Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
So the other day, I was driving on the interstate and I was behind a semi-truck trailer.
That's what we call them here or if you're in Canada, a semi-truck trailer
and so, one of those things were I remember hearing about this when I was a kid
when I was learning to drive, I mean, that if you're really close behind the trailer
and you can't see the mirror of the driver, they can't see you.
I was like, "Oh, yeah. That's a thing. If you can't see the driver, they can't see you."
And I was thinking about blind spots, that sense of whenever you're driving,
every car, whether it's a semi-truck trailer or whatever other car or vehicle you drive,
we all have blind spots, that's those spots where you can look all the way around you
when you're driving your car, but there's always going to be these spots you just can't see.
And I think this is something, it's interesting.
I work at the Newman Center at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
And it's named after a guy named John Henry Cardinal Newman.
He was a convert to the Catholic Church from the Anglican Church.
He, at one point, he had a homily or a sermon called "Hidden Faults" or "Secret Faults."
I remember it really struck me because it was based off of Psalm 19
where in Psalm 19, the psalmist says this.
He says, "Who can detect heedless failings? Cleanse me from my unknown faults."
And his recognition is that actually, there are things in my life, there are some sins that I know
but there's a bunch of faults, there's secret sins—they're hidden faults.
They're not just hidden from other people, they're actually hidden from me. They're secret faults.
And so, Cardinal Newman had this whole long sermon about
that there's a lot of blind spots in the average person's life.
Now, when you hear that what can happen is this you can totally panic and say like,
"Oh my gosh! Are you kidding me?! I thought the sins that I knew were bad enough.
Now I have to deal with all these blind spots. Now I have to deal with all these hidden faults.
Well, what do I do with that?"
Well, here's three things. I want to offer three things to do about your blind spots.
Number one is Don't panic.
Because the reality is this:
The Lord's only calling you to repent of sins that you know.
He's not calling you to repent of sins that you don't know yet.
I can only repent of the sins that I know.
I actually can't repent of the sins that I don't know.
I can say Lord, from hidden faults, acquit me.
From the secret sins that I don't even know, please forgive me.
I can apologize for that but the crazy thing is this—
when you're driving down the highway, you don't panic over your blind spot
but the second thing is this—
You're aware of your blind spots. You know that they exist
and that's really important because you know,
"OK, here's what I can see, but there's also some spots in my life where I can't see anything."
And so what do you know to do?
You know that before you make a big change, before you change lanes, before your turn,
that you have to make sure that you know what's in those blind spots.
You just keep driving forward, paying attention to what you know
and being aware that there's stuff out there that you don't know.
Same is true when it comes to your spiritual life.
There's this recognition of, OK, so there's parts of my life that I don't even know that I'm at fault here.
I don't even know that this is one of my wounds
or this is one of my sins or areas of weakness or hidden faults.
What's that mean? Keep driving forward.
It means that when I turn left or turn right,
when I stop or slow down, when I speed up, I'm gonna be aware that there might be someone in the way.
I'm gonna be aware there might be a blind spot that's hidden from me
that I'm just gonna be attentive to—that's the second thing. First is don't panic.
Second is be attentive to your blind spot.
And the third thing is this: Be patient.
Because the reality is this: When you're out on the highway and someone cuts you off,
the initial reaction is to be like, "What a moron! I can't believe this idiot just cut me off!"
As opposed to saying, "Wait a second. I might have been in their blind spot."
I've been in the situation where I inadvertently—I thought I was paying attention, but by the grace of God,
I didn't run someone off the road because I was like, "Oh my gosh!" at the last minute, I saw them.
I can imagine there's a thousand times when someone else is in that exact same position that I've been in.
And if I know that I have hidden faults, I know that I have blind spots in my life,
that means I'm going to be also surrounded by people who also have blind spots; they also have hidden faults.
And so what I need to do is I need to be willing to be patient with them as well as be patient with myself.
But I do need to be aware that there's some areas in my life that I am actually oblivious to
that I'm blind to, that I'm just gonna be cautious about.
Here's how the Psalm keeps going,
"Cleanse me from my unknown faults but from willful sins," the ones I do know and keep choosing,
"keep your servant and never let them control me."
Never let them control me
because the reality, of course, is at the end of the day,
I'm only responsible for the things that I'm responsible for.
I'm only aware of the things that I'm aware of
and I can only control the things that I actually can control.
As long as my blind spots remain blind, as long as my unknown sins remain unknown,
as long as my secret faults remain secret, I don't have any control over them
but I do know my known sins and my known faults and the parts of my life that aren't blind spots, so I'd say this,
Focus on that. Bring those to the Lord and keep driving.
Don't panic. Keep moving. Be aware and be patient.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name is Father Mike.
God bless.