This weekend, throughout the Diocese of Richmond, we celebrate 200 years of so many countless hearts being moved like the heart of Jesus. That’s why this diocese exists at all — to allow everyone to encounter Christ and be moved by His grace to love and serve Him.

The only reason we have the courage at all to enter into this third century as a Diocese is because we are absolutely convinced: Jesus Christ is still on the move. 

Sometimes that’s hard to see, isn’t it? 

In today’s secular culture, it’s much easier just to stop moving. It’s more convenient to lay down and let our desires grow cold, to put the Lord’s will on the backburner. To try very hard not to draw any attention to our beliefs. To become passive, private Christians.

But Christ is still on the move! We do not serve a stagnant, archaic, old-fashioned, dead God. We love and worship a Savior who is alive and active and really present today!

Our faith is a gift. The fact that we have been “hired” by the Lord to go and work in His vineyard is not something that we came up with. Think about it this way: It’s not like the workers in the parable sent the landowner their resumés to apply for their jobs…

No, they were standing around with nothing to do, and it was the Landowner came and found them. He took the trouble to go out over and over and over, searching for workers. He found them — They did not find this job. He says to each one of them: “You too! Go into my vineyard.”

That’s all of us.

God found you, and He found me… standing around — whether it was when we were very young or very old or somewhere in between — And He said to each one of us: “You! I choose you. Go into my vineyard. You! Work with me. You! I want you on my team. Let me show you what you were made for, what this precious gift of life is for.”

I know I can speak for myself: If the Lord had not come in search for me, and picked me out, and personally called me by His grace: I would not be a priest right now. I would not have chosen this life… But I’m grateful He found me! And I’m grateful He found you.

Remember Jesus’ beautiful words in the Gospel of John: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain.”

We have each been chosen by a good and merciful God.. We have each been hand-selected, and it’s no accident that we are here right now.

God found us

I had dinner with some friends the other night who have five young children — four boys and one girl. I asked the oldest boy: “So, on an average day, how many times do you have to forgive your brothers? Maybe like seven times a day?”

He giggled hysterically and corrected me: “Noooo… a LOT more than THAT!”

So I asked him: “Ok, so how many times a day DO you have to forgive your brothers?”

At this, he scratched his head, thought for a moment, tallying everything up — and then said, with the profound wisdom only a child could reveal: 

“Every time.”

How many times a day should we forgive? Every time.

There’s no number. No limit. No conditional statements necessary. Just… 

Every time.

My parents recently set off their house alarm by accident. 

There was no intruder this time, and thankfully they were able to disarm the system before the cops and firetrucks descended on their house to apprehend the imaginary invader. But this image helps me make a very simple point:

We want security systems for a reason. We want our smoke-detectors to have fresh batteries for a reason. We want our credit card companies to have fraud detection for a reason. We don’t care if 99% of the time, we don’t need any of these things, or if we sometimes set them off by accident. We still want them there.

Why?

Because we want to be warned when something isn’t right. It’s in our best interest to know if there’s an intruder — or if something’s on fire — or if someone is on a spending spree in Hawaii with our MasterCard!

We see the obvious value in being warned about all those things — but what about the state of our souls?

Peter takes Jesus aside and, as we hear, begins to rebuke him saying: “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you!”

How often have we done this with the Lord? Whether it was the pandemic, or politics, or some other difficulty or crisis in our life, big or small — Haven’t we at some point taken Jesus aside to set the record straight: “Lord, what are you doing? Don’t you understand? This can’t happen like this!”

As he responded to Peter, so our Lord responds to us:

“Get behind me, Satan! — which means “Enemy,” or “Adversary.” You are an obstacle to me. You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

The original Greek phrase can literally be translated: You are a little tripping stone in my way, Peter!

That’s hard for us to hear. Really hard. But what Jesus says is always said in love. 

Think of it this way: Jesus says: “You’re in my way! Get out of my way, you enemy!” Well, where is Jesus going?

To the Cross. Jesus is on the way to lay down his life out of love for Peter. For you and me. For the entire world. Why would Peter want to get in the way of THAT? Why would he ever try to dissuade God from saving him?

GK Chesterton once quipped that “a key is above all things a thing with a shape.” He goes on to say: “The Christian creed is above all things the philosophy of shapes and the enemy of shapelessness.”

We really shouldn’t bother trying to reshape the Keys to the Kingdom to appear less strange, less abrasive, or less demanding — even if it’s done with the very good intention of reaching contemporary culture — because in reality, these Keys are made of hard, solid metal for a reason — They can unlock the timeless truths every human being desires to know:

Truths about God — About Who He is and how much He loves us — how far He is willing to go to save us.

Truths about ourselves — about what it means to be a human being created in the image and likeness of God.

Truths about how we are to live — about morality, ethics, rights and responsibilities toward God and each other.

Truths about what makes us truly happy — not only while we are here on earth, but for all eternity!

As we carry out the mission of sharing Jesus Christ with the world, it would do us well to simply let Jesus be Himself — His true, shocking, attractive self. He is, after all, the "first and greatest evangelizer," and though his methods often defy our worldly expectations — they work. They actually reach people’s hearts and call them to conversion.

We don’t need to smooth out the sharp edges of our Gospel proclamation in order to win hearts. In fact, just the opposite. Let Christ be Christ and let the Church be the Church! If we do that, following the Holy Spirit’s lead, doing all things in love — we can trust that our Risen Lord will gather all people to Himself.

Heaven is only for those who dare to love God. That’s ultimately what drew Mary our Mother upwards into the vaults of Heaven! So we have to consider: Heaven is for real — but are we really for Heaven? We probably like the sound of never-ending happiness — but do we also like the sound of being brought face-to-face with our Maker?

That’s what Heaven is. Perfect, unveiled union with Him.