← Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
12/8/24 Face to Face: Incomplete
00:25:06
Want to walk through Advent with Fr. Mike? Join us for daily video Advent reflections in the Ascension App: https://ascensionpress.com/pages/frmikeadvent Homily from the Second Sunday of Advent. God will bring the work He has begun to completion. We can do so many things in the Christian life that are important. But if we miss the most important aspect of following Christ, our lives will be incomplete. We are called to love...and yet we do not have it in us to be able to love the way we need to. Thankfully, God meets us in our need and our lack and supplies us with all we need.
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Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and I'd like to invite you to join me this upcoming advent on the Ascension app. Here's a question. What if you knew that December 25th, Christmas Day was the day that you were going to wake up dead? I know that sounds morbid, but there's a reality of our life would have to change, right? The way we would live Advent would have to change. We'd have to live it with intentionality. We have to live it with purpose. We have to live it with grace. If you want to join me every day of this upcoming advent from December 1st to December 25th, download the Ascension app and join the waitlist. Or you could go to ascensionpress.com fathermikeadvent to join. Download the Ascension app today. The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke Glory to you, O Lord. Chapter three, verses one through six in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when Pontius Pilate was the governor of Judea and Herod was tetrarch of Galilee and his brother Philip, tetrarch of the region of Eturia and Trachonitis and Lysanias was tetrarch of Abilene. During the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John the son of Zechariah in the desert. John went throughout the whole region of the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. As it is written in the book of the prophet Isaiah, A voice of one crying out in the desert, prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight his paths. Every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill shall be made low. The winding roads shall be made straight and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh will see the salvation of God. The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. May you to have a seat. So this is the second Sunday of Advent, but it's also the last Sunday before finals week for our students here on campus, which is just as is. You know, time passes. It's one of those situations where there's so much to do and this is the end of a long semester for a lot of our students. And it's one of those things where I don't know if you've ever been to this place where you're getting to, whether it's at work, school, life, where you have all the things you have to do and so you're doing all the things. I'm thinking about our students, right, who they've done all the Work. They've written all the papers, or they're going to finish them this week at some point, taken all the tests. They've shown up for classes, They've done all the group projects. They've done all of those things. And again, in our lives, at any stage of our life, we have those kinds of things, those things that we have to do. And then sometimes we're doing all the things except for, like, the one thing. So, like, we, again, think about going back to school. What happens if you write all the papers except for one, or you take all the tests except for one, or you have, like, all the attendance and all the things, but there's something missing there. All the projects, something's missing there. What happens a lot of times is you don't get a grade. Like, you know, A through F grades. You don't get, like, okay, I got a B. I got a C. You get a different letter because you did everything except for something critical, like some critical aspect of the class, some critical aspect of the thing you need to do, of your job. You get an I, right? You get an incomplete, which I think it's. I don't know. I don't know if that's worse than an F or a D, but sometimes. Sometimes it is, because it's like, no, I put in all of this work, except there was one thing that I didn't do. There was some critical thing that was necessary that didn't get done. And you get the. Again, the dreaded incomplete. That thing that says, okay, yeah, you might have done a lot of work, but you're not done. And there's something so unsatisfying about doing so much of the work, but in the end, it's incomplete. I was thinking about this in terms of. I'm sure you are familiar with the greatest novel in English of all time, at least of the last hundred years called Lord of the Rings, right? This trilogy of books. And in the story by J.R.R. tolkien, who was Catholic, who wrote all these deep religious and Catholic things into his book, you know, one of the heroes of the story is a hobbit named Frodo. Again, I apologize if you know the story better than I do, but here's Frodo. He's a hero, hero of the story. And I loved. When I was a kid, my older brother and I, we watched, like, the cartoon animated version of Lord of the Rings, and we. I think we really liked it a lot. And I loved Frodo until the end, because. Why? Because Frodo is the one who Bears the ring, right? He's the one who. He's the Christ figure in this story who's gonna. The ring is a symbol of sin in the world. It's a symbol of corruption in the world. And so Frodo is carrying that ring, he's carrying that symbol of corruption to the fires of Mount Doom. The whole idea is everyone who comes into contact with this ring gets corrupted. But here's Frodo who the whole time he remains. I mean, he battles with it, but he remains faithful to this task. And he's not corrupted by the ring. And he's going to do the task. I mean, he does everything right. He goes thousand, I don't know how many miles. He travels a long, long way through the whole region of Middle Earth. He faces the giant spider, Shelob. He faces all these other orcs, he faces all these other dangers. He does all the things. And then what happens is. I'm spoiling the story. What happens is he gets to that place. He gets to the place of the fires of Mount Doom and he has the opportunity, the ring is in his hand and he has one more thing to do. He all he has to do is just let go of the ring and let it be destroyed by the fires of this mountain. And he doesn't. And it was so unsatisfying. I remember thinking, like, wait a second, he's the hero. Like, he's the guy who's supposed to do that. You have one job to do and he didn't do it. Yeah, he did a bunch of other things. But when it came down to the one thing that was most important, the whole reason he was doing everything else, he didn't do it. It was incomplete and it was a catastrophe. I mean, that's really what it is, is after all of this stuff, to have an incomplete is a catastrophe. Last week we started this series in Advent, this series that we know what Advent is. The Advent is the arrival, right? The arrival, the coming of Jesus. And so it's a time to prepare ourselves. It's to prepare ourselves to celebrate Christmas that Jesus came once into this world. It's time to prepare, to recognize how he comes into our lives now in prayer and in scripture and the sacraments in daily life. Most of all, it is a time to prepare, to be able to stand before the Lord face to face at the end of our lives. And so what we started saying Last Sunday on December 1st was, if you knew that December 25th was the day you were going to die, how would you want to live? How would you need to live the next 25 days in order to be able to stand before the Lord face to face the moment of your death, the moment you take your last breath? And so we had this last week, this whole last week of being able to reflect on this and reflect on how we need to step up from behind the shame. Because we need. In order to see the Lord face to face, we have to be willing to hand him our shame. And this week, what is it we need to do? What is it that we need to do so that on December 25th we would be ready to stand before the Lord face to face? I think it's so. I think it's really important. I think that it's important for us to realize that we could do a bunch of stuff over the course of the next whole 25 days here and still miss a critical piece. We could still do all the other work and do all the things we needed to do and still realize that this is incomplete because I didn't do the one thing I needed to do. So the question is, what was the one thing? What's the one thing we need to absolutely need to do? And I see it in St. Paul's letter to the Philippians today. So St. Paul's letter to the Philippians, he precisely says, I pray that you would be able to, that you would increase in love more and more, that you abound in love more and more, and that you'd be able to discern what matters the most so that that piece, that critical peace, you won't miss. So we have to ask the question, what matters the most? Like what when it comes to Christian, the Christian life, what is the most important thing that we absolutely need to do? That if we miss it, we'll get an incomplete. If we miss it, our life will be a catastrophe. And I think it's embedded here in St. Paul's letter. Again, he says, may you abound in love more and more, the answer is love. I mean, let's go back to this. When Jesus is asked what the greatest commandment, what's the biggest, the most important thing we need to do? He says, what? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. If there's any message in the Bible, it's that the one thing we can't not do is love. I mean, St. Paul says it again in his Letter to the Corinthians, if you've been to a wedding, you've heard this, where St. Paul says, he says, if I can, if I have faith to move mountains, if I can perform miracles, if I can heal people, if I can drive out demons, if I even give my body over to be burned, if I am a martyr. But I don't have love. I have nothing. It's an incomplete. It's a catastrophe. Remember St. John of the Cross once said, in the twilight of our lives, at the end of our lives on December 25, we will be judged on love alone. And so we realize that if there's anything we need to do so that our lives are not a catastrophe, that our lives are not incomplete, we need to love. The problem is this. The problem is I know myself. The problem is I know that I don't love the way I should. And I think right now, on this again, second Sunday of Advent, it'd be really easy to get discouraged. But that's why I love the gospel. The gospel is just a reminder. We don't need to get discouraged. Why? Because there's still time. Right? John the Baptist shows up and what does it say? He began to preach a baptism of repentance. What's repentance? Repentance is metanoia. Right? That word that just means changing how you think and changing how you live, changing how you are. Basically, there's time to change. Like, people who heard John's message realized they weren't condemned, they were convicted, but they were also encouraged because they realized, okay, I'm not living the way I should be living. There's time to change. And this is true for all of us. We don't know how much more time we will have. We might just have two and a half weeks, but there's time. There's time to get ready, to be able to stand before the Lord face to face. Now, you might think that doesn't help me at all. I have more time to continue to stink. I have more time to continue to fail. There's even better news, and it's the news that St. Paul talks about. I mean, here's the reality. If you're like me, you realize, no, I don't love the way I want to. I don't love the way God wants me to. I keep trying and I keep failing. Here's some great, great news. If you're here, that means God is doing something. Like if you're listening to these words, that means that God has already started something. What does St. Paul say? Basically, you do not need to be discouraged. You do not need to be afraid of this. He says, in fact, he's not afraid. He says, I am confident in this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to bring it to completion until the day of Jesus Christ our Lord. Now let's highlight this. If you're here, if you're even remotely interested in being able to see the Lord face to face, that's only because of this. It's only because God has started something in you. God's already begun something in you. And that God who started something in you, in you will not abandon you. The God who started this work in you, it's like, okay, here's the task. I have entrusted this task in your hands. This is the task I've given to you in your life. To be able to love him with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. He's already started that. And that same one who started that will continue to bring it to completion to the day of Jesus Christ our Lord. We realize this, that our Catholic spirituality says this, that God is the first mover, that every impulse you have to pray, that's a response to God's invitation to pray every time you go to Mass. That's a response to God's invitation to go to Mass every time you go to confession. It's not like you had the great idea, like, I'm going to go to confession. God invited you to confession, you're going to confession is a response to his invitation. The fact that you are here and you might even have the beginnings of a desire to be able to stand before the Lord face to face, even if you're like, no, Father, I have a mercenary heart. Like, the only reason I want to stand before the Lord face to face is I don't want the other thing. Even if that's the case, that's a response to God having already started something in your heart, having already started something in your life, that's a response to his invitation. And his invitation is grace. And this is the key thing. What we need to be able to stand before the Lord face to face is not us. To work more is to allow God to do what he wants to do. Even again. Even if it seems like this is beyond us, it's too big. Like, okay, I'm going to be judged on love. Like, when I continue to fail to love, I don't want to get to that place at the end of my life where I realized that in the critical moment, I missed out on the critical part because I didn't have it in me. Let's pause on this for a second. I Have the fear at times that I will get to the end of my life and I'll have it incomplete because I missed out on that critical thing. I didn't do the essential part of the assignment and I didn't have it in me. That's one of the reasons why, once again, as Catholic Christians, we absolutely need to lean into grace. God has started this. God's already begun this. He's the one who does the work. So it's his grace that starts, sustains and completes this whole project. Of course, if I'm not looking at God's grace, all I can see is my own lack, right? If I'm not looking at God's gift, all I can see is my own failure. I can see that I'm incomplete. How can I stand before the Lord face to face with all this failure? So I just say, once again, remember, St. Paul was confident. I'm confident of this fact. The one who began a good work in you will continue to bring it to completion until the day of the Lord Jesus Christ. If you've heard the good news, if you want him to win, he will. Let's lean into this. If you've heard the good news of Jesus and you want him to win, he will. He will make you ready to stand before him, face to face, even in the midst of weakness, even in the midst of catastrophe, even if you fail to be the hero. So going back to Lord of the Rings, you might know the story. Here's Frodo gets to the edge of Mount Doom, doesn't throw the ring in. He turns away. He puts the ring on his finger and he's going to sneak away. And what happens is this guy Gollum, remember this creature, Gollum, the creature who had been. He'd been possessed in so many ways by the Ring for a long, long time. And his life had been spared earlier by Frodo's Uncle Bilbo. And then his life was spared multiple times by Frodo himself. That Frodo actually had given Gollum mercy. And what happens out of nowhere? Basically, Gollum, who wants to possess this ring, attacks Frodo as he's as. Remember, Frodo has failed, but he attacks Frodo and. And in the wrestling match, he bites the ring off of his finger and then falls through the cracks of Mount Doom into the fires of Mordor. And that's how the ring gets destroyed. I hated that. And Tolkien said that when people read that story, they often hated it as well. Frodo wasn't the hero. It was a Catastrophe. But Tolkien had coined a word even before he wrote this book, before he wrote this story, Tolkien had already coined a word. He already invented a new word. And the word was based off the word catastrophe. He called it a eucatastrophe. You know how, like a euphemism is a pleasant saying or a good word? Eucatastrophe is a good catastrophe. So Tolkien knew, yeah, this is a catastrophe, but it's a good catastrophe. In fact, kind of the definition here of eucatastrophe is this. It says, in essence, a eucatastrophe is a massive turn in fortune from a seemingly unconquerable situation to an unforeseen victory, usually brought about by grace rather than heroic effort. It was actually in the midst of Frodo's failure, he had no more to offer. The victory was brought about by grace rather than heroic effort. Such a turn is catastrophic in the sense of its breadth and surprise. And it's positive in that a great evil or misfortune has been averted. You realize that at the end of the story, in the midst of Frodo's failure, God, essentially, providence was able to bring about a great good. When his strength had run out, God's grace was active. And this is true for every one of us again, December 25th being the day we're going to stand before the Lord face to face, we have to realize, okay, I have one task to do, and that's the reality. And that task is beyond me. That task is beyond every one of us. That task is bigger than us. And we actually don't have it in us to love God the way he deserves to be loved. We don't have it. And so what do we do? We are confident that the one who began a good work in us will continue to bring it to completion. You know, so many people were upset with Tolkien for the ending of the story that they wanted to write about Frodo. And so Tolkien had to write many letters about the EU catastrophe in defense of Frodo. And here's something he said about Frodo that I think could be maybe said about every one of us. He wrote this. He said. He said that Frodo's failure was not a moral failure. He said the Ring's power near the end would be impossible. He said. This is what he said would be impossible. I should have said for anyone to resist that. Frodo undertook his quest out of love to save the world he knew from disaster at his own expense if he could. And also in complete humility. Acknowledging that he was holy and adequate to the task. His real contract was only to do what he could to try to find a way and to go as far on the road as his strength of mind and body allowed. He did that. Think about this for you and for me. Out of love we just try. Out of love, we just make an effort. That is it. That's all that God expects of us. He goes on to say, I did not see myself as the breaking of his mind and will under demonic pressure after torment was any more a moral failure than the breaking of his body would have been save by being strangled by Gollum or crushed by a falling rock. Frodo undertook his quest out of love, to try to find a way. And you and I, this is our quest to try to find a way out of love, to be able to love God the way he deserves and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Even in the midst of weakness, God can still win. The question we have to ask ourselves is, is that enough? Because this is going to be true for every one of us. We do not have it in us to love God the way he deserves. We need his strength, we need his grace to continue to bring his work to completion. God is the one who does the work. Here's the question. He can do it in us, even in the midst of our brokenness. Will that be enough for you and for me? The truth is that God can. And if we let him, he will actually prepare us to be able to stand before him face to face in the midst of our weakness, in the midst of our brokenness. And he can do this even without removing our weakness. He can do this even without removing our brokenness. The question is, does he have your permission to do this in the midst of weakness and brokenness? Even if he doesn't take away your weakness of brokenness? This is the last thing. In the 1800s, the beginning of the 1900s, there was a Christian man in China, name was Mark G. Tien Cheng. Maybe you've heard of him. Mark G. Tian Chang was this apparently just very loving man. He had a wife, he had a number of kids. He was a medical doctor. And he would actually take care of his patients for free because he was a Christian. He would take care of his patients oftentimes for free because he just wanted to serve those who needed help. That's why he became a doctor as a Christian. He wanted to love his fellow man. At one point he had this horrible stomach condition and to treat himself, he gave himself opium, which is not unusual to do Back at the time, it was kind of a basically opioid because he was in so much pain. And just if you've ever experienced that kind of debilitating pain, it makes sense. Just you'll take whatever it takes to kind of reduce the pain. Unfortunately for St. Mark, what happened was he became addicted to opium for 30 years. For 30 years he was addicted to opium. And as a faithful Catholic, he would go to confession and then he go back to his addiction. Then he'd go to confession, go back to his addiction. Every day he would show up for Mass. Every day he'd show up for prayer. But he was still bound by this addiction. At one point, his parish priest said, listen, until you break this addiction, you can't come back to confession again. They didn't understand that addiction is a disease. It's a whole other thing. But St Mark Tien Cheng did not allow that priest's bad counsel to keep him from God's love. He couldn't receive confession, couldn't receive the Eucharist. But he kept showing up. He would keep going to the church. He kept going to daily mass, not receiving. And he prayed that God would give him the grace of final perseverance. He prayed that God would give him the grace in the midst of his brokenness. I imagine that Saint Mark G. Tien Cheng what his prayer was like, God, fix this thing, heal it, take it away so that I can be a saint. But in the 1900 year, 1900, the Boxer Rebellion started and they rounded up Christians, including St. Mark, one of his sons, six of his grandkids, two of his daughters in law. And you would think that here's this guy who is broken, right? He's an addict for 30 years. He's going to collapse under the weight of this pressure. He's going to disavow knowing Jesus, he's going to apostatize. He's going to reject Christianity. But he didn't in those days leading up to his execution, he was able to serve not only his family. People around him. At one point, as they're being led to execution, one of his grandsons said, grandpa, where are we going? And Mark D. Ji Tianchang looks at his grandson and says, we're going home. He asked his executors that they would kill him last so that not one of his family members would have to be alone. This man was declared a saint. This man is a saint and an addict. See, God didn't take away his addiction. He didn't take away his problem. He didn't take away his weakness in order to make him a saint. He made him a saint. In the midst of his addiction, in the midst of his weakness, in the midst of his problem. His life was a catastrophe because of God's grace. His life was a eucatastrophe. This man who would have said, my life was incomplete. I never got fully recovered. His life was completed by God's grace. Because the most important part was not that he beat his addiction. The most important part was that he was able to love. And the same thing is true for all of us. The most important part is for us to be able to love a love that we can't do on our own. A love that we need God's grace for. So just like last weekend, in order to receive that grace, receive that love, we just simply need to step out from behind shame and come before the Lord in trust, trusting that the one who began a good work in you will continue to bring it to completion until the day that we see the Lord face to face.