Homily: Learning From Our Mistakes

[00:00:01] Good morning. Welcome to St. Mike's. It's good to have you on this beautiful day. This week I was talking to a buddy of mine about an experience I had my first year in the seminary. At the time, we had a Cardinal, Cardinal William Baum, God rest his soul, he came to the seminary and I was his altar server and I was just an absolute nervous wreck serving for this guy.

[00:00:32] He was a very humble guy. I don't know why I was nervous, but I was very nervous. And you know, there's that part of the mass where you pour water over the priest's hands and instead of pouring water, I poured wine over his hands. And he thought it was hilarious. I was horrified. The rector was horrified, but he thought it was awesome.

[00:00:52] And, but I remember thinking about that, that day later when I went to bed thinking, you know, for me that's a big deal. For him, he thought it was hilarious. We all make mistakes. We just do, right? Because we're human. In case you haven't noticed, right?

[00:01:17] Part of spiritual maturity, right? Part of spiritual maturity, the saints have told us, is making this little transition that we call making the mistake to learning from the mistake and learning from the mistake to drawing meaning from the mistake.

[00:01:33] I mean, those of you who are parents, I think you would agree that we need to teach our kids to make mistakes in low-risk environments so that when they find themselves in high-risk environments, they make better decisions. Agree? Right?

[00:01:52] Which means, of course, we're honest. We got to learn from our own. We got to talk about it. We got to be open about it. Some people, it's weird, they define their whole life by a mistake, by one mistake. And in some ways, they kind of become that mistake because they play it over and over and over again.

[00:02:13] And they define themselves by it. It's sad, really. Because they haven't made that transition from making the mistake to learning from it, learning from it, finding meaning from it. Sometimes when people make a big mistake, they suffer from what is called the spotlight effect. What is the spotlight effect? It's when they make a mistake and they feel like everybody is talking about them. Right?

[00:02:44] I mean, they're not, but they feel like they are. They feel like they're under the spotlight. Because they haven't really made that movement, yeah? But the truth is, Jesus is like, look, I know you make mistakes. Welcome to the club. It's part of growth. He does not want us to beat ourselves up over our mistakes. He wants us to learn. Some people don't. But he doesn't want us to beat ourselves up.

[00:03:18] So, the first book of the Bible is what? Genesis. What does Genesis mean? Our beginning, our origin? Okay, so, if you think about it, probably no one in all of human history made a bigger mistake than Adam and Eve. I mean, if St. Paul is right, we happen to believe he is, that when Adam and Eve sinned, they, from then we had death in the world,

[00:03:46] and from then we had human suffering in the world. So, the argument could be made, those guys really kind of messed it up for everybody else. St. Paul would say, yeah? I mean, you can imagine when they're getting cast out of the Garden of Eden. Adam is talking to his wife, said, man, we could have handled that better. Oh my gosh, right? Totally dropped the ball. Do we believe that Adam and Eve, as Catholics, do we believe that Adam and Eve are in heaven?

[00:04:21] Are Adam and Eve in heaven? What do you think? I'm going to point to somebody and have them stand up. Ah. So, the church doesn't have an official teaching on this, but the oral tradition of the church is that, yes, they're in heaven. Did they make a boo-boo? Yeah, they did. You know, in fact, if you read some of the lives of the saints,

[00:04:49] they actually have Adam and Eve as saints, along with Old Testament figures like Abraham and Moses and some of these others. Moses, my heavens. He committed murder. That's never a good thing. Clearly, he's a saint. He appeared to Jesus at the Transfiguration along with Elijah. What's your point? Well, here's my point.

[00:05:15] Part of spiritual growth and emotional maturity means that we make that transition. We learn. When Moses died on Mount Ebo, who's a totally different guy than when he was a young man and he committed murder, change. Change. As you probably have heard me say before, are you the same person you were 20 years ago? Have you grown? Hopefully. You know,

[00:05:43] one of the coolest parts about being a parish priest is to know so many people in so many different occupations. And here, because we have well over 3,500 families, we have pretty much every occupation you can imagine represented. And it's really amazing because those of us, I think probably most of us know what it's like to deal with a difficult customer or difficult client. If it's any consolation,

[00:06:13] trust me, churches are nothing different. Okay? We have our share of difficulties. I remember years ago, we were making king cakes here in the parish. And as you know, with king cakes, you put the little baby Jesus in there. Right? So, the week before, I went on Amazon. And I just looked for the cheapest one. You can give 500 little baby Jesuses, or I guess, Jesus. Right?

[00:06:43] And I was just like, yeah, whatever, that's fine. Click. Whatever. So, I get it. Two days later, I open it up. And instead of little baby Jesuses, there were 500 baby Donald Trumps. Little baby presidents. Okay? I was like, wow. Somebody goes to work every day and makes these. Okay? So, then a few days later, we're putting all these little presidents in all the king cakes. I'm thinking to myself, this should be good.

[00:07:13] Lo and behold, two days later, man comes in the office. He's having a complete meltdown. Complete meltdown. He's deeply offended. And I can't believe you did this. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He goes on for 20 minutes. He goes on for 20 minutes. How angry he is that he got a little baby president. And I'm thinking to myself in my brain, wow. This is your crisis.

[00:07:43] If we should be so lucky. My heavens, right? The truth is, it has nothing to do with the little baby president. The issue is not the issue. The issue is that clearly, this guy, who by the way is not from Mark Parish, this guy has a deeper issue that he's not dealing with. If something that small can become that monumental and tragic, that's not the issue.

[00:08:11] Have you ever noticed how some people are very polished and very professional on the outside, but in home, in private, totally different? That's called inauthenticity. Why does that happen? It's because there's usually something there that they haven't forgiven themselves for, usually shame. All right? I'm not psychoanalyzed. It's not pipe psychology.

[00:08:40] I'm telling you, it's a spiritual reality. It just is. You know, those of us that work in family counseling, they have a phenomenon they call social malnutrition. What is social malnutrition? It's when people need more social interaction, but they're not getting it. You see this with some young people, for instance, who spend hours upon hours gaming, right?

[00:09:08] And they need to get out more and have more social interaction. See this with some older people who get stuck in a rut. This is my space. This is my house. This is my routine. And they need to get out of that and have more social interaction. One of the things that causes social malnutrition is shame. Because, again, people feel like they're talking about me. Everybody knows blank.

[00:09:38] They don't. They don't care. Why? Because they have their own issues. They have their own struggles. What's the difference between a mistake and a failure? What's the difference between a mistake and a failure? We do both. But in brief, a mistake is something small that can be easily rectified. A mistake is something larger that tends to take longer to rectify.

[00:10:08] For both, part of the maturity comes when we realize it, humbly accept it, learn from it, and then heal from it, draw meaning from it. That's how we grow. That's how we grow. So I'll close with this. All of us here, I think we've all heard the phrase Ponzi scheme. We all know what Ponzi schemes are.

[00:10:37] That comes from a guy named Carlos Ponzi. He died in 1949 in New York. And he was kind of a scammer, robbed millions of dollars from people before he died. That's where we get the phrase Ponzi scheme. And Ponzi schemes always have two factors, two kind of characteristics. Number one, most Ponzi scam artists like Bernard Madoff, for instance, seven billion dollars he stole.

[00:11:06] They don't come off with a hard sell, you know? They're not doing a hard sell. They're doing a very, very soft sell. They just float it and let the person come to it. The second characteristic, they play on someone's weakness. People that get involved in Ponzi schemes, they want to rub shoulders with the right people. They want to be somebody important, right? They want a quick fix,

[00:11:36] money-wise, right? And why am I telling you this? This is why I'm telling you this. Because shame, shame is a spiritual Ponzi scheme. It's a spiritual Ponzi scheme. It's subtle. It's a subtle sell. It's this little voice in the back of our head that says, you're not good enough. No one knows what you've done, right? And then one of the other things it does, it says, you can never be good enough. It's a spiritual Ponzi scheme.

[00:12:05] Don't take the bait. Because what Jesus wants us to know is, look, I realize you're not perfect. I realize that. But here's the beautiful thing. God's grace comes into us, helps us to learn, helps us to heal, and we move from the fact that we've made the mistake to learning from the mistake and learning from the mistake to growing from it. Thank you. Thank you.