09/27/26 Blind Spots: Complaint

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. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew.

0:37 Chapter 21, verses 28 through 32. Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people, What is your opinion? A man had two sons. He came to the first and said, Son, go out and work in the vineyard today. He said in reply, I will not. But afterwards he changed his mind and went. the man came to his other son and gave the same order. He said in reply, yes, sir, but did not go. Which of the two did his father's will? They answered the first. Jesus said to them, amen. I say to you, tax collectors and prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God before you. When John came to you by way of righteousness, you did not believe him, but tax collectors and prostitutes did. Yet even when you saw that, you did not later change your minds and believe him. The Gospel of the Lord.

1:32 Praise to you, Lord. Wait till you have a seat. so earlier this summer uh i was part of a camp we put on for the diocese it's a called camp survive it's it's for middle schoolers but there's a bunch of high schoolers who serve as junior counselors during the camp and so we have a little training weekend at one of the parishes we had to sleep on the floor this whole training thing it was sunday morning so these high school boys i come up to them they're having breakfast and sit down guys how are you doing and these are these are all high school boys. They're all rising seniors. They're all on the same football team from the same town. Great guys. Like they're giving up a weekend for training. They're giving up a whole week to serve at this camp the entire week. How's it going? Man, this is just, they were so mad. This is just, I don't know, like there's too much food here. I was like, what? Like, yeah, there's too much food and it's just like, it's so good. And like, I don't even normally eat breakfast. Everyone else at the table is like, we don't eat breakfast either. Like it's too much food. It's too good. I'm like, okay. They're all agreeing with each other, and they're getting mad about the fact that the food is too good, and there's too much of it. And then out of nowhere, someone in the kitchen announces, by the way, you guys, we just made fresh baked cinnamon rolls, and you would have thought these guys had gotten detention for three weeks. So they were like, what the heck? Are you kidding me? This is ridiculous. I was like, this is ridiculous.

2:57 and I was just thinking about this this is this and also by the way this was a buffet line right so this is like you don't have to have any more food and yet they just complained they complained there was too much food and it tasted too good and the question I have to ask is have you ever done something like that and the answer is of course you have we're from Minnesota that's complaint is our love language you guys we I mean any given day we can find something to complain about it's winter it's too cold there's too much snow there's not enough snow it's summer it's too hot or it's too cold I mean again you would think that in Minnesota or this area complaint is our love language because we are black belts when it comes to complaints everything can be going great and we will still find we're like bloodhounds we can find something to complain about that's why so we've been doing this series for the last month called blind spots it's based off psalm 19 psalm 19 says from hidden faults oh lord equip me from the sins I don't even realize from the things that are just so I'm so accustomed to I'm so used to just heal me so we're talking about those invisible vices that we just take for granted like they're the things in our lives like acceptable sins that we think they don't need to be addressed. They don't definitely don't need to be repented of because they're just always there. So we looked at gossip. We looked at anger. Last week we looked at entitlement. And this weekend we see complaining because complaint is one of those blind spots. Because we're just like, because we're no different. We're just like those boys at camp. We can always find something to complain about. Even the first reading, first reading from the book of the prophet Ezekiel. It's so good. It starts out by saying, you keep saying the Lord's ways are not fair. So they're complaining. God's not fair. Have you pointed, have you noticed what they're complaining about? Have you noticed why they're saying God's not fair? It's because it says this, it says, because when you turn to sin, you get justice. And when you turn to him, you get mercy. So they're complaining about the fact that, okay, if you turn away from sin, you get mercy.

5:06 and if you turn towards sin, you get justice. Basically, God is saying this, God is both just and merciful and they are still finding something to complain about. God is saying, I'm so good that whatever you choose, you get. And humanity's response is to whine about it. And this is why this is a real issue because complaining for us is so normal. Now, of course, there's times when we have to, right? If something is wrong, if something's unjust, it should be talked about. But we bring those things up so we can do something about it. Another way to, another sometimes, it's not, that's not to say you can't say negative things. Like if someone asks you about something that's painful in your life, it doesn't mean like you have to pretend it's all fine, it's fine. So you probably know this because I keep bringing it up. The last two and a half years, I had two kind of major surgeries. Surgery on my back two and a half years ago. Surgery on my shoulder a year and a half ago. Someone says, Father Mike, how's your back?

6:02 Awesome. Praise the Lord. Every day I wake up and think, God, thank you so much. How's your shoulder? do you want the truth and if you care about me you're like yes father I want the truth well let me tell you it's worse than it was before the surgery okay I also wanted to work that in so I could just share it as an example not as a complaint and now you can feel sorry for me no but what I'm talking about what I'm talking about generally speaking of course if someone wants to know about something it's painful for your life, yes, please tell them the truth. They care. But what I'm talking about is something different. I'm talking about when complaint becomes the content of every one of our conversations. I saw a statistic that said that in any given conversation, people on average will complain once every minute in a given conversation. And again, I'm no exception. If anyone asks me about, Father, how was the weekend? How's the semester going for our? I mean, the weekend could be 95% positive. The whole semester could be 95% amazing. And I'm scouring.

7:06 I'm focusing on the five. In fact, there was a study that came out in 1998 that said out of all the things we complain about, 75% of the things that we complain about are not aimed at fixing anything. We don't even want to do anything with it. We don't want to remedy the situation. They're not aimed at fixing anything. It's like, it's, it is the verbal equivalent of spritzing fart spray in the air. Like it doesn't do anything. It just makes everyone miserable, which actually does do something. It does something. It makes us less. Like when we complain, it makes us less. It makes us less happy. It makes us less capable. It makes us less resilient. In fact, there's a psychologist named Albert Ellis. He made a connection between complaining and this thing he called low frustration tolerance. that the more we complain, the more we have this low frustration tolerance.

7:59 He described low frustration tolerance as this. He said, it's the learned belief that discomfort, inconvenience, difficulty, or even just not getting what I want is not merely unpleasant. It's unbearable. And he described it like this. Someone with a high frustration tolerance would say, oh, I really don't like this, but I can handle it. Someone with a low frustration tolerance would say, I really don't like this, therefore I shouldn't have to deal with it. So when it comes to like traffic, we keep bringing up traffic every week because we all experience it. Someone with a high frustration tolerance would say, this traffic is annoying. Oh well. Someone with a low frustration tolerance would say, this traffic, are you kidding me? It's ridiculous. Why does this always happen to me? Like I cannot deal with it. So complaining becomes the verbal expression of how I see the world. and habitual complaining trains us that every inconvenience needs to be narrated as an outrage that we become trained or we train ourselves to believe that every frustration is unacceptable and every frustration has to be announced to the world and again not that everything is fine but have you noticed this so much of what we complain about is just life have you noticed that that it's morning again.

9:20 You know, like it always is, every single 24-hour period. And we complain about it, as if it's like no one's ever had to experience morning. Or I have to go to work. Yes, like everyone. I have to go to class. Yes, like everyone. I have chores to do. The stuff we complain about is just, there's other people around me. it makes me ask the question where does this need to complain come from i think i think one one it comes from the need for connection right we have connection we have shared experiences and and i think nothing bonds us like shared suffering and so we all experience minnesota winter we all complain about it and we feel closer or this shared connection this need connection i i desire to be seen like i i want you to notice what i'm going through because then I feel like I'm seen. I feel like I'm known. And I feel like I'm sympathized with. There's something good about that I desire to be connected with. I desire to be known.

10:18 Another source of our need to complain is fear. I'm going through something. I don't know if anyone notices. What if I can't get out of this? But I think there's a bigger source of our need to complain. You know, in the Old Testament, there's a couple of books, the book of Exodus, and book of Numbers that talk about how the Israelites were set free from slavery. So if you know this, the Israelites, the Jews were slaves in Egypt for 430 years. And the book of Exodus talks about how what happened after they were set free. Numbers talks about the same thing. After they're set free, they're wandering in the wilderness. And it's crazy because if there's any two books other than Exodus and Numbers that has more complaining, I do not know what book that is. I think every single chapter in both Numbers and Exodus, they're just complaining. Again, It's one of those situations where they were slaves. But think about this. They were slaves for 130 years.

11:11 That's generation after generation after generation. All they know is learned helplessness. All they know is what it is to be powerless. They were convinced that they did not have the capacity to even to do anything, to change their situation. And so what happens? Rather than be free, they remained slaves. I mean, they had been fought for, right? Every one of them had seen the 10 miracles. Every one of them had walked through the Red Sea with the water like a wall to their right and to their left. They all got fed every single day by food that was both good and too much of it.

11:49 They had good leaders and they still complained. Why? because they still looked at the world through the lens of a slave. They looked at the world with what you might call like a victim mentality or a victim lens of I have this learned helplessness. I am powerless. There's nothing that I can do. And what happens is then we turn to complaint and this is the problem. They saw everything as a possibility for complaint. So complaint makes everything a potential problem. if I listen to the habit of complaint complaint makes everything a potential problem now remember remember complaint can be good when it's aimed at resolving something but there was a study they did in 2018 a diary study of 113 employees at a company over a span of 10 work days they had conversations about workplace mistreatments so like real things that were happening at the company that were not good they needed to talk about these things but here's what they found? They found that the conversations that offered alternative explanations or conversations that offered solutions actually helped buffer negative emotional effects. But conversations that only offered comfort or consolation did not show the same buffering effect in the study.

13:08 What that means is this. It means if someone's like, well, I'm complaining. I just want to be heard. You don't, don't try to fix it. Just hear me. Does no good. Now, obviously in relationships, sometimes someone needs to vent. They're, they're, they're complaining about the negative thing. And you can ask the question. I'll make it more clear. Men, you can ask the question. Do you want to be heard? Do you want to be held? Or do you want to be helped? Those are really good questions to ask. Just between us though, just so you know, only the third one actually helps according to a 2018 study but here's the thing because why because complaining can be good when it's aimed at resolving something and especially when it comes to God bringing our pain to God can be a massive act of trust bringing our broken heart to God can be a good thing in fact there's a book in the old testament called the book of lamentations an entire book of a guy named Jeremiah Jeremiah was a prophet and he and a frog and he was walking through Jerusalem during the siege of Jerusalem and he saw so much death and suffering and starvation and destruction and his heart broke and what did he do he wrote that down and he brought that broken heart to God that's that's what lament does lament gives us a way to tell God the truth about our pain while remaining in relationship with him because this when I bring my suffering to God I can ask him to help me when I bring my suffering to God, I can say, God, help me to see, help me to act, God, help me to love. But when I merely rehearse my grievances, I can leave myself exactly where I was before, just more miserable.

14:47 Another way to say it is this. Every time we complain, we reinforce negative thoughts. Therefore, with each complaint, problems get a little bit bigger in my field of vision until that's all I can see. And what I do is I train myself to notice the negative. that's what complaint does. I train myself to notice the negative. So what's the solution? What's the remedy? The remedy is twofold. The remedy is this. The remedy is wonder and praise. The remedy for complaint is wonder and praise. Why? Because wonder opens up my attention again. Wonder opens up my mind to realize there is goodness here that I stopped noticing. It doesn't say there's no bad, right? Complaint is really, really good about telling what's wrong, but it's really, really bad because it misses the truth about what's good.

15:40 Because even in the midst of really bad, there's always something good. I came across a story recently of a young woman named McKinnon Galloway. McKinnon Galloway is deaf. She is partially blind. She's mostly paralyzed. Here's what she said. McKinnon Galloway, she said, I had my first brain surgery when I was 19 years old. It was really tough, but I moved forward. She said, when I was 21, I had my second brain surgery. Again, also terrifying, but I was back in college in 10 days.

16:11 Imagine being 21, your second brain surgery, fought back, get back in 10 days. She said, when I was 23, I had a grand mal seizure and I was diagnosed with epilepsy. When I was 25, my dad took his own life. That one shattered me. But eventually I picked up the pieces and I moved forward. And then she said, but then when I was 29, 29 completely broke me. I had my third and fourth brain surgery. My eye rolled inward. I got complete paralysis on this side. I had a cerebral stroke and I lost all of my hearing. She said, I am completely deaf. So I couldn't really see. I could barely walk. I couldn't really speak. And I definitely couldn't hear at all. And it was the first time I remember thinking, how much does a person have to go through? I can't do this.

17:06 I'm done. If there's anyone who would have a reason to complain, it would be McKinnon. If there's anyone who has a reason to train themselves to notice the negative, it'd be McKinnon. But here's what she said. She said, and if I stayed in that mind, and she said, and I stayed in that mindset for a really long time because I remember looking in the mirror and it was like a stranger looking back. I knew I wasn't moving forward, but I also knew it wasn't healthy to stay exactly where I was. And one day at dawn on me, I couldn't stay in the same mindset that wasn't helping me heal. So I had to fix my focus.

17:45 She had to go away from training herself to notice the negative, to rewire her attention to wonder. So she said this, so I had to change, I can't do this, to I'll figure it out. That's what she did. I'll change, I can't do this, to I'll figure it out. She goes on to say, she said, once you do that, so unbelievably powerful, because once you stop staring at doors that won't open, all of a sudden these windows do, solutions do. So I started working with some of the top deaf technicians in the world, went to physical therapy, went to speech therapy, and I finally got back the life that I thought that I had lost. So my advice, her advice to us, she says, if you're struggling with something, stop saying, I can't do this, and start saying, I'll figure it out. Because once you do that, you're unstoppable. This is the reality. We're all so trained to notice the negative, but we can rewire to notice the wonder and to realize that there's, even in the midst of horrible things, there is goodness that we've just stopped noticing.

18:47 In the second reading today, it ends with verse 11, but in verse 12, it's my favorite. Verse 12, St. Paul says, do everything without grumbling or complaining. Do everything without grumbling or complaining.

19:09 Instead, do it with wonder. Realize there is goodness here that I stopped noticing. In fact, there is goodness here. I'm complaining about what I used to pray for. I came across a story recently of a man. It was a normal Saturday for him. He went to Lowe's to pick up some cleaning supplies. He describes it like this. He said, that morning, he said, I just finished a 20 mile bike ride on some trail neighbor's house. I felt amazing. This is him. I felt amazing. I stopped at Lowe's to grab some floor cleaner, some scrubbies, spray bottles, glass cleaner, and some pellets for my grill. Just some regular Saturday stuff. I'm at the self-checkout, and one of the ladies working there says, how are you doing today? and I said, I feel amazing. I just finished a bike ride. She looks inside my buggy, sees all those cleaning supplies and she says, you shouldn't be doing all this cleaning on a Saturday.

20:05 And that's when I told her, I'd be disappointed if I didn't have anything to clean. Then I said, I'm going home to clean the things that I once prayed for. She said, how old are you? She's like, 40. She's like, you're wise beyond your years. And he said, I laughed at her, but I meant what I said. He said this, he said, I've learned to stop complaining about the maintenance of the things that I once prayed for. I have floors to clean because I have somewhere to live. I have a grill that needs pellets because I have food to cook and people I love feeding. I have a house that gets dirty because people live in it. I have clothes to wash because I have clothes to wear. He said, after riding 20 miles this morning, I even have a body that I've been blessed with that still moves. He clarified, he said, hear me clearly. Gratitude, praise, doesn't mean pretending life doesn't get hard. There are real problems in this world, real financial pressures. There's real exhaustion.

20:57 There's real injustice. And there are real things in our personal lives that need changing. Gratitude or praise doesn't require denial. Because I've learned that if I'm not careful, I'll get so frustrated by the responsibility attached to the blessing that I'll forget that I asked for that blessing. realize how much of what we complain about is something someone else right now is praying for. So what's our response?

21:29 A wonder. In fact, I think our response can be summed up in one word, three letters, to look at the stuff we normally complain about and just say, wow. the morning comes. I normally complain about the morning, but to look outside and go, oh my gosh, wow.

21:50 You're on your way to school. Oh gosh, I got to get there in time. But wow. To look at the things that, I mean, to realize how many of us at some point were stressed out. Will I get into college? Like, will I get accepted? This is my school. This is where I want to be. And here you are and we start complaining about having to go to class and having a paper to write. or you prayed, God, please give me kids. Now you have them. And they're the thing you complain about the most.

22:16 At least I complain about them for you. but instead to simply look at them and say, wow. This in fact is what God trained his people to do. So those people in the wilderness, right? In Exodus and Numbers. All they knew was complaint, right? All they knew was what it was to be a slave. So out of the 12 tribes of Israel, the fourth tribe was named Judah.

22:42 The fourth son of Israel named Judah, fourth tribe Judah. And whenever the Israelites moved, God would say this. God would say this. If they're going up through the wilderness, let Judah go first. When he went into battle, Judah go first. Like why? He's the fourth. Why would he go first? When they went to a new place of danger, Judah go first. Because the name Judah means praise. So here's God who's training his people. You have the power to praise. No matter what, you're going into the wilderness, let praise go up first. You're going to battle, let praise go up first. You're going to have a big paper to do tonight and want the priest to stop talking, let praise go up first. Like whatever the fact, whatever the drama, whatever the battle you're going into, God gives us this ability to let praise go up first, to rewire for wonder, and then to praise God out loud. This is the last thing. Many years ago, there was a student here, a great student.

23:33 He ran on the track team, on the cross country team. At one point, even though he was running faster than ever, was doing fine in his studies, he came to me because he's like, Father, I just, I'm so, I have no zest for the things that once gave me joy. I'm still running, still working, still studying. I just, I just, those things used to make me so happy. And now I have no happiness. What do I do? Fix me. I said, no problem. No, I said, here's what I want you to do. For the next two weeks, what I want you to do every morning and every evening, I want you to do these two wonder and praise next two weeks every morning every evening wonder and praise look at your world look at your life there's not that there's bad not no bad things but see that there are some good things you've stopped noticing look at them with wonder and then simply write down your praise to God three things in the morning three things at night he said okay came back two weeks later. I said, how'd it go? And he said, oh my gosh, it's, it's, it's like, it's night and day. It's completely different. And I was like, whew, okay, good. I'm glad that worked.

24:45 But this is our invitation. This is our invitation this week. If you, you and I are the kind of people who have this blind spot of complaint, where complaint just became the content of our conversation and we spray that fart spray in the air on a regular basis, aimed at nothing, just aimed at complaining, to rewire for wonder and to praise out loud. We complain out loud.

25:14 So if praise is going to do anything, it has to also be out loud. And if we're wondering how we start, it simply involves looking at what's right in front of you right now.