The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast

The only things we can be certain about are the things that have already happened to us in the past, and we live in a perpetual state of uncertainty about the future. If we’re honest, we can all probably agree that it’s not really comfortable to be constantly wondering what your life will look like in a month, in six months, in a year. We are always worrying about the future—especially when we sense that some form of suffering looms ahead. Father Mike walks us through the Five Joyful Mysteries: the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Nativity, the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, and the Finding of Jesus in the Temple. He reflects on the fact that each of these joyful mysteries is marked with a profound uncertainty and suffering. And yet, joy is present. Think about what what Mary must have felt like when the Angel appeared to her and told her that the Holy Spirit would come upon her—that she was going to be the mother of the Messiah. The Angel didn’t reveal details to her. He didn’t assure her that Joseph

If you’re wondering about the difference between jealousy and envy, Fr. Mike clears up the confusion in this video. Simply put, jealousy is not wanting to share something or someone you possess or hope to possess, and envy is resentment toward the possessions of someone else. There can be some intersecting of the two, because it is possible to have an excessive or distorted kind of jealousy that’s actually based in envy, but jealousy can be good while envy is always sinful. This is an important distinction because on the one hand we have God who is jealous about us. Likewise, a husband and wife should be jealous about each other. On the other hand, St. Augustine described envy as the diabolical sin, basing his reasoning on Scripture: “through the devil’s envy death entered the world, and those who belong to his party experience it” (Wisdom 2:24). Worthy of note is the fact that good translations of the Bible translate 1 Corinthians 13:4 to say “love does not envy.” Rather than allowing the blessings of oth

Sometimes we have to do stuff when we don’t feel like it, but finding the motivation to do those things is really difficult in the moment. That’s when it’s important to keep in mind that motivation is not about just feeling good about doing something. It’s about having a motive. If something is the right thing to do, it doesn’t matter if I feel like doing it or not, Fr. Mike says. The only motivation you need is the motivation to do the right thing. Fr. Mike’s friend Dean once told him this, “Emotions do not reveal the truth about reality, but they do reveal the conditions of your heart.” St. Ignatius of Loyola encouraged his followers to pay attention to their heart, because it’s revealing something very important that needs to be taken into account. Nonetheless, regardless of what your heart is telling you, the question to ask yourself is not “do I feel like doing this right now?” Rather, ask yourself, “Is this the right thing to do.”

What is the best way to prepare for the season of Advent? You’re free to do what you know will help you prepare for Christmas the best. If decorating and so forth does not help you prepare for the coming of Christ, you can be the judge of whether it’s worth doing. Fr. Mike also wants to remind us that Advent is not just about preparing for Christmas. It’s also about preparing for Christ’s Second Coming. One day we will meet Christ face to face. Advent is the stark reminder that we need to get ready for eternity. With that in mind, what if you prepared as if December 25 will be the day you die? Have a merry Advent.

Which is better, being an owner or a steward? Fr. Mike reminds us of the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) as he points out how seeing ourselves as an owner is not as great as it seems. When we see ourselves as the owner of something, we hold onto it more closely for fear of losing it. When that thing is taken from us, we may become resentful. Our lives are not our own, our bodies are not our own, our homes are not our own. Not even our children are ours. God owns all of these things, and we have done nothing to deserve them. God has entrusted them to us. If we see everything we have as a gift from God, we will always have a reason to be thankful. In our culture, we may have been conditioned to think being owners is the American Dream, but being a steward is much better.

Last week Fr. Mike Schmitz talked about why prayer is so hard in his battle of prayer video, and this week he talks about what to do when you experience dryness in prayer. He says being distracted or discouraged in prayer is like losing control of a car on ice. When dryness or distraction in prayer occurs, don’t overcompensate. Gently bring yourself back to focus. St. Theresa of Avila would always bring a book with her into prayer so she had some kind of springboard to converse with God. If this doesn’t help and dryness persists, then you persist. God may be calling you to a deeper relationship with him in these tough moments. There are some things God can only do when we come to him when we least want to. If you feel like God just isn’t giving you anything when you pray, it’s an opportunity to just spend time with the giver while expecting nothing in return.

Growing up Fr. Mike thought prayer should be like soaking in a hot tub. He didn’t understand why it was so hard when he tried it. It took him a while to learn that, as the Catechism says, prayer is a gift of grace and a determined response on our part. Prayer always presupposes effort. There’s always some kind of engagement when we properly pray to God. It’s not just about soaking in God’s grace. The required effort in prayer is difficult more often than it is not. Prayer is a battle against ourselves and “the wiles of the tempter who does all he can to turn man away from prayer” (CCC 2725). Over time, Fr. Mike discovered that prayer needs to be more than a momentary time where we seek solace and closeness with God. We need to constantly acknowledge our relationship with God throughout the day, just as a husband and wife are constantly thinking of each other. Then when we do set aside time to simply be with God, it happens more naturally. If you want to improve your prayer life, make the intentional and faith

Fr. Mike comments on Kanye West’s conversion. He celebrates Kanye’s conversion, but hesitates to lift him up as a Christian leader. He recommends that we let Kanye’s roots in the faith grow without the responsibility of having people watch his every step to see if he will fall; because we all fall in the walk of faith. Support Kanye by praying for him because everyone who is striving to do the will of God needs our prayers.

Fr. Mike uses the life of St. Maximillian Kolbe as an example of how God is going to interrupt us if we choose to do his will. We may love schedules, like Fr. Mike does, but life is unpredictable and tends to create a dangerous environment for our schedules. No less happened to St. Maximillian, who had plans for his life before being sent to Auschwitz. The inconveniences put in our path may not be that extreme, but be prepared to be interrupted if you want to be a saint. See interruptions as an occasion for holiness.

God may want you to be spontaneous, but he also wants you to be disciplined. How does that work? Well, unless you just want to have no control over you impulses like a dog chasing a squirrel, discipline is a necessary prerequisite to being spontaneous. Spontaneity requires a schedule, Fr. Mike says. God can only introduce new and exciting things into your day once you’ve done the things he put on your path in the first place. So make a schedule for your day. Yes, life will get in the way and you may have to abandon some things on that schedule, but at least having a schedule helps you decide whether or not the unexpected things are more important than the priorities you set for yourself. Fully embrace today by making a plan for it, as the author of Hebrews encourages us: “But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (Hebrews 3:13). The truly spontaneous person has a carpe diem attitude that starts with a set of determined go

We may be too hard on ourselves when considering how we use the word “should.” Of course, we should go to Mass and pray every day. We should avoid stealing and other sins. However, in the midst of the healthy “shoulds,” there could be unhealthy “shoulds,” like “I should enjoy going to Mass and praying,” or “it shouldn’t be this hard to avoid sin.” But no one ever said that. No one ever said doing what’s right would be easy. So let’s stop “shoulding” ourselves, and let’s rely on God’s grace to pull us through instead. Our weakness is an opportunity to embrace God’s grace. Fr. Mike says if all the things we should do were easy, we wouldn’t need Jesus. “For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

Knowledge is always good, but St. Thomas Aquinas said curiosity—or the fickle pursuit of unnecessary knowledge—can be a vice. What he meant, and what Fr. Mike means here, is that the methods by which we feed our curiosity, and our motivation for feeding it, can lead to vice if we just want to know something instead of pursuing what we need to know. Those things we say we have to know about because everyone else is talking about them—like that popular show we say we simply cannot miss, or that things someone did that’s none of our business but we just need to know about it—these things can lead us away from a wholehearted pursuit of truth. The counterpart virtue of unhealthy curiosity is studiousness, where the motivation and method of pursuing knowledge are correct. Curiosity is a good place to start, but it should always lead to studiousness, the virtue of great minds.

If you’re in any kind of situation in your life where you feel you are limited in what you can control, you may not be as chained to your circumstances as you think. Fr. Mike offers encouragement, saying you can still make interior decisions and have an effect on your circumstances to some extent. You still have agency. Even though you may not be able to change everything you want, you can change your heart. Resentment and bitterness can prevent a great deal of needed change, so if they’re in your heart start by surrendering them to the Lord. This will give you internal freedom similar to what Jesus had when he was suffering on the Cross. Give your circumstances to the Lord and put them under his dominion. This may lead to more pain, but it’s better than staying bitter because if we remain in that bitterness our hearts will become numb and incapable of love.

Fr. Mike says the key to making decisions together is distinguishing between preferences and principles. If the reason you’re favoring a choice is a matter of principle, it is your duty to lead the other person in that decision to the truth of that principle. If the choice you’re favoring is just a matter of preference though, charity suggests that you default to the preference of the beloved one involved in the decision instead. Fr. Mike uses going to church as an example. It is a matter of principle that we have to go to Sunday Mass and worship God the way he tells us to, so if someone tells us going to a Catholic Mass is just our preference we can tell them as a matter of fact it’s not. However, if the issue is which church we go to for Sunday Mass, say St. Francis’ Church or St. Andrew’s, more often than not that is just a matter of preference. For a helpful book on decision-making, check out _Pray, Decide, and Don’t Worry _ (https://ascensionpress.com/collections/featured/products/pray-decide-and-don-t-

Fr. Mike offers the antidote of common sense for the anxiety that often comes after making a big decision. As a campus minister, he sees many students who feel like they made the wrong decision to come to college because things are not the way they imagined. To people in these situations, he advises them to stay the course. Paraphrasing St. Ignatius of Loyola and C.S. Lewis, he says to never change your course in times of desolation when that same course rang true for you in times of consolation. Give yourself a season, time to figure things out. If you’re about to make a big decision and don’t know which course to take, or know someone who is in that situation, check out the new book by Jackie and Bobby Angel, with Fr. Mike Schmitz, Pray, Decide, and Don’t Worry: Five Steps to Discerning God’s Will (https://ascensionpress.com/collections/collection-book/products/pray-decide-and-don-t-worry-five-steps-to-discerning-god-s-will?utm_source=website&utm_medium=media&utm_campaign=discern&utm_content=frmikepod), no

After reading a book on will power, Fr. Mike discovered an important lesson when it comes to how we handle spiritual setbacks. He noticed how resisting sin is a lot like resisting a donut when on a diet. If we resist for some time but then end up giving in and eating the donut, that doesn’t mean all of our progress in the diet is lost. In the same way, if we resist sin for some time but then give in, the grace God offers us through confession can restore us. In fact, it can restore to even higher than we were before. “Law came in, to increase the trespass; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). So let’s not give up when we fall into sin, but keep our eyes on heaven and God’s grace and live accordingly.

Fr. Mike responds to last week’s episode, “Expressing Your Opinions”, where he said when we speak our mind we need to consider why, what, who, and how. We need to discern why we think we should express our opinion. What’s our motive? We need to consider what it is we are commenting on, and whether we are in a position to do so. We need to keep in mind who we are talking to. Are we in an advisory role in their lives? And finally, how are we addressing the issue? Are we being coy or passive aggressive? Are we being harsh and inconsiderate? The apostle James speaks of the tongue being a fire (see James 3:6). He wrote: “Let not many of you become teachers, my brethren, for you know that we who teach shall be judged with greater strictness” (James 3:1). In this video, Fr. Mike is not referring to any comments regarding current events in the Church. He’s talking about his experience as a member of his parish and campus ministry community, and the daily experiences we all have as members of the Church. So how do we

Fr. Mike says there are four things you should ask yourself before expressing your opinion: why, what, who, and how. First, evaluate why you’re expressing this thought. Is it because it’s the right thing to do, or is it because you are trying to one-up someone? Second, what is your opinion? Is it something true, like a principal, or is it just a preference? Third, who are you talking to and what is your relationship to this person? Lastly, how are you expressing yourself? Even if you are totally in the right, the way you say it is of the utmost importance in order for people to listen. If you consider these questions when expressing your opinion or trying to correct someone, you’ll be much more likely to find a willing listener. Check out the "2020 Vision" Young Adult Pilgrimage to the Holy Land (http://www.jeffcavins.com/pilgrimage?category=%222020%20Vision%22%20Holy%20Land) with Fr. Mike and Jeff Cavins at jeffcavins.com

Catholics use Scripture and Tradition because Scripture tells us to use both. St. Paul wrote to the Thessalonians: “So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter” (2 Thessalonians 2:15). If God wanted us to use Scripture alone, wouldn’t he tell us as much in the Bible? True, St. Paul emphasizes the value of Scripture: “All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). However, St. Paul is just as emphatic about the value of the Church: “If I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:15). Fr. Mike explains how the Catholic Church has made all of God’s gifts more accessible to humanity through the ages. Scripture, the Magisterium, and Tradition are not opp

If we can’t use the Lord’s name in vain, can we joke about God? Fr. Mike makes the case that there is room for humor about God in the context of love. No one in the universe or beyond it deserves more honor, respect, and reverence than God, and we jeopardize our souls if we fail to see this. At the same time, though, Jesus called us his friends (John 15:15). Friends can joke about each other because they know there is mutual love and respect there. It goes even deeper than that though, Fr. Mike argues. God is calling us to a whole different kind of relationship, a whole different kind of intimacy, through his son Jesus. If we enter into that relationship and nurture it, we may discover that God does indeed have a sense of humor, a whole new sense of humor we didn’t even think was possible. Catechism paragraph on the Second Commandment: “Blasphemy is directly opposed to the second commandment. It consists in uttering against God - inwardly or outwardly - words of hatred, reproach, or defiance; in speaking ill