It’s those last five minutes of conversation with someone that makes them feel like a number or like a known and loved individual. We’ve all had conversations that makes us feel like the other person doesn’t really care to be talking to us. But we’ve also had conversations that stick with us because the person we talked to made us feel so loved that we can’t help but be uplifted by them. This is what those last five minutes are all about: making the other person feel wanted, known, and loved. Th...
Dec 17, 2020•6 min
Truly loving Mary will never lessen our faith in God, or take attention away from Christ. Here’s why: The Church has 4 dogmas regarding our Blessed Mother. They are… Jesus gave Mary to all of us as our Mother during his crucifixion Mary was immaculately conceived without original sin Mary was assumed into Heaven after the resurrection of Christ Mary was a virgin before, during, and after the birth of Christ Today’s video is focusing on the second dogma dealing with Mary’s immaculate conception. ...
Dec 10, 2020•9 min
Oftentimes in Christian media we see what Fr. Mike dubs a “Hallmark” version of following Christ. There’s struggle and hardship, but then God’s grace comes in and cures everything, making everything nearly perfect for the characters in the story. While these types of stories make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, they’re not very realistic. And while God’s grace is essential, it’s not a magic wand that makes everything bad go away. There are some stories in the Bible that at first glance appea...
Dec 03, 2020•10 min
When was the last time you told God “thank you”? We live in an extremely hectic world, full of distractions, complaining, and longing for things we don’t have. And while it can be good to look at the things we do have and count up our blessings, how often do we then turn to God and thank him for those gifts? God is the reason we have anything in this life. Even our very existence day-to-day is a gift. There’s nothing better than thankfulness—and nothing worse than unthankfulness. We can all poin...
Nov 26, 2020•9 min
Have you ever felt like God really wanted you to do something, but you just weren’t ready for it? Maybe it’s a big life change, a relationship, or a vocation, but there’s something holding you back from saying yes to God’s call. People may be inclined to think that this is a bad thing, and might put themselves down, saying they aren’t open to God’s will in their lives. But what if this back-and-forth with God is the one thing we need to really say yes? When we wrestle with God, we’re not only en...
Nov 19, 2020•6 min
We all see the world through our own lens. The media we partake of—the news we read, the podcasts we listen to, the videos we watch—shapes that lens. But Fr. Mike says there’s one thing that should be shaping our lens more than anything else: scripture. Fr. Mike has read The Fulfillment of All Desire by Ralph Martin many times, and one point that Mr. Martin makes that has stuck with Fr. Mike is that every saint had a Biblical worldview. The lens through which they saw the world was the Bible, an...
Nov 13, 2020•9 min
Fr. Mike introduces us to the virtue that makes other virtues excellent: magnanimity. If someone asked you what the most essential virtues are, you might say humility, faith, hope, or love. But have you ever heard of the virtue of magnanimity? What this virtue does is it magnifies—or makes greater—other virtues within someone. In other words, it’s to strive for excellence. This is not to be confused with the vice of pride, which relies on the gifts of oneself without acknowledging any help that ...
Nov 05, 2020•9 min
Fr. Mike talks about how to regret things we’ve done without staying stuck in the past. Have you ever heard the saying “don’t regret the past, because it’s made you into the person you are today?” Maybe you’ve heard something similar to that, and while there’s truth to this saying, there’s also something that we as Christians should be aware of. Sometimes we make mistakes. We do things we wished we hadn’t. Sometimes, we hurt those we love in the process. We never want to live in the past—burdene...
Oct 29, 2020•8 min
Do you have any “expectations” when you think about marriage? A lot of us probably think of marriage as broadly the same thing: two people coming together in love to spend the rest of their lives together. But when we start to dive into the specifics of that idea, it’s important to recognize what expectations are of the world, and which are of God. One of these expectations could be the willingness to have kids. The Church teaches, however, that in the case of sacramental marriage, it is asked a...
Oct 22, 2020•9 min
Have you ever been shaken by a scandal in the Church? It’s hard not to have been, especially amidst scandals on a major scale or ones involving people we’ve looked up to and loved. When these things come to light, it’s common for people to start to blame the Church, and—sometimes—to leave their faith. If we feel the need to reexamine our belief in God and the Church because of something someone else did, maybe our faith should have been in God and not a person who’s broken just like us. We’re in...
Oct 15, 2020•10 min
Is it just us, or does the world seem a bit divided right now? Human beings were not only created with a unique purpose, but also created to live in community. However, there are two things that can disrupt this call: division and distraction. Why these two? Well, distractions are things that take us away from a given task or goal, taking us away from living with a purpose. Likewise, division takes away from living in community with those around us. The twentieth century brought with it innumera...
Oct 08, 2020•8 min
“What if I don’t have time to pray both The Rosary and The Divine Mercy Chaplet?” Deciding how to spend your time in prayer can be difficult, especially when you’re deciding between two powerhouse prayers like The Rosary and The Chaplet. Let’s look at each of them. The Chaplet of Divine Mercy was gifted to Saint Faustina during a vision of Jesus. In this vision, he listed 14 promises (https://www.divinemercy.org/elements-...) to those who pray the chaplet. In the chaplet, the prayers revolve aro...
Oct 01, 2020•10 min
You may have seen the movie Rudy. Its eponymous protagonist is a not-so-athletic college football player who spent years taking hits and practicing with his team, only to see a few moments on the field. Those short moments, however, left him with a tremendous feeling of accomplishment and pride, knowing that he committed to something and saw it through, even when it seemed hopeless. The question: is that always the right approach? Maybe if Rudy had dedicated that time to learning something he wa...
Sep 24, 2020•10 min
Playing a video game called Injustice helps Fr. Mike explain the real answer to why God allows suffering. In Injustice, Superman becomes a totalitarian dictator in his attempt to try and eliminate evil. Batman tries to tell him, in trying to eliminate evil he has ceased to do good, because without the freedom to choose evil, we don’t really have the freedom to choose good either. Couldn’t God do better than Superman though? Couldn’t he just fix everything by bringing us back to the Garden of Ede...
Sep 10, 2020•8 min
Many people ask Fr. Mike, “How do you become a Catholic speaker?” The quick answer is “Get baptized and start talking.” Of course this implies that you live out the promises of your baptism. When you do that, people will start asking you to give talks about the Faith. At least that’s how it worked out for Fr. Mke. The caveat is that being a Catholic speaker is not all that it seems to be. The Faith is not going to spread throughout the world through someone on a stage with a microphone in hand. ...
Sep 03, 2020•8 min
How many real friends do you have? Honestly, many people we call friends would probably better qualify as pals or buddies. The first step to getting real friends is to recognize how we are all made to be gifts of love. God is love and we were made in his image. We were also made for community, because God is a community of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Living out this love and community as God does requires availability and vulnerability. By availability we mean “care-free timelessness”, as ...
Aug 27, 2020•7 min
If you’re not feeling loved by someone you love, take courage in the story of Leah in Genesis. Jacob, Leah’s husband, did not love her. In fact, what’s even worse, he loved her sister, Rachel, instead. Leah named her first three sons out of her hope and desire for her husband to love her, thinking if she bore him sons he would love him. She named her first “Reuben” which means, “Look, a son,” saying, “Now my husband will love me.” She named her second son “Simeon” which means “listening” because...
Aug 20, 2020•10 min
Wearing masks, not wearing masks, and all the mixed emotions that have come with the coronavirus reveal that—as a society—we lack freedom from the fear of death. Maybe you know someone who has died from the virus, or someone who lost their livelihood due to the lockdown. Many are wondering when they can safely go out again, or when they can they go back to Mass. In fact, the coronavirus is revealing the fear of not just death, but also the fear of loss, uncertainty, and insecurity. In these stra...
Aug 13, 2020•8 min
It may sound foolish to believe in a God who allows evil, tragedy, suffering, and disasters. But God never promised to rid the world of these things. He promised us hope: “and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5). At some point we are going to experience heartbreak, loss, and suffering. Anyone who thought having faith in God would take away those things in life had the wrong idea of who God ...
Aug 06, 2020•10 min
We all have pet peeves. We all get annoyed by things that really don’t matter much, whether it’s someone chewing with their mouth open, or someone whispering the Rosary in an Adoration chapel—which are two things that used to be pet peeves for Fr. Mike. But he learned a better way to deal with annoyances. Why do we get so annoyed by such petty things? It’s because being annoyed is a choice. Fr. Mike tells a quick story about prisoners of war in Vietnam. They were put in a really small cell where...
Jul 30, 2020•8 min
Is your faith certain enough to stand up against the doubts and different ideas out there? Fr. Mike shares insight about certainty from Dr. Montague Brown, professor of philosophy at St. Anselm College, New Hampshire. Dr. Brown says certainty is intellectual belief based off the evidence. It’s not blind belief. Someone with certainty is not going to change their mind without new objective evidence. Many times people change their mind not because of new evidence, but just because of new people in...
Jul 23, 2020•7 min
Fr. Mike recalls the speed math tests he took in second and third grade. He finished them in decent time, but his cousin—who was in the same class—finished them way faster. In fact, his cousin was the fastest in his class. For some reason this led Fr. Mike to believe he simply wasn’t good at math. When it came to “speak and spell” though, Fr. Mike did really well. This led him to believe he was really good with words. He was acting under the common belief that someone is either good at something...
Jul 16, 2020•8 min
If you want to know how to share the gospel, it’s important to have the love and courage to not just give answers and corrections, but to ask questions. It is in asking questions from the heart that you convey true interest in the person’s soul, instead of just trying to convince the person you’re right. Fr. Mike tells of a time when a student came to him saying he tries to evangelize, but just gets shut down. He tried to tell his good friend that he shouldn’t be over-drinking, and this just mad...
Jul 09, 2020•7 min
In the spiritual life, it’s difficult to know whether striving to do God’s will or just abiding in him is better. But why can’t we do both? Fr. Mike tells the story of a perpetually active student athlete. His inability to disengage in doing things and just abide in God was a problem, and he knew it. Fr. Mike advised him, it’s not that abiding is right and striving is wrong. It’s important to do, but it’s important to also know what not to do in order to acquire the goal your living for. There a...
Jul 02, 2020•9 min
Rigidity and laxity are difficult obstacles to avoid when trying to find balance in your faith life. When we treat Christianity as a project, that leads to rigidity. When we treat Christianity like a projection, that leads to laxity. If you’re just looking at what Christians are supposed to do and then following those instructions, you’re treating your faith like a project and that’s bound to make you rigid. At the other extreme, if you see Jesus as a softy or a buddy who’s going to look the oth...
Jun 25, 2020•9 min
Making small sacrifices is not just for Lent, because sacrifices and penance are necessary. As Christ said: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). And this is true all year long. But when Jesus said to deny yourself, he didn’t mean to always go against what you want. Really. He meant there are things I want that will not make me more like him—a lot of things, actually. So following him often means dying to self by denying mys...
Jun 18, 2020•8 min
Fr. Mike explains how being at home with our family is one of God’s favorite ways to make us holy—if we are honest about the areas where we need to grow in our relationships with family members. Fr. Mike has observed that college students often have a profound encounter with Jesus through their college’s Catholic community. They find that they are praying more, receiving the sacraments more, participating in more service opportunities, and so on. Then they get back home for Thanksgiving, Christm...
Jun 11, 2020•9 min
In today’s special podcast, Fr. Mike Schmitz sits down with Fr. Josh Johnson to discuss racial division in the Church and how Catholics can strive to restore unity in the Body of Christ. Fr. Josh emphasizes that he is not infallible, so it’s okay to disagree with anything he says that doesn’t lead you closer to Christ, but he hopes this conversation bears fruit in your walk with Jesus and within the body of Christ. Many members of the Church want to know what they can do during these turbulent t...
Jun 04, 2020•1 hr 20 min
Throughout the Gospels Jesus says, “Remain in me” or “abide in me,” which—in simplified terms—means whatever you do, invite Jesus along. Ask him to “come with.” This is a way to grow in your relationship with him, but it’s also a smart thing to do because, after all, Jesus said: “I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). When we ask someone to “come with” or “go with”, as Fr. Mike say...
May 28, 2020•7 min
When someone says something hurtful to you, it is wise to give them the benefit of the doubt. What does that mean? It means ask yourself, “Do I firmly believe that this is a person of good will?” If so, is there anything that can help you better understand their behavior? Give them the benefit of the doubt that they are just tired, or “hangry”, or having a bad day for some reason. Especially in marital relationships, think of how many times your spouse has said hurtful things to you, while you k...
May 21, 2020•8 min
