← The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast
If You're Doing This, It's Not Love (w/ Fr. Mike Schmitz)
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Saint John Paul ii. At one point he said, the opposite of love is not hate. What do you think he said it was? Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and this is Ascension presents. You know that in the Bible, if you're looking at Genesis 1 and Genesis chapter 2, you realize that. That what we're made for. I've talked about this so many times. We're made for at least three things, right? We're made for labor. You know, God works. He puts us in the garden to work. Made for leisure. He rests. On the seventh day. We're called to enter into his rest. And he made us to share in maybe God's deepest identity. The catechism says it like this. It says, Jesus reveals the innermost secret of God. What is the innermost secret of God? That God is an eternal exchange of love. Basically, another way to say it is the innermost secret of God is that God is love. Love isn't just something God does, but love is who God is. If you're made in God's image and likeness, the innermost secret of you is that you're made for love. So we're made for three things. For labor, for leisure, and for love. It's our call. And in some ways, that love is our deepest identity. And yet what happens is, well, Genesis 1 and 2 reveal this is all good. We're made for that. Genesis 3 reveals the brokenness and the introduction of brokenness. And so now, from now on, we all have distortions. We have distortion of labor, we have distortion of leisure, and we experience a distortion of. Of love. So what's the distortion of love is what John Paul II was getting at. He said the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love, he said, is use. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is use. I would say that's one of the distortions of love. There's another distortion of love, though. We can see what John Paul is saying. The opposite of love. Love is that love is what love is willing the good of the other, right? So love is willing the good of the other. And yet what is useful use is willing to use the other, right? It recognizes the usefulness of the other person. It recognizes the fact that this person has something that could benefit me, has something that I want. That's a trap, right? Instead of it being a gaze of love, this gaze of I can will, I can choose the good of this other person. Now it's, where can I take use? Doesn't have to always be lust. That's Often how it is, but also it could be manipulation. It could be, you know, getting one over on someone, you know, pulling one over on someone, you know, tricking them or fooling them so that now I have something that I wanted that they used to have. Stealing like, that could be using them, right? Doesn't have to just be lust. But I see something in you that's potentially valuable for me. That's use. But the other extreme, the other distortion of love, it's kind of sneaky. Another distortion of love is indifference. Love is willing the good of the other. It's seeing the other and choosing their good use. Oh, no, I'm going to take whatever I find valuable from you. Indifference is looking at another and saying, oh, I'm not even acknowledging you. I'm not even noticing you. I'm not even necessarily even seeing you. It's as if you don't exist for the use. It's okay. What I value in you is what you can give me. Indifference is, oh, there's no value here. Never mind. Pass, swipe left, whatever that thing is. Just moving on. Both of these are a distortion of love. If love is willing the good of the other, choosing the good of the other. Use is I want to take whatever I find valuable. And indifference is an unwillingness or an inability to see the good in the other, to see the dignity of the other. And again, this could be our whole day. In fact, for many of us, we could say, I really try not to use people. I really try not to either use people lustfully or try not to use people in a manipulative way. I try not to use people when it comes to, like stealing from them or lying or whatever, getting what I try not to take from others. And that would be great. That'd be great. At the same time, how often do we give ourselves a pass in simply ignoring people and being indifferent to, to not even just their suffering, but being indifferent to their existence. We just walk past people day after day and don't even notice the fact that this is another person made in God's image and likeness. C.S. lewis wrote about this where he was talking about if we could only see, if we could only see the truth of every, even just the most ordinary human being. If we saw the reality, the spiritual reality of what is standing, what kind of being is standing in front of us or walking past us on the street, he said we'd either be tempted to run in horror because of the distortion we can do ourselves by sin, or we'd be tempted to bow down in worship because seeing the image of God in so many ways unscarred, and yet we're indifferent. How many people do you and I pass with indifference? And we think, that's fine, that's fine. I'm not using them, right? I'm not using the opposite of love as use, so I'm not using them, that's fine. I could just walk past them and be indifferent to them. And yet both use and indifference are distortions of our deepest identity, distortions of, in fact, our highest call, right? Jesus said, the great commandment is to love the Lord God with all your heart, my soul and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. The second greatest commandment, use and indifference, both violate the second great commandment to love our neighbor as ourself. So what are we called to? Well, I would say John Paul said. Would say we're called to chastity. Chastity. Where did that come from? Out of nowhere. I guess it makes sense when it comes to use lust and chastity. But John Paul II said this. He said, chastity, what does it essentially entails a quickness to affirm the dignity of the other person. The essence of chastity is the quickness to affirm the dignity of the other person. So if we see someone and we want to use them for however we want to use them, whether through lust or some other way, the essence of chastity is a quickness to affirm their dignity. Like, no, that person does not exist for me to use. That person exists solely to be loved. But also when I want to pass by someone and like, oh, no, there's nothing in that person that I could use, nothing in that person that offers me anything. So I'm going to be tempted to be indifferent. The essence of chastity is the quickness to affirm the dignity of the person that we're passing by. We've really hollowed out the word chastity, if that's what chastity really is. We have really emptied it of the beautiful richness of what it's meant to be. The essence of chastity is the quickness to affirm the dignity of the other human being, other person. You and I can exercise chastity every single day. And I don't just mean we're not going to lust after people. What I mean is to quickly acknowledge, this is a human being made in God's image and likeness. This is a human being of great, incredible goodness. This is a human being who's worth loving to have that kind of view that kind of perspective to that kind of look in our eyes, reflecting the truth in our hearts would be amazing. And that is actually what you're made for. Love, your deepest identity. So how do we exercise that today? Equicness for every person we come across to affirm the dignity of every human being. Anyways, from all this here at ascension presents, my name is father Mike. God bless.