Fr. Mike

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73 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Dec 2024 last heard Dec 2024

Fr. Mike’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) · Day 347: Witness to Unbelievers (2024) · 12 Dec 2024 podcast

In your deepest identity, God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is you are a communion of persons. You're an eternal exchange of love. You pour yourself out in love to the Son, Father. And the Son, Jesus Christ, you pour yourself out in love to the Father. And we give you praise for the Spirit that is the third person, so real, that love that's so real that it's a third person.

Lord God, all fatherhood, all family. on earth comes from you. And so we just thank you. Thank you for bringing us into your family. Thank you for making us your children. Thank you for allowing us access in the power of your Holy Spirit to be able to cry out, Abba, Father. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

Okay, so as I mentioned, a little hoarse today. Hopefully it's not too annoying or too bothersome, but we have St. Paul once again. You know, it's really incredible. Paul is someone, if you give him some lemons and a bunch of sugar, he's gonna make lemonade because, you know, you can't just make lemonades with lemons. You need sugar. But say here's St. Paul who is on trial

And he uses this opportunity to basically try to convert the people that are listening to his case, essentially. And you think about this, like, think about the, I don't want to say just positivity. That's not necessarily it. The can-do attitude, maybe that's part of it. But even more, the deep virtue, the deep theological virtue of hope, which is, God, you can do anything with any circumstance.

God, you can do any good, even in the worst possible situation. And so here is St. Paul and he's in front of Agrippa and in front of Festus and in front of Bernice and all these other people. And basically he's telling them his story, right? It tells him his conversion story. And then I love this at the end of chapter 26, he then says, he says, King Agrippa, do you believe in the prophets?

I know you believe. And Agrippa says to Paul, you're trying to make me a Christian basically. And in a short time, you want to make me a Christian. And I love Paul's response. Well, I don't care short or long, it doesn't matter. I don't care if you do this quickly, you do this slow.

I would to God that not only you, but also all who hear me this day might become such as I am, except for the chains, except for being locked up. And of course, Agrippa and Bernice and Festus, they would have let him go. But Agrippa said to Festus, this man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar.

So he's going to be shipped off to Rome, you know, really phenomenally because he read the St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians. And St. Paul writes this letter to the Ephesians from house arrest in Rome, which is kind of this, again, providential way in which our readings are kind of going together here.

That we realize that as Paul's writing a number of these letters, but particularly the one we're reading today, St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians. He's writing to the church in Ephesus while being under house arrest in Rome. And now, so house arrest was basically a situation. I came across this in a commentary.

What house arrest involved was a guard, basically, of a Roman soldier of some sort, who his job was when it was Paul's turn or whoever the person was going to be on trial. When it was their turn to stand up in court, they had an hour. They had an hour to bring that person, the guards did, an hour to bring that person before the authorities, before Caesar in this case, right? And here's Paul.

So it's kind of like light house arrest, right? Here is Paul, who is using this opportunity, not only in the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 26, but also here when he's writing to the Ephesians. as an opportunity to witness to these guards, witness to these people who were assigned to take care of him and assigned to make sure that he would appear before Caesar when it was time.

But Paul's writing to the Ephesians and what's going on in Ephesus? Well, we know that Ephesus was one of the more significant cities, right? We have Jerusalem, obviously clearly significant. We have Corinth. We read through St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians, and that was a very unique city. Ephesus was also an incredibly unique city. It was a port city for a while.

Actually, if you go there right now, the ocean is quite a ways away because it's been filled up with silt. You don't need to know all the details, but at the time, it was a very religious city. It was a very cosmopolitan city, and it was a very religious city, as I think I said before the third time. And so a lot of conversions there.

not only among those who are Jews who recognize that Jesus is truly the Messiah, but also among the Gentiles who came to believe in the one God and in Jesus Christ whom he has sent. And so what is happening is what's happened a bunch, which is I just see divisions, right?

We have the Jewish Christians, we have the Gentile Christians, and we see this place of separation, this place of maybe us versus them, those people who Paul believed that you had to follow the law in order to follow Jesus and those who came to Christ directly as opposed to going through Judaism.

Paul's kind of one of his more primary points of the letter to the Ephesians is going to be, we're all coming from these different places and yet we're united in the one spirit, one baptism, one faith. one God and father of us all, you know, one Jesus Christ. And so this is going to be really incredible as Paul is talking about, here's all of the spiritual blessings that you've received.

I mean, this is, he's trying to point out the fact that they're united in Jesus by highlighting, okay, if you're a Jewish Christian, look how many blessings you have in your life. If you're a Gentile Christian, look at all the blessings you have in your life. It goes on in verse one, he says, Well, actually, let's go back up in chapter one, verse five.

He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the beloved. In him, we have the redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us. And this is to the Gentile Christians and to the Jewish Christians.

Paul is making this absolutely clear. And that he has so much in store again in later on in chapter one, St. Paul says, and what is the immeasurable greatness of the power, his power in us who believe according to the workings of his great might, which he accomplished in Christ when he raised him from the dead is far above all rule and authority and power and dominion.

And gosh, it's just Paul's highlighting the fact that you've all were dead and now you're all alive in Jesus Christ. Whether you came from a Jewish tradition or you came from some kind of Greco-Roman Gentile tradition, you were dead and now you are alive. That's the highlight, the theme of the second half of chapter two. You are now one in Christ. Now, one of my favorite lines is St.

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