Homily: Changing Our Way of Thinking

[00:00:01] Welcome to St. Mike's, to our guest. It's good to have you today. Before he died in 1804, Alexander Hamilton, one of the founders of our country as you know, said something that I think probably most of us have heard. He said, if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. If you don't stand for something, then you're going to fall for anything, right?

[00:00:29] Basically, what we would say that means, more or less, is be careful the voices that you listen to. Because sometimes we can stand for something that's really not true. We think it's true. It's not. Be careful the voices you listen to, sometimes in our own head, right? For instance, say, discouragement. Sometimes we have to be careful the voices we listen to. He said that in about 1803.

[00:00:59] Now, fast forward to Palm Sunday, 1943. And the Allies were dropping bombs all over Nazi Germany, as you know. That particular day in Palm Sunday, 1943, the Allies didn't drop bombs over Germany. You know what they dropped? Can you believe it? Papal encyclicals.

[00:01:22] Isn't that weird? Hundreds of thousands of copies of papal encyclicals were dropped from the Allies over Nazi Germany on Palm Sunday, 1943. Can you imagine? If our military was doing sorties over Iran, dropping encyclical letters from Pope Leo, you think that raised some eyebrows of CNN?

[00:01:46] Probably. Probably. That's what they did? They said, well, what on earth did this say? The name of the document in German is Mitbrennender Zorga, which translates from German as with burning concern. And the Pope, Pope Pius XII, had it read by the priests in Germany from the pulpit at all the masses.

[00:02:14] That's really amazing because at the end of mass, for some of these priests, the Gestapo was waiting in the back of the church to arrest them and send them to Dachau for reading a papal encyclical from the pulpit. That, my friends, is courage. Man, that's courage. They did it anyway.

[00:02:36] So what did the document say? It said, basically, Father Ben's paraphrase, don't buy into the lie that Hitler is trying to tell you. As you know, in the Treaty of Versailles, 1919, Germany was going through a horrible time. The Great Depression hit. They were looking for a savior, a messiah to get them out of this mess. And they found it. And the Pope was like, no, you have not found it. Don't believe the lie.

[00:03:07] As Herman Goring said at the Nuremberg Trials, Hitler made us want to be German again. They wanted it to be true. It became true, even though it wasn't true. In our own time, people can fall into the same thing, man. In every generation, I have to laugh every generation, with socialism, for instance. They think, it's going to work this time. It's going to work this time. This is going to be different.

[00:03:36] Every generation killing millions and millions of people, destroying economies. And they think, this is different. And they buy into the lie. They think it's true. They want it to be true, even if it's not true. We have to think about how we're thinking, yeah? That's what this comes down to. People confuse thinking with feeling and feeling with the truth. If I think it's true, then it must be true, even if it's not true.

[00:04:02] For instance, when I'm doing marriage prep with couples, getting ready for their marriage, they may not want to see, they may have rose-colored glasses, and they don't want to see the truth in their future spouse. And it's my job to be Father Raincloud. And I'm like, you do know that your fiancé drinks a six-pack of beer four times a day. Okay? Is that a problem?

[00:04:32] No, no, no, no, Father. It's great. It's great. It's a wonderful man. Hmm. Maybe we should pump the brakes a little bit. They think it's true, and there it must be true, even if it's not true. You know, those of you, I mean, we're all in many different businesses here. Correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, correct me if I'm wrong. In businesses, one of the hardest things for people to learn is this.

[00:04:55] You don't solve a problem by using the same thinking you used to make the problem to begin with. Amen? You have to have fresh thinking. That's why we have to take the advice of people who are honest with us, even if we don't want to hear it. We take the advice and courageously change. We call that clarifying the optic so we can see the bigger picture, yeah?

[00:05:23] That, of course, requires humility. Albert Einstein, I love this. He said he was fond of saying the hardest thing that people can do is have good thinking. And that's why so few people do it. The hardest thing for people to do is have good thinking, and that's why so few people do it. And his point was, even Albert Einstein, as you may know, towards the end of his life, his favorite thing to do as he was at Princeton University was to tutor grade school children in math.

[00:05:53] Can you imagine having Einstein as your tutor? Man, he's humble. He's humble. He's a guy that had the Nobel Prize Prize. He wanted to tutor a sixth grader in math. That's humility. Pope Benedict said, it's a man with three doctorate degrees, said his best time of his life was teaching grade school kids. Humility. Humility. Jesus, Matthew 25. This is what Jesus says about thinking.

[00:06:21] He says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. Remember that? He's quoting the book of Deuteronomy. What does that mean? I think most of us, we understand, okay, heart, I need to pray, check. Soul, I need to pray, check. What does mind mean? It means to think about how we're thinking. Is our thinking productive or destructive? Is it a positive or negative? Because here's, this is an important point, folks. And I'm going to tell you why.

[00:06:51] Because what we do, our actions are going to flow from how you're thinking. And your actions are going to have a massive impact, not just on you, but on your spouse, your children, your work, your bottom line, and quite frankly, where you and I will be 200 years from now after we leave this world. It starts with our thinking.

[00:07:20] Got to get that right. St. Paul says, be transformed by the renewal of your mind. Think about how we're thinking. It starts up here. It's one of the reasons, by the way, we do this thing, right? That weird Catholic thing we do after the gospel, right? That's what we're saying. Be in my thoughts. Help me to have good thoughts, Lord. You know, I remember many years ago when I was a younger man, I was backpacking through France.

[00:07:47] I came up through the Côte d'Azur near Cannes and Nice and made my way up to the town of Dijon. That's where they have the mustard, right? Okay? And so here I go into this brasserie bistro in Dijon. And I was trying to explain to this wonderful waitress how to make a Bloody Mary. I had a savage craving for a Bloody Mary. I'd been walking all day.

[00:08:11] And I said, okay, it's one ounce of vodka to eight ounces of tomato juice. One ounce of vodka, eight ounces of tomato juice. I got eight ounces of vodka to one of tomato juice. Okay? I don't remember anything else from that day, but I remember it was a good day. Okay? And so I was talking to this wonderful waitress. She's maybe in her 80s. And she told me something I thought was really interesting.

[00:08:40] She said, you know, Ben, this restaurant was a hub during the French Revolution. It's a big deal. That was the 1790s. That's an old restaurant, man. She said they would meet here. And she said, I love my French culture. I love my country. But she was ashamed because she said something I didn't know.

[00:09:05] She said Robespierre, who was a Catholic, led the entire French Revolution that butchered about 40,000 Catholics. So you had one Catholic who led the killing of about 40,000. I mean, how does that happen? And she said, people wanted it to be true. They assume it was true, even if it wasn't true.

[00:09:37] And we can do the same thing in our own life. People hear what they want to hear, man. They filter out the truth. Right? And the hardest truth for us to hear is by the people that are the closest to us. Why? Because we're used to hearing what they're going to say. We know how they're going to say it, when they're going to say it, and how they're going to say it, but the words are going to choose. So it takes a truly humble person to hear it, to see it. But that's when the good stuff goes.

[00:10:04] You can grow 20 years and 20 minutes in the spiritual life if you're willing to hear it. Here's a question. Maybe you can help me with this. What is the difference between believing or beliefs and values? Let me ask that again. What is the difference between beliefs and values? In brief, it would go like this. Beliefs are what we think is true.

[00:10:32] Values are what we think is important. And values undergird the foundation of our beliefs. So for instance, let me give you an example. I believe that cheating on my spouse is wrong. I believe that lying is wrong. I believe that stealing is wrong. Okay? The value that undergirds that, we would say, is honesty. Integrity. Okay?

[00:11:01] In a few minutes, we're all going to stand here and profess what we believe. Say it with me. I believe in... Okay? If we're saying that we believe in one God, that's our belief. What is the values that undergird that creed? Relationship with the person of Jesus Christ. That's why we say all the time, Catholicism is not a religion. You look in a book of religions, we'll be in there.

[00:11:30] But for us, as Catholics, it's not a religion. Catholicism is a relationship. That's what this comes down to. Do you have a relationship with the person of Jesus Christ? Because I can guarantee this for all of us, man. Once we take our last stand in this world, the first person we're going to meet is him. Right? So it's worth having a relationship with this guy we call Jesus. That requires humility.

[00:12:00] So I'll close with this. I'm going to go out on a limb, and you will forgive me if I speak for you. But I think it's a safe bet that most of us here have that one person in our life that never reaches out to us. Like we're always the one to text them, reach out to them, email them, and call them. But we never hear back from them. Right? You got somebody like that in your life? It's always you that reaches out.

[00:12:29] Okay? If you're always the one that reaches out to that person, can I make a humble suggestion to you? Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop.

[00:12:54] Take that energy and that time and put it towards other people and other relationships or new ones. If you're the person, however, that never reaches out, and the other person is always reaching out to you, just a humble suggestion. I can promise you this. Eventually, the other people are going to get a belly full. And then be like, done, dude. Second window, please drive around.

[00:13:25] Right? Done. I'm so sick and tired of always reaching out to this person, and I never hear back from them. I can't do this anymore. Why am I sharing this with you? People can fall into the thinking without realizing they've drank the Kool-Aid, thinking it's always that person's responsibility to reach out to me. Relationships work two ways. The phone works two ways, in case you haven't noticed.

[00:13:54] And they do the same thing with their relationship with God. They reach out to God if they have a crisis moment. But here's the thing. That's not a prayer. You know what that is? A life raft. We need a life raft. Otherwise, we're not going to kind of care less about God. We don't have to wait until that moment to have a relationship with Jesus. Here's the takeaway from everything I'm saying this morning.

[00:14:22] Just because we believe something to be true doesn't mean it is. For us as Catholic Christians, our truth is not a thing. It is a person. I am the way and the truth and the life. Amen.