Alright.
Alright, alright.
Alright, alright!
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
So a number of years ago, my sister had shared with me
that she was reading a book to her oldest son as they're getting ready for bed.
The book was called Hatchet by Gary Paulsen.
I'm sure many of you are familiar with this story.
It's the story of a 13 year old boy named Brian Robeson,
whose plane crashes in the North Canadian wilderness
and he finds himself in this wilderness trying to, needing to survive
and needing to make his way back to civilization.
So as my sister— who's like incredibly tough, like she's a type-A
awesome, like just really strong person.
Anyways, as she was reading this book to her oldest son,
they got to this point where— and it says this,
"When he sat alone in the darkness and cried and all was done, all done with it,
nothing had changed.
His legs still hurt, it was still dark,
he was still alone
and the self-pity had accomplished nothing."
Now, it was at this moment that my sister closed the book and said,
"Did you notice that? Pay attention to this:
your crying, your self-pity doesn't do any good."
So this this reveals a little bit about the family of origin in which I was raised.
And there's something good about this.
In fact, there's something absolutely necessary
about acceptance of our situation in order for us to grow.
Here's what I mean:
How many times am I talking to someone in the course of a day, the course of a week
and what they're doing is that they're saying,
"Well, no. Here's the deal. I'm like this, therefore I'm stuck."
Or "My wounds define me. What I'm struggling with means that I can't make any progress."
And so, what we do typically, in our spiritual lives
is our first movement is to deny it all, to ignore it all.
Yet one of the first movements of the spiritual life
is to accept yourself.
There was a priest. His name was Father Romano Guardini.
He was just this incredible spiritual master in the Church within the last hundred years or so.
And Romano Guardini said this. He said, "One of the pillars, one of the beginnings
of any kind of real spiritual life and any kind of real spiritual growth is this one word:
acceptance.
That if we're going to go anywhere, we have to accept ourselves.
Here's what that means:
that means accept the truth about who I am.
So yep, with my flaws, with my strengths, with my weaknesses, with the people who have hurt me,
with everything I'm experiencing, we have to accept who we are.
We have to also accept the reality of our situations.
We have to accept where we are.
We have to accept what we're in the midst of.
We have to accept our situations and our circumstances.
Because I can say, "I wish I was somewhere else. I wish things were different,"
and that's real.
I just actually got done talking with someone whose spouse just left them
and they are profoundly hurt.
And part of our conversation was,
"I wish that had never happened. I wish my spouse had kept their vows.
I wish they had not left," and that's real, that's totally true.
And yet, one big piece for them to move forward is to say,
"OK, I didn't want this to happen but I have to accept that this is where I am now."
So I have to accept who I am, I have to accept where I am
and also this is big: I have to accept where I'm made to go,
that I'm not made to stay here.
That's why Romano Guardini, he actually makes the point he says—as I want to read it out of here— he says,
"This does not mean that we should approve of everything and leave everything unchanged."
"Like well, I just—" that's what's called resignation.
Resignation is the end.
Resignation is when I say, "I can stop moving now
because I'm just resigned to—well, I guess this is how I'm gonna be. I guess this is where I'm at."
This is if Brian Robeson, that thirteen year old boy
was in the middle of the North Canadian wilderness
and he was resigned to this, "Well, I guess I crashed. I guess I'm dying here."
He didn't resign himself to, "This is where I die."
He accepted, "OK, I don't want to be a 13-year-old boy in the middle of the wilderness,
but I am."
"I wish I was a 30-year-old, you know, wilderness expert in the middle— but I'm not."
"I'm made for more than this and I'm made to get home."
So I start moving, that's what Guardini says.
He said, "I don't leave everything unchanged. I can and should work on myself
and on my life and mold and improve it.
First, however, I must admit the existing facts."
Otherwise, everything else becomes false.
You have to understand, if we're gonna have a real relationship with God,
I have to admit, "God, this is the person that I am."
I was just recently talking with a young man and he revealed a big part of his heart.
He had said that he was in prayer
and this man has experienced same-sex attraction for much of his life.
He was in adoration in high school and he was praying in front of Jesus
and said, "I don't want this. I wish it was different. I wish I didn't feel this way."
And at one point, he said, he looked at the Eucharist and he said,
"Jesus,
I accept that I am a gay man
and I accept that you love me
and I accept that you're calling me to be a saint,
to be a chaste celibate saint.
He said at that moment, he experienced so much freedom.
Like, "This is where I'm at. OK, this is part of my identity,
This is part of who I am, this is part of my reality,
but I'm also made for something more. I'm also made to go further."
Guardini has this last note. He says this, he says,
"What gives us the strength to accept who we are, where we are, and what we're made for
is our confidence in the love of God through Jesus Christ,
who loved you and gave himself up for you,
that even if there's real brokenness in your life, even if there's real evil in your life,
"While I was still a sinner," as St. Paul says, "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
The truth is you can accept who you are, where you are, and your destiny
because of the fact that you have a God who loves you and gave himself up for you.
And while we were still broken,
while we're still in the middle of the North Canadian wilderness
while we're just a kid stuck somewhere
or we're people who are wounded, in situations that are broken,
he loved us.
That's what we have trust in and that's why we can accept ourselves and our situation
because we accept his love.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name's Father Mike.
God bless.