How to Start Strong and Stay Strong

The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast

Ascension

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.9 • 7.1K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2020

⏱️ 8 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Starting strong is easy, but staying strong—perseverance—is a mark of holiness. It’s easy to be excited about a new relationship, ministry, job, or school, but enduring through the dull times when that newness wears off is difficult.

Fr. Mike is not trying to downplay the importance of starting strong with a commitment, whatever it may be. It’s wonderful to be determined when a commitment is new, but to stay strong is a test of will power that many do not pass. For those who do endure, the endurance builds character.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We do not rise to the level of our expectations. We fall to the level of our preparedness.
0:15.0	How many is Father Mike Smith and this is Ascension Presents. So I was recently reading the Gospel of Mark.
0:20.0	And in the Gospel of Mark, the very beginning, you have the story right off Jesus.
0:24.0	He calls Simon and Andrew, James and John, and they come follow him. And then later on, that night,
0:29.0	they go to Simon's mother-in-law's house. Or Simon's house. His mother-in-law's there.
0:34.0	There's a healing. Then all the people come to the house. Like all the people come and Jesus is like,
0:38.0	you're healed. And you're healed. And you're healed. Like demons are getting kicked out of people's lives.
0:45.0	Illness, sickness, all these things are getting healed in these people's lives. It's incredible. It's a huge day.
0:52.0	Then it says, early the next morning, Jesus went up and went out to pray by himself.
0:58.0	So Peter went to go find him. Simon went to go find him. It's Simon finds him. And he says, everyone is looking for you.
1:04.0	And I got stuck on this line of like, everyone is looking for you. And one of the things that stuck with me was
1:11.0	maybe the excitement in Simon's voice in this moment, right? Like he gets called. He's part of the team.
1:18.0	He's like, yeah, he was first-round draft pick. Jesus is walking along the shores of the Sea of Galilee in Matthew's Gospel.
1:25.0	And he's like, first one. First one called, well, I guess after Andrew, whatever.
1:29.0	There they are. First round. You're with me. And then here is Simon who is to see, be part of like all of these miracles.
1:37.0	They're saying, everything is, I can't imagine how exciting everything would be. I can't imagine how eager he would be.
1:44.0	Like everyone's looking for you. Let's go back. This is like, we have a front row seat to the most incredible thing that has ever happened in not just my life,
1:53.0	not just in this region around the Sea of Galilee, in the world.
1:58.0	An excitement. Because it's exciting. The eagerness, because everything is new in that moment.
2:05.0	At least that's how I kind of read it, you know, right? But then I thought about this and realized, okay, so Mark's Gospel is the one where Peter says, Simon says, everyone's looking for you.
2:14.0	Well, Mark's Gospel is essentially Peter's Gospel, right? Because Mark was Peter's traveling companion and in his evangelistic travels.
2:21.0	And so Mark's Gospel is, he's simply recording and reporting what Simon preached or what Peter preached about Jesus.
	...

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