Fr. Mike Schmitz was a headline speaker the evening of Thursday, July 18, at the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis. (Photos by Kathleen McGillis Drayna)

Everyone knows the greatest love story ever.

But it’s not enough to know something. Knowing God doesn’t save the soul. Only loving God can do that.

With his signature rapid-fire, razor-witted locution, Fr. Mike Schmitz — a priest of the Diocese of Duluth who has risen to national fame for his podcasts with Ascension Press — took the stage on the second night of the National Eucharistic Congress to examine the difference between ignorance and indifference.

“The title of this talk was given to me. It’s called ‘The Greatest Love Story,’” said Fr. Schmitz. “Here’s my promise to you. Tonight, I’m not going to tell you anything you don’t already know.”

Fr. Schmitz framed his talk in the context of the Road to Emmaus, where Cleopas and a companion (“We’ll call her Mrs. Cleopas,” he quipped) encounter the risen Christ but do not recognize him.

Cleopas and his companion are amazed to hear that this stranger has not heard the story of what happened in Jerusalem, and they quickly tell him — Jesus the Nazarene, a great prophet, someone they had hoped was the Messiah, was executed.

“Here’s the deal. Cleopas and Mrs. Cleopas, they knew. They knew that Jesus was a prophet mighty in deed and word. They knew that Jesus was arrested by the chief priest and elders. They knew that he was crucified. They knew. And Jesus says to them: ‘You’re stupid,’” said Fr. Schmitz. “I’m paraphrasing.”

So Jesus — who they still do not recognize — leads them through the Scriptural foreshadowing of the Messiah, who is time after time referred to as a sacrificial lamb, one who must suffer.

“They knew the story,” said Fr. Schmitz. It was a story that began with goodness: “In the beginning there’s God and he’s good. And this good God made this world good.”

But then came the fall — when man “took our ability to be like God … and we broke the world by sin.”

The first sin wasn’t a mistake, Fr. Schmitz noted. “A sin isn’t a mistake, a sin isn’t ‘I broke a rule,’” he said. “A sin is this: ‘God, I know what you want. I don’t care. I want what I want.’ And that’s what (Adam and Eve) did. They did what they wanted and it broke the world.”

Adam and Eve had knowledge. It didn’t save them. Their action “broke our relationship with God and each other,” said Fr. Schmitz.

What resulted was an “unbridgeable gap between God on one side and humanity on the other,” said Fr. Schmitz. “And no matter how hard humans could strive, no matter how many good things human beings could do, we couldn’t do anything to get from our side to God’s side. And Cleopas and Mrs. Cleopas knew this. And they thought that Jesus would be the one to be able to restore it all. But they knew the story — he was a prophet mighty in deed and word, but then he was executed. ‘We thought it would restore it all … but he was executed. We had hoped. But now we know.’”

So, Jesus has to continue on to the story of Abraham and Isaac, and then on to the story of Joseph, through Exodus and the Israelites’ escape from Egypt, all the way up to John the Baptist, who proclaimed upon seeing Christ, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world” — and finally to Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered Jerusalem on the same day that the Jews were bringing the sacrificial lambs into the city for Passover.

“This is the story you already know,” Fr. Schmitz said again to the crowd.

Finally, Christ makes the connection for Cleopas — it was not an execution on Calvary. It was a sacrifice. It was the bridging of the gap between God and man. It was the sacrificial lamb offering up “his Body, Blood, soul and divinity to the Father in loving sacrifice, in loving obedience — because that’s what happened, right? It was our disobedience; we said, ‘God, I know what you want. I want what I want.’”

Throughout the entire Eucharistic Revival, the Church has been talking about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, said Fr. Schmitz.

“Amen, yes. Jesus is truly present, Body, Blood, soul and divinity in every Eucharist, in every Mass, in every tabernacle around the world,” he said. “Is the point of the Mass the presence of Jesus? No. It’s the presence of Jesus that makes the point possible.”

The Real Presence, said Fr. Schmitz, is enormously important. “I’m not minimizing that,” he said. “But just like the Incarnation makes the sacrifice possible, the Real Presence makes the sacrifice possible. We fall into a big trap when we say, ‘The point is that you’re here,’ or ‘The point is I get to receive you.’ Those are amazing things. But what saves us is the sacrifice of the Body, Blood, soul and divinity of Jesus to the Father in humble obedience.”

Ignorance of the Real Presence is a problem, Fr. Schmitz acknowledged. “But I wonder if our problem is deeper than that. I wonder if our problem is what Jesus said in the Book of Revelation. Chapter two — he’s talking to the church in Ephesus, and he says this: ‘Hey, church in Ephesus’ — that’s a paraphrase — ‘I know your works and your labor. I know your endurance and that you cannot tolerate the wicked. You’re doing great. You’re doing the right things … you have suffered for my name. Good job.’ But then he says: ‘Yet this I hold against you. You have lost your first love.’”

Sometimes the problem is ignorance — “I don’t know.” But most often, said Fr. Schmitz, the problem is indifference — “I don’t care.” Just like Adam and Eve.

Too often, said Fr. Schmitz, as Catholics, “We say: ‘We have the Real Presence, we have the Real Presence, we have the Real Presence.’”

“We know. We just don’t care,” he said. “If the remedy for ignorance is knowledge and the road to knowledge is truth, the remedy for indifference is love. And the road to love is repentance.”

Even the most faithful and observant Catholics are at risk for “losing their first love,” said Fr. Schmitz — and it will leave them as blind as Cleopas and his companion, who knew so well a story they could not understand, about a man whose face they couldn’t even recognize.

“So here’s the big question,” he said. “If you’ve lost the fire of your love — this is the question for every one of us to ask (ourselves) — what are the fire extinguishers in my life?”

These fire extinguishers can be “big, big sins,” he said. But more frequently, “it’s those small things that we settle for.”

“Here’s the invitation for all of us,” said Fr. Schmitz. “Tonight, identify what are the fire extinguishers in your life. The Lord is present among us. I don’t need more knowledge. But I need more love.”

No one should plan to return from the National Eucharistic Congress to the same life they led before, said Fr. Schmitz. Like Cleopas on the road to Emmaus, the pilgrims of the congress have had their eyes opened. They have knowledge.

But knowledge never saved anyone’s soul.

“I can’t expect to take the fire of this weekend and bring it back to my home if I’m cramming it into the life I just left. Something has to change. Someone has to redecorate my home. We have to do some remodeling,” said Fr. Schmitz. “I cannot fit the fire of God’s love into the life I left behind. I can’t return and expect that flame to keep growing. I have to identify those fire extinguishers. I have to repent. Because I need love.”