10/04/26 Blind Spots: Worry

0:00Welcome to Sunday Homelies with me, Father Mike Schmitz. I hope today's homelie 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, another Sunday Mass Resources sent straight to your inbox, sign up at ascensionpress.com slash Sunday, or by texting Sunday to 333-777. You can also follow or subscribe on your podcast app for weekly notifications. God bless. The Lord be with you. The Lord be with you. A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew. Chapter 21 verses 33-43. Jesus said to the chief priests and elders of the people, here another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a head around it, dug a winepress in it, and built a tower. Then he leased at the tenants and went on a journey. When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce

1:00but the tenants seized the servants, and when they beat another they killed, and a third they stoned. Again, he sent other servants more numerous than the first ones, but they treated them in the same way. Finally, he sent his son to them, thinking, they will respect my son. When the tenants saw the son, they said to one another, this is the heir, come, let us kill him and acquires inheritance. They seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. What will the owner of that vineyard do to those tenants when he comes? They answered him, he will put those wretched men to a wretched death, and leases vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the proper time. Jesus said to them, did you never read the scriptures? The stone that the builder rejected has become the cornerstone. By the Lord has this been done, and it is a marvel in our eyes. Therefore I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you, and given to a people that will produce its fruit.

2:04The gospel of the Lord. Wait to have a seat. So I recently came across a tragic story of a father and a son. The son was an ordinary son, young kid. This father was a great dad, and it was very, very clear that this father loved his son, very, very much. At one point they were in the wilderness together, and there was an accident. And in the midst of this accident, the father had a choice, the father had the opportunity. He could either save his own life or he could sacrifice his life and save his son's life. And without thinking, without hesitating, this father sacrificed his own life so that his son could live.

3:05The son obviously was devastated by this. And not only because his dad, his father, who loved him so much, had died, but also he was devastated because he blamed himself. He thought it was his fault. So he just ate him up so he wanted to get his far away from his life as possible. So he ran off just running away. In the course of his travels, he encountered two individuals who became friends. And these individuals, they knew that he was just so broken. And they knew that he was going through something. And they just kept telling him, yeah, but just don't worry. Like I know your dad's dead, don't worry about it. Yeah, I know that your whole life has been up ended. Just don't worry about it. In fact, it turns out later on they found out that it was the dad's brother had conspired

4:06to kill his own brother. And that he had moved after that dad had died. He had moved in and he had taken over his dad's land, his dad's property. He had basically enslaved his wife and their kids and Uncle Scar had planned this whole thing. And all of these two individuals, all that Timon and Pumbu could say was, well, I know it's a big deal, but don't worry about it. Except they didn't just say don't worry. They said it in Swachili. So it was more catchy. They put it in the songs. They just said Akuna Matata. And that's it. Is that so strange? I don't know if you've ever thought about it. What dark the story of the Lion King is and that all these two individuals, all that Timon and Pumbu, all these friends could say was, don't worry. You know, when it comes to worry, when it comes to anxiety in our day and age, I would say this, I would say that, well, we know this. It's everywhere. In fact, the studies have shown, have indicated that worry and anxiety is at an all-time high in our culture. This net, that worry across the board has never been as high as it is. In fact, clinical anxiety. About 10 years ago, clinical anxiety surpassed clinical depression as the number one medical

5:10illness among college students. And so that notion of like we realize that there's a lot of forms that anxiety can take. One is clinical anxiety. That sense of you need to, and if someone's experiencing that, of course, we want to get help. You want to get counseling, maybe medication. There's also another kind of anxiety. It's just a high temper. Some people have a high strung temperament, right? That's just a reality. Some of us are even just born more high strung. In fact, they did the study where they found out that 13 to 15 percent of human beings are just naturally more high strung. Just naturally have a temperament that's more oriented towards anxiety. Of course, there's a third kind of anxiety. This is just the emotion, right? The emotion of worry, the emotion of nervousness. I'm afraid. I'm uncertain. And here's what we're saying. Is that for most of us? Now, none of those things are sins. To have a clinical anxiety, that's not a sin. Because why? Because mental illness is not a sin, right? Any more than cancer is a sin. Any more than a broken leg is a sin. That's not the case. Emotions aren't sins either, but here's the problem. For many of us, worry has become the background noise to our lives.

6:13For so many of us, worry isn't something we're choosing. It's become the soundtrack of our lives. And so for the last five weeks, we've been talking about these things called blind spots, right? The blind spots we have in our lives. And blind spots, it comes from Psalm 19. Psalm 19, the Psalmist said this. He said, from a hidden false, O Lord, equip me. If the God, I realize there's things in my life. I don't even see them. I don't even realize they're there, but they are still sins. But we call them acceptable sins. Because there are sins that, yeah, they're significant, but we've developed socially acceptable excuses while we leave them in here. So we don't even notice them. Therefore, we can't repent of them. And so we talked about gossip, we talked about anger. We talked about the sin of entitlement. Last week was complaint. This weekend is the sin of worry, which again, is different than clinical anxiety. It's different than the emotion of worry. It's when we choose to allow worry and anxiety to be our constant companion. And so again, worries that at all time high, and then St. Paul says, have no anxiety at all.

7:13The question I have to ask is, is St. Paul just quoting Timon and Pumbha? Like, is St. Paul, is all St. Paul is trying to say, is like, hey, you know what? Don't think about it. Just stop caring. Is St. Paul saying, don't be concerned? And we answer is no. We won't know that St. Paul is not saying, don't care. He's not saying don't be concerned. Because why? Because St. Paul's letter to the Philippians chapter four, he says, have no anxiety at all. But in St. Paul's letter to the Philippians chapter two, he talks about how anxious he is. He actually talks to his good friend, his name is Epaphroditus. Chapter two, he goes on and on about his friend Epaphroditus who got deathly sick. He recovered. But Paul says, I hope that he comes to you soon so that I can no longer be anxious for him. And if he wants to no longer be anxious for him, that means he's currently anxious for him. Later on, or earlier, St. Paul's second Corinthians, he writes about this. He talks about all the suffering he went through as a missionary. He talks about that he'd been shipwrecked. He'd been left for dead a couple of times. He'd been beaten. He'd been stoned. He'd been rejected.

8:14And he says, on top of all these things, he says, the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. So is St. Paul just St. Hippocrit? And what's he doing? He's saying, you guys don't worry, I'm going to be the one who worries. No, that's not what he's saying. He's talking about the difference between worry and being concerned. Being concerned is different, right? Being concerned is being attentive. Being concerned is being careful. It's being prudent. Being concerned is what many of you need to be, right? How are you going to care for your family? I mean, to be concerned over that. If you have a home, you should be concerned enough to lock your doors at night. Then if you have something you need to show up for, you need to be concerned enough to prepare for that thing. Again, I don't want anyone leaving tonight thinking, well, St. Paul said, don't worry. So I was worried about this test tomorrow. I guess I don't have to do anything now. I don't want anyone to say, well, St. Paul says, don't worry. So I need to do the hand that paper in by midnight tonight. I'm not going to worry about it. No, that's not St. Paul. That's Timon and Pumbaa. And Timon and Pumbaa are not good friends. What St. Paul is talking about, St. Paul, when he says, have no anxiety, don't translate

9:19that to mean, don't care. Because not caring is not an option. What are the number two top two commandments? Top two commandments? Love God with everything. I love your neighbors yourself. We're commanded to love and love means you care. When I was growing up, my dad would say, he's like, Mike, I'm worried about you. Mike, dad, don't worry. He's like, I'm your father. It's my job to worry. I say, that's a horrible job description. Like, I would not want to sign up for that. So here we are. But the thing is, love means you care. Concern is the burden that love gives a person. We have to understand this. More worry does not mean you love more. In fact, we'd say this that worry oftentimes is my attempt to carry the burden without surrendering it to God. Because worry and concern are fundamentally different. Because concern and worry ask fundamentally different questions. Concern asks the question, what can I do? My concern has the sense of, like, I care about this person.

10:21I care about the situation. So what can I do? Concern prompts action. And we know that action alleviates anxiety. But worry, the question worry asks, is not what can I do? The question worry asks is, what if? Now, do you know that question? What if this happens? What if that happens? And what happens is this, worry merely rehearses teachers that we can't control. And oftentimes, oftentimes, worry comes from uncertainty. I don't know what's going to happen. Now, in fact, how about this? How many of you, well, you don't have to raise your hand. But how many of us regularly get overwhelmed when we say, gosh, I just don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. Well, look at all the things I need to get done. And I don't know what to do. And the question I have to ask is, is it true that I don't know what to do, or do I actually mean I don't know what's going to happen? Like, is it actually true that I don't know what to do? Or am I really saying, I just don't know how this will end? Because we have to consider this. Is it really true that just because I don't know how this will end, does that mean I don't know how to start?

11:23Do I truly not know the next right step, or do I simply not know the step after that? I came across this while I got a conversation with a woman named Tracy Koggeski-Korea. And she's trained as an engineer. And she worked as an engineer for a bunch of years. And then she now works at the University of Notre Dame. And what she does is she leads a team that whenever there's a tragedy or a cataclysm somewhere in the world, she and her team are the first people on the ground. So if there's a tsunami, she and her team immediately spring into action and they're the first people on the ground. If there is hurricane, their first team, they are the first to arrive. If there's an earthquake, like Venezuela, her, she and her team are the first people to show up. And she says she shows up among this to all this devastation. People who have lost everything. They've lost their property. They've lost their lives. They've lost loved ones. They've lost everything. And she's the first person there. And amidst in all of this, I said, how in the world, how do you take action? How do you know what to do? And she says, actually, it's very simple. So how are going to be simple?

12:23Everything's gone wrong. She said, when everything has gone wrong, it's so simple because I just simply ask one question. And the one question I ask is, what's the next right thing? Then even if everything is overwhelming, I just ask the question, what's the next right thing? And then I just do the next right thing. Here's a go. I read this book by Andy Weir. Andy Weir, he wrote the book The Martian. He also wrote Project Hail Mary. But if you, I don't know if you've seen the movie The Martian or read The Book The Martian, it's about an astronaut named Bark Watney. And he's a part of this exploration of Mars, right? So the book opens up. They're on Mars. At one point, there's a Martian storm. And he's caught outside of the spaceship, I guess. And they think he's dead. They need to leave. And so they basically, they abandoned him on Mars. Bark Watney comes too. And not only does he have like a pole through his stomach, he's also 140 million miles from Earth with no way to get home. And it's just a great story because I remember reading this thinking, how in the world is he going to get from Mars to Earth with no spaceship and no help and no hope?

13:28And he just does this. He just does the next right thing. He's like, well, I've got a pole sticking through my stomach. Okay, deal with that. Don't get infected. Deal with that. I need food. Deal with that. And he just consistently does the next right thing. Because we know this. We know the action alleviates anxiety. We can always, we can always just simply do the next right thing. In fact, I was talking to a man. He's been about three decades in the special ops. In the United States military. And he's part of a unit that was, that's widely considered to be the world's best problem solvers, at least the military's best problem solvers. And they asked him about it. He said, yeah, you know, people say that. They're the world's best problem solvers. But he said it's good. It's not because we make perfect decisions. It's not because we even make the best decisions. He said, we're considered to be the world's best problem solvers because we make quick decisions. That we over face with an issue. We make a decision and then we're willing to pivot.

14:30I think about this. What my worry does to me and what our worry does to us, I think a lot of times our worry keeps us stuck. We have this anxiety-induced paralysis. You may call it procrastination. But I like the term anxiety-induced paralysis where we just, we look at the thing and we're like, I'm so overwhelmed. In fact, there's this, there's this residential, specialized residential facility for adolescents who experience high clinical degrees of anxiety and high clinical degrees of OCD. It's called Mountain Valley, Mountain Valley Treatment Center. The Mountain Valley Treatment Center has come up with what I think is the single best definition of anxiety that I've ever heard. Their definition for anxiety was this, the overestimation of danger and our underestimation of our ability to cope. The overestimation of danger, something bad is going to be too much for me and the underestimation of our ability to cope. I won't be able to handle it. So, what we do instead of facing it, we begin to, our blind spot is we begin to believe

15:31these three lies about worry. We believe that worry is necessary. We start to believe that worry is useful and we start to believe that worry is somehow keeping me safe. We believe worry is necessary. Like it's like, no, I'm worried why? Because it proves that I care. It's like my dad's saying, you know, I'm your father, I have to worry. Or sometimes we believe worry proves that we're responsible. How many of us have believed this lie that if I'm not worried, nothing will get done. If I don't fret over this thing, nothing will get accomplished. But we realize, we have to realize there's other fuel for forward motion than just anxiety. In fact, there's a man, his name is Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek is a speaker and author. He talks about how he was watching Olympians after they came off the podium, right? They got the gold silver or bronze medal. And they were being interviewed by people and they were asked, these interviewers were asking these Olympians, pay before your event, before your race, before your competition. We're in nervous and he said consistently, these Olympians said, no, I wasn't nervous.

16:34I was excited. Because we know this. We know there's other fuel for forward motion than just worry. Our blind spot is this. Our blind spot is not that we care too much. Our blind spot is we mistake worrying about something for loving it. And we further make a mistake that we believe that worrying is doing something. That's why we not only believe that worry is necessary. We believe that worry is useful. We look at worry as if it accomplishes something. Why? Because we keep asking that question, what if we keep rehearsing what potentially could happen? And what happens is we can feel productive because our mind is busy. But it's like this. I remember hearing someone describe worry like this. It's like a rocking chair. It doesn't go anywhere, but it gives you something to do. It doesn't do anything. There's a saint, his name is St. Padre Pio. He has a very famous line. He said, pray, hope, and don't worry. But he goes on. He says, pray, hope, and don't worry. Worry is useless.

17:37It literally accomplishes nothing. In fact, there's another man, not a saint. His name is Baz Lerman. Baz Lerman once said this. He said, don't worry. Or worry. But realize that worrying is about as effective as solving an algebra problem by chewing bubble gum. It doesn't do anything. We convince ourselves that thinking about this thing will give me more control. But at a certain point, I'm no longer solving my problem. I'm simply rehearsing my problem. We believe worry is necessary. We believe worry is useful. And then we believe that worry somehow keeps me safe. We see worry as self-protection. If I can imagine the worst beforehand that it won't be blindsided, if I don't expect anything that it won't be disappointed. Or even this, if I stop worrying, then something bad will happen. You know that this is the last study of the night. They did a study where they found out that 91.2% of the things people worry about on a

18:38regular basis never actually end up happening. I think, think about what you worried about over the last week or what you worried about over the last month, 91.2% of the things we typically worry about never end up happening. So the lie is this, my worry protects me from suffering. But the truth is worry makes me suffer twice, once in my imagination, and then again, if the thing actually happens. But even more unfortunately, it makes me suffer once 91.2% of the time. All of this, all this worry is an attempt to control outcomes without actually doing anything. Now remember, remember, it's not a sin to feel worried, it's not a sin to feel anxious, it's what we do with it when it shows up. If I choose worry, that's actually a sin against trust. There's a Protestant pastor who, he passed away a couple of years ago, his name is Timothy Keller.

19:38He made a distinction about resentment and worry, he said, resentment is believing that God got it wrong. He looked back at my past and I'm so angry about this, resentment is believing God got it wrong. And worry is believing that God won't get it right. It's a sin against trust. So what's the remedy? Because all the blind spots, every one of the blind spots has a remedy. So what is the remedy? How do we actually have no anxiety at all? We'll go back to Padre Pio. He gave it to us. Pray, hope and don't worry. So the two things here, pray and hope. So we realize, remember, action alleviates anxiety. So prayer, prayer is an action. Prayer is something you're doing something. In fact, if I can make a decision, make a decision. If you don't know what to do, just do the next right thing. All of that, all of that alleviates anxiety. Because of course they're going to be anxious moments. Paul tells us what to do with those anxious moments.

20:39Paul says, I have no anxiety at all. But in all things with prayer and petition, in Thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. Basically Paul says, take them to him. No, these are what people say. They say, yeah, but Father, what if I get into a place where I just can't fix it? What if I have something so big in my life that I can't do anything with it? I can't fix it, especially then. Especially then is when we need to pray. Especially then is when we need to bring it to God. So there's a man, his name is Max Lakado. Max Lakado is a Christian author. He has this great example of what this looks like from most of us. He says, how many of us, if we had a broken appliance that we couldn't fix? Like we tried everything, we tinkered with the laundry machine or the dishwasher. Whatever it was, we did all we could to try to fix it and we couldn't fix it. He says, how many of us would bring that appliance to an expert? Like the person who they know how to fix laundry machines, they know how to fix dishwashers and bring it to the person who knows how to fix it. And then hover over them as they're working on it saying, can I help? How many of us would say, let me just bring my sleeping bag.

21:39I'm going to sleep in your shop while you fix this thing. And none of us would do that. Once you bring it to the expert, when you know you can't fix it, you bring it to the expert. And then it's no longer yours to carry. You bring it to the expert and let him have it. We have things in our lives. This is bigger than me. I can't fix it. Prayer is I bring this to God and say, God, it's now yours. It's no longer mine. You can have it. That's pure. And then hope. We know this. We know that hope is not wishful thinking. I don't know if you know this. Do you know where St. Paul was when he was writing to the Slater to the Philippians? St. Paul is in prison as he's writing to the... As he's writing, have no anxiety at all. Here's Paul, who is... He has no influence over the outcome of his life. He's St. Paul. He has no influence over the verdict. He has no influence over where he's going to die or where he's going to get set free. He has no influence over the churches. He has no influence over Epaphroditus who could get sick again and he could die.

22:41But here's St. Paul. He has no influence over these outcomes, but he has hope. Why? Because he knows he has access. No matter what happens, he has hope because he knows that God's father will always hear him, that God is there with him in prison and God will be there no matter where he goes. And this is the last thing. He has hope. Because he knows no matter what happens, God will be there. One of my heroes is a man named Father Walter Chizek. Some of you know who Father Walter Chizek is. Father Chizek was an American priest who became a missionary to Russia during World War II. He got to Poland at the outbreak of World War II and then Russia invaded Poland and he found himself in Russia. And he almost immediately was arrested and accused of being a Vatican spy by the Soviets. For a year, he was tortured and solitary confinement until after a year of torture, it broke him. He broke. And then he spent the next 23 years in a Soviet gulag. Being almost worked to death.

23:42And there's anyone in the world who could experience overwhelming anxiety, overwhelming worry about his life and having no influence over outcomes will be Father Walter Chizek. But at one point, one of the best lines in the entire book, the entire account of his experience of 23 years of being essentially powerless is he says these words. He says there would be a tomorrow and we would have to live in it. And God would be there as well. That's hope. I've done everything I could. I've done everything I can. I give it to God and I know there will be a tomorrow and we'll have to live in it. And God will be there as well. That's hope knowing that no matter what the outcome, no matter what happens, God will be there as well. In every one of our hearts, every one of our lives, worry comes and goes. That blind spot shows up all the time. But we know we who love, know the love of God, we know who know the power of Jesus Christ.

24:46We refuse to overestimate the danger. And we refuse to underestimate our ability to cope. In every situation, we can do something, we can pray. In every situation, we can trust God. We can hope. And therefore in every situation, we can do what St. Paul tells us to do. In that worry.