St. Philip Catholic Church: Good morning. It's good to be with you finally. My name's Father Mark Knowtee, and I'm not gonna get into my whole story. I think there's a bio somewhere on the website. I'll let you read that. it's a long story. I've been all over the place. But it's good to be back to the Diocese of Nashville. This is where I started as a seminarian for two years and then God called me to religious life to Omaha. So that's why I was up there. Grew up in a very German Catholic traditional Catholic family. when I was serving, we were still doing the Latin and all the incense. And then my parents got involved in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal. So I grew up with the traditional and I grew up with the charismatic. They go together. Stop this nonsense about this versus this. It's all of the Holy Spirit, right? So that's a little bit about myself. One of the things you may have to get used to when I preach, I like to interact And I think I think that's because all the assignments I've ever had, I had a school. This is the first assignment. I don't have a school. Well we do have the learning center. So I'm glad I'll get to be around some of the kids and but with the kids you gotta interact or you'll lose them. But you're you know, it's like a principal once told me, don't be fooled by the adults. They're they're just kids in big bodies. So I like to interact, I like to ask questions, I like to try to get you to raise your hand. If you don't want to, that's not your style, that's fine. So just I may throw you off sometime. So I'm gonna start with this. Who's tired of being tired? Raise your hand. Who's tired of being tired? Yeah, you find yourself tired a lot? Yeah. And what's look at look at what's what's what's the big thing on the market, right? What's the latest energy drink or the latest pill I can get to get energy, right? Well, Jesus, we don't need any magical pills. We got the Holy Spirit. That's the greatest, you know. You want energy, or do you want the one who creates energy? I want the Holy Spirit. He's uncreated energy. And Jesus teaches us today. Everything Jesus teaches, He models it himself through his own lifestyle. He says, Come to me. Where's the where's it at? Here we go. Here we go. Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Saint Augustine, after his conversion, one of my favorite quotes from Saint Augustine, he says, My heart was restless until it rests in thee. He was a restless soul. Some of you here this morning, you're restless, full of anxiety. Some of you here this morning, you have a hard time going to sleep at night. Any of y'all have a trouble with that going to sleep? You don't have to raise your hand if you don't want. But sometimes we we're so burdened with so much we worry. Got any worry words here? Some of you worry we worry too much. So he teaches us here's the way you find rest. First of all, come to me. When I give spiritual direction, or if I'm in the confessional, somebody will be sharing their struggles with me, and I'll say, Have you brought that to the Lord? They'll look at me like I'm from another planet. no. Well, come to me. Come to me with your burdens. Come to me who all of you who labor. He's not talking about just your physical work. We labor, we strive, we labor in so many ways, we strive so much to be good, and God's telling us it's not about striving, it's about surrendering. It's taken me years to learn this, and I'm still working at it, I'll work at it the rest of my life. The key in the spiritual life is surrender. Come to me. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. He wants us to learn from him. Learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for yourselves. Come to me. Psalm 46, verse 11 says, Be still and know that I'm God. Bring me your burdens. What is burdening you? What's weighing on your heart right now? One of the best ways you can unburden your hearts is to go to regular confession. Regular meaning at least once a month. Saint Pope Paul John Paul II and Saint Teresa of Calcutta, Mother Teresa, when they were living, people would ask them, How often should I go to confession? They both said, a minimum, once a month. Even if you haven't committed mortal sin, we should go on a regular basis. Why? To unburden yourself. With the guilt and the shame and the that's what sin does it bur it weighs you down, it makes you tired. And we're tired because we're trying so much, we rely too much on ourselves. It's called self-reliance, which is the fruit of pride. And Jesus is teaching us in today's gospel the pathway to finding rest and peace in your life. Is the pathway of humility. That's why surrender is so difficult for us. Because we struggle with pride, don't we? All of us struggle with this stuff. St. Paul in the second reading today, he talks about this battle between the flesh and the spirit. My flesh wants to call the shots. My flesh wants to be God. My flesh wants to carry the burdens. It's a false humility and it's wearing me out because of it. Whereas the Spirit, which is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Christ living within you and me, his desire is to surrender it all to him. Just as Jesus' whole life, his whole life was surrendered to the Father. Jesus never did anything outside of his relationship with his father. Remember last week's gospel at the storm at the sea? Remember that story? No? You remember? Where was Jesus in the boat? Where in the here's all these waves crashing away. Where was Jesus in the boat? He's resting. He's going through a storm. See, God wants to teach us how to find rest. Even in the midst of the storms of your life, you can find rest when you turn your eyes to Him and stop looking at your circumstances around you and focus on Him. Jesus is your rest. He wants to unburden you. Some of you here have been carrying a lot of stuff for a long time, and He says, That's enough. At every mess, place your burdens on this altar. I'm gonna hold up the precious blood a little bit longer today for you so that you can place just place all your burdens in that in his precious blood. Place everything that's burdened you in that chalice and just tell Jesus, Jesus I'm gonna give you I give you all my burdens. I give you my marriage, my family, my finances, everything that I worry about and stay up at night. I give it all to you. And at the end of Mass, I'm not going to go back to the altar and take it with me. When you bring it up here, you leave it here. And then go into your day. How many of y'all heard of the surrender novena by Father Rulatolo? Anybody ever heard of Father Rulatolo? How many raise your hand if you ever heard of the Surrender Novena? Raise your hand real high. Some of you have. I never heard of it until about ten years ago. I wish I'd known about it in my last parish when I was a pastor. I was so stressed out. I had health issues, I had a mild heart attack, just from the stress of being a pastor. And then I learned this novena. Somebody gave me this novena and I sleep at night. I go to bed at night and I say, This is your parish. There's too many of these people, just one of me. I'm going to bed. Good night. And if people complain, they complain. And my problem is I tend to be a people pleaser, and I'm learning to get over that too. You will not please everybody, right? And the antiphon in that surrender surrender noveno says this. It says, Jesus, I surrender myself to you. Take care of everything. The key word there, everything. Take care of me. Take care of my wife, my husband, my finances, take care of it. I'm going to bed. And I'm not gonna worry about it. If they complain, they complain. I'm gonna do best I can. And if we learn to surrender, and it's all grace, so ask the Holy Spirit, give me the grace to surrender my life. Jesus says, Take my yoke upon you. What is this yoke he's talking about? It's the yoke of submission. He's saying, Submit your life to me. Surrender your lives to me and let me carry you. Let me take care of you. See, Jesus wants to carry you. He wants to carry that's what he did on Calvary. And that's what he does at every mass. He wants to take the everything that's burdening you. The scriptures tell us he took upon our infirmities. He wants to take upon your infirmities, your sickness, all of it. Because that's who he is. He's love incarnate. He wants to unburden you and give you his peace and rest. So, how many of y'all are ready to let go? How many of you are ready to let go and like God? How many of y'all are tired of being control freaks? Raise your hand. I'm going to raise both of mine up. Yep. I'm so tired of being a control freak, trying to fix everybody, fix myself. Lord, it's wearing me out. I learned my lesson, Lord. I am not God. You are. So I give it all to you. And man, I've found so much more peace in my life. So much more resp but I have a long ways to go. I've I'm still fight things, I still it's it it takes us a lifetime. So whatever you're carrying, give it to him. And he'll give you his peace and his rest.