Experiencing God's mercy requires discovering one's own brokenness, priest says

LOS ANGELES (OSV News) -- Experiencing the mercy of God requires discovering one's own brokenness, keynote speaker Father Mike Schmitz told the sold-out crowd at this year's Los Angeles Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

"Mercy is the love we need the most and deserve the least," Father Schmitz said during his keynote talk at the Sept. 17 event. "God's mercy is strong enough to carry the weight of your sins."

The event began with a 6:30 a.m. rosary and a 7 a.m. Mass celebrated by Archbishop José H. Gomez inside the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels before a near capacity crowd.

Afterward, more than 2,000 people gathered in the Cathedral Plaza for breakfast. This year's crowd was the largest turnout in the event's history, organizers said.

The main speaker may have had something to do with it. Father Schmitz's "The Bible in a Year" podcast has topped U.S. podcast charts multiple times in recent years, while other projects such as his "The Catechism in a Year" podcast and speaking appearances have helped make him something of a Catholic superstar in the U.S. Father Schmitz also heads campus ministry at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and is the Diocese of Duluth's director of youth and young adult ministry.

Earlier this summer, Father Schmitz delivered a rousing, widely acclaimed talk on the second night of the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis on the need for repentance as an answer to indifference.

In his remarks at the prayer breakfast, Father Schmitz drew on the story of Father Walter Ciszek (1904-1984), a Jesuit priest who spent more than 20 years imprisoned in Soviet Russia after being arrested for his clandestine missionary work there. In his famous memoir "He Leadeth Me," Father Ciszek recounted how after a year spent in solitary confinement, he agreed to sign a false confession in hopes of being released earlier.

Tormented at the thought of having disavowed Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church while enduring four more years of confinement, Ciszek recalled realizing that "I was nowhere near the man I thought I was."

Every one of us, Father Schmitz said to the audience, needs to have a similar experience of recognizing our own brokenness.

"If you haven't reached that moment yet, pray to God that you have it," said Father Schmitz. "Without Jesus, we wouldn't know that the very identity of God is that he is love. And without our brokenness, we wouldn't know the depth to which we need that love."

To drive home his point, Father Schmitz recalled a conversation with his mother weeks before she died of pancreatic cancer last year.

"I know Jesus, I trust in God, and I know he loves me, but sometimes I wonder: Have I given him everything?" Father Schmitz recalled his mother wondering aloud. "Are there any sins that I've held on to that are going to keep me from him?"

Those questions, Father Schmitz said, find an answer in trusting in God's divine mercy, especially at the hour of our death.

"We can make being Catholic really complicated, but it really comes down to one question," Father Schmitz said. "Does God have your permission today to love you as you are?'"

This year's crowd at the breakfast included more than 100 local Catholic high school students, as well as representatives of several local parishes and religious orders from around the archdiocese. Music for the Mass featured more than 50 singers from parishes around the archdiocese under the direction of Paul Puccinelli from St. Rita Church in Sierra Madre. Caterer Alan Mork, a parishioner of St. Mel's Church in Woodland Hills, arrived at 2 a.m. that morning to start cooking the breakfast.

After Father Schmitz's remarks, the event's organizers thanked him with a surprise gift: a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball jersey with his name and the number "24" on the back, as well as a Dodgers cap with Archbishop Gomez's autograph.

At the end of the breakfast, Father Schmitz was asked to give a final prayer that included a blessing for the "Back to Mass kits" that were given to guests. Each kit included an invitation card, a bracelet from My Saint My Hero, "the blessing bracelet company" as it calls itself, along with stickers and buttons pointing to https://findamass.org, a site for nationwide Mass times powered by eCatholic.