I'm going to start with the first thing.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz and this is Ascension Presents.

How am I supposed to get something out of a homily when sometimes I'm not getting anything out of the homily?

Good question, camper. First thing is when it comes to, we're going to talk about how to listen to a homily.

Because I think there's just as much skill and work sometimes and listening to a homily as there is in preparing and delivering a homily.

It is always easier to be a critic than to create. Actually made a video about that.

It's always easier to be a critic than it is to create.

And so I can sit back and watch the movie, I can sit back and listen to the homily or to the talk or whatever the thing is.

Look at the painting and say like, well that's ridiculous. You should have done this, this and this.

To approach a mess with that kind of, with the approach to the homily part of a mess, with that kind of receptivity.

We're going to talk about that in a second. But to approach it with that kind of maybe even humility.

I remember when my little sister, she was going to school right, or she was, was she going to school? I don't know.

She was living next near the seminary where I was going to seminary and so she got to meet a bunch of my seminarian friends.

And when we got the point, you know, at X-Nerve Years Later when we were getting ordained, she and we were having to give homilys, you know, as deacons.

She said, I will never, I will never complain about a homily ever again.

Because she knew us personally until then she'd only known the priest a little bit from afar.

Like, oh my gosh, this is like, this is all you could do, you know, this is the best you could do.

And she saw us and realized, wow, these men, they were responding to a call to be a priest.

Not because they were like, you know what I'm good at, I'm good at public speaking.

I'm going to do that. What she found was a bunch of guys who just wanted to be holy and just wanted to help the people of God.

And because of that, they had to get up and give talks and they had no idea.

We had no, like we're just freaking out every time. And I have to tell you honestly, this is like on Saturday night or before the first homily of the weekend, I'm always, I'm always in either literally in tears or virtually in tears.

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