Transcript
A (0:02)
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 Matthew.
A (0:37)
Chapter 3, verses 1 through 12 John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea and repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said, a voice of one crying out in the desert, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight his paths. John wore clothing made of camel's hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. At that time, Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region around the Jordan were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan river as they acknowledged their sins. When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, you brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the coming wrath, produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, we have Abraham as our father. For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the axe lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I am baptizing you with water for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn. But the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. Might you have a seat?
A (2:13)
So last week we started this new series, the series through Advent called Waiting well. And the reality is we call it Waiting well because we don't know how to wait. Well, here is a season of Advent, season of preparation, obviously, but it's also a season of waiting. I mean, just think of how, how how much we dislike the season of waiting, because right now, probably you know, December 7th, we are probably already in a place of having gone to maybe already one or two Christmas parties that we. Full disclosure, we had a Christmas party last night for our alumni. On Friday, we had a Christmas party for all of our students. And. Yeah. Why? Well, we wanted to get in before the end of the semester. All those things. We have excuses, but do you. No, we all have excuses. And the excuse is we don't like waiting. We want it to be here. In fact, there is actually a whole science on waiting, on the study of waiting. In fact, David Meister is a man who. He wrote a whole dissertation on the psychology of waiting lines. We talked last week about how much of our lives are spent waiting lines. And he said this. He said he found out this. He found out that there are four kinds of waiting we really, really dislike. He says when we have to wait in lines, particularly that we have unoccupied time, we have uncertain wait times, we have unexplained weights, and when we have unfair weights, right? So he talks about this. He says that occupied time feels shorter than unoccupied time. So people hate waiting in lines without doing anything, right? So that's number one. Number two, he said uncertain weights feel longer than known weights that we don't like. The unpredictability, like, when is the next thing coming? We don't know. Unexplained weights feel longer than explained weights. I want to know why. I want to know the reason why I have to wait here. And lastly, he said unfair weights feel longer than fair weights. That perceived injustice makes it worse. And it comes down to this. It comes down to a lot of us when we have to wait. The hardest part, waiting is I want to know why or I want to know when. I want to know why this is happening. I want to know when it's going to end. And so there actually are some clever ways that people have kind of worked around this. So Disney, in fact, imagine a place that everyone goes to have fun, and then you show up and you wait. Disney, when it comes to those theme parks they have introduced in the course of waiting, interactive Easter eggs that if you're waiting in line, you can find little spots. You play little games as you're walking in line or as you're standing there in line to be able to engage the guests, another thing that you can do is you can start services before the actual wait ends. So I don't know if you've ever gone to a restaurant and you're in the waiting area waiting to be seated Sometimes the host or hostess will give you a menu and say, hey, just take a look at our menu. Or maybe, hey, go up to the bar and order some drinks. Now all you're doing is waiting right there. But they've given you something to do, and so it feels like you're actually accomplishing something. Or actually, I happen to have gone to the hospital relatively recently, and one of the things they do is you. You go in, your appointment isn't ready yet, or the doctor's not ready yet. The PA is not ready yet. So what they do is they give you some information to fill out so you feel like you're already making progress, so it gives you something. It's not idle waiting. It's not unoccupied time. One thing I think is really helpful is that people will use transparency and updates so that waiting feels like it's happening faster. One way to say it is that if you have accurate wait times displayed, I mean, you've seen this on the highway. Whereas it takes 15 minutes to get to 494 from here. Like, okay, that's good. Now I know that's how long it's going to take. If you've ever ordered Domino's Pizza, they are genius in the sense of they have their Domino's Pizza tracker where it's like, okay, hey, you put your order in, you made the phone call, and you can find. It's in the oven right now. It's out. Oh, my gosh, it's out of the oven already. It's on its way. Joe is bringing it to your house. Like, that pizza tracker makes waiting seem more tolerable. Why? Because what makes waiting feel intolerable is when I don't know why it's happening, and I don't know when it's going to end.