Father Mike Schmitz's Homily for the Eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

so um when i was in high school i i said about i i thought i was i thought it'd be really funny so let me start over again when i was in high school i thought that um if i just memorized other people's words if i memorized uh like the funny people's words i could be funny um if i memorized like romantic words like be romantic i remember remember i just listening over and over to sonnet 116 where william shakespeare writes let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments love is not love which alters when adulteration finds or bends with the remover to remove it is the start every wandering bark who's worth unknown although his height be taken love's not time's fool the rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickles compass come level does not with his brief hours and weeks to bears it out even to the edge of doom if this be error and upon me proved i never writ nor no man ever loved and i remember thinking like i was i'm gonna get all these girlfriends this is so great because i cuz i know this by the by heart you know and i can have all these friends because i have like every i have dumb and dumber memorized i have every other stupid movie memorized like that sense of like i'm gonna memorize someone else's words and i'm gonna know them by heart and that's one of the things like right when it comes to um when you memorize something we say you know it by heart and yet it's so interesting because um i even i even forgot one of the lines in sonnet 116. so i don't know about my heart because it's been a thousand years since i was in high school but this reality is when you memorize something we say we know it by heart meaning that we know it's so closely we know it's so well we know it so thoroughly that you only don't even need to think about it those words actually are planted in your own heart and that's that's partly true to be able to speak from your heart that's another way we talk about this right to be able to speak from your heart means that you're telling something that that actually is is so deeply and so core to a person and that's how we want to speak right we want to speak from the heart we want to know things by heart we want to speak from the heart and yeah i think sometimes knowing something by heart and speaking from the heart are very different because knowing something by heart is is knowing something external but speaking from the heart it does something unique speaking from the heart reveals something in fact that's what we want to talk about today because our words have power see those that speech those words they have the power to reveal in fact xerox says this and in the first reading today it's rex says a sieve is shaken and husks appear and so do one's faults when one speaks goes on to say one's speech discloses the bent of one's mind and we know this hopefully we know this when we speak from the heart what that does is words have the ability to disclose one's character words have the ability to reveal who i actually am who we really are no at the same time there's a caveat that we all of course we know the power words also have the power to disguise one's character words also have the power to disguise what one really is in fact um i just recently watched this documentary on netflix called the tinder swindler um it's about this guy who's traveled all over europe and he has basically just conned people into giving him money i think at the end of his you know con he's free right now but after at the end of his con he had swindled a number of people out of over 10 million dollars so he put himself off as a certain kind of person and people would say he seemed so genuine he seemed so legit he seemed so real it seemed like he would speak to me from his heart those words didn't disclose his heart those words disguise his heart and that we know we can all do that i mean we all do that on a daily basis um they say that uh we can get away with it too like truly we can use our words to disguise our character and we can we can get away with that up to a point because we can have our rehearsed words like we can know words by heart and just say them as if they're from our hearts but the moment always comes when our words disclose the truth of our hearts so i was just talking to a friend of mine um we were both giving a presentation so we both had microphones on and so the conversation went to um i had to use the restroom and he was like hey make sure you turn off the microphone because we've all heard the stories right of someone you know the priest at mass you know going to where you're going to go before right from us takes up goes to the bathroom it's like whoa that's so embarrassing so he's like making sure you turn off the microphone like absolutely thank you my friend you're a good friend um and he said actually it gets even worse it's even worse some he shared a story that was even worse than someone taking the microphone into the bathroom it was uh someone who had been invited to a church he'd been invited to a parish to give a talk and people came from all over the city people who actually came from all over the region and they packed this church it was it was absolutely full and this presenter this speaker before he went out he was in the sacristy like the room right off the the front of the the church and uh he was kind of going off and he said yeah you know this this priest here this pastor here is just a clown like he's a total joke well i better get out there now and he walked out and in this pack church everyone's looking at you like a pin you could hear a pin drop everyone's looking at him and he realized wait a second my microphone was on that entire time this whole time he said yeah the pastor hears what a clown what a total joke walked out and everyone heard everyone heard what he really thought right everyone heard what was in his heart that was disclosed and i just i remember telling my friend like what did he do like what would you do i i think it would be one of those situations where it's like i am so sorry you all came here there is nothing i can say to you now because even if what i have to say to you is true even if i have to say to you is actually helpful or as good the only thing you're going to know the only thing you're going to remember is what i just said earlier when you actually know what's in my heart because words have the power to disclose what's there because you could say i now know the kind of person that's standing in front of me words have the power to disclose what's there and in fact this happened to me a couple of summers ago um the uh maybe this last summer shoot i don't even know it's pretty recent but it was summertime i was at my parents place and and all the siblings came back and we were up late one night talking smart and stuff and at one point my older brother who i love am i my older brother i just respect him i respect him not disrespect him i just respect him so much um we got to talking and at one point he said something in it and i just i don't know what it was i was like no you listen to me uh you can't say that kind of thing and and i was like no this what this is he was like what in his i said no this is what you need to know about you you know i kind of went off and i was like oh my gosh and he's sitting there and he just kind of has a smile on his face and he's really funny because he's in control this man he knows what he's about and i'm like no here's what you need to know and he's like and i just got unleashed and the next day we had mass in the house first thing we had like 8 a.m five hours later we were up late and uh i'm like oh shoot i have to talk to my brother i found him because you know scripture says if you have something against your brother leave your gift at the altar be reconciled first and then come back like oh man mark i'm so sorry and my dad even came up and said hey i heard that you had some words with your brother like how did you know this already because it's a such out of character thing for me later on he walked up nick we were walking and he came up next to me and he's like so he got pretty mad at me and i'm like no i wasn't mad at you i was like no no no it was good like what he's i mean mark i'm so sorry he's like no that was good like what do you mean is good he says he says mikey you you always are so careful with your words like i sometimes wonder if you ever actually say what you really think and so it was really good to hear and i well i thought hey um well thank you for not destroying me because he's a tough guy um b that's true like what he said is i am i i'm often not always really careful with what i say and for i think for good reason it may be three good reasons one is because i know that not everything i think needs to be said secondly i know that not everything i think happens to be true and third i know that not everything i think is actually what i think i mean let's go back to the first one i think the same thing is true for all of us not everything we think needs to be said i mean we don't all have to live online we don't all have to live on twitter or something because why because i think we all love people or we at least we all want to love people and that we all know that just because i might think something doesn't mean it needs to be said because that could actually wound people you and i have the power that our words not only have the power to disclose what's in our hearts our words also have power to destroy and jesus says from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks yeah and if i was full of nothing but goodness and love and butterflies then that no problem i can say whatever i thought but i know this about my heart my heart is a mix and i think your heart might be a mix too and so i think maybe we need to filter because i want to filter out i want to do what saint paul said saint paul said say only the good things people need to hear things that will really help them if i want to be like that then i need to filter so my brother says yeah i think sometimes you're really careful with your words i'm like yes because i want to say things that actually help people not things that just needlessly hurt the second thing is i know that not everything i think is true i don't know if you've ever had that situation where um you think about one person or a situation and you realize you had it completely wrong like you were completely convinced that oh my gosh this is the story about this person's life or even like you know you realize you're looking at the circumstance you're looking at the situation you're like this is horrible and someone hands you a snickers you're like oh i'm fine you know it's like you just i was just hangry what st james says st james says about the about words the power of words he says listen just just be quick to hear and slow to speak and slow to anger why because not everything you think is true so be quick to hear and slow to speak and slow it to anger i think that that's one of the many reasons why saint ignatius of loyola he was the founder of the jesuit so he founded this community of men who are going to live together and then go throughout the world evangelizing and being on mission he he said um everyone should be careful to interpret other people's thoughts words and deeds in the best possible way in fact he said it like this he said he said every good christian ought to be ready to give a favorable interpretation to another statement than to condemn it like our inclination should be to give a favor and favorable interpretation rather than condemn it he says going on he says but if you can't do that if you can't do so let him ask how the other understands it or the other meant it and if the other person understands it badly well you can correct him with love and if that doesn't work then let the christian try all suitable ways to bring the other to a correct interpretation so that he may be saved and that that first inclination that first impulse of being able to say that not everything i think is true just because i think you meant this doesn't mean you meant that just because i i think that that this is what you're all about doesn't mean that's what you're all about not everything i think needs to be said not everything i think needs is true and also this last one i just it's so humbling not everything i think is actually what i think i think that's true about youtube not everything we think is actually what we think because our thoughts largely i think over the course of the day go unexamined and unfiltered we have so many thoughts we have so many inputs we have so many things that in competing voices that we might not even know what it is we actually think and so the result is i don't even know what's there i don't even know what's in my heart i don't even know myself we find ourselves in that place where what do i think i think there's three things we can do first we can stop and pray so uh my last year's seminary archbishop harry flynn was the archbishop of saint paul minneapolis and he had all the guys in my class over to his house and we had a holy hour and then dinner afterwards and before we had dinner after the holy hour he stopped and he said okay gentlemen here's what i need you to do i need you to make the decision that through your priesthood you're gonna make a holy hour every day that in that at some point in the course of every single day you're gonna come into the lord's presence come before him in the eucharist and the blessed sacrament and just have that time of prayer just with jesus and he said here's why you need this not only because you need to grow in holiness not only because you need to grow in intimacy with jesus but because of this as a priest you're going to talk a lot as a priest you're going to do a lot of things you're going to make a lot of decisions and you can get so busy that you go from one thing to the next you can say one thing and then another but if you come into the lord's presence and have that time of silence you're going to realize and jesus is going to remind you there were things you said you said you shouldn't have said said there were things you should have said that you didn't say there's things you did you shouldn't have done and there's things that you didn't do that you should have done and it's in that place of silence that you actually get to be reminded by jesus you used to stop and pray and let them remind you here is what you need to ponder to examine okay what are the thoughts and feelings of my heart can i put a name to them can i give a handle to them can i understand where they're coming from and what they mean because so often we have these thoughts going through our head that are largely unexamined and unfiltered so we need to stop and pray the second thing we need to do i think is we need to to write um i think we may think we know what we think until we try to articulate it then we realized i have no idea what i think i i my uh the hardest class i ever took in my probably my entire life was my sophomore year in high school ap american history class mr lottie super good teacher super tough teacher really difficult difficult class for me for at my level at the time because there's a lot of information but every single week mr lottie had us write a thesis statement and and i got the lowest scores i mean the entire almost the entire year i got the lowest scores i've ever gotten basically in my entire life on mr lottie's thesis statement what it was was one page just had handwritten even you had to make a statement and you had to back it up and i filled up the page with all these words and mr lottie every week he'd look at all these words and say what's your thesis where's your thesis statement where's your proof where's your evidence what is it you actually think have you made a case for anything here or if you just put a bunch of words on the page and i realized i didn't know how to think i didn't know how to say what is it that i actually am trying to say what do i think so writing actually helps us with it helps us figure out what is it that we think what is it that's in our hearts in fact i referenced him a couple weeks ago michael hyatt is an author and speaker and whatnot businessman and he has this saying that i remember hearing him say like a dozen years ago he said thoughts untangle themselves passing over the lips and through pencil tips that our thoughts and our brains are just like again largely uh un unfiltered and and kind of unacknowledged or uninspected investigated but they become untangled as they pass through our lips as we speak and just kind of work it out and through pencil tips as we write these things down so my invitation is is to write it out to speak it out and then we can learn something because words disclose what's in our hearts words this goes what's in our minds in fact again what did syrax say xerox said the fruit of a tree shows the carrots had not carrots had care it has had the fruit of a tree shows the care it has had so too does one's speech disclose the bent of one's mind so not only do we stop and pray not only do we write but there's this third element it's called the law of exposure and the law of exposure is a psychological principle and basically what it means is what's in my mind or what's in my heart is there because i put it there if i investigate my thoughts those thoughts are there because i put them there what i expose myself to shapes me that's the law of exposure and so i i have this love hate relationship with instagram um i think it's kind of cool i like there's some like i don't work out tips and whatnot you know that are on there but also i find myself i have to delete it like every other day because i'm like i don't need this not only a waste of time but also i find myself wanting things i've never wanted in my entire life i've scrolled through and there's an advertisement for the best pair of pants gentlemen you'll ever own i'm like well i want the best pair of pants i've ever owned there's an advertisement for a a cutting board not only not only this cutting board bamboo but also has these plastic containers you chop your vegetables and slide them right into the into the plastic containers put them right in the fridge genius i need that thing but not only is there like the stuff crazy thing is i find myself if i expose myself to instagram wanting something i've never wanted in my life wanting someone else's life i'm like i love my life i'm so grateful to jesus for what he's called me to but it's so strange the law of exposure is real what we what we put in our minds is there because we've exposed ourselves to what's in our hearts are there because we put them there this is anything to from from instagram to the tv shows we watched the movies we watched the songs we listened to i was talking to a focus missionary the other day who is describing how at focus training one of the things they do to kind of reveal how culture influences us is they say okay we're going to go through some lyrics of popular songs these are songs you all know these are probably even songs that you all listen to but have you paid attention to the lyrics that you're putting into your mind every day and so these without the beat without cool harmonies without any cons with just just hearing and also in the context where everyone here is a missionary and the person who just gave a talk was a priest or a religious sister that kind of thing and we're just going to read these lyrics of songs that you know and you might have just listened to in the gym this morning and she said it gets really really uncomfortable and i was looking up lyrics because i was gonna do that here and i thought i am i am so uncomfortable that this is not the context actually it was so bad that i was like oh shoot i can't even do this as an example i have to describe the example i can't even use the example because the number uh number one songs or the top songs of 2021 i thought there's not even one example here that i could use as an example that would be wouldn't be censored by the youtube or whatever but it's censored by parents hopefully watching this it's that bad and we realize this is what you're putting in your heart every time you listen to this song this is what you're planting every time you listen to this song sirach the fruit of a tree shows the care it has had so too does one speech that slows the vent of one's mind because it's the last this is the last thing not only do words disclose our hearts words also direct our hearts not only do words reveal but words also reframe so the words we actually choose to use and the words we choose to put into our minds into our hearts they can direct our minds and our hearts so there's an author his name is james clear remember him using this example a bunch of years ago he said when you're talking to someone and maybe you want to get healthier maybe uh you want to stop eating sweets or maybe you want to stop uh uh being lazy maybe you want to start exercising maybe start going to bed on time he says you need to change how you speak it's a simple change but powerful change he said this and said someone obviously offers you a piece of cake say you want to like get away from sweets typically we'd say oh no no i can't have cake because i'm on a diet he says just change one word no no i don't eat cake that i can't it can't eat it to i don't do that is a significant shift that sense of like i can't stay out late i need to go to bed no i'm not going to stay out late i'm going to bed that kind of that sense of like oh i have to go work out no i get to go work out those subtle shifts in how we use our words can actually direct our hearts and actually can change our insides because words have power they have power to disclose they have power to disguise and they have power to direct our hearts and so what we're gonna do is um starting next week on the first sunday of land we're gonna we're gonna start a new series and the series is based around lent but it's really we're gonna spend the next seven weeks with jesus but not just with jesus we're gonna spend the next seven weeks with jesus on the cross because on the cross jesus uttered words that came from the depths of his heart he didn't speak these words he didn't know these words by heart they came from his heart and so for the next seven weeks we're going to hear his words for the next seven weeks we're going to ponder his words for the next seven weeks we're going to stop and we're going to pray with his words in these words we'll disclose the depths of our lord and savior's heart these words if we stop if we pray if we ponder if we write them out if we live them if we expose ourselves to them those words his words will direct our hearts so that's beginning next sunday i'm going to spend all of lent with words the words of jesus from the heart of the cross

Channel: Ascension Presents

Views: 50,963

Keywords: ascension presents, fr. mike live mass, mass with fr. mike schmitz, sunday live mass with fr. mike schmitz, ascension press mass with fr mike schmitz, fr. mike schmitz, father mike schmitz, best online mass, youtube mass, Catholic Mass, catholic mass today live, fr mike schmitz live mass, ordinary time catholic, catholic mass, father mike schmitz sunday mass, eighth sunday in ordinary time 2022, 8th sunday in ordinary time 2022

Id: 5NbedB3WE60

Length: 21min 51sec (1311 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 27 2022