Joy is the Gigantic Secret of the Christians - Fr. Mike Schmitz

thank you um i i really appreciate that you know it's really funny um i think it's funny at least i was sharing with some of the folks at our table during supper um about you know speaking of the bible in a year speaking of that uh that podcast um about maybe a month into it you know it was doing relatively well and uh some people had whether i knew them or they just were friends or i didn't know them at all they got a hold of my number or got a hold of my email and they would message me and say hey you know congratulations it's really cool but don't let it go to your head and i appreciate that because you know that can happen um but my thought was i mean that makes sense but i've had a podcast since 2007 of my own homilies that um and then i just started another podcast in 2015 and now the one would i just like pick up the bible and say a reading from the gospel of john chapter 6 and read god's word that's when it goes so i'm like if anything it's more humbling than anything else because it's like wow when i tried to do it it was fine but when god does it it's amazing so and also that's true right when god does it it's amazing um so i wanted to start i wanted to start by well actually so on a number of you probably well let me assume this thing i'm really polished speaker you can tell i'm good at talking i don't know how many of you were part of our virtual front pew that we had during kovid but one of the things that we announced oh i announced during that time so like five of you thank you so much i appreciate it but one of the things that happened is is during copa during the spring of coven my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and uh and she all that's all that summer she went through chemo and she had surgery that next fall and the doctor said it couldn't have gone better and so that was great she just started another round of chemo last tuesday for the next six months because it's back and whatnot so if you don't keep if you want to keep my mom and your prayers that'd be amazing um yeah and i always say mom can i can i tell people about this and she's like all the prayers i don't care tell everybody if they're going to pray for me i want them to know like okay mom so um at one point though oh so okay i was going to keep her name a secret her name is kidding her name is goody and so here okay this is not on in my notes but if you were to picture a goodie what would you picture a goodie to look like [Music] would she be like a bubbly blonde haired pink hair maybe yeah so my mom her actual name is gudrun amundsen so very norwegian her dad bjarny amundsen uncle leif amundsen and her older brother forrest amundsen um so good so good yeah goody schmitz is actually gudrun amanson so just keep that in mind my mom i used to say my mom looked like a beautiful witch because no no let's listen maleficent or whatever the angelina jolie she's beautiful but she looks like a witch and so she has very pointed features his jet black hair she has dark eyes she's just very beautiful but just like a beautiful witch that's all i don't know what to say it's not glenda the other i mean but my mom wants you know it's funny because my mom she once uh she once drew on her eyebrows uh i told her i told my mom that mom you drawing your eyebrows too high she looks surprised that's not true she doesn't do that but um but my but i will tell you though this that that my my mom hates it when my dad refers to her as his ex-girlfriend just it just gets under her skin like nothing actually so i dated a girl in high school it's been my girlfriend's who this is fine it's a bit i dated a girl in high school um and uh she was a tennis player a tennis player so we had to break up because love meant nothing to her i actually i actually came up with my own personal version of tennis um it's it's called quiet tennis it's like normal tennis but without the racket so i can keep going if you like [Music] so bad news uh the newman house where i live last night i wasn't there and it got broken into and someone stole my limbo stick i mean how low can you go okay last one last one i promise the bishop is like what the heck why did they invite this man and i i thought i thought this would be kind of fun because i have a bunch more you guys you have no idea but i thought it would be kind of fun because this is the it's the good news conference and that's this recognition of there's something gosh life no matter how difficult life is there is there is always room for joy no matter how difficult life is there's always room for joy not only that but joy is joy when we live joy joy is the witness that is in you joy's the witness that just comes out of you that when we live when we when we actually receive the embrace the faith um you can't help but have joy and so so the the title essentially of this talk is is um we are witnesses of these things and one of the things we're witnesses of and one of the things because the interesting thing i think is that joy isn't an argument it's just proof if you think about it like that joy isn't an argument it's just proof and and i think that probably the witness to joy that we're witnesses of these things that where does our joy come from is more necessary in our culture in our country maybe than ever you know they did a survey they found out that 69 of americans when asked reported that they are not very happy think about that 60 almost 70 percent of americans they're asking no the way i live i'm not not very happy so when we witness if we witness to joy there is something powerful about this there's something that again it's not an argument but it's proof even we even live in a world right now obviously right where uh a country that that has built itself off of the fact that you get to pursue happiness which is interesting because um c.s lewis one of my favorite authors he hit the last thing he ever wrote that got published before his death was an essay entitled we have no right to happiness that we actually don't have a right to happiness that we have we have the right in this country to pursue happiness but we don't actually have a right to happiness which i think is really so brain but really really important because one of the things we need to realize is that if you want to be happy you shouldn't be a christian well way to kill a room because if you want joy that's a whole different story if you want to be happy though because if you think about this if you ask the question what religion in the world would make you the most happy the religion that makes you most the most happy would be the religion of self be me-ism because if there's anything that that that christianity is not is just like just be happy it's religion it's a religion that promises so much more than just simply happiness and yet when it comes to happiness how many why is it that so many of us aren't happy i think many reasons it's because we sabotage ourselves because we keep moving the goal posts because we think sometimes maybe this isn't you but i think a lot of times what we do is we set things up and say you know when i'm done then i'll be happy when the kids just get out of diapers then i'll be happy but i don't have to worry about this then i'll be happy when they move out of the house then i'll be happy actually that's probably true but you know whatever the thing is though we keep moving it down and say like well when i'm done when i'm at peace when things are when things are fine then i'll be happy but we have this insatiable desire a couple years ago it was thanksgiving and um i was i went into the kitchen it was this was after the big meal and went to the kitchen and we made root beer floats and so i was making all the i'll make i was telling our table too that my nieces and nephews they have me around their little finger like they if they ask me to do anything i'll absolutely i'll do this and so what happened was they said uncle father mike would you make us root beer floats of course i will so i go into the into the kitchen i'm making ripper floats and we ran out of glasses the only glass we had left was a little shot glass and so like this is fun i'll put a little ripper in there put a sliver of ice cream on top of it i brought it to my niece sophia who must have been i think first or second grade at the time and uh so she's like what i'm like no this is for you okay so she slams it and then she puts it down she knew it's in her parents this whole thing um she knew what to do but her older cousins said no sophia you don't just put it down you have to slam it down and say another she looks at me like do i i'm like yeah go for it she slams it another and so i run it back into the kitchen and fill it up she slams it bam another and her dad says well i know what you're doing the rest of the night because we have this insatiable desire right we keep moving the goalposts we keep saying when when things are at peace when everything's over with when i'm done then i get to be happy but the reality of course is you're not made for that like even biologically you're not made for that university of stanford did this study where they took these uh you know amoebas essentially these these single-celled organisms and they put them in complete stasis a place where they had the exact right amount of light and darkness that exact amount of temperature for them they had all that they needed all the nutrients they needed and put them in these completely protected petri dishes and you know what happened to every one of those living organisms they became non-living organisms every one of them died because for life to thrive we actually need to fight for life to thrive we actually need to struggle a life devoid of struggle is life devoid of life and so when we move the liberals and say well when this happens then i'll be happy when this happens i allow myself to be joyful what we're doing is we're stealing away the joy that actually god wants for you now i think it's one of the reasons why things like you know that that christianity has always told us to be aware of things like comfort and pleasure not to avoid them but comfort and pleasure and and being done are to be observed with care because they just can't make you happy in fact there is a study out of uc berkeley that that said americans in order to be happy they actually have to learn how to be happy because we don't actually do it we don't do it naturally because we keep thinking mistakenly keep thinking that it's about feeling that happiness is a feeling of euphoria we mistakenly think that um it's an experience centered on self we just keep thinking well if i get what i want if i can do what i want then i'll be happy yet we realize that that's completely not true now that's not to say that you don't get to be happy but it is to say we need to aim for something bigger something deeper something that can be counted on because happy happiness comes from what word it comes from happenstance it's an accident if my circumstances are like this then maybe i'll be happy if they're changed then i won't be happy anymore but there's something as i mentioned before something deeper than happiness and it's the thing that you're made for it's a thing that actually is a gift of christianity and that thing is joy and i want to say this um you know when god commands us through the sacred scriptures regarding joy he doesn't say if you can if things are okay then rejoice when you're having a really really good day then you can rejoice scripture says what rejoice always that's a that's not a suggestion my mom literally has a bumper sticker that says they're not called the ten commandments sorry dang it i've ruined that joke which is funnier sometimes my mom has a bumper sticker that says they're not called the ten suggestions oh and that makes sense now so these two clowns are eating a cannibal and the one says to the other i think we got this joke backwards because the joke's supposed to be two cannibals are eating a clown and one says the other does this does this taste funny okay so back to our story joy you commanded it have joy what's the marker of a catholic back up if you were to say what is one thing catholics are known for i think a lot of people would say well duh starts with a g ends with an ilt i mean it's catholic guilt go back to godren because she's the star tonight apparently um but my mom she's like my mom always says why do they call it catholic guilt it's just guilt if you did something wrong you should feel bad if you don't feel bad after you've done something wrong that's called a psychosis that is called your sociopath that's that something went wrong and you not something went right in you but typically our world around us would associate being catholic with guilt and yet at the same time there's a man who man named jk chesterton and he once said joy is the gigantic secret of the christian if you imagine if that was our secret imagine again this is we bear witness to these things joy is the gigantic secret of the christian that's the original description of christians and he realizes because we obviously there's two ways of looking at the world one is that god doesn't exist and therefore you can do anything you want because nothing matters and for a while you'll probably be happy one way of looking at the world is god doesn't exist so do whatever you want because nothing matters the other way of looking at the world is god exists therefore i may not do whatever i want because everything matters and again the first one sounds more fun first one sounds like yeah that's what the world says that's that's how you that's how you have fun and yet if you think about it and try to live that for more than a week more than a month you realize it's a choice between a life that means nothing and the life where everything you do every word you utter every heartbreak you've gone through every sorrow you've ever had to experience every grief every joy every love it all means something i'll say that one more time there are two ways of looking at the world one is that god doesn't exist therefore do whatever you want because nothing matters or god does exist therefore you can't do anything you want because anything and everything you do matters you know this is this is the the radical crux of christianity we think about the culture in which christianity arose not the jewish culture but the culture around it the greco-roman culture then the greco-roman culture you had the pantheon of gods right you had all these gods but if you've ever read anything about um those greco-roman gods or ever at percy jackson series you would know that the gods might be powerful the gods might be immortal the gods might be beautiful at times the gods might have a lot of intelligence but the gods are not good the gods aren't just the gods don't actually even know who you are and they don't care who you are they definitely don't love you in fact it seems like the only reasons why you'd actually pray to any of these greco-roman gods was because one of two reasons either you were so desperate to get what you needed you're so desperate for the rain to follow so desperate for a child so desperate for something that you were willing to risk being cursed by the god in order to get the god's attention or you just wanted to preempt the gods curse by offering a sacrifice hoping that they would leave you alone and i hear that and i think that's how a lot of people that's how a lot of catholics live that we stay away from god until we really really need something and then i'll show up and i'll pray and not just pray i'm gonna pray on my knees god hears from that position better maybe even fold my hands like and i'll speak with like old english thou that's all i know um or we go to church on sunday to say oh god you get this hour the rest of the week is mine if i give you this time you can just stay out of the rest of my life you know there were actually gods of war in the in the middle east that if you were going to battle what you would do is you go into the the temple of this god you'd offer a sacrifice but if you really wanted victory you not only offer a sacrifice of something other than yourself you'd actually take your your sword or your spear and you'd actually cut yourself and you would show that you're willing to bleed for this god so this god would give you victory but you never knew if the god was gonna bless you or if god was gonna blast you and then along comes this message along comes this person jesus christ what he reveals about god is not only not only he's got one but he's actually good and not only is he just but he actually knows your name not only does he care about you but he has counted every single hair on your head every breath every heartbeat you've experienced not only does this god love you but he's not waiting for you to shed your blood for him he actually came to this earth and what did he do he took on a body so he could shed his blood for you you don't have to cut yourself to get his attention he has allowed himself to be beaten and broken just to get your attention and to realize that this god not only that he let death overwhelm him he conquered death so that you also when death overwhelms you when grief overwhelms you that you're not forgotten even then even when you're in the pit that you realize i'm not forgotten that even the worst moment the worst season in your life you realize i am not forgotten chesterton said joy is the gigantic secret of the christian why because you went from a world where who knows to a world where he knows and he cares a world where i don't matter to a truth that says you actually matter to the most important being [Music] in the universe how could that not give joy now again not not a feeling of euphoria what joy is joy i would i heard this definition i loved it joy is the abiding and pervasive sense of well-being joy is the abiding and pervasive sense of well-being because i know that even on the worst day even the worst season even on my last day my last breath and that moment i'm not forgotten on your worst day in your worst moment with your last breath you are not forgotten i mean joy the abiding and pervasive sense of well-being the gigantic secret of the christian of these things we are witnesses and yet we have to ask the question well why don't i have that because i believe why don't i have that and i wonder there's probably a lot of reasons i think one reason is because the thing paul pope john paul ii he he named this thing we have in our in a lot of people who believe he called it practical atheism where we say like you know i actually believe that god exists but i don't live like i believe that god exists i believe that i matter to the lord but i actually don't live like i matter to the lord i believe that god has a plan for my life and that he already loves me i don't have to earn his love but i don't actually live like he already loves you like you don't have to earn his love this practical atheism means that yeah i might believe god exists but for all intents and purposes it hasn't changed the way that i live and i'm not just talking about avoiding sin what i'm talking about is when you look in the mirror or your self-talk how do you talk to yourself you talk to like do you talk to yourself like someone who god said you're worth dying for do you talk to yourself like someone that god said you don't have to be better first for me to love you do you talk to yourself like someone who's been the recipient of infinite grace and patience do you talk to yourself like someone who the father looks at and says you're my son you are my daughter i will never forget you i will never forsake you see i think this practical atheism goes so much deeper in our lives than just simply well i avoid sin i try to do good it goes down to the heart of who has your heart when it comes to who you are who do you believe this world that doesn't care about you or this god who has said you're worth everything to me i think that's one of the problems so one of the reasons we don't have joy is because of this practical laser atheism and i think another reason is because we a lot of us we don't even want to but i think a lot of us have this thing that we might call conditional catholicism i think what conditional catholicism could be is is so it's it's november which means happy christmas season everyone um so right now up in duluth they have this place called bentleyville you've probably heard it heard about it it's famous worldwide or at least in northern minnesota um and it is a uh it's it's basically a light show that of christmas lights and it's huge and there are cars that are backed up on the interstate people trying to get off the road to what to walk through in 20 below weather um christmas lights it's really smart um at the end of bentleyville is a certain gentleman a jolly old chap um by the name of santa claus and you may have heard of him i know him but uh but how many times did you bring your kids to see santa and or maybe even yourself when you're growing up and you like had to see santa or your kids had to see santa this was not an option this like mom we have to go santa's only there from two o'clock to three o'clock we have to be there and they're in line they're waiting to see santa they can't wait to see santa unless they're really little in which case you have those fun pictures of them just breaking down melting down in front of style santa um but there's this sense i mean there was a there's a teacher at our school at university of minnesota duluth whose daughter one of her daughters saw santa six times one christmas season essentially leading up to christmas because she wanted to make sure that santa heard the list and like understood this is what i want i don't mean this version of it i want this version of it she needed to see santa here's the interesting thing she needed to see santa not because she loved santa but because she wanted what santa would bring her a lot of us pray not because we want him but because we want what we think he will bring us and that's what you might call like a conditional catholicism because you know it's interesting jesus is not a means and joy is not the goal joy is a byproduct it's a fruit but he's the goal he's the end he's everything and you think about why would we not love this god who's revealed himself to us why would we not have joy every single day i think one of the reasons is because our conditions are such that we when we come to the lord it's not like i think it's not like we're incredibly ungrateful my god you've never done anything for me i think we just i think that we just maybe have short memories and so we don't say god you've never done anything for me or what have you ever done for me god we just say god what have you done for me lately there was a a letter i got years a couple years ago from a woman who was very distraught because her best friend had died and of course death is always always a place of just sensitivity but her best friend died and she said this woman was so good and she loved so well she had a son with her husband and son with special needs but but she just gave he poured her heart out for this son who grew up to be a young man who's able to like function in the world a bit better because of her love because of her care and attentiveness but her husband at one point decided he'd rather be single and so he left her and he left their son and she got sick and she said for a year she was in and out of the hospital and then on our last day we were all there all of our friends all these people who loved her were all there the priests that come to be with her and we're all there but her son on the day she died her son didn't make it into the room in time he didn't make it into the room and tell her until his mom had died she was so distraught over this like how the injustice of this having a child with special needs having a husband to abandon her getting this getting sick and dying with her out without her son being able to say goodbye one last time in my response to her i just i wanted to acknowledge that is all real those are all things that could break any human being's heart but i also needed to point out another piece of something that was true because in her email she indicated that this husband who had left was now taking care of their adult son that he had stepped up and the son was now living with his father and his father was loving his son very well now for that last year she had time to prepare she had time to actually get ready to get her heart ready for death that she died but she died surrounded by her friends she died with a priest she died with the last sacraments but sometimes we say but i think what i wanted so i'm going to take my heart back and yet even in the mo incredible moments of grief we can still choose joy because in every moment even in moments of grief there are reasons for joy we just have to let go of our conditions let me say that again even in our most incredible moments of grief we can still choose joy but we have to first let go of our conditions i'll only be happy if i'll only be faithful if i'll only let you love me if i will only have joy if we can choose joy in every situation in fact we can in every situation we can just simply simply say lord thy will be done and to allow the joy to grow like even in the midst of pain and sorrow and uncertainty we can still choose joy i mean let's be honest we have a whole set of the mysteries called the joyful mysteries but have you ever stopped to like take a look at the joyful mysteries they're not the most joyful of all mysteries in the world you mean let's go through them a little bit here we have the mystery of the the annunciation first rifle mystery where the archangel gabriel appears to marry and says you'll be the mother of the messiah she asked her clarifying question how can this because i have no relationship with a man he answers her question she says thy will be done the very next line in the gospel says then the angel departed from her you're 15. you'll be pregnant really yes okay poof he's gone talk about uncertainty talk about a moment of crisis talk about i cannot be joyful in this moment here's what i would want if i was in that scene i would say okay listen here's what gabriel needs to do gabriel needs to say okay here's what's going to happen you said yes joseph's not going to believe you but don't worry about it i'll appear to him in a dream it'll be fine then then there's going to be this census you have to go to bethlehem don't worry about it you'll be fine you're not going to find a place to live but don't worry about your really sweet story don't worry about it a place to give birth but it's be a stable everyone's going to sing songs it'll be fine um and then herod's going to try to kill the child you're going to go to egypt don't worry about it you'll be fine after a while you come back from egypt and you would grow and then jesus is actually going to become a pr preacher prophet savior of the world and and people aren't gonna believe him don't worry about it you'll be fine and then actually he's gonna go to jerusalem suffer die don't worry about it it'll be fine like that's what i would like give me the story tell me roll it out for me mary mother messiah really yes okay poof sorrow grief uncertainty don't get me started the visitation okay now you're pregnant let's go on a long walk this is your cousin you haven't seen in a thousand years hope she believes you the nativity of this go through a little quicker now the nativity yes we have these songs all is calm all is bright silent night those are not the right order but yeah you get it i don't think that it was a very quiet night except for that drummer boy who was playing the drums to wake up the baby from crying out loud who does that but here they are impoverished unable to find a place to stay no doula anywhere and they just here's joseph trying to figure this story out lay him in a manger oh it's so sweet and a manger oh was that like hebrew for cradle nope imagine how it was covered in like saliva and like muck out of the cow's mouth and stuff and you're like joseph you are not father of the year this is not where you this is not where you put a baby what just it's my first born i don't know what else to do like [Music] the fourth joyful mystery the presentation where you hear jesus bring goes into the goes into the temple and simeon says wow this child is destined for the fall and the rise of many in israel also mary your soul will be pierced and then finally you have the finding of jesus in the temple which is great enzyme ends on a high note you imagine god says okay the most precious gift i have my son i'm entrusting him to you and you lose him my parents left me well my parents friends left me at chuck e cheese for like half an hour they lost him for three days it wasn't just an overnight quick thing it was like three days really i don't understand but here's the thing is in every situation we can choose joy in every situation we can say but i know i know god i god i know you're here joy is the abiding and pervasive sense of well-being it's a choice it's like love and like love we can either chase the feeling or we can choose the reality i want to say that again because it's a really cool line joy is a choice just like love and just like love we can either chase the feeling or we can choose the reality and joy comes from faith joy comes from the fact that you know there is a god who already loves you so it comes from the fact that you know there is a god who has already accepted you you joy comes from the fact that you know that god's here and yes this life has so much real pain and so much real sorrow and so much real grief so much uncertainty but this world actually does not have permission to take away your joy your sorrows and your uncertainties do not have permission to take away your joy years ago there was a man named nasim taleb who wrote this one of my favorite books of the last decade called antifragile naseem telev is an economist and a thinker exactly a middle eastern christian and he noticed this thing in nature he said there are some things in nature that are fragile and when they come up against an obstacle they break that's just to define fragile for you all there's some things in nature that are resilient and there's a big movement right now for like make your help your kids become resilient this is great it's awesome but you need to become resilient because if you're resilient you can come up come up against an obstacle and you hit it and you're able to make it through but naseem to have pointed out something else that exists in nature something more that exists in nature because not something fragile comes up that comes up against an obstacle and breaks and not even something resilient that comes up against an obstacle and it is unbroken but what he defined as anti-fragile and something that's anti-fragile is when it encounters an obstacle it doesn't get broken it doesn't merely become resilient it actually gets stronger you are like that you are you are an anti-fragile organism that you encounter i don't know a virus and if you survive it you become stronger when you're learning something you're stretching your brain and if you survive it you become stronger your brain comes smarter your muscles test them out and they become stronger like what you're made to be is is an anti-fragile being and i got to tell you christianity if anything christianity is the most anti-fragile faith that has ever been dreamt of under the sun the church in fact is the most anti-fragile organization that i've ever ever read about ever heard about ever even again dreamed about how many times has the church looked like it's been beaten and it comes back stronger how many times has the church look like no christianity is done for it is over with there's no hope there's no coming back from this kind of thing and then all of a sudden the church god raises up saints in the church in the worst times and bring about an incredible revival that no one could have ever possibly imagined and your faith and my faith your joy and my joy is actually meant to be anti-fragile faith and anti-fragile joy the kind that actually grows when it's been punched the kind that actually is worth bearing witness to the kind that even in our darkest day is not an argument that points to god but is proof of what god has done and this can be part of your life in my life no matter how old or how young you are back in um 2016 there's this girl in our dice her name is mallory and mallory in 2016 she was 15 years old and uh malik um madly come to a bunch of our camps that we put on for junior high students and one of the things that that uh that she got from that campus she had got a devotion for the chaplet to find mercy loved praying with her sister loved praying the rosary with her sister love going into adoration but on december 21st 2016 mel went to the hospital for some checkups and they found that she had cancer it's really remarkable because from that day mal said two things she said either i'm praying i'm praying that god either heals me and that in healing me he's glorified and people like come to know who he is and believe in him because of what he's how he healed me then she said my other prayer is if he doesn't heal me that my death glorifies him too a 15 year old kid that if he heals me it glorifies him and if he doesn't heal me that people fall in love with him may i would do this thing we we taught him taught her and her sister and other other campers how to do um basically at the end of the day we'd have them write down a rose and a thorn if you heard this practice so at the end of the day um you write down one thing that was good that was your rose and you write down one thing that was that was tough it was a struggle that was your thorn and and mal she uh she loved the the umd minnesota duluth shield of the bulldogs it's the division one hockey team um and at one point she was in the hospital and uh bishop serba our bishop came and visited her and so she wrote in in her uh did the bulldogs the hockey team visited her in the hospital and she wrote down her rose ah the umd bulldog hockey team visited me in my hospital room and then a little further down and said bishop serba also showed up but at one point it was it was august 26th uh 2016 in her journal you're like how did you get a hold of her journal like what's the priest going through a 15 year old girl's journal her parents shared it with us uh on august 26 2016 she she read uh matthew 25 the parable of the wise and foolish virgins and she wrote down this she said well nothing really this is her word she said nothing really stuck out so i picked this this word and then the door was locked i picked this because it's kind of like you know you only have one chance to make your life worthy of going to heaven after you die the doors to heaven will either be open to you or locked so make your life worthy of going so make your life worthy of going to heaven smiley face earlier on on december 21st 2015 2016. sherwood had a rose in her thorns she said rose going to adoration tonight and being able to hand my load to god thorn spending all afternoon evening in the er and then finding the tumor then parentheses she put but that's also kind of my rose smiley face almost one year 11 months from her diagnosis on december 21st it was the first tuesday in november two days from now we had a youth minister meeting and before the meeting started someone in new orleans said hey father mike mal is um she's getting confirmed today bishop is actually in her hospital room right now giving her the sacrament of confirmation so can we pray for her before before the meeting starts i'm like oh my gosh absolutely so like we all stood up like in in the in our in our meeting room and like faced the hospital direction and just like extended our hands just ask the holy spirit of power the holy spirit of love and self-control holy spirit of just god's holy spirit including the holy spirit of healing to come upon mal and her hospital room and bishops confirming her two hours later we had mass together and we said okay this is it this is the mass that we're celebrating on behalf of mao because he had one prayer that prayer was that god either heal her and he glorified or that he doesn't heal her and god still be glorified and while we were celebrating that mass on november 7th in the middle of the mass we are celebrating and offering for her mal stepped from this world and entered god's presence this is a girl who was only 15 years old but knew that it was possible to choose joy no matter what the circumstances were that she wasn't expecting any kind of condition she wasn't placing any condition on her face she wasn't placing any condition on her joy she was simply saying god whatever happens i just want people to know who you are god whatever happens i just want people to glorify you god whatever happens i just want people to know that you love them we are witnesses of these things and joy is not an argument but joy is proof and the reality is this night and every moment of your life and every moment of my life we have the opportunity to do that we have the opportunity to choose joy we have the opportunity to bear witness to joy and this is what we witness that there is a god who already knows you that has loved you to death that your life has meaning and everything you do matters that you matter to the god of the universe if that isn't a reason for joy i don't know what is and that's what we give witness to joy is not an argument but joy is proof all glory be to the father and to the son and to the holy spirit as it was in the beginning is now and ever shall be world without end amen father son holy spirit you

Channel: Word on Fire Institute

Views: 218,545

Keywords: fr mike schmitz talk, fr mike schmitz, father mike schmitz, father mike, fr mike, fr mike schmitz keynote, fr mike keynote, fr mike schmitz address, good new conference, word on fire, father mike schmitz talk, bible in a year, joy, live a joyful life, live joyfully, life of joy, joy of christians, catholic talk, catholic conference, christian conference, priest keynote, keynote address, fr mike schmitz joy, talk on joy, speech on joy, catholic joy, christian joy

Id: gnVWYHoHLsM

Length: 44min 9sec (2649 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 29 2022