09/20/26 Blind Spots: Entitlement

0:01 Welcome to Sunday homilies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homily inspires and motivates you, and I also hope that it leaves you hungry for the one who gave everything to feed you. If you want to get this and other Sunday Mass resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday or by texting Sunday to 33777. You can also follow or subscribe in your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you. And reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew.

0:37 Chapter 20, verses 1 through 16. Jesus told his disciples this parable. The kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out at dawn to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with them for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard, going out about nine o'clock. The landowner saw others standing idle in the marketplace. and he said to them, you two go into my vineyard and I will give you what is just. So they went off. Again, he went out around noon and around three o'clock and did likewise, going out about five o'clock. The landowner found others standing around and said to them, why do you stand here idle all day? They answered him, because no one has hired us. He said to them, you two go into my vineyard. When it was evening, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, summon the laborers and give them their wages, beginning with the last and ending with the first. When those who had started about five o'clock came, they each received the usual daily wage. So when the first came, they thought that they would receive more, but each of them also got the usual wage.

1:35 And on receiving it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who bore the day's burden and the heat. He said to them in reply, My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?

2:06 Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last. The Gospel of the Lord. Thank you, Lord Jesus. I'd like you to have a seat. So a couple years ago, I was talking with one of our missionaries, and we have Focus here on Campus Course, and she was talking about one experience she had at Focus Training. So now they've Focus Training a couple different places. She was at training at Ave Maria University down in Florida. And so middle of the summer, super hot, and she had to cross the entire campus. Now, when you have focus training, apparently, apparently you have to, you have to wear a business casual. So you got to get dressed up to just to go to class. So she gets dressed up, goes to class, walks outside, super hot. Her next class was completely other side of Alvarez campus. So they have these bikes on campus, kind of like you have bikes everywhere around town. Bikes you can just take, bikes you can use.

3:01 Her bike was right there. She's making a beeline for this bike. She needs this bike because she's going across the entire campus. It's blazing hot. And this girl comes out of nowhere and takes her bike. And she knew, like she knew for a fact that that girl did not have as far to go as she had to go across campus. And so she's like, that's my bike. The girl takes it. She goes off. So she's huffing it across campus. She arrives at where she needs to go. And she's drenched. She's huffing and puffing. She's sweating. And not only huffing and puffing, she's also kind of a little upset, right? So her mentor meets her there and she sees her like, okay, you're all sweaty. You're huffing and puffing. And you're kind of in a little bit of a tizzy. What happened? So she tells her, I want outside. It's so hot out there. I have to wear these clothes because they make us wear these clothes. I had to go all across campus. I had my bike. The girl took my bike. And she even said that she said, I deserve that bike. And that's when her mentor says, okay, I need you to stop right there. She said, what you said, you said one word that should never be in the vocabulary of a missionary.

3:59 You said, you said one word that should never be in the vocabulary of a Christian. That's one word that a Christian should never ever utter. And for the last couple weeks, we've been talking, we've been doing this series, and the series is called Blind Spots. And the idea behind this is, it starts with Psalm 19. Psalm 19, the psalmist says this, he says, from hidden faults, O Lord, acquit me. That there's these, we recognize that we know the sins we're embarrassed about, we know the sins we're ashamed of, but there are these, what you might call acceptable sins. There are these invisible vices that we have them, but we just don't mind them. Like, they're not sins that we're ashamed of, we're not sins that we're embarrassed. they're the sins, not the sins we hide from, they're the kind of sins that hide from us because they're just always there and we just have grown accustomed to them. It's not that they're not big, it's just that we've developed socially acceptable excuses of why we have them in our lives. So the first week we talked about gossip, something we do. Last week we talked about anger, that reading from Sirach said, anger and wrath are hateful things but the sinner holds them tight. It just becomes, this week we're going to talk about a sin that just has become, for many of us, it's become kind of the air we breathe. And it comes from the gospel today. The gospel, we just heard the entire story. Here's the parable. Here's the workers. They're in the field. They agreed for their wage.

5:13 Others hired after them. Again, y'all heard this thing. The point was this, they expected to be paid more. And this parable is, I believe this is a tough picture of a tough blind spot in a lot of us. And it's this, it's the people saying, hey, wait, they got what we got, but we deserved more.

5:38 Yeah, yeah, I got what I agreed to, but I deserved more. The blind spot is the blind spot of entitlement. And I think sometimes this, I think if I say the word entitlement, if we think entitlement, sometimes we think about like those people who like clearly have so much more privilege than us. And we sometimes think of the people who are like excessively wealthy. I came across some stories of, I don't know if you, like the famous crash outs of these families that built up incredible wealth and they tried to hand it to their kids and the kids just destroyed it. Maybe you've heard of the Vanderbilt family, but the Vanderbilt, they were a classic family in America that just like made it rich. The patriarch was Cornelius Vanderbilt. When he died in 1877, he had about a hundred million dollars, which in 2026 money is $3.2 billion. He had a mass, He made this massive industry, made tons of money, $3.2 billion, 2026 numbers. He gave it to his kids. His great grandson is a man famously, Reginald Claypool Vanderbilt, which is maybe the problem.

6:36 He inherited, when he turned 21 years old, he inherited his part of the fortune. When he turned 21 years old, he inherited $400 million in 2026 money. Can you imagine turning 21 and being like, I'll have my first drink and my first paycheck for $400 million? dollars. It did not go well for him. This man had never been taught how to value money. He was entitled. This is what's coming to me when I'm 21. And so he developed all these habits. He died almost 20 years later. He died in his 40s, having lost it all. Gambling, betting on horses, drinking, and just living this massively extravagant lifestyle. And we sometimes see that, like, that's what's going to happen. In fact, I, you know, I don't know. I'm on the internet occasionally, and I'll see these stories of people who are like, I don't want, I've been successful. I don't want my kids to become entitled. Because there's stories of like the Vanderbilts.

7:29 There's also stories of people like the Rockefellers. I don't know if you know about the Rockefellers even more. So John D. Rockefeller II, J.D. Rockefeller Jr., by the time he died in 1928, he and his father before him, he had acquired an empire in 2026 numbers that was $20 billion. But he didn't want his son, J.D. Rockefeller, III. He didn't want his son to become entitled. He didn't want his son to squander it all. So what he did was when J.D. Rockefeller III turned 14, he gave his son an allowance. The allowance was $1.50 a week. But he said, with that $1.50, I need to know exactly where you spend it, but you have to spend it at least two places. You need to give 20% to savings. You give 20% to charity because, and I need you to keep an account of what you do with this money because it's been handed to you. It's been entrusted to you to do something good with it. By the time J.D. Rockefeller III died in 1978. He had not squandered a penny of this money, but he had donated millions upon millions of dollars.

8:27 In fact, when he died, he had given away all of his money because his father had taught him not to be entitled. His father taught him to be responsible. I mean, Warren Buffett, another person, Warren Buffett had said, you know, he made a lot of money in the stock market. Warren Buffett once said, I want to give my kids enough money that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing. Because we know this. We know that the temptation for all of us, It's not just wealthy people. It's not just rich people that are tempted to be entitled. We're tempted to be, this is in every one of us. You're like, well, if I had money, I wouldn't be entitled, I promise.

8:58 But think about how we are on the road. Like I'm trying to get from A to B. How many times on the road? It's like, why are these people out here on the road? What are they doing? Why are they in front of me? Because they have somewhere to go. That's why. They're kind of like you. They have places to be. And yet, like, no, but I need to get there. we don't take a moment to appreciate the fact that everyone needs to get someone, that that's why they're in a vehicle. How many times have you had a situation where maybe you took the day off, it's the middle of the week, and you go somewhere unusual, like you go to the mall of America or something, or you go to the gym in the middle of the day, to be like, go to like an amusement park, somewhere like a fun place in the middle of the day, and it's weirdly packed, and then you become weirdly angry. Like, why are all these people here in the middle? It's the middle of the day. Don't they have jobs? because why? We have this sense of like, someone's getting more than I'm getting. They shouldn't be here.

9:51 This is what I deserve. That's the word. This is what I deserve. It's in every one of us. And that's why the gospel, the gospel is so remarkable because they're upset. They're no longer happy, but they're getting exactly what they agreed to. But when someone's getting the same as me and it seems like they did less work, there was a study in 2025 in New Zealand. It was a longitudinal study and they discovered a relationship between entitlement and feeling financially deprived in relation to others. That if I have what I have, great. But if I have what I have and you have more, then I begin to believe that I've been treated unfairly. In fact, this is what they concluded. They said, if someone else has more or receives the same with less effort, my situation must therefore be unfair. It's exactly the story of the gospel. It's not just in this study. It's not just in the gospel.

10:42 It's in our lives. I remember talking with a woman a couple of years ago. A friend of mine had a friend who had cancer. And she said, hey, could you talk to her? You just call her up. She's really struggling with the cancer. And I think she'd really benefit. I'm like, great, I love my friend. So I called her friend and I'm listening to her talk about her experience with cancer and her experience with getting sick and maybe facing death, all these kinds of things. And at one point I had mentioned to her, at the same time, my mom was dying of cancer. cancer at the same time. And I just wanted to offer, well, here's what my mom has found help with. Here's what my mom has found strength in. Here's what she's leaning into. And her response was, well, how old is she? I was like, well, she's in her 70s. Well, yeah, well, I'm in my 30s. Like she, or she was under 40s. I'm in my 40s. She had 30 extra years. Yeah, she had 30 more years than me. And instead of saying like, oh, actually I get what I get.

11:37 or here's I am going through the same kind of thing as someone else it's well no she got 30 more so it's not the same why because I deserve more again there there's some kind of entitlement that we say I deserve because I'm special I deserve this because why because because I've worked hard like the gospel we worked hard all day we deserve this I deserve this I'm special because I'm smart I deserve something or I'm a good person. I try really hard. Therefore, I'm better. I deserve because I'm special. There's another study in, there were 700 cases in 2015 about parents talk to their children. They made a difference, the distinction between how some parents, they let their kids know that they were special and they're loved. And others let their kids know they're special. And that meant that they were exempt from consequences. They were special. Therefore, they deserved more.

12:34 and they found, surprisingly, that those who knew they were loved had a great sense of self-esteem. But those who thought they were special and therefore they deserve more had a great sense of self-entitlement. Because that's part of us. Some of us, we have this sense of like, I worked hard, I'm special. I deserve because I'm special. But there's another sense of entitlement that's just as real. There's one that says, I deserve because I'm special. There's another one that says, I deserve because I've suffered. you don't know what I've been through. I deserve. If there's something that says, I'm owed because I have, there's another thing that says, I'm owed because I don't have. I've been overlooked. I didn't get what other people got. Life has been unfair, and therefore, I'm owed something. Because life has been hard for me, therefore, I deserve something.

13:27 Last study of the day. In 2010, there was a story by Zitek and his colleagues, and they said they discovered, for everybody, They discovered that recalling past injustices or past experiences of unfairness increased participants' sense of entitlement. Just remembering the fact that at some point I experienced something unfair led people to the conclusion that therefore I deserve more. Even if the recalling of something unfair had nothing to do with the situation in the moment. But just remembering the fact that at some point I didn't get what I wanted. or I didn't get what I deserved. Therefore, that means currently I'm being owed. You know this, right? Entitlement can come from pride, but entitlement can also come through pain. That my circumstances give me a special claim. And we end up saying that word, I deserve.

14:21 But once again, there is a word that should never be on the vocabulary, on the mouth, on the lips of a Christian. There's a word that should never be on the mouth of a Catholic. And that word is I deserve. In fact, at the end of this week, Archbishop Fulton Sheen will be beatified. He'll be blessed, Archbishop Fulton Sheen. It was, I think it was the last sermon he gave in St. Pat's Cathedral on Good Friday, the year he died. He was 83 years old. And he got at the St. Pat's and he said this. He said, but honestly, look into your own heart. This is Fulton Sheen's. He said, honestly, look into your own heart. He said, I've looked into mine. He said, I've had a great deal of suffering in the 83 years of my life. Physical suffering, another suffering that should never have happened. that lasted over many years. And yet, as I look back, I know very well that I have never received the punishment that I deserved. God has been easy with me.

15:18 He has not laid on me burdens that were ever equal to my failures. And then he said, and if we look into our own soul, I think that we would also come to that same conclusion. I've never gotten what I deserved. And here's the truth. This is the truth that I think we need to live with today. And I think this is the truth that we need to live with every single day. And it's this statement. The truth is this. God does not owe me anything. God does not owe me anything. No matter how hard I've worked, he does not owe me anything. No matter how much I've prayed, he doesn't owe me anything. No matter how much I've served, no matter how much I've suffered, we need to understand this. God does not owe me anything.

16:04 There's a psalm that says, the Lord is just in all his ways. He's loving in all his deeds. He doesn't say, the Lord is just in many of his ways and loving in some of his deeds. It's all of his ways and all of his deeds. He is always just and he has never given me anything that I ever deserved. God does not owe me anything, but that doesn't mean that I'm not worth anything. God does not owe you anything, but that does not mean that you're not worth anything. There's a man I just came across, he's in the military. He talked about his experiences in the military of applying for promotion, for selection, and being passed over. And he said multiple times, he applied for this promotion, applied for this selection, and he was passed over multiple times. And he said this, for any of us who have been passed over, for any of us who think that, oh my gosh, here's God who's not paying attention to me or here are the people around me not paying attention to me. He said this, he said, pay attention to what you think getting passed over means. because all of us at some point don't get what we want, but pay attention to what you think getting passed over means. He says, it might mean you're not ready. It might mean that someone else is more fitting. Someone else is more competitive. It could mean that you lack a necessary quality, something you need to fix, but here's what it does not mean. It does not mean not worthy.

17:22 He said this. He said, do not confuse non-selection with non-value. the first reading Isaiah God says through Isaiah he says my ways are not your ways my thoughts are not your thoughts just because he has not given me what I want does not mean that I do not matter to him the reality of that we have every one of us no matter how much I'm special no matter how much I'm suffered God does not owe me anything I invite every one of us like today for the rest of our lives to sit with that to let hear that in our head in our prayer God does not owe me anything It is a liberating truth. Why? Because this parable today is all about grace.

18:03 It's all about, what is grace? Grace is literally an undeserved gift. And if one of the words in my vocabulary is what I deserve, I will not ever understand grace. The fact of the matter, of course, is, you are loved. The fact of the matter is you are special. You are unique and you have suffered.

18:31 Remember, go back to that 2015 study. Those parents, how they talk to their kids and say, no, you are special. You are loved. Now you have self-esteem because you know that your value does not lie in what you're given. It's already been given. That value has already been given. Versus those people who say, because you're special, because you suffered, you're now exempt from pain. God does not owe me anything. And therefore, I cannot lay a claim to his grace.

18:59 I cannot deserve his grace. I can only accept it. I can only accept it with responsibility and with gratitude. And those are the two remedies. Every one of our blind spots, every one of these blind spots we're talking about, they all have remedies. And the remedy for entitlement is responsibility and gratitude. written. So responsibility. Instead of asking, what do I deserve? We ask the question, what has been entrusted to me? Not what have I earned? What do I deserve? What's been entrusted to me? I mean, even think about this in the gospel today. This is so good. They've been given work. They've been, the landowner, he's entrusted them with work. And he, and he's, is this not unjust? He's not paying them a bad wage. Even makes it clear. He's like, I'm not cheating you. You agreed to this. This is what you want. He not only gave them payment at the end of the day, he entrusted them with work for that entire day. This is so important. We have to understand this. Because why? Because there were some people who got to work the whole day. Imagine those people at the end of the day. He says, why are you standing here idle all day? Imagine standing there your entire day not having been given a work to do.

20:08 I really resent people on Fridays. Get up and go to the gym on Friday, and everyone's like, hey, happy Friday. Weekend's coming. I'm like, you have no idea what my weekends look like. Friday night, I'm like stressing out, sweating bullets about, I've got a homily, those things. Saturday morning, Saturday I'll go down to, used to go down to Dunn Brothers, that coffee shop there, and I'd be in the loft. And I'd be up in the loft, and I'm literally sweating. There's tears. I'm like, God, what do you want me to say? I don't know. I'm stressing out. I'm looking down in the loft at people and they're like relaxed. They've got crosswords they're playing. They're reading books for fun. I look down, I'm like, fine, I'm doing my work. A couple of years ago, it was summertime and I was so jealous, right, of that summertime and I was supposed to go somewhere else.

21:01 I was supposed to be filling out of town and it got canceled last minute. Like Thursday, Friday got canceled. It's too late to do anything else. Everything was full. And my family in the Brainerd area were out of town too. So I wasn't like running over to Brainerd. So I got to spend the weekend just in Duluth. It was awesome. I got to have like a weekend. I like on Friday night, I think I ordered a pizza, like watched a movie. This is amazing. I got up, you know, a decent time on Saturday, went to Dunn Brothers, read a book for fun. I went for a walk. I'm like, this is awesome. Did some stuff. You know, Sunday morning, I think I said mass in the chapel. A couple of students were in town. So here we are. Went for another walk, like clean the house. I'm like, this is amazing. This is what people live like. But by Sunday afternoon, evening, I remember getting to the end of the day and thinking, God, thank you so much. This is an, rest is so good. I remember thinking, God, this is so good. I don't need another one of these for a while. Because there's something great about rest.

21:54 There's also something incredible about being entrusted with a work to do. To be entrusted with this work and say, this is what has been entrusted to me. So the question we get to ask, rather than what do I deserve, is what has been entrusted to me? this season, like this day. There's a work every one of us, there's a burden every one of us is carrying right now. That burden has been entrusted to you.

22:16 The project that's due tomorrow morning, that's been entrusted to you. Paper that you have to write, that's been entrusted to you. The people around you, the chores you have this afternoon, that has been entrusted to you. I mean, caring for a sick family member, some of you taking care of your elderly parents in their old age. they've been entrusted to you for this season.

22:40 The cure for entitlement is realizing that even though, not just the reward, but even the work has been a gift. So our response is, the remedy is responsibility and gratitude. To be able to look, to see what's been given and just say thank you. To pay more attention to what I have been given than to what I haven't been given. and on a daily basis. How often do we pay more attention and give more time to what we don't have than what we do?

23:16 How much time do we pay more attention to what we've lost than to what we were entrusted with? But if we're going to get out from underneath this, we have to escape this. And so this is the last thing. Not only in small ways, not only to be able to be grateful in small things, but even to be grateful in the worst, biggest possible moments. Well, back I came across the story of a woman. Her name is Martha Tennyson. Martha Tennyson is, she's a preacher and she's an older woman. Her husband's a pastor.

23:51 They have a son named Alan. And in 1988, the school that Martha and her husband were running, 1988 in Carolina, or sorry, in Kentucky, Their church bus had a crash. Their son, Alan, was in that crash. He survived. But they lost in that crash, they lost 24 young people and three adults.

24:17 And Martha Tennyson describes this. She said that she said, we had to tell 24 sets of parents every 15 minutes that they had lost a child. They come into their office and her husband would be sitting there, she'd be sitting there. She said, one mother has made such a, such an impression on me. They had a son named Billy. He was 17 years old. He was the only child they ever, they had. So we called him in and said, Bill, Maddie, our bus has been involved in a tragedy.

24:46 And your son, Billy, went home to be with the Lord. Martha said, the father absolutely went all to pieces, but the mother laid her hand on his shoulder and said, the first thing we must do is praise God for 17 wonderful years.

25:07 She said, he let us have him for 17 years. Martha goes on. She got from where she was seated. She came around the desk where I was seated with my husband. She hugged me. She made this statement, Sister Tennyson, I rejoice with you that your son made it. But God's grace will be sufficient for us. think about having that kind of faith think about having that kind of perspective think about having such an absence of I deserve to be able to say okay I imagine him turning 18 I imagine him going off to college I imagine him having a family I imagine having grandkids I'm not going to pay attention to that I'm going to pay attention to the fact that God gave us him for 17 years 17 years that we didn't deserve we didn't deserve a son in the first place We didn't serve one day with our son and he gave us 17 years worth of days. Imagine having that kind of faith, that kind of hope, that kind of freedom.

26:08 freedom from the word deserve. Because you pay attention to what I've been entrusted with, grateful for, once again, that word deserve has no place in the vocabulary of a Christian, a follower of Jesus. But our call, every one of us, every day, is to accept what's been entrusted to us with responsibility and gratitude.

26:38 and to do the work that has been entrusted to us.