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Welcome to Sunday Homilies with me, Fr. Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the One who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up@ascensionpress.com Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe in your podcast app for weekly notifications. God Bless the Lord be with you. A Reading from the Holy Gospel According to Luke Glory to you, o Lord. Chapter 16, verses 1 through 13 Jesus said to his disciples, a rich man had a steward who was reported to him for squandering his property. He summoned him and said, what is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship, because you can no longer be my steward. The steward said to himself, what shall I do now that my Master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do so that when I am removed from the stewardship, they may welcome me into their homes. He called in his Master's debtors one by one, and to the first he said, how much do you owe my master? He replied, 100 measures of olive oil. He said to him, here's your promise renoat. Sit down and quickly write one for 50. Then to another the steward said, and you, how much do you owe? He replied, 100 cors of wheat. The steward said to him, here is your promissory note. Write one for 80. And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently, for the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones, and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours. No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon. The Gospel of the Lord Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. I want you to have a seat so Whenever I'm getting couples ready for their wedding, one of the things they get to do is they get to often choose their wedding readings, their wedding readings. And I remember the very first wedding I ever. I tell this to all the couples. The very first wedding I ever was part of. It was a woman. The bride was a woman I was a missionary with down in Central America. And I'd never met her husband or future husband yet. And so I was asking them, like, why did you choose. How did you choose these readings? And they said, you know, every time we go to church, someone else has chosen the story we get to hear. But this is the one time that we get to go to mass and we get to choose the story that our friends and family get to hear at our. At our wedding. And so that's how that was their lens. And so I share that with. Share that with every couple. One couple in particular was fascinating. Their wedding was in Arizona, named Tam and Audra. And. And they said, you know what? We have. We have a lot of friends who have never heard the gospel. They've never heard the good news of Jesus. And so we want, in our wedding, we want them to clearly hear the gospel proclaimed. And so what they did is they chose for the first reading, they chose Genesis chapter two, which is that God is good. God made this world good. He made human beings in his image and likeness. That's Genesis chapter two, right? The end of that we talked about last week. The end of that chapter is the man and his wife were naked, yet felt no shame, right? So they wanted to establish the first part of the gospel. Cause the gospel, you might say, has four parts, right? The first part, God is good. He made this world good. He made us in his image and likeness. Great. Part two, though, they said, we don't want to stop at the end of chapter two. We want to go into chapter three, because then everything breaks, right? So that first reading was Genesis chapter two into chapter three, where the serpent comes into the garden, and where the man and his wife, they rebel against God and break the world, right? So that's the second part. First part of the gospel is that God is good. God made this world good. He made us in his image and likeness. The second part of the gospel is we took that freedom and we broke it. We rebelled against God and we broke our relationship with God, with each other, and even in our own hearts. That's the second part. But they said the third part, they said about how Jesus comes into this world. So Romans chapter five was their second reading. And Romans five is that God proves his love for us and that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us, right? These are the first three parts of the gospel. The good news that God is good, made this world good, made us in image and likeness. Second part, we took that freedom and broke the world through sin. The third part of the great news is that God himself comes to our rescue. That God is the bridge between Jesus is the bridge between God and us. And their gospel was the same gospel we had last week on the feast, the triumph of the cross. John, chapter 3, verse 16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only beloved son that all those who believe in him would not perish but have eternal life. And so these four parts of the gospel, right? The first part, God's good made this world good, made you and I in his image and likeness. Second part, we took that freedom and broke the world through sin. Third part, God is the bridge between. Jesus is the bridge between God and us. And the fourth part is we have the opportunity to respond in faith. We have the opportunity to receive that gift that God has given us and live a whole new life like this is. And they said, we just want everyone at our wedding, we want them all to hear the gospel. So I wanted this question. Have you ever heard. Have you ever heard. Have you ever heard the gospel? Like in those four parts, first part, once again, last time, God is good, made this world good, made us good. Sin broke the world. The third part, Jesus bridges that unbridgeable chasm because he's both God and man. In fact, that's the second reading today, right? The second reading of St. Paul's letter to Timothy. What does he say? He says, this is how good God is. This is how good the gospel is. This is how good the good news is. St. Paul says God wills that everyone be saved and come to the knowledge of truth. For there is one God. There's also one mediator between God and men, the man, Jesus Christ. So these two parts here, first, God wills all people to be saved. That God wants everyone to be saved. He doesn't want anyone to be lost. He's never created anyone who without wanting them to be with him forever. And the second part is this, that Jesus is the only one. Jesus is the only way, right? He is the one mediator between God and us. Why? Because he's the only. He's the only being that is both fully God and fully man, right? So we talked about this last week. Jesus, what Jesus has done, he's given us Access to the Father. What Jesus has done is. I mean, we mentioned. I don't know if I mentioned this here online, but we did on campus is we mentioned that after all that Jesus had done, we have this line. Jesus says, I don't want what you did for me to go to waste on me. Because what did Jesus do for us? Right? Jesus came to this earth so that our sins could be forgiven. And so in baptism, our sins are forgiven. After baptism, if we go to confession, what happens? Our sins are forgiven. And so we invited so many of our students on campus. Say, okay, if you want to, you realize that this is God, the gospel. This is what God wants for you, that he wants to forgive your sins. Then we get to go to confession by saying, essentially, Jesus, I don't want to let what you did for me go to waste on me. And the crazy thing is, over this last week, it's been insane. The way that our students have responded by going to confession, by going to adoration, by just increasing their prayer has been, I'd say, pretty remarkable. Why? Because every single one of them is saying this about the gospel. Jesus, I don't want to let what you did for me go to waste on me. I don't want to let it go to waste. So even those three words go to waste. I don't want to. To squander what you've done. That word go to waster. That word squander reminds me of the gospel today. The gospel is, I don't know if you were confused by the parable of Jesus. I'd say it's probably his most confusing parable. We're going to begin by looking at just the two main characters. The two main characters are the wealthy man, the rich man, the master, and the steward. And so back in the ancient world, what would happen is if you had a lot of property, either you inherited it or you worked hard for it. You had a lot of resources, you had a lot of finances, a lot of money. You. You would actually hire someone, you'd entrust someone to be your steward. So they would manage your property, they'd manage your finances, they'd manage your resources. It's one of those kind of situations where you're so wealthy because either of what you had inherited or what you had worked for, that you would entrust all that you had, you'd entrust all that you worked for. You'd entrust everything that were your resources and materials and finances to someone that you trusted. That's the heart, the heart of this relationship between this wealthy man and the steward is trust. Again, imagine, imagine this entrusting all that you had done to someone else. And then the one who had been trusted wastes all that he'd been given. We have to understand this, that we have been, as Christians, as Catholics, we've been entrusted with the gospel, we've been entrusted with the good news, with this story of what God has done for us. Not only that, we've been entrusted with all of the riches of the kingdom of God that God has given us. Again, everything Jesus did for us on the cross, all of those graces, God has entrusted those to us. He is the. In the real world, he is the wealthy one who has entrusted all of his wealth, all of the grace that he won for us. He's entrusted all of it to us. To do what? Well, we realize this, as St. Paul said to Timothy, Jesus is the one mediator, meaning without him, without what he has done, there's no hope. But here's the remarkable thing. In entrusting all that he's done to us, he makes us mini mediators, right? He's the mediator. And as Christians, we're like mini me. We're mini mediators, right? So we know this because why? Acts of the Apostles, chapter one. After Jesus has died, risen from the dead, 40 days, he's met with his apostles. And then at the end, after 40 days, he takes them to Bethany. And you remember this interaction between Jesus and his apostles. He says, they say, lord, are you at this point going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Lord, you did it all. You did all of it. Are you now going to bring the kingdom of God to this earth? And. And Jesus short answer is, no, I'm not going to. You are. He says, you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And then you will be my witnesses here in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, Samaria, to the ends of the earth. So what's Jesus saying? Like, he's the one mediator of God's grace. Without him, we have no hope. But now, as Christians, you and I are mini mediators. We've been entrusted to tell the story. But also in the second reading today, again, Paul writing to Timothy, what's he say? He says, first of all, I ask that all supplication and prayers and petitions and thanksgiving be offered for everyone. So here's the role of a steward. Here's the role of the person who has been entrusted with all of the grace that Jesus has won for us. The role of the steward, the mini mediator is two roles one is to pray. Like St. Paul says to Timothy, I urge you, pray for everyone. And number two, witness, like, share, tell the story. Basically, it's this. God has you, he wants. All right, because that's what St. Paul says again and again. Writing to Timothy. If you go back and count the number of times that Paul, writing to Timothy, uses the word everyone or the word all, that he says, I ask you that you pray, you petition, you, supplication, you, thanksgiving for everyone, for. For all. Why? Because God desires that all human beings be saved. He wants everyone to be saved. This is the crazy thing, is God has entrusted all of the grace that he has won to you and to me. Why? Because God wants to make heaven crowded. God wants us to help him make heaven crowded. And that will only happen. He's crazy. That will only happen if we first say, jesus, I don't want to let what you did for me go to waste on me. But also if we go on to say, jesus, I don't want to let what you did for me end with me. Because if it just ends with us, then God can't reach all. If it just ends with us, then God can't reach everyone. So what's he do? He says, okay, many mediators, stewards, need to pray and you need to tell the story. You need to pray and you need to witness. And so pray. St. Paul says it today. Second reading, once again, he says, okay, prayers, supplications, petitions, thanksgiving. For who? For everyone. He goes on to say, he says, for kings and all those in authority. And I'd say it like this. So Jesus died for everyone. So I can at least pray for everyone, right? If Jesus died for everyone, he died for all. Then at least, the very least, I can pray for all. Where do I start? I'm going to start with these four groups of people. Number one, St. Paul says, pray for kings and those in authority. How about this? Pray for all of those in this world who have influence. They have a lot of power, they have a lot of authority. What they say, people listen to them. So St. Paul says, you need to need to pray for them. So, number one, who do you know that you. Sometimes they just come to your mind, right? There's the kind of people that maybe you read about and People magazine. I don't know about People magazine. People read that still. I don't know, online, whoever it is that you would say, this is someone who has influence, this is someone who has authority. And they pop into your newsfeed, they pop into your life. They pop across your screen, pray for them. St. Paul says you have to pray for them. Those people have influence. Number two is this. Pray for people who are close to you. Who are the people that God has entrusted and put in your circle? Who are the people that actually probably maybe they prayed for you. You can pray for them. Or who are the people that God has brought into your life in such a way that you realize that I'm going to be a steward. If I'm going to be a mini mediator of what Jesus Christ has done, I have to pray for these people who are close to me. So those who are influential, those who have authority, those who are close to you. Third is, this is the hard one. Who is the person you want to pray for least? Who is the person that, when it comes to you, hearing St. Paul say God wants all people to be saved, you're like, yeah, but hopefully not that one. Who is the person you want to pray for least? They have to make your list. So first, those who have influence, authority, those who are close to you. Third, the person who's hardest to pray for, the person you want to pray for least. They have to make your prayer list. And number four, I would say this on a daily basis. Whoever you're passing by, I don't know if you've ever been in the case in a situation like this where you're driving, you drive by someone and you realize, you know, we're all going somewhere. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation like this. You're on the interstate or whatever kind of road, and you pass by someone, usually you're going faster, right? Because we drive the same and we're passing by somebody, you look over and just. I don't know who they are. I don't know where they're going. I don't know what the. But I do know what they're doing. They're driving the same direction as I am, but I don't know if they know who Jesus is. Someone gets in your way, they park in the left lane rather than moving over to the right so you can pass them, pray for them. I would say this on a daily basis. Whoever we pass by on campus, in the hall, in the hallway, just be able to say, okay, here are these people passing me by. I just. Just praying for them. I don't. I don't know who they are. Maybe I see them every day at this part, at this. At this spot. I just want to pray for them. So the four people. The four people, if we're going to pray for all. If we're going to pray for everyone, we start with these four. Pray for those who are influential. Pray for those who are close to us, those who we find it hardest to pray for. And lastly, just who has God brought across our path today? And it could be just a short prayer. Actually, it probably should be a short prayer. Just something like this. God, just please be with them today. Like, that's it. Something like just God, just please give them what they need to be yours today. A prayer I will often pray is God, you know what they need. Please just give them that in your name, Jesus. That's it. Something so simple. Why? Because if we're going to be mini mediators, we have to pray. But if we're going to be mini mediators, we also have to share the story. We have to. We know the gospel, right? The gospel. God is good. He made this world good. He made you. He loves you. Secondly, we use that freedom to break the world. Thirdly, but Jesus did not abandon us. He came to bridge the gap between God and us. And fourthly, if we say yes to this, we believe in him, put our faith in him, we can have eternal life. We have to be willing to share that story. And I'll say this, and not to disqualify people because we don't think they'd be interested. Why? Because God desires that all people be saved and come to the knowledge of truth. I came across a story recently of a man who. He had heard that Ozzy Osbourne. Yeah. Who just passed away this last summer. He heard Ozzy Osbourne. That leads to almost 10 years ago, said he was a Christian, which is interesting because he also was known as the Prince of Darkness. He named himself after Satan. So that's a little bit of a conflict. But he heard that Ozzy Osbourne was claiming to be a Christian. Someone asked him if he read his Bible. And he said, I can't really. He actually said, my brain isn't working as well as it used to. So it's really difficult to understand the Bible. So this man heard about it, heard that Ozzy was going to go to this, you know, convention. And he was like, you know what? I. I could meet Ozzy at the convention. What he did was he went to this Bible store and he had a Bible personalized with Ozzy Osbourne's name on the bottom of the Bible. And he brought a couple tracks. He had a letter written to Ozzie and to his wife Sharon and to their two kids and had gifts for all of them waited in line, paid to see him, got a chance to talk to him. And he just said, ozzy, I heard you said you were a Christian, but it was tough for you to read the Bible. I got you this Bible that I think you'll be able to understand. He hands him the Bible. Ozzy Osbourne turns to the gospels and says, oh, wow, I do understand this. This is fantastic. They talked for a number of minutes about Jesus, about what God wants to do in Ozzy Osbourne's life. And he thought that was the end. You know, he's like, okay, pass it on. Maybe goes nowhere. Well, a couple, two weeks later, the same guy was talking to Jack Osborne. He was at another convention. And Jack told him. He said, oh, my gosh, my dad loved your gift. So really? He said, yeah, actually, they forgot it at the table. They went. They left the convention center. They were in the elevator on the way up to the hotel, and Ozzy was like, wait, we have to go back. I. I forgot my Bible. And they were like, no, convention center's closed. He said, no, we have to go back tonight. And so they actually went back, opened the convention center so he could get his Bibles, because the next day, he wanted to read it all day. Actually, at lunch, they said the next day, the topic of conversation was that every one of those four individuals in Ozzy Osbourne's family had gotten a gift from this man. And the topic of lunch was this, the Gospel. The topic of lunch was Jesus. Because what this man had done later on, Jek had told this man, he said, yeah, my dad, he gets stuff all the time. He's always grateful for it, but he doesn't keep any of it. He kept your Bible, and it's on his bedstand. And whenever someone comes over to the house, he always yells at our mom to go get the Bible. Because he wants to show people the Bible that has his name on it. So sometimes that's what we do, right? Sometimes we disqualify. They're not interested in hearing about Jesus. They don't want to know the gospel. We can't disqualify anyone. Why? Because God wills that all human beings be saved and come to the knowledge of Christ Jesus. Because we're all made for that. We can't squander the opportunity. We have to be able to say, God, if you made me a steward and mini mediator, I can't let what you did for me end with me. But too many of us don't do it. Like, too many of Us, don't take that step. I heard another story about a man who had. He was a fan of James Taylor, right? The singer James Taylor. And at one point he typed in Google just James Taylor religion and came upon an interview with James Taylor where The interviewer said, Mr. Taylor, a lot of your songs have Christian themes in them. Are you a Christian? And he actually says, actually no, I'm not. He said, both my parents were atheists. He said, but I'm really spiritual and if anyone wanted to talk to me about Jesus, I would love to talk to them about Jesus. If anyone wanted me to talking about Christianity, I would love to have a conversation about Christianity. Anytime someone want to talk. So this guy hears about this, does the same thing. He knows where James Taylor is going to be. He's waiting for him with a group of people when he gets off his bus to kind of a meet and greet. He's polite, waits back till everyone else is gone and he says, Mr. Taylor, I saw this interview you had given. He told them the interview, he said, would you like to talk about Jesus? And James Taylor was like, absolutely. He said he spent 15, 20 minutes just talking about Jesus, talking about the gospel, talking about how much God loves and how God calls us all to himself. And at the end of the conversation he said, it was a really great conversation. At the end of the conversation though, James Taylor said something devastating. At the end of this conversation, James Taylor said, you know, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about Jesus, about your faith, about Christianity. So the funny thing is I gave that interview 24 years ago and you're the first person to ever reach out to me and talk to me about Jesus. Because that's what we have to do as mini mediators. That's what we have to do as stewards. We have to be willing to say, God, I don't want to let what you did for me end with me. This is the last thing. This last summer we had our summer camp. I always talk about camp survive for our middle schoolers. And on the last day of camp, I said, you guys, what's gonna happen is this, you know, we send them back to their home, send them back to their family, send them back to their friends and whatnot. I said, when you, when either your parents pick you up or when you get dropped off at your parents house, you know this later on today, you are all going to be asked the exact same question, every one of you. And they all said, I was like, what's the question? And the question is and they all knew it. Exactly. The question is, how was camp? I mean, they all knew that they were all gonna be asked, how was camp? And all of you are gonna say the same answer and what's the answer? And they all said, fine. Because they're middle schoolers. Make sense. Like, how is camp fine? And I said, listen, think of that opportunity. Someone just asked you, someone you love, someone you care about, someone who cares about you, just asked you, how was camp? And you have the incredible opportunity, that moment where they open the door and basically are saying, do you have any good news for me? You can tell them about how you encountered Jesus in confession. You can tell them how you encountered Jesus in adoration. You can tell them about your small group and how you finally started to understand the Bible, whatever it is. You could be a mini mediator to your family. Here's what's going to happen for us. Many of us tomorrow, Monday morning will be asked the same question. How was your weekend? Or what did you do over the weekend? And a lot of us will say something like, ah, it was good, rested a little bit, hung out. And we'll go through a list maybe of all the things we did except went to mass. We'll be given an opportunity. We will have been given an open door to share the story. Tomorrow, most likely, someone will ask you how your weekend was. And in that moment, they will give you an open door to be a mini mediator, to be a steward of the gifts of what Jesus has done for us. And you have the opportunity in that moment to tell them, even as simply as went to Mass. Really? What did they say? Well, they said, this is the gospel. What's the gospel? The gospel is this. God is good. He made the world good, made us in his image and likeness. We freely chose to break the world with our sin, but God did not abandon us and sent his only begotten Son so that we could have eternal life. And if we respond to that in faith and put our trust in him, the One who's entrusted us with all of his grace, then we could have new life. Truth is, as stewards, I do not want to let what Jesus did for me go to waste on me. I don't want to squander it. But also the truth is, for us as stewards, we cannot let what Jesus did for us end with us.