← The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Day 185: Thanksgiving, Memorial, Presence (2026)
00:14:13
Together with Fr. Mike, we continue our examination of the sacrament of the Eucharist. Fr. Mike takes us back to the Book of Genesis, the sacrifices of Cain and Abel, and the Book of Exodus, the story of Moses and Pharaoh. He emphasizes that the point of freedom in life is to be led to the freedom to worship God and that it matters to God that we freely choose to attend the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 1356-1361.
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Hi, my name is Fr. Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 185. We're reading paragraphs 1356 to 1361. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the Foundations of Faith approach. But you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. To download your own Catechism in a Year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com ciy and you can also click follow or subscribe in your daily podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. And every single day, here we are on day 185. Also, you know, this is crazy. I don't know if you've thought about this. I sometimes think about this. It's day 185, and I mentioned yesterday and kind of the day before that we just passed halfway, which is awesome. So good. And have you ever noticed, I don't know, I listen to podcasts and I love them and I realize I get this for free and someone pays for it, right? There's no such thing as a free lunch. Someone pays for this. So I'm so grateful, you know, because people have supported the production of this podcast with their prayers, their financial gifts. So just thank you for all of you who do that. I'm just so, so grateful that the rest of us get to just listen for free. It's awesome. It's insane. Okay, anyways, we are day 185, paragraphs 1356 to 1361. We're at the heart of talking about the Eucharist today, which is just a beautiful, incredible. We're not. I mean, there's a bunch of days left to talk about the Eucharist, and I'm here for it because. What a gift. Okay, what are we going to talk about today? We're going to talk about the fact that what I kind of mentioned yesterday, by and by, kind of mentioned, I went into it a lot, that the fact that the Eucharist is the memorial of our Lord's sacrifice, that when we enter into the Mass, we offer to the Father what He Himself has given to us. It's incredible. And this is. I mean, this is anything we give to God. Everything we give to God is giving to God what He's given to us. If I give him my heart, well, he gave me my heart. If I. If I give, you know, I don't know, to charity, well, God is the one who made it possible for me to be able to have any kind of means that everything we give to God originally originates with Him. And the same is true when it comes to the Eucharist and the great sacrifice of the Mass. We'll talk about how the Eucharist is thanksgiving and praise. It's a sacrifice at the heart of it, though, as we said yesterday, because why? Because we know the heart of religion is worship and the heart of worship is sacrifice. So as we launch into these six short paragraphs today, just call to mind what God has done for us. Call upon His Holy Spirit, and in the name of Jesus, let's talk to our Father in heaven. Father, we know that you love us. We know that you have given your own Son so we can have life and have it to the full. We know what he has done for us in offering himself in sacrifice to you. A sacrifice of love, a sacrifice of praise, a sacrifice of thanksgiving. We know that that sacrifice has changed the course of every one of our lives because that sacrifice, the sacrifice of your Son, made it possible for us to have access to you. Help us to participate in this sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Mass, with our whole heart. Help us to participate in the sacrifice of the Mass. As if every time we approach the Mass, we approach as if it's the first, our first Mass, our last Mass, and our only Mass. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is day 185. We are reading paragraphs 1356 to 1361. The sacramental sacrifice, Thanksgiving, memorial presents. If from the beginning Christians have celebrated the Eucharist, and in a form whose substance has not changed despite the great diversity of times and liturgies, it is because we know ourselves to be bound by the command the Lord gave on the eve of His Passion. Do this in remembrance of me. We carry out this command of the Lord by celebrating the memorial of his sacrifice. In doing so, we offer to the Father what He has himself given us. The gifts of his creation, bread and wine, which by the power of the Holy Spirit and by the words of Christ, have become the body and blood of Christ. Christ is thus really and mysteriously made present. We must therefore consider the Eucharist as thanksgiving and praise to the Father, the sacrificial memorial of Christ and His Body, the presence of Christ by the power of His Word and of His Spirit, thanksgiving and praise to the Father. The Eucharist, the sacrament of our salvation accomplished by Christ on the cross, is also a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for the work of creation. In the Eucharistic sacrifice, the whole of creation loved by God is presented to the Father through the death and the resurrection of Christ. Through Christ, the Church can offer the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving for all that God has made good, beautiful, and just in creation and in humanity. The Eucharist is a sacrifice of thanksgiving to the Father, a blessing by which the Church expresses her gratitude to God for all his benefits, for all that he has accomplished through creation, redemption and sanctification. Eucharist means, first of all, thanksgiving. The Eucharist is also the sacrifice of praise by which the Church sings the glory of God in the name of all creation. This sacrifice of praise is possible only through Christ. He unites the faithful to his person, to his praise and to his intercession, so that the sacrifice of praise to the Father is offered through Christ and with him to be accepted in Him. Right, there we have it. As I said, six short paragraphs, almost a nugget day. But we're not reviewing anything. We're introducing this incredible reality of the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. So let's highlight a couple of things here. Let's actually, let's start by going back. Let's go all the way back to, let's say, the book of Exodus. Actually, let's go all the way back to Genesis. Let's do that for just a second. Remember, in Genesis, there were these two sons. They had the two sons of Adam and Eve. There's Cain and Abel. And what did they do? The first thing we have them do, first thing we see them do, is we see them offering sacrifice. Remember, the heart of religion is worship, and the heart of worship is sacrifice. And so here's Cain and Abel, and they're offering a sacrifice. And for whatever reason, we don't necessarily know exactly why, although there's people who have theories about this. Abel's sacrifice is accepted, and Cain's sacrifice is not accepted. And it's not that God doesn't love Cain. We don't know what it is. I mean, God speaks to Cain, he talks to him, he protects Cain ultimately, even after he's slain his own brother. But there's something about the sacrifice that is of Abel. That's right. Right. It's accepted. And something about the sacrifice of Cain, that's not accepted. As I said, we don't know what that is, but all we know is that it is. And so the heart of every human being is. Should be, what does God want? In fact, let's jump to Exodus now. So if you recall the story of Exodus, here are the Jewish people. They're enslaved. The Hebrew. Hebrew people are enslaved in Egypt. And God turns to Moses and says, moses, go to Pharaoh and tell Pharaoh, let my people go. Now, maybe I've said this before. I'm going to repeat myself in this case. I used to always think that that was the whole story that God told Moses, Go to Pharaoh and tell Pharaoh, let my people go. My people are slaves. They're not meant to be slaves. I want to set them free. I want to give them freedom and life. All you have give them is slavery and death. I want to give them this freedom. And that's true. That's not false. That is part of what God wants for his people. And yet the whole line is not just let my people go, it's let my people go so that they can go and worship me. That the point of freedom, the point of this life is being led to be able to worship God. That it's not just freedom from something, it's freedom for something. And the freedom for is so that they can enter the promised land, of course, and be that dynasty, become a worldwide blessing that God can. He will keep his promises. But also, they have freedom for worship. And so as the story unfolds, you know, Pharaoh's heart is hardened. He says, no. Then he says, yes. At one point, he says, okay, fine. Go ahead and take the men, the women, the children, and whatever animals you need to sacrifice to the Lord your God. And Moses says, looks at Pharaoh and says, well, actually, we have to take all of the animals. We have to take all of our stuff. Because when we get to the mountain where God will be worshiped, we don't know what he's going to want yet. We don't know how he's going to want to be worshiped. And I used to always think that this was, you know, Moses being a little, sly little fox, like, you know, Moses, you're trying to pull. Pulling over on Pharaoh. But Pope Benedict wrote about this in a book called the Spirit of the Liturgy when he wrote as Cardinal Ratzinger. And he highlights this and he says, actually, you know, Moses wasn't trying to trick Pharaoh. Moses was telling Pharaoh the truth. The truth is we don't know what God is going to want. And we want to give God what he wants. Our temptation, your temptation and mine is I want to give God what I want to give God. And yet, true worship is where we say, okay, God, what do you want? This is why in the book of Exodus, right, they had to take all of their stuff to be led to from slavery and death into freedom, into life, so that. So that they can worship. So they can worship God as He wants them to worship Him. And so here we find ourselves. What does Jesus say on the eve of His Passion? He takes bread, breaks, blesses, breaks it, gives it to his disciples. This is my body. Do this in remembrance of me. Same thing with the chalice filled with the fruit of the vine. This is the chalice of my blood of the new. The blood of the new and eternal covenant he poured out for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me. Do this in remembrance of me. This is the key thing we know now. We know how God wants us to worship Him. And the Church has preserved this because why? Because the heart of. This is the heart of everything. This is the heart of everything. That what saved us is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The self offering to the Father, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. We get to participate in that sacrifice at every Mass, because that's what it is. Paragraph 1358 says we must therefore consider the Eucharist as A, the thanksgiving and praise to the Father, B, the sacrificial memorial of Christ and His Body, and C, the presence of Christ by the power of the Word, of His Word and His Spirit. And this is just again, so, so good that you and I have not just been allowed access. That's one thing. They let us through the door like, you can come if you want. We haven't just been allowed access. We've been invited. And you might say commanded. You say commanded, I'll say commanded. But the fact that God wants us, isn't this crazy to think God, it matters to God whether you or I show up to Mass or not. That it matters to God whether you and I participate in Mass. It matters to God whether you and I offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving or the sacrifice of praise that we talked about today. That just blows my mind that if I absent myself. Yes, okay, That's a mortal sin. Got it. If I choose to not go to Mass, and I freely choose to do that, then yes, mortal sin. And so we can look at it like a guilty thing. We can look at it like, oh, it's an obligation. But, like, what's at the heart of that? At the heart of that is this affirmation that says, apparently it matters to God whether you or I show up. And you think, no, I'm just a person sitting in the pew. I'm just standing up, sitting down, like everyone else. I'm just saying, you know, and with your spirit, like everyone else. I'm just saying, amen, like everyone else. With everyone else. And yet, when you're present, something's different. And when you're absent, something is different again. It just boggles the mind how the infinite and eternal God, that it matters to him whether or not we show up. We'll say this last thing in paragraph 1359. It says, in the Eucharistic sacrifice, the whole of creation loved by God is presented to the Father through the death and resurrection of Christ. The whole of creation loved by God is presented to the Father through the death and resurrection of Christ. And that includes. That includes you and me. Crazy. Crazy. The sacrifice of praise to the Father is offered through Christ and with him to be accepted in him, as we say at every Mass, right through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honor is yours, Almighty Father, forever and ever through Jesus, with Jesus, in Jesus, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honors on heaven and earth is offered to you, Father, in heaven. Incredible. And you and I get to be part of that. What a gift. No, other words, what a gift. So I know you might struggle to get there, you might struggle to stay there, you might struggle to show up, you might struggle to focus. But that's where we're called to be. We are invited to be commanded to be. If you wrestle with that, I gotta tell you, I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.