← Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz
3/23/25 The Place of the Way: The Valley
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Homily from the Third Sunday of Lent. We all want peak moments, but growth happens in the Valley. Why do we walk through valleys? What good is life in the valley? Is it only a negative? Is it always a punishment from God? Or could the valley be necessary?
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Fr. Mike Schmitz
Welcome to Sunday Homilies with me, Fr. Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the One who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up@ascensionpress.com Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe in your podcast app for weekly notifications. God Bless the Lord be with you. A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to Luke, chapter 13, verses 1 through 9 Some people told Jesus about the Galileans, whose blood Pilate had mingled with the blood of their sacrifices. Jesus said to them in reply, do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way that they were greater sinners than all other Galileans? By no means. But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those 18 people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them, do you think that they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem? By no means. But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did. And he told them this parable There was once a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, for three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. So cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil? The gardener said to him in reply, sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it that it may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down. The Gospel of the Lord Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. Glad you'd have a seat. So what I'm going to share today, I have a sense that many, if not most of us will find it hard to hear. And I think that many of us, if not most of us, will find it even more difficult to understand and probably almost all of us will find it very, very difficult to accept. And I just wanted to get that out right away because this is kind of difficult. One of the reasons why is because I think that in our lives, I think we love the peak. What I mean by that is I think we as human beings, I just we think we love peak moments. I think we love the mountaintop experiences. I think. I mean, just look at this. We love highlight reels I can be captivated by highlight reels of sports. I don't even. I don't even like. But that's the thing is, like, I love the peak experiences. I love the mountaintop experiences. I love those highlight reels. I love watching videos of, like a guitar virtuoso, right? Someone who just can play the guitar so well. I love seeing that. I love. I'm amazed at world record performances. Get those clips of that final lap. I. I think it's so cool when something, like, to watch something I've been gymnastics when they, like, do the iron cross or up on the high bar, just flip it around. That is. Or even the fact that I think it's amazing that Albert Einstein, and I don't know if you know this, in one year, he published four groundbreaking papers that completely, in some ways, redefined our understanding of physics. So I. I mean, we do. We love peak moments. We love mountaintop experiences. I think we love highlight reels. At the same time, I know myself and I love watching people play the guitar like that, but I'm not willing to practice like that. Like, right? I. I love. I love seeing the people in their world record experience moments, but I'm not willing to train like that. And I love reading about people like Albert Einstein, who makes such a huge impact. And I realized that I probably am not someone who's willing to sacrifice my comforts or sacrifice my social life or sacrifice my freedom for that kind of peak moment. Because you might have heard someone say it like this. Everyone wants the view, but no one wants the climb, right? Everyone wants to see what it looks like at the top of the podium, but no one likes that climb. You know, in the first reading today in the book of Exodus, we have this story of Moses, right? This talk about mountaintop experience. Here's Moses on Mount Horeb, and he experiences God himself, the very presence of God in the burning bush. And in that burning bush, God reveals himself. He reveals his name to Moses and sets him on this whole new. Whole new path. I think we look at that and say, I would love that. I would love to have a peak experience where God just reveals himself. He tells me his name, that he communicates to me in such a way that I know him in a deeper way. That is clearly a peak experience. That is clearly a mountaintop moment. I think we forget the fact that before this moment, Moses has spent 40 years hidden. Before this moment, Moses has spent 40 years toiling. Before this mountaintop moment, Moses has spent 40 years in the valley. So here we are in Lent. We talked about how Lent is a season of asceticism. And that word asceticism or ascesis is Greek not for discipline and not just for self denial. It's Greek for training. So we realize that every one of us right now in this Lent, we're called to enter into a season again, not just self discipline, not just self denial. We're invited into this season for training. And that means we're not training to stand on a podium. We're training to look more like Jesus. Where are we training to live like Jesus? We're training to be able to do something at the end of this Lent that we can't currently do. We're training to be able to look a certain way that we don't currently look. We're training again to be like Jesus. And I think sometimes we can. We can. Maybe not you, but we can imagine that, okay, that means Lent is going to be a series of peak moment after peak moment, right? That means that Lent is going to be the series of success after success. Like, okay, I decided I was going to do this. I'm going to train this way. This is my asthesis, right? I'm going to do this thing for Lent, I'm going to stop doing these other things for Lent, and I'm just going to go from win to win to win. And this whole process of Lent is going to be one massive mountaintop experience. And if we think that, hopefully reality has already woken us up. Because if we know this, we know that the mountaintop experience we're looking for, the mountaintop moment, the peak moment we're looking for is not from last week. Remember last week, the Gospel was Jesus on Mount Tabor being transfigured like that's the glory, shows his glory, shows his goodness, shows his power. That's not the moment that we're working towards, not Mount Tabor, Mount not transfiguration. The moment we're working towards, the kind of Jesus we want to be, little Christ we want to be, is not from last weekend, but it's from a couple weeks from now when Jesus is on a different mountain mount called Calvary, mount called Golgotha. And on that mountain, what does Jesus do? On that mountain, Jesus is able to say, father, forgive them. On that mountain, Jesus is able to say, father, in the worst moment of my life, I commend my spirit into your hands. Jesus is able to say, on that mountain experience and that peak experience, Jesus is able to say, God, I trust in you. And again, I Think we can imagine the process from where we are to there can just be a peak experience. We go from win to win to win. Lent is not like that, and life is not like that. Actually, it's very much not like that. We have to realize that, to have moments at the peak, we have to understand that that means we're going to live in a place of training, right? So that series, this whole Lent, is all about, like, the dojo, right? And dojo is Japanese for the place of the way. And the place of the way is not the peak. Let's just have to understand this. The place of the way is the valley. That's just the truth. The place of the way, the place of training to look like Jesus is not the peak. The place of training is actually the valley. And so we've been following a man named Takashi Nagai, right, who was raised Shinto in Japan. He became an atheist when he was a school and college. Ultimately, he became a Catholic. But it's fascinating because if you read the book A Song for Nagasaki, you can see the valley that was written in Japan that led to Takashi Nagai and his faith. And it started 400 years before Takashi Nagai. In fact, it started with a man named St. Francis Xavier. St. Francis Xavier was one of the first Jesuits, and he came to Japan in 1545. And when St. Francis Xavier came to Japan in 1545, he brought the gospel. And immediately he had like, a thousand converts. Within 30 years of the gospel being brought to Japan, there were over 200,000 Catholics. It was. It was just incredible. But because there were all these samurai who became Catholic, there were all these other adamyo who became Catholic, there are these other people of importance who became Catholic. Pretty soon the Emperor realized that they are. They are giving their allegiance to a Lord whose name is not his. They're giving their allegiance to a Lord. His name is Jesus. And so he came down pretty hard on Christians. One of the first moments that really just demonstrated the persecution of Christians was involved. Called the 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki. The 26 Martyrs of Nagasaki, led by a man named Palmiki. Palmiki was a Jesuit himself. He was a Japanese Jesuit. Ranged from people his age, he was 33 years old, all the way down to about, I think, 13 or 14 years old. These 26 Catholics, in order to humiliate them and in order to break the faith of the Japanese Catholics of Nagasaki, they were marched through the winter, single file through the snow up to Nagasaki. And the Emperor had thought, or the person in charge had Thought that I'm going to demonstrate how humiliated these men are. I'm going to show them being tortured. I'm going to show them being killed. And the faith of the people there in Nagasaki is going to be broken. And so here is Palmiki and his companions, these 26 martyrs that were led through the valley. At the end of the valley, they were led up a hill. And the hill was called Nishikizaka. Nishizaka. And they were crucified up there. And at one point, Palmiki indicated that he wanted to speak. And this was his peak moment. This was his mountaintop moment. After living a life in the valley, Palmiki was now on a hill, and he was now on a cross, just like Jesus. And he was able to say words that were just like Jesus. He said this. He said, I'm a Japanese and a brother of the Society of Jesus. Basically, I'm Japanese and I'm a Jesuit. He says, I've committed no crime. The only reason that I'm condemned to die is that I have taught the gospel of my Lord Jesus Christ. And I'm happy to die. And I accept death as a great gift from my Lord. And then he did something amazing. He asked for the crowd. He asked them if they saw fear on the face of the 26 around among him. And he showed them there was no fear. Why? Because heaven was real. He had only one dying prayer, one dying request that they believe that even as they continue to walk through the valley, that they also forgive Emperor Hideyoshi and was responsible for their execution. And his last words were among this. He said, after Christ's example, I forgive my persecutors. I mean, this is, again, this is what it is to look like Jesus on a mountaintop. But he can only do this because he went through a valley. Why? Because the valley is the place of the way. He went on to say, I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on them all. And I hope that my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful rain. Here's Paul Meke, who said, no, I don't just forgive. I don't just not hate. I'm asking that God uses my sacrifice so that everyone who's here can have faith, can have trust in God when they're walking through the valley. That martyrdom of those 26 Catholics began roughly almost 300 years of Catholics living in the valley. In fact, they were called the Hidden Christians. For the next 250, 300 years, they were called the Hidden Christians. And they settled in that Valley. In fact, the valley is called the Urakami Valley outside, just in Nagasaki. And there were some incredible stories of how, you know, at one point, the priests were all driven out of Japan, and for roughly 250 years. Just blows my mind. After roughly 250 years, those Catholic Christians, they live without a priest. And so some of the elders, they had. They had, like, a water man who was in charge of baptizing people. They had a calendar man who was in charge of keeping track of Advent and Christmas and Lent and Easter, all those dates. They had then a head person. Head person was charged with, like, holding together the faith and passing on the faith. Because the priest, before they left, 250 years before this, they had said. When he said, listen, the Jap, they said, listen, the Catholic Church will come back to Japan. Like, don't be afraid. And when the church comes back, you will know it by three signs. Their priests will be celibate. He said that there'll be a statue of Mary and they'll be obedient to the Papasama in Rome. And so years later, I think it was 1864, there was this. I think it was a French priest, Father Petitjean, who arrived in Nagasaki. He went to the valley. He went to the Urakami Valley, and he went to the church because they allowed Europeans, Westerners, to worship, but they didn't allow Japanese to worship in the church. And here is Father Petitjean, who had dreamt of going to Japan his whole life. He had heard about St. Francis Xavier. He heard about those 26 martyrs in Japan. Now he was finally there, but he couldn't talk to any Japanese, because if they talked to him, they could get persecuted. They could have their land stolen. They could be killed. But some of the. Some of the women there in the Urakami Valley who had been living in the valley, right that place of the way. They'd heard that there was a Catholic. They had heard that he wasn't married, and they heard that. That he was faithful to Papasama in Rome. So they had two of the three. And so one day they disguised themselves and they snuck into the church, and they found Father Petitian just dejectedly praying his bravery. And they saw him, and they asked him the question. They. They said, basically, they walked up and said, have you. Where's the statue of Holy Mary? He didn't understand at first, and they were just like, no, where is Holy Mary? And he understood. He's like, oh, yeah. Or right over here. Right over here. And it's amazing, because one of the women said, listen, our hearts. Because he was afraid. Like, what are they doing? Are they trying to trap me? She said, no, our hearts and your heart are the same. And so he showed them the statue of Mary. And when they saw her, these women just cried out, yes, that's her. That's her. And look, it's her. And in her arms is the child Jesus. For 250 years, these Catholics held onto the faith. These Catholics lived in the Urakami Valley. If this was a mountaintop moment where they finally realized, okay, here is God who has come to us, and he's given us not just baptism, he's given us all the sacraments, it's only because they had spent so much time in the valley. And that's where the valley where those Catholics learned to trust God. That's the valley where their. Their faith was formed. That's the valley where their faith was forged. Like, just like St. Paul said to the Corinthians in the. In the second reading today, he's like, listen, he said, you ancestors, they all passed through what? They all passed through the fire. They all passed through the cloud. They all passed through the sea. They all passed through these low places. Here's a question. Here's a pause on this one question for us as Catholics in the 21st century. How do we see low places? Like, how do we understand valleys? In the gospel today, you know, Jesus points out these two tragedies that happen. Pilate mingles the blood of Jews with the sacrifices of the pagans. This building falls down on some of the Jews in Jerusalem. The question is, Jesus says, you think that happened because they're bad? Do you think that happened because God's punishing them? Do you think that's happened because they deserved it? Do you think it's happening because it's just an accident? Question. How do we live in the valley? How do we live in the place of the way? Because after 250 years of living in the valley, the darkest day for those people in the valley was yet to come. And it came on August 9, 1945. On the morning of August 9, 1945, there was a US Air Force pilot named Major Charles Sweeney, who also was raised a Catholic, who piloted a B29 bomber named Bockscar loaded with an atomic bomb called Fat Man. And it was. It wasn't destined for Urakami Valley. Actually. His target was somewhere else, but the cloud cover was too thick, and they had mechanical difficulties. They were running low on fuel, and so he diverted this course, and he was Flying over the Urakami Valley, flying over that part of Nagasaki. And at one moment there was an opening in the clouds and he spotted the Urakami Cathedral. And it was when he spotted the Urakami Cathedral that he knew he would release the bomb. So at 11am the atomic bomb detonated only 300 meters from the Urakami Cathedral. That day was like a normal day for all the residents in Nagasaki. It was a normal day for Tekashi. He was at work. His children, they were in the mountains to keep them safe from all the bombing. His wife Midori, was at home praying a rosary in the church at the Urakami Cathedral. Two priests were hearing confessions that day. And then the bomb was dropped. There's an account from the book A Song for Nagasaki that talks about it. Says the plutonium 239 bomb exploded in Nagasaki with the equivalent force of 22,000 tons of conventional explosives. Not counting the radiation, which is lethal, its intense heat, which reached several million degrees. At its epicenter, the whole mass of the huge bomb ionized and a fireball created, making the air around it luminous, emitting ultraviolet and infrared rays and blistering roof tiles. Further than half a mile from the epicenter, exposed human skin was scorched up to two and a half miles away. The velocity of the wind that rushed out from the epicenter was going faster than a mile a second, which is 60 times the weight of a major cyclone, the speed of a major cyclone a mile a second, destroying everything. In the Book of Song for Nagasaki, there's a couple different descriptions of what happened. In fact, Midori, tekashi's wife, her 19 year old cousin, she just found her two small brothers. They were chasing dragonflies where she was. She told them their mother wanted them and they heard the plane coming, so they ran to go into a bomb shelter. And as they entered, the bomb went off. And it says this. They were picked up and hurled to the far wall. And she blacked out. Coming to, she heard the two children whimpering at her feet and wondered why it was so dark. As the little light began to penetrate the gloom, she was paralyzed with terror. Two hideous monsters had appeared at the shelter's entrance, making croaking noises and trying to crawl in. As the darkness lifted a little, she saw that they were human beings who had been outside when the bomb exploded. In less than seconds, they had been skinned alive. Half a mile from the epicenter, she saw that the raw bodies had been picked up and smashed into the side of the shelter. She went outside. She could hardly See anything? She stood there, her eyes involuntarily drinking in this hideous details. There were four children playing in a sandbox and the skin of their hands had been torn away at the wrists and hung from their fingernails like inside out gloves. She was losing her mind. She felt back into the shelter and they just kept crying out. She kept hearing the words mizu, Mizu, which means water. There's a 10 year old girl, Michiko. And she found herself after the bomb, pinned by rubble. And she cried and cried and cried. And someone came, she didn't know who it was. Someone came and got her free. And outside she saw the evil looking clouds coming in. And it goes on to say she became conscious of a tiny voice becoming hysterical. And it was her two year old sister, trapped under a crossbeam. She turned for help and she saw dashing toward them, a naked woman, her body greasy purple like an eggplant, with her head hair reddish brown and frizzled. And she realized, oh my gosh, it's my mom. This naked woman, her clothes burned off, her body almost destroyed, was her own mom. And she said all she could do, speechless, she pointed to her little sister and the mom looked wildly at the fires that had already started, dived into the rubble, put her shoulder under the beam and heaved. The two year old was free and the mom, hugging her to her breast, collapsed to the ground. There was no skin left on her shoulder that she had put under the beam. It was just raw, bleeding meat. Then her father appeared, badly burnt too. And she watched in dumb helplessness as her mom, his wife, groaned and struggled to rise. Then all of her strength ebbed away and she collapsed, dead. You know, it's interesting. Major Sweeney, after the fact, the pilot, he said that dropping the bomb was necessary. He said that while it was horrible, it saved millions of lives and put an end to the war. And he claimed, and other people claimed that there was no other way. They claimed that every other option would have been more deadly. It would have been deadlier to not drop the bomb. If you ask the question, what was this? What was this valley like? The gospel? Was it God's punishment? Was it random? Was it an accident? The question that comes back to us is how do we see this valley, the Urakami Valley? How do we see any valley? How could this valley possibly be the place of the way? Here's Tekashi when he was. He was in the hospital when this bomb had gone off. And so he was relatively protected, but he was very badly injured and he spent days, days and nights tending to the wounded, saving lives again. His two children were safe, but his wife, Midori, he found her body days later, charred, burnt almost to ash. But he saw her clutching her rosary, and he took consolation in the fact that she died praying to Our Lady. Now, up to this point, Tekashi already had leukemia. And after the bomb went off and after he exerted himself, he became even more sick. He almost died. In fact, he had a miraculous recovery. That happened on August 9th. On November 23rd of that same year, there was an outdoor Mass outside of the rubble of Urakami Cathedral. And Tekashi was asked to speak. He was asked to try to make sense of all of this and try to speak words that would encourage the people of Nagasaki, the Catholics of Nagasaki. And he didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to make sense of this again. His wife, his beloved wife, had died here. He was on the verge of death himself. Everything he had owned, everything, every, almost everyone he knew, they were gone. And so he didn't know what to say. How do you make sense of this? How do you make sense of the valley? And he heard two stories that just clicked with them, and they're both stories of how children, immediately after the bomb, who were badly burned, who were injured, how they gathered in groups and instinctively turned to prayer. There's some of these stories that these kids, even though their skin was burnt off, they would huddle together and they would pray the rosary. They would gather together not because anyone told them, because they knew what it was like to live in the valley. They knew what it was like to be able to trust God, even in the worst of moments. And so here, in the worst moments of their life, their last moments of their lives, these young children, up to adolescents, up to teenagers, gathered together, and they would sing songs praising God. I like how they said this. It said, this was not a forced or organized prayer, but a deeply ingrained response to their suffering, reflecting the faith that had been nurtured in their families and community for almost 300 years. These Catholics knew what it was like to have walked in the valley, to have lived in the valley. And so Tekashi knew what he had to do. He. On the day on November 23, he got up and he ascended the steps. This man who had lived his life in the valley, he ascended the steps to the Orakami Cathedral. He bowed to the priests who were there. He bowed to the people who are listening. And then he said these words. It's kind of a longer quote, but I Apologize. But these are his words. Takashi Nagai Just months after everyone, almost everyone he knew and loved was killed, he himself was badly injured. Said, on the morning of August 9, the world stood at a crossroads. A decision had to be made. Peace or further cruel bloodshed and carnage. Just then, at 11:02am and Atomon exploded over our suburb. In an instant, 8,000 Christians were called to God. In a few hours, flames turned to ash. This venerable Far Eastern holy place, the church itself. He said, at midnight that night, our cathedral suddenly burst into flames and was consumed. At exactly the same time, in the Imperial Palace, His Majesty the Emperor had made known his decision to end the war. And on August 15th, the Imperial Rescript, which put an end to fighting, was formally promulgated. And the whole world saw the light of peace. I don't know if you know this. August 15th is also the Feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Tekashi and the guy made a connection. He said, here, Our lady, the Queen of Peace, on that feast day and the Assumption of Mary, this feast, the Assumption of Mary, war ended. He said, was this the convergence of events? Was it just merely coincidental? Or was it the mysterious providence of God? He goes on to say, he said, I heard that the atom bomb was destined for another city. Heavy clouds rendered that target impossible, and the American crew headed for the secondary target, US Nagasaki. And then a mechanical problem arose and the bomb was dropped further north than planned and burst right over our cathedral. Then he said these words that are just so powerful. He said, it was not the American crew, I believe, who chose our suburb. You ask the question, well, who was it? Then he said, God's providence chose Urakami and carried the bomb right over our homes. He asked the question, is there not a profound connection, relationship between the annihilation of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Was not Nagasaki the chosen victim, the lamb without blemish, the slain and whole burnt offering as an altar of sacrifice, atoning for the sins of all the nations during World War II. Now, at this point, so many people in the crowd, they were angry. They also had lost everyone that they knew. They had lost everything that they owned. They're getting mad. But Tekashi just calmly, calmly waited. And he continued. He said, we are all inheritors of Adam's sin. We are all inheritors of Cain's sin. He killed his brother. And yes, we have forgotten that we're God's children. We've turned to idols and forgotten love, hating one another, killing one another, yes, even joyfully Killing one another. At last, the evil and horrible conflict came to an end. But mere repentance was not enough for peace. We had to offer a stupendous sacrifice. Cities had been leveled, but even that wasn't enough. Only this sacrifice of Nagasaki sufficed. And at that moment, God inspired the emperor to issue a proclamation that ended the war. The Christian flock of Nagasaki was true to the faith through three centuries of persecution. And during the recent war, it prayed ceaselessly for lasting peace. So here was the one pure lamb that had to be sacrificed as holocaust on his altar so that many millions might be saved. And last, he said, in the very depths of our grief, like in this valley, we were able to gaze up and see something beautiful, pure and sublime. Happy are those who weep. They shall be comforted. He said, we must walk the way of reparation. Ridiculed, whipped, punished for our crimes, sweaty and bloody. But we can turn our mind's eye to Jesus carrying his cross up the hill of Calvary. The Lord has given. The Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. And he concluded by saying, let us be thankful that Nagasaki was chosen for the whole burnt sacrifice. Let us be thankful that through this sacrifice, peace was granted to the whole world and religious freedom to Japan. How do we make sense of life in the valley? How do we make sense of having to walk through the valley and having everything taken from us? How do we make sense of life not turning out the way we want to? Takashi said, we're hensai. Hensai is the Japanese word for whole burnt offering. Basically, here is Takashi, who said, we got to participate. This is not an accident. This is not God's punishment. We didn't deserve this. We were given the gift of being able to participate in God's redemption of the world. We were able to be given the gift of being able to end the war by our sacrifice. By my wife's sacrifice, there was no more violence. By my neighbor's sacrifice, there was no more violence. You know, I wonder. I wonder we realize this is so difficult to accept. I wonder if Major Sweeney was right. Major Sweeney said dropping the bomb was necessary. Tekashi Nagai also said dropping the bomb was necessary. Again, in a way, both. In a way, both were right that Nagasaki was offered as a sacrifice necessary to end the war. But I think of the two men of the two perspectives. One is deeper and one is truer than the other. The first one is spoken from someone who is willing to offer the sacrifice. The other, from Tekashi, is spoken by someone who is willing to be the sacrifice. And I know that we might hate this, but I've also seen people point to the differences between Hiroshima, which also experienced the atomic bomb, and Nagasaki. And they've said that in the wake of the atomic bomb, Hiroshima is defined by anger and resentment and bitterness, whereas if you visit Nagasaki, it is defined by sadness, but also forgiveness and peace. In fact, people even said that Nagasaki is a global symbol of peace, that it is a sign of what it is to forgive, an example of how we might all might be. In some ways, Nagasaki. This place in the valley is at the same time a city on a hill. This is the last thing we know, that peak moments happen, but growth occurs in the valley that every one of us, we love mountain moments. But those mountain moments are rarely moments of transformation. Though we know that when we are on the path to become like Jesus, that happens most in the valley. As you might have heard, there is no crown without the cross. There is no resurrection without Calvary. And for every one of us, there can be no way that we live like Jesus, look like Jesus, and love like Jesus, unless we pass through the place of the way. And the place of the way is the valley.