Hi, my name is Fr. Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents
So I've been thinking a lot about current affairs lately and current events lately
and one of the events that's been current has to do with the NFL and players who knelt during the national anthem
or linked arms during the national anthem
I'm sure you know all about this. I want to take a look at this a little bit closer
and in order to look more closely at it I want to step back a second
because there's so much emotion that's involved with this whole scenario, isn't there?
There's so much emotion on one side that says
we know we need to protest like this because there's injustice happening.
There's so much emotion on the other side saying like
but wait a second this seems like an attack on our country - the flag of this national anthem - it seems unpatriotic
so let's take a step back for a moment.
GK Chesterton was a man who lived in in England he was a convert
from [Anglicanism] to Catholicism in like the early 1900s and he said this about our country:
He said America is the one country that was founded on a creed,
we're not made up of some people who happen to live in a geographic region,
we're not made up of one ethnicity or one race or one culture or one common language,
that the reason why we're Americans is because we believe in a particular creed,
that creed starting with "We hold these truths to be self-evident,
all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights," etc. etc., right?
So that's part of the creed of what it is to be an American.
When people are protesting during the National Anthem, one of the things that
that kind of gets our our blood going is like wait a second people died for that flag,
people died for that National Anthem.
And we have to press pause and
say well I don't know if they did. I don't know if anyone died for the flag itself,
but they died for what the flag represents - the creed,
and so if someone is gonna protest - peacefully protest - during a song that represents the creed or the flag that represents the creed,
what we have to ask is this:
Are you protesting because you don't believe the creed?
Or are you protesting because you believe the creed
but you're recognizing a gap between the ideal and the real?
You're recognizing a gap, then saying "No, you're trying to call us higher to say, 'Listen I love this creed that is the United States of America...
'...and we need to raise ourselves up because there's an injustice there.' "
because if it's the first, if it's someone who says I don't believe the creed,
then it's like well I got a real problem with that
but if it's someone who says, "No, I'm on your side. I am for the Creed but there are some injustices happening...
"...that I just can't tolerate."
Now of course if you still don't like it you know I get to change the channel.
I don't want my entertainment and politics mixing, like I hate that too, so I could just change the channel
or I could do this: I could stop and say, "Tell me what's going on?"
I could ask someone and say, "So what are you trying to get, what do you want me to do?"
Because the fact of the matter is, in this country, I get to stand on the corner at the abortion clinic and I can pray,
peacefully, quietly protest the killing of these unborn children,
the hurting of these moms and someone can drive by and they can honk their horn
and give me the finger or they can come up to me and say,
"OK, so what are you trying to do? Why do you believe what you believe?"
That's part of having that same creed that says no, we do hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, etc. etc.
but I think in all of this, with so much emotion I think one of the things that it just highlights to me
is that we do a really good job of telling other people what to do.
I think a lot of us really like telling other people what how they should act, how they should think, how they should be -
that's a temptation and that might even be a temptation for me right?
I make a video, I make videos every week that tell people how they should live.
I preach every day, every Sunday telling people how they should live so that's a serious actual issue
because I think if I didn't spend a lot of time trying to look at how someone else should change
or how someone else should be different but I don't spend any time looking at myself,
then we've got a really really big problem and this is not anything new to us.
In Saint Paul's first letter to Timothy chapter 3, he has this advice for people who want to be bishops,
he said this about people who want to be leaders
because as the role of a bishop you're gonna have to tell people what to do,
so St. Paul says,
"Therefore a bishop must be irreproachable himself, married only once...
"...he must be temperate, he must be self-controlled, he has to be decent...
"...he should be hospitable, able to teach, shouldn't be a drunkard not aggressive, but gentle...
"...not contentious, not a lover of money. He must manage his own household well."
Basically St. Paul says this if a guy's gonna get called to tell other people what to do,
he first has to get his own house in order.
And if you and I are are gonna be active in this world and try to help our country,
get to a place where the real is actually lived up to the ideal,
then what I need to do first is I need to look inside.
I can get mad at people protesting.
I can get mad at people who get mad at people protesting.
What I really need to do is realize that the problem is not out there.
This is the important thing - the problem is not out there, I mean there are real problems -
Let me disclaimer: there are real injustices, there is real bigotry, and real hatred,
but I'll say this: the problem is not SIMPLY out there, the problem is in here.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn after spending years in the Soviet gulags,
he came back and he said the dividing line between good and evil passes straight to the human heart,
that evil's not just something out there, that I find evil in myself.
So what I need to do if I'm a Catholic Christian,
by the grace of Jesus, I need to actually ask him, "Lord. help me get my house in order...
"...before I tell anyone else how they ought to live."
I'm bothered by some protests at times,
but I also am very, very bothered by injustice.
Most of all, I guess I have to say just to tell the truth,
I'm mostly bothered by the evil I find in my own heart,
and that's when I just say I can't just point a finger at someone else,
can't just tell someone else what to do,
but I have to go before the Lord and just say, "OK God, help me be the man that I need to be...
"...so that, inside so that I can go be the man that the world needs me to be."
This is what God's asking of you, too. So as we go to prayer and say,
"God help me be the woman or help me be the man that you're calling me to be ...
"...so I can go out and be the woman or be the man that the rest of the world needs me to be."
I think that's a good start, start inside with the Lord, then we can go out and do good.
From all of us here at Ascension Presents, my name's Father Mike
God bless
you