← The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
How Being a Christian Will Affect Your Life (w/ Fr. Mike Schmitz)
00:06:58
As we discover the lives of the saints, it seems they endured quite a bit of suffering before receiving their eternal reward. It begs the question, is it worth it? Fr. Mike reminds us that in this life, we will have suffering. The question is not, can you avoid suffering by avoiding Jesus? The question is, can your suffering be transformed by embracing Jesus?
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:00]
A
That loss, that. That suffering, that pain. I'll say it like this. It's coming either way. The question is not can you avoid suffering by avoiding Jesus? The question is, can your suffering be transformed by embracing Jesus? Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and this is Ascension presents. Apologize for the tree. It is beginning to look a lot like Christmas, but it's not yet Christmas. We are filming the upcoming Advent series called Waiting. Well, and so I have a Christmas tree in my living room because limited space. Someone recently reached out and they're reading about the lives of saints. And they said reading about the lives of saints is both inspiring and really, really intimidating. Inspiring because obviously here's God who does incredible things with normal human beings, but intimidating in the sense. They said this, they said. It seems like all of these saints have the same story, in the sense that they start following the Lord and they have horrible things happen to them. Physical suffering, mental anguish, big grief in their hearts. They lose everything. They have to go places they never would want to go. Ah, yeah, I kind of want to be a saint. God wants me to be a saint, but I don't know if I want to sign up for that. You know, it's funny, we have two narratives. One narrative is you follow Jesus and blue skies. I mean, it's rainbows, it is butterflies and it's sunshine. But the other alternative is you follow Jesus and it is just he strapped in because it's a life of misery. Let's clarify as normal, the truth lies somewhere in the middle. So, number one, we know that it's not true, that if you follow Jesus, he's going to make you healthy and wealthy, happy and wise or whatever the thing is, right? Yes. He wants us to have joy. The joy that's in him and joy that's complete. Yes. He wants us to have the abundance of love, of course. But Jesus never promises that following him would lead us to riches. In fact, he says, woe to you who are rich now, Right? He says, easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who's wealthy to enter the kingdom of God. It is nowhere in the Bible promised to be blessed with health or financial success. Christians have never thought that until. Unless they get it wrong, we'll say that. On the other hand, Jesus makes it very clear that, no, if you want to be my disciple, you must deny yourself your very ego, pick up your cross and follow after me. Okay, so is Jesus saying that if you follow me, you'll have more sufferings than you would if you didn't follow me, and the answer is maybe. Really, that's what it is. Well, you and I might have more suffering for following Jesus than if we didn't. Jesus says, many will hate you and exclude you and reject you, and on account of the Son of man. There'll be some ways you have to suffer for faith in Jesus, for following after Jesus that you wouldn't if you didn't follow after Jesus. Those are things like, you may be misunderstood, you may be rejected. You may not get that job, you may not get that spouse. So many students on our campus who are saying, like, well, I have this vision for what marriage should be, for what a love should look like. I have this vision that I should wait for sexual relations until marriage. And so I start dating someone and say, oh, by the way, you know, I'm a Catholic, and that's my plan. The number of young women and even the number of young men who have told me this and said, yeah, the person I told that to either is, they're thinking about it. They're thinking if they still want to date me, or they broke up with me. This bananas, that is completely bonkers. But it's true. And if you want to follow after Jesus, that means there's some doors that are shut. There are some people that will not want you in their life. Yeah, you might get fired. You might have to move to a place you don't want to live. You might not get that person you find the most attractive, but they don't live the same life. Think about if you lived in an atheistic regime. Yes, everything could be taken from you for your following Jesus. I got an oh, man. A message from a man recently who lives in a Muslim country, and he's becoming Christian. And he says, if I do this publicly, I may lose my life, they may kill me, because that's the law. If you're a Muslim, become a Christian, like, you're dead. Yes, it's possible that following Jesus will give you more pain and more suffering than if you didn't follow Jesus. But think about the question this person was asking. When they're saying, so it seems like all these saints had incredible pain, had incredible suffering. If I follow Jesus, am I just signing up for more incredible pain and more incredible suffering? Again, the answer could be maybe. What's Jesus say? He says, if you want to be my disciple, you must deny yourself. Okay, so that's the thing. That's the ego. I have to deny that. Me as first pick up your cross daily. Now here's the interesting thing, most of the crosses in our lives, they just come to us as a result of life. Difficult relationships as a result of life. Sickness, result of life. Injuries, result of life. Every one of us will get to the point where we get weaker and weaker and weaker as a result of life. Ultimately, every one of us will lose everything as a result of life. As we die, the cross is going to come either way in your life. In my life, the cross is going to come either way. Sickness will come, injury will come, devastation will come, tragedy will come, death will come. Will Jesus be there? That's the secret of the saints. Remember, they're ordinary people who have simply allowed God's grace to enter into their cross and transform it. They've allowed God's grace to enter into their tragedy and allowed him to transform it. They have allowed God's grace to enter into their suffering, their broken heart. They've allowed God's grace to enter into every crack of their life. And because of that, God has transformed every crack of their life into something remarkable. So what are you signing up for when you say yes to Jesus? Not a life of healthy, wealthy, happy and wise, but also not just a life of total deprivation. We're signing up to say, okay, I will deny myself, I will pick up my cross. But maybe the most important, I'll follow you, Jesus. You will transform every crack, every wound, every cross in my life. And I'll carry each cross, I'll experience each wound, and I'll know that this is not for nothing, that you're doing something incredible with each crack, with each wound, and with each cross. It is not a matter of each either suffering or not suffering. It's a matter of either I suffer with Jesus or I suffer without him. As Christians, even in the worst moment, season time of our life, we're never alone. You're not choosing suffering. You're choosing him. My name is from Elvis here at Ascension presents. My name is Father Mike. God bless.