Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz. I am so excited to be joining the Courage Under Fire Gala on May 23rd

in Nashville, Tennessee, and I would love for you to be there too. I believe that this world needs

people of faith, who are willing to live with clarity, conviction, and compassion. That's what this night

is all about, standing in truth, rooted in Christ and unshaken by the storms around us.

You know this. We weren't made for comfort. We were made for courage.

So go to the Courage Underfire Gala by grabbing your ticket at courage underfiregala.org.

That's courage underfiregala.org. And God bless.

So this is one of those moments where we get to pause. I think it's one of the moments

where we have to pause. I think that hearing this story again, you know, this account of the passion of the real suffering

and the real death of Jesus, the fact that he really died, we have to pause.

I think that right now we have to just stop and look because I think maybe our temptation is like, hmm, mm, kind of like take a glance and then move on.

But we have to pause the story and look.

Because we know this, we know this, right?

We know that the story is not just a story.

We know that the crucifix is not just a symbol, that the story is a window, right?

The story, that the crucifix is a lens through which we see the truth. The truth that we get to

see what love looks like when it holds nothing back. We get to see what sin looks like

when we see the wounds and we can see what mercy looks like when it refuses to give up.

But these, those three things, right? If we stop right now, if we pause right now,

and look, we see those three things. We see what love looks like when it costs

everything, what sin looks like when we can see the wound and what mercy looks like when it refuses

to give up. The first thing is we see what love looks like when it costs everything. You know,

...