Overnight Success

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 with your spirit. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Glory to you, O Lord.

1:05 You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. Might you have a seat. So I love the idea of the overnight success. There's something really captivating about this. So back in 2015, on November 4th, 2015, there was the Country Music Awards. And Justin Timberlake, not a country artist, gets on stage at the Country Music Awards on November 4th, 2015, with a relatively unknown, burly, bearded country singer named Chris Stapleton. Up to this point, Chris Stapleton had at least one album out that had sold. By that night, his album, Traveler, had sold 3,000 copies. But after that night, he electrified the crowd.

1:58 People watching from all over the country and all over the world were just captivated by this unknown Chris Stapleton. I think shortly after that night, he almost immediately sold 176,000 copies of that album. He was an overnight success. which again, it was just remarkable. But the thing, if you learn about his story though, he actually moved to Nashville 14 years before this. He moved to Nashville in 2001 and he immediately continued writing songs. He immediately was doing demos. He was performing almost every single night. He was touring, but he wasn't touring. He was performing in downtown Nashville. The man in those 14 years between 2001, when he moved to Nashville in 2015, November 4th at the Cartoon Music Awards, he had written over a thousand songs. Over 170 of those songs had been recorded by people. Actually, people looking at the stage on November 4th, 2015 were saying, who is this guy?

2:50 But they actually, so many of them already knew his songs. He'd already written a bunch of number one hits. He had written Josh Turner's song, Your Man, number one. Kenny Chesney recorded one of his songs called Never Wanted Nothing More, number one. Darius Rucker had recorded his song, comeback song, number one. George Strait, Love's Gonna Make It All Right, number one. He had written so many number one hits before November 4th, 2015, he recorded so many songs before November 4th, 2015. He had played so many nights and days in bars and in concert halls and in stadiums until November 4th, 2015, that when that night happened, November 4th, 2015, that man, Chris Stapleton, became an overnight success. But the crazy thing is, of course, that moment was sudden, but the preparation was not. That moment didn't form him into an overnight success.

3:47 That moment simply revealed what had been formed over 14 years leading up to November 4th, 2015. we're going to come back to that in a little in a second um looking at the gospel today there's this question right the lawyer comes up to jesus with the question which commandment is the greatest which on from from our perspective makes a lot of sense there's 613 commandments 613 laws in the old in the old testament which one is the greatest i mean you can narrow it down and say well out of the 10 commandments there's some that are pretty obvious but from from our perspective, we would want to know which one of those is the greatest. But it's interesting. I was listening to a scripture scholar named Dr. Brant Petrie talk about this, and he said, from our perspective, yeah, maybe it is a question. But from the first century Jewish perspective, it would not really be a question. Number one, it could be the first commandment of the Decalogue, right, of the Ten Commandments. I'm the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods beside me.

4:48 But there's actually another rephrasing of this from Deuteronomy chapter 6. It's called the Shema. and it's, it's, it's here, O Israel, the Lord, your God is one, the Lord alone. And you shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your strength. That's called the Shema. It was because that first word is Shema means here to here. And the average Jewish person would pray that prayer multiple times a day. They prayed it when they woke up, they pray it sometime during the day and they would pray it before they went to bed at night. And if there's anything that everyone would have agreed on was what's the greatest commandment is the Shema. It's, it's not, because you know this, we say this again and again and again, love God, love the Lord your God with all your heart. That means your whole will, with your soul. That, that word in Hebrew is efesh or nefesh, which means your whole life and with your mind, with your intellect. Basically the command is this, and it's so clear. The greatest commandment is give God everything. Give, give, all you have, all you are, love God with everything and give God everything. So here's the question. Why is this lawyer asking? Why is he, if it's so obvious, why would this lawyer be asking the question? I think, here's my theory.

6:00 My theory is the lawyer's asking the question. You've ever gone out to dinner with a friend and you choose where you're going? And you're like, oh, we're going for Mexican. And they ask the question like, are you sure? Like, are you sure you want Mexican? Or maybe in your family, in your marriage, your spouse says, where are we going for Thanksgiving? You're like, oh, we're going to the in-laws place. And you ask the question, like, is that where you really want to go? You're asking the question, right? Sometimes we ask the question again in the hopes that we get a different answer. I wonder if the lawyer is asking Jesus this question that he knows the answer to because he wants a different answer.

6:41 Let's pause on this for a second. Like for us, here's the great commandment. We've probably known this as long as we've ever heard of who Jesus is. The great commandment is to love, right? To love God with everything, to love your neighbor as yourself. I think we have to ask a question. And the question is today is this, do I want to?

7:02 When we hear the great commandment, love God with everything, to give God everything, to love your neighbor as yourself, I think an honest question we have to start with is do you want to? And then we have to ask this question because I'll say this, because everything I'm going to say today, it only applies if this is something you want to do.

7:24 And it doesn't apply to you if this is something you want to get out of. You know, I recently came across a story from Dr. Brant Petrie about a Jewish rabbi who lived shortly after Jesus. His name was Rabbi Akiva. And he admitted that the Shema, love God with all your mind, with all your life, your soul, and with all your strength. He said he admitted at a very particular moment in his life, he admitted that the Shema troubled him. Yeah, in fact, he said it this. He said, all my days, I've been troubled by this verse with all your soul. He said, which I interpret as, even if he takes your soul.

8:05 He was troubled by it because he said this. He said, when shall I have the opportunity of fulfilling this verse? Here's the thing. He wanted, He wanted to love God with all he had. He wanted to be able to be the kind of person who could give God everything. His question was, how? How can I do that? And that's our question today. If you're someone who you say, okay, I want that. I want that. I want to be able to love God with all. I want to be able to give God everything. How do I do it? Here's the answer. You just have to start. What I mean by that is if you want to be able to give God everything, you and I have to start by giving God the first thing. Another way to say it is I will not be able to give God everything until I begin giving God the first thing. So in the Old Testament, you probably know about this. In the Old Testament, there's this concept of the first fruits.

8:58 So you give God the first fruits of your crops. You give God the first fruits of your flock. Basically, of any blessing, you give God the first fruits. that right away, right away, God has given a portion. And so you've probably heard of the tithe. The tithe means a tenth. And so you give God a tithe, that first 10% of the fruit of the earth. Or you give God the firstborn of any of the flock. Or basically you give God that first portion, that first tithe, that first 10% of any income you get. And we see this actually right away in the third or fourth story of the Bible, you have Cain and Abel. these two brothers of Adam and sons of Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter four, you have both of them offering God a sacrifice. They says, Cain made God an offering from the fruit of the ground. Abel made God an offering from the firstlings of his flock. And then immediately after that, it points out that God accepted Abel's offering, but he did not accept Cain's offering. And the question, of course, comes up immediately is why didn't God accept Cain's offering?

10:01 And I would say this. I would say that I don't think there's ever been an interpretation I've ever come across that said that God accepted Abel's offering because it was animals and he didn't accept Cain's offering because it was produce. That wasn't it. It's because scripture makes a point of saying that Abel offered his first. That Abel offered his best. and again I will not be able to give God everything until I until I give God the first thing so how do I do that where do I start I would start with Jesus Jesus makes it very clear later on earlier actually in Matthew's gospel Jesus makes it very clear um that where we're to get where we are to give God the first is in three particular areas in the area of prayer in the area of fasting and in the area of almsgiving that these three areas are directly when we're willing to give in these three areas, they're directly connected to our heart. So what's prayer? Prayer is nothing more than giving God time and attention. That's it. All prayer is, is giving God your time and attention. And I know people will say, well, I pray. But so often what they mean if I say, why do you pray? So often we give God time if we happen to have some left over.

11:21 So often we give God our attention if we have nothing better to do. so often our prayer is is the last thing so often our prayer is is i'm going to bed and have nothing else going on and that's when i'll pray but imagine this imagine having a meal you say well i share my meal i share my meal with people i love but every time you shared it's always when you're done eating when you're totally stuffed when you don't want any more of this food or even when you don't even like that particular of what's left on your plate and you say, oh, I love you so much, you can have that. And that's love.

12:00 How much love is it if I were to give the person I love my leftovers? How much love would there be if I gave the person I claimed to love, okay, you can have whatever I don't want. That's why God has introduced to us this concept of the first fruits. Yeah, again, when it comes to first fruits in prayer, again, it's time and attention. It doesn't have to be the first moment of the day. It doesn't have to be the first thing we do when we wake up. But I'll say this, it has to be the first thing that gets scheduled. To give God the first fruits of our time and attention, our prayer, it has to be the first thing that gets scheduled. We have to decide, when am I going to set time aside to give God my time and attention, a.k.a. pray? if I don't do this, I can't actually claim to be a disciple of Jesus.

12:50 But if I do this, I've begun to be a disciple. One of my favorite definitions of disciple, I repeat it all the time, it's not someone who's perfect, it's not someone who doesn't sin, it's not someone who doesn't ever fall. A disciple is this, a disciple, simply put, A disciple is someone who's willing to change their schedule in order to get closer to Jesus. That's it. A disciple is someone who's willing to change their schedule in order to get closer to Jesus. I've changed my schedule in order to carve some time in my day to give God those first fruits, to give God my time and attention. And so the question I have to ask is, okay, if I want to be a disciple, then when will I give God the best of my time and attention? just deciding no i know it's a here's a small small way to do this one small way to do that is is actually the first the first moment of the day there there there's a prayer a classic prayer called the morning offering and basically it's this it's it's the alarm goes off whenever you get out of bed i just kind of slide out of bed onto my knees and i pray this morning morning offering and it's a simple prayer it says um i always forget how it is when i have to give it It's, my Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you the most holy, the sacrifice of the Mass in union with the Holy, I offer you all my prayers, works, sufferings, and joys in union with the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass said throughout the world today, for all the intentions of your most sacred heart, for the conversion of sinners, reparation for sin, reunion of Christians, and for the intentions of the Holy Father.

14:25 It's just the first prayer, the first words that come out of my mouth get to be this offering. Now, you might say, I can't remember all of that. I have a good friend, his name is Eni. And Eni says, I can't remember that morning offering. My mind is groggy every morning when I roll out of bed. So his morning offering sounds like this. Bless us, O Lord, and these are thy gifts, which we are about to receive from thy bounty through Christ our Lord, amen. That sounds like your before meal prayer. It is, but have you ever noticed it doesn't say anything about food? It says, bless us, O Lord, and these are thy gifts. He says, yeah, Lord, at the beginning of this day, the whole day is gonna be a gift from you. He just consecrates that day first right away by just giving it back to God. So again, let me give you the first fruits of our prayer, of our time and attention. But secondly, fasting. Remember, I will not be able to give God everything until I give him the first thing.

15:20 And when it comes to fasting, please just know this. It can be so small. It can be anything, thing, but it just has to be a decision. It doesn't necessarily mean no food. In fact, we have focused missionaries who regularly have unique fasts going on each different week. There's a different kind of a fast. What is that? It's any small sacrifice done out of love for Jesus. So it could involve food. Sometimes there's no snacking between meals, that kind of situation. But also sometimes they have like a fast where there's, okay, this week, no music. or this week, no podcasts. This week, no YouTube. This week, no reels. It could be a situation. I talked to someone and said, sometimes they have a week where it's like, okay, it's the Ohio week. Ohio is you only handle it once. So every time you have dishes, just only handle it once, meaning you do them right away.

16:11 Only handle it once. When you come into the house, you put your coat away. You put your bag away. That kind of offense. And like offering that as a little small sacrifice offered to the Lord. I think some of them have said that when they're living on their own, they're quiet after 8 p.m. Or maybe they have a media fast. It can be something super small. In fact, I came across a priest, he's a great Dominican priest named Father Gregory Pine. And one thing Father Gregory Pine was talking to, I think, Matt Fradd, and he talked about, he said, we can offer these small, small things. He says, imagine you go out to eat and you're looking at the menu. And instead of ordering the thing you most want, just order the thing you second most want. It's just small, again, so small. In fact, it's so small that someone might say, well, what the heck, what does that even do? Well, what it does is it trains my heart to give. It trains my heart to love.

17:05 Because remember, we're talking right now because we want to be able to love God with all. But I will not be able to give God everything until I just give God the first thing. so prayer time and attention fasting almsgiving is the third one in fact not only is almsgiving one fantastic way to fulfill the second commandment takes care of people but also is a great way to train our hearts you know the biblical principle in the old testament is to give god the tithe to give god 10 i don't know if you know this these statistics that i came across recently are that the average Catholic, again, 10% is what the Old Testament requires. The average Catholic gives away 0.8%, which is much lower than 10%. In fact, there's only 11% of Catholics give the full tithe. And again, the church doesn't demand that we do this. That's an Old Testament thing. The church says, just give according to your means. But I think what's fascinating is that 63% of Catholics decide what to give on a week-to-week basis. Like whatever it is, whether it's 0.8% or 10%, again, church just asks, give according to your means, that 63% of Catholics give on a week, decide what to give on a week-to-week basis. What that means is it's the difference between asking the question, what should I give today? And the question, what belongs to God first?

18:34 it's the difference between I'm giving according to how I'm feeling and I'm giving according to God's call. There's this thing called the Pareto principle. The Pareto principle, it's named after an Italian economist. And it states this. It states that roughly 80% of results come from roughly 20% of causes or inputs. So the idea behind it is 20% of customers may generate 80% of sales. I came across this a while back that talked about how like Coca-Cola, 80% of their profits come from only 20% of clients. So it's not like you and I buying Coke. It comes from the fact that Coca-Cola has a contract with Delta. They have a contract with McDonald's. And so 80% of the revenue in Coca-Cola sales comes from only 20% of the people who they have contracts with.

19:33 So Matthew Kelly, right? Matthew Kelly is this great Catholic author. When he did research for a book called The Four Signs of a Dynamic Catholic, he noted this. He noted that the Pareto Principle is 20, 80, 20. Like 20% inputs make 80% of the results. He said in the average Catholic parish, 6.4% of the people account for 80% of volunteer hours. 6.8% of people account for 80% of the financials in each parish. Now think about that. 80% of the volunteer hours by 6.4% of the people, 80% of the finances coming from 6.8% of the people. So he rounded it up to 7%. And he asked the question, he said, if we're gonna really improve, if we're gonna change the world, if we're gonna actually improve our parishes, he said, let's not shoot for the other 93%. He said, let's just increase by 1%. Let's go to 8%.

20:26 What if 8% of people in a parish volunteered? What if 8% of the people in the parish gave? He said that would increase the amount given and the increase the amount served by 15%. That'd be 15% increase if only 1% growth. that could be us. That could start this week. but even more important than the impact it can make on your parish, the impact it would make on your heart. Why? Because I will not be able to give. I would not be able to love God with everything until I give or I love God with the first thing. So going back to Rabbi Akiva, he says, all my days I've been troubled by this verse. When shall I have the opportunity of fulfilling this verse? Love God with your whole soul. So this story is told in a book called The Babylonian Talmud.

21:20 and it was told about the moment that he was martyred, that the Romans were torturing and killing him. Rabbi Akiva was skinned alive by the Romans, and while they combed his flesh with iron combs, that ripping off his skin, his disciples heard him praying the Shema. In that moment where his skin's being taken off of his body, he was praying that prayer, I am the Lord your God, and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might. And his disciples, apparently, his disciples said to him, they said, even now, Rabbi? They looked at what he was doing, they said, even to this point, you're still reciting, you're still reciting the Shema. And that's when Rabbi Akiva said, he said, all my days I've been troubled by this verse with all your soul, even if he takes your soul. And I said, when shall I have the opportunity of fulfilling this verse? And then he said this line, he said, now that I have the opportunity, shall I not fulfill it?

22:22 In that moment, and then he, his last word was the word echad, which is the word one. God, you are one. And then he died. In that moment, it would look like maybe Rabbi Akiva became an overnight success. In that moment of truth, in that final moment, this man was able to love God with everything. He was able to give God everything. but we know this. Just like the Christian martyrs came after him, he was able to give everything in that moment because he had spent a lifetime giving the first thing. He was not an overnight success. There is no such thing. That moment did not form him. That moment merely uncovered what had been forged in him through all of the unknown moments.

23:19 This is the last thing. The question, do you want to love God with everything? Do you want to? Maybe you don't. what do you do then? Like, what do you do if right now, you're like, ah, I don't like this. I don't know that I want to love God with anything. St. Teresa of Avila talked about this. And she said, okay, here's the deal. Pray as you can, not as you can't. What's that mean? She would say, okay, if you want to pray that prayer, God, help me to love you with everything. I don't want to. She said, okay, then start there. God, help me to want to love you with everything. And someone says, well, I don't even know if I want that. she said, okay, back up a little further. Simply pray the prayer. God, help me to want, to want, to love you with everything.

24:13 And if that's even too close, God, help me to want, to want, to want, to love you with everything I've got. Because here's the truth. We're made for love. And not only are we made for love, we're made for God. We're made, we're created to love God and to love our neighbor. and so start where you can. Every one of us has to start where we can. God, help me to want, to want, to want, because I will never be able to give God everything until I give God the first thing, but, Once you do, once you give God the first thing, you are on your way to giving God everything. and becoming an overnight success.