Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
So one of the things that I hear about from a lot of people,
particularly those who have been raised Catholic is like, "I don't like going to Mass."
Pause.
I get it.
When I was kid growing up, we had a rule.
The rule is of the Church and of the Schmitz household
was that if you are not sick, you are going to Mass on Sunday
because that's basically the rule, right?
Mass on Sundays is an obligation
Actually, in fact, this is serious enough to be able to note this, to say
that to intentionally skip Mass on a Sunday or a holy day it's what they call a mortal sin.
So the three requirements for a sin to be mortal are is it grave?
That's grave matter, I know it's a sin, and I freely chose to do it anyways
which means that if I know that skipping Mass on Sunday is a sin and I freely choose to do it anyways,
that's not the same thing as I tried to go but I got stuck in a snowbank
or I tried to go but my child got sick and I couldn't go.
Like that's not the same thing but I freely chose to do it anyways,
that's what you call a mortal sin.
That means I can't receive Holy Communion until I go to confession for that
and for whatever other mortal sins there might be.
So it's that big of a deal.
Now so that was my family's rule was, right?
So the Church's rule, my family's rule—you have to go to Mass unless you're too sick to do anything else.
And honestly you guys, I have to tell you this.
When I was a kid,
I pretended to be sick many times. Not many times.
My parents were pretty astute people. They did not fall for it too many times
but I did it often enough to even realize. So the rule, of course, the following rule, the next rule
was if you were too sick to go to Mass, then you were too sick to do anything for the rest of the day
and that meant you had to sit in your room by yourself doing nothing
and there were no TV's in rooms and there were no devices you could play with.
You would just sit there by yourself.
So boring and yet you guys, I hated Mass so much that I thought that was a good trade-off.
Like to be able to do nothing the rest of the day to get out of one hour of going to church.
So if you're like, "I struggle with going to Mass," I was there.
Then everything changed by the way. That's changed for me right now by the way.
The Lord brought to my attention the reality of what happens in the Mass,
that the reality of the Eucharist—it just blows my mind
and from that moment on it, there's nothing more important than Jesus in the Eucharist,
nothing more important than worship.
Now we're gonna talk about worship for a second.
I hear so many people say things like, "Well, I go to Mass. I don't get anything out of it."
I think this is my sassiness, right, so I apologize for Father Sassy to come out here right now.
The Word of God that people throughout time, throughout space, across the world long to hear
Do we have any idea
how grateful we should be to be able to hear God's Word
anytime we pick up a Bible but every time we go to Mass.
There literally are people around the world who would give anything to know
that God was speaking to them
and yet we're like, "I don't get anything out of it."
God spoke to you through his Word.
Not only that,
but he then gave you himself in the Eucharist.
Jesus is giving us himself.
And so we think like, "Yeah, I didn't get anything out of it.
I only had God speak his Word to me and then actually give his whole body, blood, soul, divinity to me.
I don't get anything out of Mass."
That blows my mind. It blows my mind how hard-hearted we are.
I didn't get what I wanted though. It wasn't very entertaining, it wasn't very engaging.
And I think a lot of times, that's how we approach the Mass as.
Mass is gonna be entertainment for me, so it's supposed to kind of do something to me.
or it's supposed to be engaging, like enlightening,
like it's, "I'm there to learn something."
Now hopefully, you're engaged.
Hopefully, it is doing something to you or hopefully you're learning something
but that's not the point of Mass.
The entire point of Mass is worship.
Sometimes people say things like, "Well, you get out of it what you put into it."
And I guess I know what they're saying.
First of all, we get God's Word spoken to us, we get the Eucharist, we get God himself,
that's not even the point necessarily.
The point is worship.
Across the world, across history, the heart of every religion is worship.
The heart of every religion is worship.
And the heart of all worship—this is so important for us to understand—the heart of all worship is sacrifice.
You can ask the question, Who is worship about?
So I always tell this story and I'll tell it again right now.
When I was a kid growing up, on my mom's birthday,
she always had a birthday roughly the same time of year—so weird—
in November and so sometimes in Minnesota, there's relatively good weather.
That plays into the story.
So all the kids would ask our mom like, "Mom, what do you want us to do for your birthday?"
And my mom would say something like,
"Yeah, actually it be really great if you kids would go out in the yard and rake the leaves."
That's the weather thing. It would be great if you go out in the yard and rake the leaves.
We'd be like, "Ugh, Mom."
"No, what do you really want for your birthday? That's lame."
You know.
"OK, it'd be great if you kids could clean the whole house for me."
"Yeahhhh, mmm,
but Mom, what do you really want for your birthday?"
She's like, "You know, actually, it'd be great if you could just go through the whole day
and not fight with each other."
Like, "Yeah, Mom. You don't really know us very well, do you?"
I mean that was kind of a thing, right?
So what would happen at the end of the day
is my two older sisters, they would borrow the car, borrow some money and go shopping,
get my mom something from the store.
My older brother and I we would ride our BMX bikes all over the neighborhood all day.
And at the end of the day, we'd call her out onto the lawn and say,
"Mom, here is a trick that we learned for you for your birthday."
Like honestly, we did that.
My little brother, he liked painting or drawing and coloring so he would color a little picture
and give it to my mom for her birthday.
Now, my mom would accept all these gifts from us and she'd smile
but deep down, we knew that she knew that we didn't give her what she wanted.
She had asked for something and we didn't give it to her.
On that day, on her birthday,
our gifts weren't for her. Who were they for?
Well, they were for us.
My little brother got to do what he wanted to do
and just say, "Here's my present."
My older brother and I, we got to do we wanted to do and say, "Oh, here's our present."
My older sisters got to do what they wanted to do and say, "Here's our present."
So in those moments, that gift wasn't about our mom, it wasn't even for our mom, it was for us.
Worship is nothing at all about what we get out of it.
Worship is completely about what we can give to God,
is what we can give to God.
And what do we give to God? We give God our very best.
Two things at least.
Give God our very best.
Number one,
we offer up in the Mass, we offer up the sacrifice of the Son to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The best thing we've ever been given ever is Jesus in the Eucharist.
He is the sacrifice, he's the victim, he's the Paschal victim that was slain that lives forever
and he's offered up to the glory of God the Father.
So we give God the very best in Jesus.
We also give ourselves the very best we have of ourselves.
The very best thing we've been given is Jesus.
The very best we have in ourselves is ourselves.
And so as we place the sacrifice on the altar, we're also placing ourselves on the altar
and saying, "Lord, please receive me as well."
You see what's happening here.
I'm going to Mass not actually expecting to get anything back.
I'm going to Mass prepared to give. Why?
Because the Mass is worship.
The heart of every religion is worship. The heart of every worship is sacrifice.
The goal is not really to get anything out of this.
The goal is to give God our best, because why?
Because he deserves our best.
But if it's like, "I'm not feeling anything. I'm not—"
Listen, we do not worship an experience.
We worship a reality.
This is so important. I'm getting intense about this because it's so important.
We don't worship an experience. We worship a reality.
Capital "R"-reality.
THE reality—we worship God.
If I'm saying, "I don't go to Mass because I don't get anything out of it,"
what it reveals to me is actually, I'm not interested in worshiping God.
What it reveals to me is actually, I want to worship myself.
Or what it reveals to me is my heart doesn't belong to him.
My heart's my heart and my life is my life and my time is my time
and worship is actually about me.
But it doesn't have to be.
You and I have been invited to Mass,
which is the most powerful form of worship God has ever, ever given to his people,
where we offer up the sacrifice of the Son of the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit,
where we offer up to the Father ourselves, our very best, who we are.
We give without expecting to get.
We worship a reality, not an experience.
So the next time you have that twinge, that temptation
to think, "Well, I'd like to go to Mass but I don't get anything out of it,"
just remember that a) you already do.
God's Word and his very self
but that has never been the point.
The point is to give and the point is worship.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name's Father Mike.
God bless.
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That'd be great. It'd be super cool. It will be— well, it would be really cool.
It would be cool. It'd be cool.
(click)
(laughs) Why do I wink? It's so stupid!