do we pray the Mass? We. Well, one couple things we talked about in the past. Get prepared. Like, you can pray through the readings. You can like go to confession. All those things are really, really helpful. But I think one thing that would be really helpful to how to pray the Mass is to actually go through the Eucharistic prayer. So there's basically, there's four Eucharistic prayers. The one I typically choose on a Sunday is Eucharistic prayer number three. So in the notes below, there actually is Eucharistic prayer number three. So because we're going to walk through this, and people here, they have their magnificato, the word among us, whatever it is. So can actually walk through the Eucharistic prayer with us. Now, a couple things. Again, there's four essential versions of the Eucharistic Prayer. 1, 2, 3, and 4. We do number three here today. Another thing is if you pull up that the. The notes where it has actually the. Here. These are the prayers of the ministerial priest. Keep this in mind. These are the prayers of the ministerial priest. Even if you have them in your hand, even if you have them in front of you, they're the ones. These are the words that he says. You might see them. You can pray them in the silence of your hearts. It's one of the situations where, if we go back to the sports analogy, if you're on a football field, there's one person who calls the plays, one person who more or less throws the football. Everyone's playing on the field. Well, people have different roles. So when it comes to saying these prayers out loud, that is the role of the ministerial priest, to be able to pray along with them in your mind, in your heart, that is ideal. But just. Okay, there we go. First thing. Now, before we even look at the words, the first question we have to ask and answer is, who are we principally talking to in the Mass? And typically, people say, well, God, yes, you're absolutely right. But like who? Like, there's three persons in the Holy Trinity. Who is the one we're talking to the most? And the answer is the Father. Almost all of the prayers in the Mass are directed to God the Father. Now, there are roughly about six times or so when we're talking, we're speaking directly to Jesus. And so that's like with the kyria we said at the beginning of Mass, lord, have mercy. Christ have mercy. Right? That's talking to Jesus. In the Gloria, we talk to Jesus and praise the Lord Jesus. At the end of the Gospel, you said, I said the Gospel of the Lord. You said, praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. So in that moment, you were talking to Jesus. In a moment at the Mass, we'll say the mystery of faith. And you say something along the lines of, we proclaim your death, O Lord, and proclaim your resurrection. So talking to Jesus there, at one point, right at the end of the Our Father, the priest will pray to the Father and then he'll speak directly to Jesus. Well, where he says, Your peace, Lord Jesus, you said to your disciples, my peace I leave you. My peace I give you. He's talking to Jesus, so he should be looking at the altar, because that's Jesus on the altar in the Eucharist. And then lastly, there is a moment where the priest elevates the host and says, behold the Lamb of God. And we say, lord, I'm not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the word, my soul shall be healed. Those are the six times when in the Mass, we're talking directly to Jesus. Every other prayer, we're talking to the Father. Now, that might not mean anything to you, but I'll tell you this. When I realized that, it changed so much about how I prayed the Mass. And so when you're hearing this, realizing who you're talking to, we are speaking to the Father, because again, all of this is a representation of the one sacrifice, once for all of the Son to the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit. Okay, we got that. In the past weeks, we've talked about some of the different lines, especially when the priest says. You all stand up. And the priest says, pray, my brothers and sisters. Then my sacrifice and yours may be acceptable to God. And you respond about the two things that Nas does. And then it is right and just our duty, our salvation. After that, we have this prayer called the holy, holy, holy, or the Sanctus. Now, the thing that's, I think, so important about this is if we realize where this comes from. There's places in the Old Testament where it talks about the holy, holy, holy. But there's this incredible moment in the New Testament in the book of Revelation. We're from Revelation Today, Revelation, chapter four, where here's John, the beloved, right? St. John the apostle, and he's brought into heaven, and he sees what heavenly worship looks like. There's. There's a throne. There's an altar, essentially. And there's a lamb that was slain but lives forever. That's Jesus. And it says this. It says, this is Revelation, chapter four. John sees this. He says, and the four living creatures, each of them with six wings, are full of eyes, round and within, and day and night, they never cease to say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who is and was and is to come. And then it goes on to say, and whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is seated on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the 24 elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying, worthy are you, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you've created all things by your will. They existed and were created. Now think. Think about this. We say that holy, holy, holy. In heaven, they say, holy, holy, holy. 24 elders. What do they do? They fall on their knees and they throw their crowns off. That's exactly what we do at the end of the Sanctus. At the end of the holy, holy, holy, we fall to our knees. And I love this image of casting off the crowns. What's the casting. What. What is it? To take off your crowns? That's. That's all the stuff that we say. These are my accomplishments, God. These are all the reasons why you should love me, God. These are all the reasons why I should be important. These are all the reasons why you should listen to me. We take those off, and we just are here to worship. So we have that holy, holy, holy. Then we fall to our knees. That's us as the 24 elders, taking off our crowns, saying, God, I get to worship you because you love me, not because I've proven anything to you. And then what happens? Then this is where you can follow along in the Eucharist of prayer number three, where it says, the priest talks to the Lord. And this is basically, he's setting the context. He says, you are indeed holy, O Lord, and all you've created rightly gives you praise for through your son, our Lord Jesus Christ. By the power and working of the Holy Spirit, you give life to all things and make them holy. So it's like, God, you are holy and you give life to everything because you want to make it holy. And that's why we're here. It goes on to say, and you never cease to gather a people to yourself so that from the rising of the sun to its setting, a pure sacrifice may be offered to your n. To your name. In that moment, we're saying, yeah, God, you brought us here. And at any given moment around the world, this mass is being celebrated. You've gathered people from all over the world. Why? So that we can offer sacrifice. And then the priest does this. He puts his hands over the gifts. It's a technical term. It's from Greek. It's called the epiclesis. Right. So he calls on the Holy Spirit upon these gifts. May your Holy Spirit come down upon these gifts to make them holy, to make them the. The body and blood of Christ. Now, this is incredible because he calls on the Holy Spirit upon the bread and wine but remember, in the offertory, you put yourself on the altar, right? You put your hopes and your dreams and your fears, your joys, your sorrows. You put the people you love, you put them on the altar. So when the priest is asking the Holy Spirit to come down upon the altar, it's not just the bread and wine, it's everything you laid there. Because why? Because when the Holy Spirit comes out upon the gifts, the something happens. It goes all the way back to the book of Exodus, right? The book of Exodus is the dew falls on the desert. That dew falls down and becomes what becomes bread from heaven, becomes manna. So the priest is praying that let this Holy Spirit come down here, come down upon this altar to make this ordinary bread and ordinary wine into something extraordinary. The body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus. But also when he prays that epiclesis, he's also reminiscent of. Remember when they traveled in the wilderness, when they established the temple that over the temple to mark the presence of God was a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. We're praying, God, like the Holy Spirit, come down upon these gifts, but even more powerfully. And this just blows my mind every time I think about it. In Luke's Gospel, Gabriel appears to Mary and he says, here's God's plan. You'll be the mother of the Messiah. Mary says, how can this happen? How will this be accomplished? I've known. I do not have relations with a man. And angel Gabriel answered her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. So as the Holy Spirit came upon the womb of Mary and conceived in her the Word made flesh, here's the priest praying in that moment. This is what we can think of. This is the Holy Spirit in the same way, coming down upon these gifts and turning ordinary bread into flesh, ordinary wine into blood. That's what happens now, that's what happens next, right? Because next thing, if you're following along, is the Passover narrative, right? These are the words of consecration where the priest says, takes bread and says, this is my body, takes wine, says, this is my blood. Obviously, this is huge. Like, again, this is the moment of the incarnation. This is the moment of the presentation. Remember we talked about this a couple weeks ago, that in ancient worship, in the first century on Passover, you would bring that lamb around your neck to that chest high wall, you'd lay that lamb, present that lamb to be Sacrificed first, they would kill it and then. But that wouldn't be the moment of sacrifice, yet that would be the moment of your presenting the Lamb of God. This, in this moment where the priest elevates the host, elevates the chalice, this is the presentation of the sacrifice. This is the chest high wall. And we're getting closer and closer to the Lamb of God who takes away the sins in the world. Now this is again, so important to realize in that moment. This is truly Jesus. In that moment. It ceases to be bread, it ceases to be wine. And actually, what I find fascinating is there are a number of Protestant pastors who have, who have come to acknowledge this. They've come to acknowledge the truth, that what Catholics have been teaching for 2,000 years is the truth. In fact, there's two men. One is Francis Chan. You might have heard about him. Francis Chan is a Protestant pastor who was reading John Chapter six recently, and he came to the conclusion that when Jesus said, this is my body, he meant, this is my body. Another one is an interesting guy. His name is Benny Hinn. I don't know much about Benny Hinn. I know he's Pentecostal. I know he has a lot of healing, a healing ministry. But I recently came across a video of him giving a talk at I think a healing session or his Pentecostal church. And he said this. These are his words, not Catholic. He said they just released a study that more people are healed in a Catholic church than in a Pentecostal church. And people must have been groaning because he said, no, no, no, it's a fact. It's an absolute fact. These are his words. He said the studies have proven it because Catholic people revere the Eucharist. He goes on to say, more people get healed in a Catholic church during Communion than Pentecostals because to us it's symbolic. But Jesus didn't say, this is symbolic of my body. He said, this is my body. Now, I want Benny Hind and Francis Chan to become Catholic because they realize this is the reality, that every Catholic Mass, it is no longer bread, no longer wine, it is actually Jesus. Now the reality, of course, is you need a validly ordained priest, ministerial priest in order to have the consecration. Like any person could just get up behind an altar and say those words and it wouldn't do anything. You need an actual validly ordained Catholic priest to be able to say those words. Why? Because we believe that the church is one holy, catholic and apostolic, and that Jesus, at the Last Supper, he gave his apostles the Ability to do this. And they laid hands on the people who came after them, gave them the ability to do this, Them, them, them. All the way down to my ordaining bishop, Archbishop Dennis Schnur in Cincinnati. But he, he has a. He's part of an unbroken succession going all the way back to Jesus, which is the only reason why the ministerial priest has this authority. I know sometimes we talk about the priesthood people and, and people are like, yeah, but I know a lot of unholy priests. You need the ministerial priesthood. Okay, fine, But I just. I don't like it. I know people even who. They'll stay away from Mass because of the priest. Even worse, we all know about the scandals when it comes to priests. I was reading about an article by a man named Trent Horn. Trent Horn is this incredible teacher, incredible evangelist. And Trent Horn described an encounter he had with a woman who. She was torn up about the abuse scandal of priests in the Catholic Church. And she said. She said, well, if they're really men of God in Christ's Church, then how could they possibly do that? That's a great question, because that is the question, like, how could this be possible if someone is really a man of God, how could you do this in Christ's Church? His response, he said, let me ask you, does the devil hate Christ's church? She said, absolutely. And he said, then of all the members of the church, who is he going to attack the most? And he said. She thought for a moment and then she said, but the priests. And that actually echoes what St. John Vianney had said. St. John Vianney, years ago, he's a patron saint of priests. He said, when people want to destroy religion, they begin by attacking the priest. For where there is no priest, there is no sacrifice. And where there is no sacrifice, there is no religion. So here's what we need to do. We know that we every. Every human priest, not Jesus, the great high priest, he's the one who's sinless. All of us are massively, massively sinful. We're sinners. Pray for your priest. We need priests, ministerial priests who offer the sacrifice or else our kingdom priesthood would be wasted. So pray for your priests. After that, the priest, ministerial priest, says, the mystery of faith. And this is another one of those times where we actually get to speak to Jesus and we say, we proclaim your death, oh Lord, and profess your resurrection until you come again. Now, I think this is fascinating because years ago I was on, had. We had mass on campus, and this man kind of stumbled into Mass, he was walking around campus with his Bible, which is great. And he's, I heard you guys praying. So I came in and at the end he said, can I have some questions? Can I ask you some questions? Sure. He had a bunch of questions. One of them he said, was here just sermon. It was pretty good. But I wonder, when do you actually proclaim the gospel? Because I heard. I remember the sermon. Even I remember the homily. At the time, it was on the virtue of courage. And I was like, really happy with it. I was like, oh, we talked about courage and fortitude and all these things. He's like, but when do you actually proclaim the gospel? You know, the reality that Jesus died for our sins and set us free. Now we have new life in Jesus. For Catholics, we realize that at Mass, we do not merely preach the gospel at the Mass, we represent the gospel. What I mean by that is we don't simply preach the message of the gospel. We actually participate in the action of the gospel. That what we're doing here is the work of our salvation. And so when we say, we proclaim your death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection until you come again, we're professing the gospel. We're also representing the very work of our salvation. It goes on to pray. He says, therefore, O Lord, as we celebrate the memorial of the saving passion of our Son, of your Son, his wondrous resurrection and ascension to heaven, and we look forward to his second coming. You know, I've been emphasizing this whole series, that moment on the cross where Jesus pours out himself and says, into your hands, Father, I commend my spirit. That's the moment of salvation. That is the moment of salvation. And yet it's part of a whole movement of salvation, meaning that it's the entire life, suffering, death, resurrection and ascension into heaven of Jesus that saves us. So it's one part on that cross that's part of the whole. And at the Mass, we proclaim that. That, yes, your death, your resurrection and your ascension. Now going on, this blows my mind. We pray, we continue to pray and we say, we offer you, Father. Remember talking to the Father, we offer you in thanksgiving, this holy and living sacrifice. What is the holy and living sacrifice? Thanksgiving. So back in the Old Testament, there were a bunch of different kinds of sacrifices, a bunch of different kinds of offerings. There's the tribute offering, the burnt offering. There's the purification offering. There's the sin offering. There's the peace offering. There's the thank offering, there's the vow Offering. There's the free will offering. You know, the rabbis said at the time of Jesus, they said that in the age of the Messiah, all these different kinds of sacrifices, all these different kinds of offerings, they said in the age of the Messiah, all sacrifices, all offerings will cease, except for one one called the Todah sacrifice. That's in Hebrew. In Greek, they call it the Eucharistia sacrifice. In English, we call it Thanksgiving. That basically, the rabbis prophesied that in the age of the Messiah, the only sacrifice we'd have left is the Eucharist. The only sacrifice we would have left is the sacrifice of thanksgiving. So we pray that we offer you in thanksgiving this holy and living sacrifice. And I love this next part. It says, look upon. Look, we pray, upon the oblation of your church and recognizing the sacrificial victim by whose death you willed to reconcile us to yourself, we ask the Father God here on this altar, God our Father, recognize this is the sacrifice of your son. This is him. This is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. We're begging the Father to see this. And then we pray this. We say, now make us an eternal offering to you, Father. See the sacrifice on the altar. Your son, whom you love, now make of us an eternal offering to you. Remember last week we talked about being a kingdom priest. If you're going to be a kingdom priest, you have to be willing to be a kingdom sacrifice. God recognize first, please recognize your son and make us like him. Make us a sacrifice, make us an oblation, and then go on to say and grant that we who are nourished with the body and blood of your son and filled with his Holy Spirit may become one body, one Spirit in Christ so that we may obtain an inheritance with your elect. I don't know if you realize, ever realize this, that whenever we pray that we're praying for ourselves so that we may obtain an inheritance with your elect, with the blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, with blessed Joseph, her spouse, all the angels, et cetera, all the saints, we're actually asking God in that moment to help us in that moment. We are praying for ourselves. We're saying, father, at the end of my life, please let me hang on at the end of my life, hang on to me. At every single Mass you are praying to the Father, begging him that you can go to heaven. You know, it's one of those things we realized. If you've ever read the Bible, you know that there are so many people in the Bible who they start out really, really well, and they end really, really poorly. We know so many people in life, right? They can start out really, really well, and at the end, they end really, really poorly. In the Mass, in that moment, we're praying for ourselves. We're saying, okay, God, please, Father in Heaven, help us with this grace called the grace of final perseverance, so that we can actually enter into our heavenly inheritance. This is the inheritance that you and I have. At every Mass, we're begging God, please help me, even if I didn't start well, help me to end well. At every Mass we're praying this. They go on to say, may this sacrifice of our reconciliation we pray, O Lord, advance the peace and salvation of all the world. Remember, we pray for ourselves and we're praying for all of the world. The two things that the Mass accomplishes every time the Father is glorified and the world is saved, we're praying for those things. In fact, Saint Padre Pio once said this. He said it would be easier for the world to survive without the Son than to do without the Holy Mass. We're praying for the whole world because the whole world is transformed and changed when we offer up the sacrifice. So we pray ourselves, we pray for the whole world, and then we say, be pleased to confirm in faith and charity your holy pilgrim church on earth. We pray for the Pope and the bishops. We pray for every person who ever has said yes to Jesus. Last, get into the last ones. Then we say, listen graciously to the prayers of this family whom you have summoned before you in your compassion, O merciful Father, gather to yourself all your children scattered throughout the world. You know, we have students come here, we have students leave. You may be part of a family where they're close by, and sometimes you're part of a family where we are really far from each other. One of the things that I remember hearing 20 years ago when I got to campus from a friend who would travel a lot, and we wouldn't see each other for weeks, for months. But we both know we were going to Mass. We would say this. We'd say, I'll see you in the Eucharist. Because that's what we're praying. It's like in this moment, gather to yourself all your children scattered throughout the world. So even if you're far from your friends, far from your family, far from the people you love, to be able to say, I see you in the Eucharist. This has become a common thing, a common way to say goodbye. I'll see you in the Eucharist. And lastly, we pray to our departed brothers and sisters and to all who are pleasing to you at their passing from this life, give kind admittance to your kingdom. So we prayed for ourselves. We prayed for the world. We prayed for the Church, for our brothers and sisters who are scattered throughout the world. And lastly, we pray for all those who have died. Now, this is the doctrine of Purgatory. And at some point, we sometimes lose people when it comes to purgatory. But Purgatory is a deeply, deeply Christian, not merely Catholic belief that from the very beginning, Christians understood from Scripture and from tradition, understood that those who die in friendship with Jesus, right, those who die in friendship with God, but need their hearts to be purified, need that purification that's called purgatory. That's the process of purification. So not only did Christians from the very, very beginning believe in the existence of Purgatory, but Christians from the very beginning believed in the power of the Mass to help people through Purgatory. One of our favorite saints, St. Augustine, he has a book called Confessions. Writing in the fourth century, he talked about when his mother Monica, who had prayed for his conversion massively and shed many tears for his conversion when she was dying, it was breaking his heart. But there's a moment there where I'll read it to you, Augustine said. We were overwhelmed with grief, but she held her gaze steadily upon us and spoke further. She said, here you shall bury your mother. I remained silent as I held back my tears. However, my brother haltingly expressed his hope that she might not die in a strange country, but but in her own land, since her end would be happier there. When she heard this, her face was filled with anxiety and she reproached him with a glance because he had entertained such earthly thoughts. Then she looked at me and she said, look what he's saying. Thereupon she said to both of us, bury my body wherever you will. Let not care of it cause you any concern. Only one thing I ask you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord, wherever you may be. Once our mother had expressed this desire as best she could, she fell silent as the pain of her illness increased and then she ultimately died. One thing I ask you, remember me at the altar of the Lord. Basically, one thing I ask is that you say Mass for me. I have shared this so many times that my mom would say when she was alive, she would say that she put in her will that I have to say X number of masses for her because she thought I wouldn't actually want to say Mass. Like, mom, we actually put this in this quote from St. Monica on her funeral card. It was that sense of like, yeah, bury my body wherever you will. I only ask that you remember me at the altar of the Lord. Why? Because the mass is the most powerful prayer we have. And the mass actually does something. The mass is efficacious, right? It does something. Years ago, I remember talking with an exorcist. The exorcist was telling a story about this convent that they had this. Well, it wasn't a demon, they made it very clear, but it was a ghost, essentially, in a convention. And he told the story about how they have a sewing room in this convent, and there are only two keys because they called this exorcist to the convent to get rid of whatever this thing was, whatever the supernatural event. And what happened is they'd tidy up everything in the sewing room, and then they'd shut the door, they'd lock the door, they opened it again, and everything would be off the shelves and in the middle of the room. And so at one point, he was like, okay, how many keys? He's like, the only two keys. And who has the keys? Like, me and Mother Superior. And he's like, okay, either of you getting in the liquor cabinet? Like, what's going on here? Like, no, we don't do that. And there's no liquor cabinet in the convent. And it's something beyond us. It's not natural. And he says, well, how long has this been happening? The nun told him. She said that there's one nun there who was in her 90s, and this had been going on even from. Even before she was a novice. So, like, over 70, however many years. And he said, why are you calling me now? It's been going on for 100 years or however long. And they said, well, because it's ramped up recently, and we don't know what to do. And he said, why is it ramped up? And turned out that that wing of the convent was about to be demolished. And so the priest, the exorcist, kind of discerned that this would be the soul of someone who. Who is asking the nuns for prayers for their soul. So then what did he do? There was a neighboring monastery. And he said, okay, contact the neighboring monastery and ask them to offer Mass here in the sewing room for the next 30 days, every day for the next 30 days, put the monastery in charge. The next day, he gets a call from the convent and said, yeah, the monk came over. He's offered Mass, and then he Ran away. He said he wants. He's not going back. So he talked to the monk and said, what happened? He said, well, during the Lord's Prayer, right? During the Our Father, when they prayed the prayer, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Both candles on the altar just immediately extinguished. There's no breeze. There's no draft. There's no nothing. They just went out. And he's like, I'm not going back. The exorcist priest is like, okay, can we have a more courageous monk come over and say Mass? So for the next 29 days, another courageous monk came over and said Mass amid every single Mass for the next 28 days. At that part of Mass, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. The candles on the altar extinguished themselves. Until the 30th day, the last day the Mass was offered for the soul. The candles remained lit. They took that as an indication, as a sign that this is someone who is no longer in Purgatory but is now in heaven. And that's the incredible thing. This is the last thing, the most amazing thing. Do you realize this? There are people in Purgatory right now who will no longer be in Purgatory by the end of this Mass. There are people in Purgatory right now who've been. God's been purifying them with their hearts, with his grace, who will be in Heaven by the end of this Mass. Not even by the end of this Mass, but by the moment when we offer up the sacrifice of the Son, the Father, power, Holy Spirit was saved through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, Almighty Father, forever and ever. That moment is the moment where someone who literally at this moment is in Purgatory will see the Lord face to face for the first time in their entire lives. And from a moment that's going to happen in just a moment, there will never be another moment when they will not see the Lord face to face. See, this is the. This is the prayer. This is the power. This is the reality of when we pray the Mass. We're on the field. You are on the field. You are in the game. And the invitation, of course, is that this gets to be the place where we don't simply watch, but this is the place where we offer our Lord, where we offer ourselves, where we offer everything to the Father in sacrifice. You are on the field. You are in the game. You are made for worship. And this worship has the power to change the world.