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Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and this is Ascension Presents.
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So a number of years ago one of our students, she's a young woman. She had a friend,
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she invited her friend to go with her to Mass off campus because school wasn't in session, it was summertime
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So she drove this young man to the cathedral and on the way there—he was raised Catholic—on the way there
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She said, "You know, if you aren't a practicing Catholic ...
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"... you can't receive Holy Communion unless you go to confession first.", and he was like, "Wait, what?
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"What, what? I was raised Catholic." And she's like, "Yeah, but you're not a practicing Catholic."
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And so then when school started like the next week he came to Mass and
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afterwards he said, "I have some questions," and his big question was this, "What is it to be a practicing Catholic?"
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I thought that's a great question so we started meeting and talking about what it is to be a practicing Catholic.
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So what does the Church say it is to be a practicing Catholic?
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What is it to say I'm not just Catholic in name only, but you know, it's a part of my everyday life?
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Well a couple things: the Church says, well, we have to, you know, observe the ten commandments
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We have to assent to Church teaching
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and then the third thing is to do our best to follow the five precepts of the Catholic Church.
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In the Catechism of the Catholic Church
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I think starting in article 2041 or paragraph 2041 talks about these five precepts of the Church.
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Now what it says is that these precepts are the
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indispensable minimum or another translation is the very necessary minimum for life.
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Basically the Church is kind of saying that if these aren't there
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that life connected with Jesus, connected with the Church, it's not there.
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I don't know if you know this but like I think like something like ninety percent of Americans believe
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that there's some kind of God. So ninety percent of Americans, ninety percent of Americans, are theists.
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And yet most of us, the way we live our lives,
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we're practical atheists like we're practicing atheism, because why?
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because we often make decisions not in light of this God that we claim exists.
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So these five precepts of the Church—the very necessary minimum,
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the indispensable minimum are basically just, are you alive? Are you connected to the Church?
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Here's number one: Going to Mass on Sundays and holy days of obligation,
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so every single Sunday a practicing Catholic has to go to Mass
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and every holy day of obligation. That might sound incredibly overwhelming or demanding, but that's
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roughly, I don't know ... I'm bad at math ...
sixty-five hours of church every year
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That's it. That's it—the indispensable minimum, the requirement is just go to Mass every Sunday and every holy day of obligation.
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So it's not overwhelming.
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Number two is: Go to confession at least once a year.
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Go to confession at least once a year. That's what we're called to do.
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Number three is receive Holy Communion at least once every year, during the Easter season.
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what had happened in the past is actually the ...
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at one point people are staying away from Holy Communion because they thought the Holy Eucharist is too holy
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and I'm too unholy, I could never possibly receive Holy Communion, I can never possibly be in a state where I'm worthy,
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I can have worthy reception of Holy Communion, even if I've just gone to Confession, there's something wrong.
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So they would stay away from Holy Communion
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So at one point, the pope had to say,
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listen, one of the precepts: you have to receive Holy Communion at least once a year during the Easter season. Why? Because Jesus loves you.
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He gives us the Eucharist to feed us because he wants intimacy and communion with us.
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Number four is observe the prescribed days of fasting and abstinence.
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Now, this is incredible. So days of penance are Fridays throughout the whole year.
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Days of abstinence are
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Fridays throughout Lent and
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and Ash Wednesday, these are abstinence, means we avoid meat.
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The two days of fasting—we only have two days of fasting in the entire
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365-day calendar year—that's Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.
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And that fasting is what? It's, you know, have two small meals and one meal
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regular sized meal that doesn't exceed the size of the two small meals combined.
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You think about this: that's not very demanding because
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if you live in the Western World
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or developed world, developed countries, your fast day
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could still be more food than most people in the rest of the world eat on a normal day,
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so just observe those days of fasting and abstinence.
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And the fifth precept of the Catholic Church is
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to provide for the material needs of the Church according to your ability.
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It doesn't even say, provide for the material needs of the Church by giving ten percent of your income.
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It says, according to your ability.
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Whatever you can do just help the Church out.
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Now think about that.
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I remember when I came upon these, I talked about them.
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At one point this man wrote me a letter saying like, that's ridiculous,
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this is crazy, that might be fine for some monk on a mountaintop somewhere
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but for regular human beings, no one could possibly do this.
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I'm thinking, wait, these are the minimum requirements.
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This is the Church being absolutely super generous on what it means to be a practicing Catholic,
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not just a nominal Catholic,
but one who lives their faith out.
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Now I was talking to this man about this and he was like, OK.
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And we walked through this whole kind of story.
And actually in the course of this,
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talked about the story of the gospel and the story of the Church
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and the story of Jesus Christ calling him to live in the Church to live up, rise up to this
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and actually transcend this, so he started praying, started being part of a Bible study.
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By the end of that year he had entered seminary
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This June, this man is going to be ordained a priest for our diocese.
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His friend, she could have said, I'm embarrassed,
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I don't want to, I don't want to tell him that he can't receive Holy Communion if he hasn't been going to Mass.
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So I'll just be quiet. You know what would have happened?
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Nothing.
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Because she was willing to in love just speak the truth to her friend, this man
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in like
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days from today
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will be ordained a priest
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of Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church and he will
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give us the Eucharist
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and he will give God's reconciliation through confession
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And this man, already, he's holy already. He's just like, it's incredible to see the transformation in this man's life.
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I can't imagine how many people he will lead to heaven
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because his friend was willing to say, "Hey, by the way, I don't want to be rude, but
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if you're not a practicing Catholic, you can't receive Holy Communion."
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And that prompted him to ask these questions
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If you're asking the question, I think it also means that God has a plan for your life
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just like he has a plan for my buddy's life, my future brother-in-orders' life.
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From all of us here at Ascension Presents,
my name is Father Mike. God bless.
