Father Mike Schmitz

Again, once again, the wisdom of James.

I love a couple pieces here.

One is this in chapter four, verse seven, submit yourselves therefore to God, resist the devil and he will flee from you.

Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.

That is such incredible advice and counsel for all of us because we have to, we have to submit ourselves to God.

We surrender to God and resist the devil.

The recognition is we're going to hear St.

Peter talk about this in a couple of days, that he'll say the devil's prowling like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.

Resist him solid in your faith, that this is the battle.

And every Christian realizes, as we heard the other day, that our battle is not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and powers, with the rulers, elemental forces of this world, with demons, with the evil one.

and so we resist the devil and draw near to god he goes on to say cleanse your hands you sinners and purify your heart you have meant you meant of double mind basically that he says you backsliders in another translation that sense that remember when elijah asked the the people on mount carmel during the battle with the prophets of the priests of baal he said how long will you be of two minds like how long will you straddle the fence

If the Lord God is God, then serve him.

And if Baal is God, then serve him.

But just stop being of two minds.

And here is James saying the exact same thing because this is the human condition.

He says, cleanse your hands, you sinners.

Purify your hearts, you men of double mind.

Stop being a person of two minds.

Goes on.

One thing I want to highlight is I love the fact that I had this priest when I was a missionary right after college on the border of Belize and Guatemala.