The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast

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What's The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast about?

Faith, pop culture, and headline reflections from Fr. Mike Schmitz.

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Why God Allows Us to Learn ...

07.29.2021

God is quick to forgive, and he’s given us the gift of confession so we can return to a relationship with him after sin. But this love he has for us is so great that he never wants us to ...

The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast episodes:

07.29.2021 Why God Allows Us to Learn from Our Mistakes God is quick to forgive, and he’s given us the gift of confession so we can return to a relationship with him after sin. But this love he has for us is so great that he never wants us to ...
07.22.2021 Why It’s Important to Have Good Friendships At a glance, you may look at friendship and say it’s not necessary for day-to-day life. It’s just “nice to have.” And the truth is… it’s not necessary. We could certainly live, breathe, and survive without friendship, just like we ...
07.15.2021 What to Do When You Get Interrupted An interruption is anything that takes our attention away from our primary task. We may think our days are filled with interruptions: people cutting us off in traffic, a slow internet connection, etc. But in order to truly be interrupted, ...
07.08.2021 Why Forgiven Sins Still Have Consequences We can be 100% confident that when we confess our sins, we receive complete and total forgiveness from God. However, God loves us so much, that he’s allowed the choices we make in life to matter. That means that even ...
07.01.2021 The Dangers of Complaining St. Paul tells us, “Do everything without grumbling,” but even the best-intentioned Christians can fall into a toxic habit of constant complaining. It’s true that sometimes, sharing a complaint can help rectify an unjust situation or call attention to something ...
06.24.2021 How to See God in Everything, Everyday (and How to Respond) “It is good to guard the secret of a king, but gloriously to reveal the works of God, and with fitting honor to acknowledge him.” – Tobit 12:7 How often do you acknowledge the works of God? How often do ...
06.17.2021 Why Christians Shouldn't Cancel People How should a Christian react to “cancel culture”? Chances are that if you’ve been on social media or listened to the news in the past year, you’ve heard of “cancel culture.” Cancel culture is that practice of boycotting a person ...
06.10.2021 Going to Confession for the First Time in a Long Time Learn more about the Pocket Guide to the Sacrament of Reconciliation with Fr. Mike Schmitz and Fr. Josh Johnson. Confession is a place of never-ending mercy and forgiveness and is one of the most beautiful parts of our Catholic faith. ...
06.03.2021 Are You Your Own Worst Critic? Why do we keep critics in our lives? You probably have someone in your life that seems to be on the hunt for anything they can criticize. It might not be a friend, a coworker, or a family member. It ...
05.27.2021 What Is Real Truth? What is truth? On this channel, we speak a lot about the teachings of the Church and how our society longs for these truths. But have you ever stopped and asked yourself what truth really is? There can be a ...
05.20.2021 What Does Surrender Actually Look Like? What does it mean to say that Jesus is the Lord of your life? We hear this phrase a lot in the Church, that Jesus is the Lord of our lives, that he has dominion over them. But what does ...
05.13.2021 What Should We Talk to God About? Everything. Should we really talk to God about everything? There are a lot of different kinds of prayers (liturgical, litanies, the rosary, the chaplet of divine mercy, etc.), but today Father hones in on mental prayer. Mental prayer—including lectio divina and ...
05.06.2021 How to Love Your Difficult Parents The Ten Commandments tell us to “honor thy mother and father”, but what does that really look like? Especially for adult children? Parents are not perfect, and sometimes they make mistakes that leave us and others wounded. So when God ...
04.29.2021 When Your S.O. Has a Different Vocation Than You “You are not an extra in someone else’s vocation story.” We all know breakups are tough, and most of the time they are occasions of intense sadness and hurt, but what happens when your significant other breaks up with you ...
04.22.2021 How to Question Your Faith Well The Catholic Church loves questions, but are we asking them for the right reasons? One of our Doctors of the Church, St. Thomas Aquinas, is known for asking the hardest questions we have for our faith. His summa is a ...
04.15.2021 The Key to a Happy Death The key to a happy death is not a long and fulfilled life—it’s a life of gratitude for the time given. Here’s why: We often forget that this life isn’t owed to us. Every breath we take is a gift ...
04.08.2021 When You Have to Go It Alone The Wednesday of Holy Week is known to many as “Spy Wednesday”, but it’s also known as the “Day of Aloneness.” The backstory behind this moniker can have a profound impact on the way we live our lives. There are ...
04.01.2021 Pray Like Jesus Prayed This Holy Week During Holy Week, as we contemplate the last hours of Jesus’ life, we get an intimate look at how Jesus prays to his Father. Starting with our Lord’s prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane, we hear Jesus talking to God ...
03.25.2021 Turn Your “No, But” into a “Yes, And” When was the last time you said “yes” to God? In improv, there’s a practice where participants are encouraged to never respond with “no, but” and to instead offer a “yes, and...” This allows for not only growth in the ...
03.18.2021 Blaming vs. Taking Responsibility “Blame keeps us stuck...Taking responsibility gives us the opportunity to move forward.” In our difficult, fallen world, we are bound to face struggle. Sometimes our natural response to that struggle is to blame other things or people for why it’s ...
03.11.2021 Why Did God Take On Our Humanity? Every Christmas we celebrate the fact that Jesus took on our humanity and became one of us. But have we ever asked the question why? Why the Incarnation? You’re definitely not the first to ask this question, and it’s a ...
03.04.2021 Does God Need Us to Worship Him? God is an infinite, perfect, communion of persons, responsible for the intentional creation of everything around us - which begs the question, if God is perfect, why does he need us to worship him? Well, he actually doesn’t. God doesn’t ...
02.25.2021 Setting Boundaries for Yourself and Others We often receive the behavior we are willing to tolerate, but what does that mean for our daily interactions? Communication is the clearest way to let someone know how you are feeling. When meeting with someone who you feel is ...
02.18.2021 Why Love Is More than a Feeling What if we were to make all our decisions solely based on how we felt in the moment? You may be familiar with the four types of love: eros (love of desire), storge (love of affection), philia (love of friendship), ...
02.11.2021 A Martyr for the Faith vs. a Victim of Circumstance What’s the difference between a victim and a martyr? A victim is always described as dying “of” or “from” something. But when you describe a martyr, you talk about what they died for. While a victim is hurt by something, ...
02.04.2021 Learning Detachment from Your Stuff Sometimes the things that we own end up owning us. Detachment prevents this from happening. You may have heard of the minimalist movement that focuses on only having the things you need, and letting go of the things you don’t. ...
01.28.2021 How to Keep Your Faith Alive and Growing Why is it easier to fuel our faith at retreats and conferences? Can we have this same fire at home? You can probably reflect on a certain moment or time period in your life that your faith seemed to flourish ...
01.22.2021 Are You Called to Be a Missionary? Are you called to be a missionary? You may be one already! Saint Francis Xavier and Saint Therese of Lisieux are co-patrons of missionaries, although they lived very different lives. While St. Francis traveled all over the world proclaiming the ...
01.14.2021 “Is This a Sin?” If you begin to sin but don’t follow all the way through… is it still a sin? It depends. We’re offered two different scenarios. In one, the person is prevented from sinning due to external factors that make it impractical ...
01.07.2021 What It Truly Means to Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin What do you think of when you hear the phrase, “Love the sinner, hate the sin”? To some, maybe it’s something that their parents would say to them when they heard them gossiping. Maybe it’s something you were taught in ...
12.31.2020 Struggle Is Necessary It may sound counterintuitive, but choosing the harder path may make our life easier. Here’s why: When caterpillars go into their cocoons for hibernation, they struggle against the barrier of the cocoon for months on end, trying to get out. ...
12.25.2020 If You Think This Year Was Supposed to Be Different We might have had different plans for this year, but were they really supposed to happen? We all wonder whether we’re actually following God’s will for us, but the reality is that, unless we are directly going against the Lord ...
12.17.2020 The Most Important Part of Any Conversation 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 ...
12.10.2020 Answering Your Questions About Mary and Her Immaculate Conception 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 ...
12.03.2020 When You Don’t Understand the Bible 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 ...
11.26.2020 The Absolute Necessity of Saying "Thank You" 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 ...
11.19.2020 Let Yourself Wrestle with God 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 ...
11.13.2020 Living Life Through the Lens of Scripture 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 ...
11.05.2020 The Virtue That Takes Virtue to the Next Level 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 ...
10.29.2020 Regret vs. Repentance 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 ...
10.22.2020 Why Married Couples Must Be Open to Children 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 ...
10.15.2020 Why You Can’t Put Your Faith in People 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, ...
10.08.2020 Why Are We So Divided Right Now? 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 ...
10.01.2020 Which Is Better? The Rosary vs. The Chaplet “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 ...
09.24.2020 Is It Ever Okay to Give Up? 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 ...
09.10.2020 The Real Answer to Why God Allows Suffering 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 ...
09.03.2020 What It’s Really Like to Be a Catholic Speaker 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 ...
08.27.2020 How to Get Real Friends 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 ...
08.20.2020 If You’re Not Feeling Loved 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 ...
08.13.2020 Freedom from the Fear of Death 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 ...

Older episodes

The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast

What's The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

The Fr. Mike Schmitz Catholic Podcast episodes:

Why God Allows Us to Learn from Our Mistakes

Why It’s Important to Have Good Friendships

What to Do When You Get Interrupted

Why Forgiven Sins Still Have Consequences

The Dangers of Complaining

How to See God in Everything, Everyday (and How to Respond)

Why Christians Shouldn't Cancel People

Going to Confession for the First Time in a Long Time

Are You Your Own Worst Critic?

What Is Real Truth?

What Does Surrender Actually Look Like?

What Should We Talk to God About? Everything.

How to Love Your Difficult Parents

When Your S.O. Has a Different Vocation Than You

How to Question Your Faith Well

The Key to a Happy Death

When You Have to Go It Alone

Pray Like Jesus Prayed This Holy Week

Turn Your “No, But” into a “Yes, And”

Blaming vs. Taking Responsibility

Why Did God Take On Our Humanity?

Does God Need Us to Worship Him?

Setting Boundaries for Yourself and Others

Why Love Is More than a Feeling

A Martyr for the Faith vs. a Victim of Circumstance

Learning Detachment from Your Stuff

How to Keep Your Faith Alive and Growing

Are You Called to Be a Missionary?

“Is This a Sin?”

What It Truly Means to Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin

Struggle Is Necessary

If You Think This Year Was Supposed to Be Different

The Most Important Part of Any Conversation

Answering Your Questions About Mary and Her Immaculate Conception

When You Don’t Understand the Bible

The Absolute Necessity of Saying "Thank You"

Let Yourself Wrestle with God

Living Life Through the Lens of Scripture

The Virtue That Takes Virtue to the Next Level

Regret vs. Repentance

Why Married Couples Must Be Open to Children

Why You Can’t Put Your Faith in People

Why Are We So Divided Right Now?

Which Is Better? The Rosary vs. The Chaplet

Is It Ever Okay to Give Up?

The Real Answer to Why God Allows Suffering

What It’s Really Like to Be a Catholic Speaker

How to Get Real Friends

If You’re Not Feeling Loved

Freedom from the Fear of Death

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