OK—
I always wipe my face too, I don't know why.
I don't know, it's just a thing.
It's a thing, I always wonder if I have boogers or things hanging out of my teeth,
Hanging outta my teeth? Hanging out of my ... Anyways ...
Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.
So it's the summer time and we just got done up here in Duluth with an incredible summer.
And one of the things that we do, is we always get together with a bunch of college students.
Last night, we asked a bunch of college students the question, What was your kindergarten ambition?
What did you want to be in kindergarten?
Surprisingly, there were a number of paleontologists,
people who had apparently watched a lot of the Jurassic Park movies
and in kindergarten, they wanted to be a paleontologist,
even though, I imagine that being an actual paleontologist is a little more boring
than being someone who's the curator of Jurassic Park or Jurassic World.
Some people wanted to be sports people, singers, dancers.
(laughs) Mine.
My kindergarten ambition—
I wanted to be Batman or Superman.
I would even settle for Robin.
That's the kind of guy I am.
Because I was thinking about this.
like there's something about the heroes and I've talked about this before,
but there's something about the heroes that just resonates with me
and I was thinking, "What hero most closely resembles the life of the Christian?"
I was going through my favorite ones and kind of going through the list
and saying, actually different heroes have different elements to them
and they're good and they're bad, whatever,
but there's a kind of a way we can look at being a Christian,
being called to be a disciple of Jesus Christ as kind of that heroic life
so which one is most accurately Christian?
What hero is most accurately reflected in the Christian life?
So here's my number two guys.
Here's Batman.
Well, here is a human being, who through sheer force of his will—
he's just a normal human being—but through the sheer force of his will, he's able to lift himself up
and be amongst the greats.
He's there on the Justice League with Superman
and with Wonder Woman and with Green Lantern and with the Flash and with Martian Manhunter—
all these incredible heroes.
He just did it on his own.
I realize, OK, I want to do that.
That's this heresy called Pelagianism. Pelagius was a guy back in the day—
yeah, back in the day—and he just simply thought all it took to follow Jesus,
Jesus was simply a great moral teacher and what he did was he showed you the way.
He didn't give you grace, he just showed you the way.
So on your own, you can you can live just like him, and that's a heresy, so Batman's out.
Then I thought, well what about my other guy, Superman?
In that reality of—even Fulton Sheen fifty years ago, he said Superman is kind of a lot like Jesus.
He's the son. He gets sent to the earth. He kind of redeems us.
That's not bad.
But at the same time we think, OK, if that's who we are,
that's a lot like kind of some of the modernist or humanist views of humanity,
which is like a Jean-Jacques Rousseau or a Friedrich Nietzsche
that says there's nothing essentially wrong with you.
You have all of the power in you already. You're not fallen and you're just good.
You're just good, you're not fallen. That's kind of Superman.
You have all the powers, you are NOT in need of anything
and that's a heresy too because we realize that even though we are made for greatness,
even though you have an incredible dignity and you're made in God's image and likeness,
we're also fallen, so we're not Superman either.
So it's got to be something else.
OK, we have a good humanity that's broken
so something has to happen to us to change us.
Well, here's my next guy:
Iron Man.
Here's Tony Stark.
You know, in The Avengers movie where he and Captain America get into this little tussle with each other
and Captain America, Steve Rogers, says to Iron Man, Tony Stark, he says,
"Take away the suit, what are you?"
And he says, "Billionaire philanthropist playboy genius super-genius—" whatever.
The reality is without the suit, Tony Stark's good
He's got goodness. Billionaire, genius, philanthropist.
He's also broken
because Tony Stark is a wounded character but what makes him a superhero
is when he puts on this suit outside of himself.
No, that's not bad.
It's almost like we'd say like being clothed with Christ, being clothed with power from on high.
That's not bad, but at the same time, that's not the Catholic view of what grace does for us,
because that's actually more of a certain kind of Protestant view of what grace does:
it's a covering over, it doesn't change Tony Stark substantially when he wears it.
He can do great things— that's grace, that's wonderful.
But it doesn't change him as a human being.
So something deeper needs to happen.
So what about this? What about Captain Marvel?
Now you might not know who Captain Marvel is. He's also known as Shazam.
His story is this:
Billy Batson is just a kid. This wizard comes to him and says if you say the word Shazam,
you have the strength of Hercules, you have the speed of Mercury, you have the wisdom of Solomon—
all these kinds of things.
Maybe that's what the Christian life is because he's changed. He's a good kid, does his thing
but then this power from outside comes inside and changes him substantially.
That's pretty close, but here's the problem with that
is what he does, what Billy Batson does, is he says the word Shazam and he turns into Shazam.
He has this incredible power—it's incredible grace and incredible strength—
I don't know about grace but strength—
but if he wants to NOT live like that, he just says Shazam again he goes back to being Billy Batson,
not a hero, not super strong, not powerful.
Now, this is how I think a lot of Christians prefer to live our Christian discipleship,
like we will say the word, "Jesus, come into my heart."
We'll call upon the Holy Spirit when we really want him
but then when we don't really want to follow Christ,
we just kind of say, "God, go back on the shelf."
We take on and put off our Christianity
like some people put on a hat and take it off, like Shazam.
But what's more consistent? What's most consistent?
I think the ultimate example of a superhero that aligns with who we are as Christians is Steve Rogers.
Now, let's go back to the story of Captain America.
Here's the young Steve Rogers and what is he?
He's a good young man. He is brave. He has a nobility. He wants to fight for the underdog.
So he's good but he can't. He tries to fight and he gets beat up.
He tries to defend people and he gets knocked down.
He tries to join the army and he's not even strong enough to do that.
So again, he's not Superman. He's not Batman. What happens though?
Well, they give him the Super Soldier Serum
and what it does is it doesn't come from outside and just make him strong on the outside.
What it does is it takes everything that he is and amplifies it.
In fact, this is Catholic theology.
This is, we believe that what grace does is grace builds on nature and perfects it.
We believe that grace builds on our nature, elevates it, and perfects it.
That's why when they're having that little debate or that little argument
between Tony Stark, Iron Man, and Steve Rogers, Captain America,
he says, "Take off the suit. What are you?"
Tony Stark looks at Steve Rogers and says, "Everything special about you came out of a bottle."
At first, I was watching that, I was like, "Oh, that's a mean thing to say,"
but then I'm like, "No, it's actually kind of true." He was good in and of himself
but fallen, not strong enough to do this
but that external thing came internal and transformed him substantially from the inside out.
And this is exactly what happened to you when you were baptized.
You were good, but fallen. You're made good, but you didn't have the strength to live good.
So what happened?
God came and dwells inside of you now.
He built on your nature, he elevated it, and perfects it,
so that if you were talking to Mother Teresa and you're saying to Mother Teresa, "Mother Teresa, seriously...
everything special about you came from God's grace,"
she would look at you and say, "Um, yeah! Hello?!?"
Because you have been— if you've been baptized—
you've been transformed substantially from the inside out.
And what the guy says in the movie Captain America, it makes a good man great.
It takes what you are in your essence as a human being, made in God's image and likeness and amplifies it.
You're made into a son or daughter of God, temple of the Holy Spirit, disciple of Jesus Christ,
someone put on this planet to live—not like Shazam—but to consistently live every single day
as that integrated human being.
I think it's really remarkable too, all these others saints—all these other heroes I mean, not saints—
they have alter egos.
Billy Batson—Captain Marvel, Shazam.
Bruce Wayne—Batman
Clark Kent—Superman
Steve Rogers, Captain Steve Rogers is Captain America all the time.
He's always Captain Steve Rogers.
Doesn't take it on, take it off.
And this is what we're called to do as well as Christians.
You realize God's grace, his presence, his very life, HE lives inside of you right now.
He takes all of your good qualities and amplifies them.
And he takes all of our wounds and he wants to heal them or use them, at least.
You've been made into a son or daughter of God.
May we have the grace and to cooperate with that grace
to live every single moment of every single day worthy of that name: son or daughter of God.
From all of here at Ascension Presents, my name is Father Mike.
God bless.
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