Hi, my name's Fr. Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
So, years ago, I heard a story about Steve Martin —
Steve Martin the actor, comedian, and musician.
So, when he was starting out
as a comedian, as an on-stage performer and magician, he was really young.
In fact, I read his autobiography about his life as a stand-up comic —
which is not for children by the way, so if you are a child, please don't read that.
It is inappropriate in many places, but he's telling the story of his life.
When he started out he always wanted to be an on-stage comic, magician, whatever.
But he knew that as a comedian who was young, people wouldn't take him seriously
unless he could prove to them right away that he knew how to do stuff.
So he thought, well, what can I do?
I can learn a musical instrument — learn something difficult —
and then I can showcase that on stage and people would know
“Oh hey, he's not just some kid who's just stepped up on stage.
He's someone who knows how to do something difficult.”
So that something difficult that he chose to learn how to do was play the banjo.
It's difficult to learn how to play the banjo though, however,
and so he found himself a little bit discouraged at the prospect of learning this musical instrument.
He told himself, “Well, if I practice the banjo 20 minutes a day, every day” —
that’s not too much, 20 minutes that's it —
“if I practice the banjo 20 minutes a day every day, in 20 years I'll be pretty good at the banjo.”
That's what he did then. He just practiced.
And what happens is, it compounds on itself, right?
The better and better you get at a thing, the more you want to play it and want to do that thing.
And so he ended up not just being “okay” at the banjo. I think he has now gotten a bunch of Grammys.
When it comes to his banjo music or his bluegrass music,
it's just phenomenal, it's really interesting.
And that's what I want to talk about.
When we think the word faithfulness, we can think of this like,
“Well I'm really faithful which means I have this kind of really religious-churchy kind of aspect about me.”
Which might be the case, but let's be practical. Let's be really concrete.
Faithfulness, in so many ways, merely means ‘consistent.’
So actually, another definition or another translation of the word ‘faithful’ is ‘steadfast.’
To be steadfast is to be consistent. It means that I do what I say I was going to do.
So to be consistent is to be faithful.
I want to talk about this because here's — I mean, let's look at Steve Martin.
He was faithful to the banjo, which means he was consistent in his practicing the banjo.
And it was that consistency that actually changed him.
It made him into someone who was excellent at this thing, at the thing that he did.
And this is the case for every human being you ever respect.
What I mean is, any human being who can do something that you really respect.
Now what I want to talk about when it comes to your spiritual life — our relationship with the Lord —
the call is, you know, we want to be holy.
None of us are going to be perfect, but all of us can be consistent.
We show up again and again, day after day, in all circumstances.
Because, as we know, it's really easy to show up on the days when I'm feeling good
and the days when everything is conspiring to get me to that place I need to go,
whether it's that I've decided to be faithful to reading Scripture,
I’ve decided to be faithful to getting to daily Mass, I've decided to be faithful to praying the rosary.
Whatever that thing is, to be consistent in that — it's easy when it's easy. [Laughs]
But we're transformed when we do it regardless of whether we feel like doing it or not.
And when it comes to our spiritual life, sometimes we really, really rely on intensity.
We really want to rely on passion.
But we can't, because it's always gonna let us down.
Because no one will be transformed deeply when it comes to — especially — their spiritual life
if all they rely on is their intensity.
I've said this before, I'll say it again, I'll say it now:
when it comes to almost anything, consistency beats intensity every time.
When it comes to almost anything you want to get excellent at,
whether it's the banjo or belonging to the Lord,
when it comes to praying or when it comes to serving other people.
One of the ways we can exercise consistency in such a way that changes us is —
I got this from one of our students here at UMD. He played baseball for the University.
And he said one of his favorite coaches told all the guys, as athletes, he said,
“Okay the deal is this:
to become an excellent baseball player, to become excellent at this thing,
you need to learn to love the process.”
It's a long journey to become excellent at anything; a long journey to become excellent at baseball,
a long journey to become an excellent a saint of God.
So I can get discouraged at like, “Man it's just taking so long.”
Yes, but learn to love the process.
“Well right now I don't really feel like it.”
Okay, that's the day you need to show up. Because I need to learn to love the process.
To be able to practice in any circumstance, in any kind of weather,
means I can play in any circumstance and in any kind of weather.
If I'm going to be a fair-weather Catholic or a fair-weather Christian,
a fair-weather someone-who-follows-the-Lord,
that means I will only be able to follow him when it's good weather.
But if I consistently — consistently — train myself to show up and be with the Lord
in rainy weather, essentially, or when it's difficult,
then I'll be able to follow him in rainy weather or whenever it's difficult.
Last thing: part of faithfulness, part of consistency,
is being willing to, and able to, say yes to the Lord in the darkness.
Say yes to the Lord when I don't even feel him.
Our tendency, our temptation is, when we find ourselves walking in darkness,
we forget what we learned in the light.
Right? This is true.
When we're in consolation, when the sun is shining down on us
and we know that we're loved by God, it's really easy to believe those things.
But then here we are now in a place of darkness, in a place of trial,
in a place maybe where we've even done it to ourselves, maybe we've fallen into some kind of sin,
and it's really, really tempting to forget in the darkness what we learned in the light.
But faithfulness and consistency will make it a habit — a practice, a conviction —
to remember in the darkness what I learned in the light.
That's faithfulness.
Imagine praying 20 minutes a day, five days a week.
Imagine what your relationship with the Lord would look like in 20 years from now.
Or, you could just put it off for 20 years.
And imagine what your relationship will look like with the Lord in 20 years from now.
Either way, the choice is yours.
I believe you are called, though, to choose faithfulness,
to choose consistency in choosing to spend time with the Lord.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name's Fr. Mike. God bless.