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Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and this is Ascension presents. So we have a pope, which is awesome. Pope Leo xiv. That is incredible. It's not unexpected in the sense that we get a pope. I mean, when the cardinals went into the conclave, I figured they'd come out with a pope. So that's a. That's awesome. What's kind of unexpected is. Well, obviously what everyone's talking about, which is the fact that he is born in America, raised in America, I think a Peruvian national, he became a citizen of Peru 20 years ago. But praise God, this is awesome. Thank the Lord for the fact that he's given us a new pope. Now, sometimes people say, well, what's that mean? What does it mean to have a new Holy Father? And I. I would say it means a lot of things. One of the things I believe it means is that we have a new universal pastor. That is what the Holy Father is. I mean, he's many, many things, obviously, right? He's the Al Habait, right? He's the prime minister. He's the steward of the kingdom that Jesus Christ founded, but also he's the universal pastor. He's the universal shepherd of the church. You know, that. That. That idea that, that truth, that reality comes all the way back from Isaiah 22, where you have that role, the role of the Al Habait, right? The role of prime minister, the steward of the kingdom of Israel. And he's called. He's called. He will be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. One of the reasons why we call the pope the Holy Father, actually sort of the reason he called the pope the Pope, because pope is just an Anglicized version of word of Papa, which is obviously father. And so here is the Holy Father, right? Here is our pope, who is the universal shepherd. Again, that. That role of. He'll be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and to the house of Judah. So we see him as that. In. In that role, we see him as the universal shepherd, the universal pastor. So how do we receive him? That's the big question. And I would say this. If the role of the Holy Father is to be universal pastor, how do you receive your new pastor? Like, you know, in most Catholic dioceses around the country, at least, if not around the world, we have this rotation of priests. It's rare that you kind of keep your pastor for a long, long time. If he's an amazing, incredible pastor, even then sometimes he gets. He gets moved on. If he was mediocre, he Gets moved on. If he's bad, he gets moved on. Yet we all get, you know, a new pastor at some point. The big temptation, of course, is when you get a new pastor is to compare him to the old pastor. And you think like, oh, he was so great. He was the best pastor ever. And then there's this. Typically there is a temptation to compare. And yet when you've been around for a while, you realize, okay, every priest has their strengths, every priest has their weaknesses. This is the shepherd, this is the pastor that we get now in our parish. And so, yes, there's gonna be differences, obviously, but there's some things that are consistent and that consistency is okay. This is the person that the Lord has given to us to be our pastor, to be our shepherd for however long. And so how we approach them, how we embrace them is we should, I think, stay away from the temptation to comparison or even the temptation to just assume that we know. Like I heard about him. He was in the parish, you know, next town over, and people said such and such. Well, no, that's the information. You know, when it comes to Pope Leo, a lot of people are saying, like, well, what's he. What's he like? How is he different than Pope Francis? How is he different than Pope Benedict or John Paul II or all these other different popes that we. Or even Pope Leo XIII from, you know, 100 whatever years ago? How is he different? Well, we'll find out, but we won't find out if we make. If we just keep making assumptions, just like meeting anybody, we won't find out unless. Unless we just accept them and let them tell us who they are. And at the same time, we do embrace and accept the Holy Father with a certain degree of respect. And I made a video about this a while ago. When it comes to these three levels of respect, the first level of respect is the kind of respect that's common to everyone, right? It's the fact that every individual human being is made in God's image and likeness. So they deserve a baseline level of respect when it comes to the fact that they're made in God's image and likeness. The second kind is the kind of respect that's based off of the fact that someone is occupying an office, right? They have a. They have a particular role in my life or they have a particular role in all of our lives. So we honor our parents because they have a particular role in our life. You know, whether or not they're good parents or bad parents, the fact that they are our Parents, they have a certain degree of respect. Same with our teachers, same with our, you know, elected officials, these kinds of things. And also the same thing with the Holy Father, with the Pope, the fact that he occupies the chair of Peter, that particular role of, of, of guiding, of governing, of a sanctifying right, that that person, whoever it is, deserves the respect that belongs to that role. The third kind of respect, right, the first kind is the kind of respect that's common to everybody because you make are made in God's image. Secondly is the respect that's due to someone who, because they occupy a role or a position. The third is the respect that is never owed. It's the respect that's always. It can only be earned. It can also be lost. It's the respect due to someone's character. And so if someone has a great character, like, oh yeah, I respect them in an even greater way. And over the course of his life, I'm sure that Pope Leo XIV has people in his life that have said, oh, you are a good man, you're deserving of my respect. And over the course of his papacy, I imagine that we all will come to know that not only do we respect Pope Leo XIV as an individual, as a made a man, made in God's image and likeness, the baptized made us a son of the Father, also a priest. That, that, that role, that respect that we offer to the role as, you know, someone occupying the chair of Peter, but also thirdly, hopefully we find that he's a man of integrity, man of character, and we can give him that third level of respect. Until then, what do we do? Well, I think until then, it's great to have this particular attitude. I think it was Ignatius of Loyola, you know, founded the Jesuits and he was writing about how is it that you live in community and you know, when you're living in community, whether that's a family or a religious community, there are some things that get on our nerves, right? There's some things that other people can do that we just think, like, why did they do that? I. Well, they did it because they're a jerk and they did it because they're selfish. They did for all these, you know, bad reasons. And Ignatius of Loyola had said the, the wisdom of, of the Church as well, which is always assume the best. That even when we see someone's actions, what we want to do is we want to assume good motives because we do that for ourselves, don't we? We say, well, I did this thing that might be kind of sketchy, but I did it for a good reason. Okay. And so he would say that whenever we see someone do something, if there's, if we kind of think it's sketchy or kind of thing, it's like, well, I'm kind of problematic. If we can, we want to assume, well, they must have had a good reason or must not understand the reason basically to assume the best. You know, I was talking, this last thing, I was talking with one of our focus missionaries here on campus and in their team, they had, they had a team. This last year I had a team of five missionaries. And one of them, one of them said that the team director, that he had this policy, and the policy is this, is that when you approach each other and there's some kind of gap between what the person did and your understanding of what they did or what they said and your understanding of what they said, when there's any kind of gap in, in relationship, fill the gap with trust. So there's a gap. Like I, I, I'm not sure. Like, I think you're just g me a side look and I, I, I, I feel weird about this, or you just said that thing that kind of seemed, felt like a criticism, or you just did the thing you, I asked you to do whatever and you didn't do the thing. To fill the gap with trust means that, okay, there's this gap. I could assume the worst or I could fill that gap with trust. I think this is so helpful not only when it comes to Pope Leo the 14th or, or your new pastor, but when it comes to your family members, when it comes to life. If in other occasions there's a person who has demonstrated that they're a person of goodwill, in this occasion, I have some kind of temptation to think poorly of them. Well, if they've demonstrated in other areas they're a person of goodwill, then why not, why not fill that gap with trust? So that's what I think we should do with Pope Leo xiv. I think that's what also we should do with the, the, the people maybe who live in your house with you, some family members or some friends or whoever those people are. Anyways, problems here at Ascension presents. I'm going to name Father Mike. God bless.