Ordinary Time:
Finding Holiness in Everyday Life
Sunday Homilies with Fr Mike Schmitz Collection
ISBN 9781954882003
eISBN 9781954882010
ASIN B0CL7SP83R
This is the sixth of 8 volumes currently available in the ‘Sunday Homilies with Fr Mike Schmitz Collection’, that I have read, and it an excellent resource! Over the last several years I have read and listened to a lot of Father Mike Schmitz’s offerings. This is one of 6 volumes of Homilies that have been released by ascension press. The first four volumes seem to have had eBook releases in 2022 in a series called ‘The Curious Catholic’. They were then rebranded and rereleased in the fall of 2023 as ‘The Sunday Homilies with Fr Mike Schmitz Collection’. I believe there were four in the original collection and there are now 6 in the new editions released late in 2023 and early 2024, with this being the second of the original set. And late in 2024 2 new volumes were released. It is hard tracking down all the works published by Father Mike as they are published under a few variations of his name:
Mike Schmitz
Fr Mike Schmitz
Father Mike Schmitz
and even
Michael Schmitz
But back to this volume. The description of this book states:
“Invite God into the ordinary moments of everyday life.
Amid the big events and exciting days of life, so many days are simply ordinary. Yet these ordinary times hold extraordinary potential for holiness.
Ordinary Time: Finding Holiness in Everyday Life, a booklet in The Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz Collection, was created to invite Catholics closer to God by teaching them how to live ordinary days extraordinarily through Fr. Mike Schmitz’s homilies.
In Ordinary Time, Fr. Mike Schmitz reveals all Catholics’ divine potential for holiness and how the saints provide a timeless example of living every day for Christ. The practical guidance found in this booklet can help each person invite God into every moment and make the choice to continuously strive for heaven.
• Live every day extraordinarily with advice on:
• How to develop a vision for your life and ensure that it is also God’s vision
• Why cultivating wonder leads to gratitude and joy
• Whether holiness is for all God’s children or just a certain few
• How to act on your saintly potential for holiness
• What giving God the very best of your day looks like
Complete with thought-provoking questions, prayerful meditations, and real-life challenges after each chapter, this booklet is perfect for individual devotion or group study.”
The chapters in this volume are:
Welcome to The Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz Collection
Chapter 1: Drifting
Chapter 2: No Wonder
Chapter 3: Do It Now
Chapter 4: Ask, Offer, Accept
Chapter 5: Last Ten Percent
Chapter 6: Grow and Guard
Notes
We are informed that this booklet and I assume the others in the series as well are adapted from a series of Homilies given by Fr. Mike Schmitz. It would be nice if there was a list of the homilies so we could go back and listen to them either in the podcast, youtube, or now even the Ascension App. The welcome message in the booklet states:
“Each booklet in this series has been created to invite Catholics to grow closer to God through reflections from Fr. Mike.
These booklets are short and relatable, with features that will help you apply what you read to your own life.
Quotes and Bible verses throughout the booklets will help you zero in on the key points.
Questions after each section prompt you to reflect and help you to dive deeper into the topic being presented. We recommend that you pray or journal with these questions as you make connections to your everyday life. (They also make great prompts for small group discussion, while keeping in mind that not everyone in your group may feel comfortable answering those of a more personal nature.)
Meditations are provided after each reflection to help you take the topic directly into prayer. We recommend setting aside some time after each chapter to read the meditation and pray or journal with it.
Each reflection ends with a challenge to put what you have learned into action. These challenges invite you to enter into prayer, serve others, make a resolution for the week, and more.
It is our sincere hope The Sunday Homilies with Fr. Mike Schmitz Collection helps you along the way in your journey toward holiness. May God bless you!”
A sample Reflect, Pray and Act section from the end of the second chapter is:
“Reflect
Who is someone you know that you admire? What was it about them that you see as exceptional? Do you find some of the same characteristics or gifts in your own life?
Sainthood is about who our heart belongs to. Ask, offer, and accept is about orienting our heart toward God’s will. Discuss some practical ways you can do this in your life.
Are there any times in your life that you find it more difficult than others to ask God to be present, offer him the moment, and resolve to accept the result? Discuss.
The communion of saints is real. Have you ever experienced the intercession of a saint in your life? How?
Pray
In your prayer today, meditate on St. Francis de Sales’ method to ask, offer, and accept. Though God is already with you in this moment, your act of asking him to be with you is your way of acknowledging his presence. Whether you are aware of him or not, the Lord is always with you—so ask him to make you aware of his presence now.
Next, offer this moment of prayer to him. Whatever the state of your mind, heart, and emotions, offer it to him. If you are distracted, hungry, grumpy, tired, or ecstatic, offer it to him. Don’t try to force your feelings or pretend things are different from how they are. Offer him the actual moment you are experiencing. This is the beauty of having a relationship with Jesus in prayer—you don’t need to fake anything. He knows you; he knows where you are and what you are going through. So offer him your “now,” as it is.
Then, accept whatever happens next. Perhaps you ask and offer, and then your phone rings, or a child comes running in and needs you. Accept that! Otherwise, you are trying to control what happens, and this doesn’t work well in life. If you’ve asked God to be present and offered him this present moment, then he has heard your prayer. Now, the only thing that remains is for you to accept what happens next.
Once you begin “asking, offering, and accepting,” seek to make this practice consistent in your prayer. It is easy to forget to do this. As you enter into prayer in this moment, don't focus on all the times you forgot to ask, offer, and accept in the past. Focus on asking, offering, and accepting now.
Act
When we ask God into every moment, we are asking him to sanctify each moment. When we offer God every moment, every moment becomes worship. When we accept what God brings us in every moment, we are saying “your will be done.” This week, go past last week’s “do it now” plan and seek to “ask, offer, and accept” at least five times each day.”
Each of the chapters has a section like that at the end. Some longer some are shorter. While reading this volume I highlighted a number of passages. Some of them are:
“Many people drift through their lives. They might have a vague idea of where they want to go but no plan on how to get there. They might say, “Plan? Are you kidding? I’m too busy!” So they are just drifting, hoping they will end up where they want to go without having a vision for how they will get there.”
“If we want to live an extraordinary life, we need three things: a destination, a plan, and a will.”
“By following God’s plan, we get more freedom.”
“Make a list of three things you want to be true about your character in five years, three things you want to be true about your relationships in five years, and three things you want to be true about your relationship with God in five years.”
“The reality is that this world doesn’t owe us anything. God certainly doesn’t owe us anything! It’s not necessary that we exist.”
“If we have just randomly been brought into existence by the universe, then our lives have no meaning. But if God exists and we have been created by him, then our lives are full of meaning. The fact that we exist is a gift.”
“If there were no God, then everything would be an accident. But if God is real, then the opposite is also true. Everything that exists is a miracle. Every person is extraordinary. There is a great quote attributed to Albert Einstein: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” So why don’t we expect miracles?”
“Every encounter with another human being is an encounter with God himself, so he remembers everyone. St. John Paul II was filled with wonder every time he met another human being. That is what it is to have an extraordinary life, filled with wonder, knowing that there are no ordinary people.”
“In the end, we have two options: we can let our lives be defined by their potential or by our choices now.”
“If we want to be a saint, we need to say yes to God and never stop saying yes.”
“Again, this is not necessarily about spending more time in church doing “holy” things; it is about bringing the holy things into your ordinary time. When we do this, every ordinary moment is transformed into an extraordinary moment. Ordinary time becomes holy time.”
“When you offer something up to God, it changes an ordinary moment of your life into worship.”
“Every year, on the first of November, we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints. I invite you to live each day as if All Saints’ Day is your feast day. Live each day of your discipleship with Christ as a saint. You don’t have to wait for tomorrow. You don’t have to wait for a holy hour. You don’t have to wait for anything. In this moment, ask, offer, and accept. Make the ordinary time in your life into extraordinary, sanctified time. That’s the life of a saint. Run to win.”
“Many of us tend to live and worship out of our surplus. We look at our lives and see a few holy things sprinkled around them. But Jesus says, “I want a different ten percent. Not the first ten percent but something else. I want the last ten percent.” It is giving that last ten percent—in other words, our entire hearts—that makes us saints.”
“This is why Pope Benedict says that in Christ, God reveals that the goal of worship is not destruction but divinization. 5 The goal of sacrifice is transformation. What you give up in your life becomes transformed in God’s hands. It is lifted up.”
“Ordinary time is meant to reveal that everything in our lives matters. Every decision makes a difference. None of our moments are really ordinary; they all can be life-changing. As C. S. Lewis puts it, “Every time you make a choice you are turning the central part of you, the part of you that chooses, into something a little different than it was before.””
“While we need to guard our time, resources, and relationships, guarding our heart is primary. This is the part of you that chooses. This is the part of you that changes.”
“Scripture gives us four ways we can guard our hearts. We need to guard our hearts with regard to our words, our eyes, how we walk, and where we find ourselves.”
“One of the ways in which we entrust our heart to God, more than almost any other place, is in the Eucharist. When we receive Holy Communion, we are offering God our heart. And when the Eucharist is placed in our hands, God himself places his heart in our hands.”
“True happiness lies in choosing to grow our hearts closer to God and to guard our hearts from being drawn away from him. We entrust our hearts to him, and he entrusts his heart to us.”
I hope those few quotes give you a feel for this volume. This book really hit home for me, I finished it several days before working on this review and it keeps coming back to mind. It is a volume I hope all three of my teenagers will read. And it is a book I wish was around when I was a teen or young adult, I would have greatly benefited from reading it.
This is another excellent little volume. It is one I will likely return to again and read again and again. When I was in university, I was involved with Campus Crusade for Christ, there was a series of booklets by the founder Bill Bright, called Transferable Concepts, and by reading them many times you could almost memorize them and the message so that you could share it. This volume reminds me a lot of those books, but specifically geared for Catholics. But to be honest any Christian would benefit from reading this book.
This is another wonderful resource from Fr Mike, I have used his Bible in a Year Companions, and am currently using the Catechism in a Year Companion and read some of his other offerings. What I love about this book and this new collection is you can pick and choose. Read a booklet from beginning to end or jump around and read the different topics as you are inspired, or as they seem relevant. Because they are based on Father Mike’s actual homilies the text flows well, is engaging and keeps your attention. They would be great to work through as a group study or for personal reading, reflection, or spiritual reading.
I highly recommend this volume and look forward to reading others in the set. It is another great resource from Father Mike and Ascension. An excellent book for any Catholic or even any Christian!
Note: This book is part of a series of reviews: 2024 Catholic Reading Plan!
Books By Father Mike Schmitz:
Made for Love: Same-Sex Attraction and the Catholic Church
The Sunday Homilies:
Set Apart: Living for Heaven Here on Earth
…
Contributed to:
Pray, Decide, and Don't Worry: Five Steps to Discerning God's Will
Don't Be Afraid to Say Yes to God! Pope Francis Speaks to Young People
…
Audio Talks by Father Mike Schmitz:
Living Life by Design, Not by Default
Love - Sacrifice - Trust He Showed Us the Way
From Love, By Love, For Love
True Worship
The Four Last Things
Jesus Is …
Changed Forever - The Sacrament of Baptism
We Must Go Out - The Sacrament of Confirmation
…
