Casting Out Fear

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...

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 ov...

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,...

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 o...

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? Th...

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...

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 e...

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.

The "Cancel Culture" is a misguided quest for “perfection.” We tear people down for disappointing us — For not being pristine and sinless. Why? Because human beings rightly want Perfection. They rightly desire Truth. They rightly desire Goodness. They rightly desire Beauty.

Jesus comes to us through Mary. You can’t have Jesus, the Son, without Mary, the Mother. It’s not biologically possible — nor is it spiritually possible. They come as a unit. To separate them would be far more deplorable than the glass window and 6-feet that separated me and my Grandma yesterday morning. Simply put: You can’t socially distance — or spiritually distance — Jesus from his Mom.

We need the gift of a radical, expectant faith. A faith that hopes against all hope: A faith that assumes that God will in fact be God.

Believe it or not, your NOTHINGNESS is a precious gift to Jesus, because precisely through that Nothingness, the Victory is totally HIS and not yours.

What can one prophet do against such reckless hatred of God? Wouldn’t it be easier to just make it four hundred fifty-one prophets of Baal? Wouldn’t it be easier to bend the knee to an idol? But no. Prompted by the still small voice of God, Elijah rides out to meet the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel head on.

God, who is in Himself Love on a mission … is on a mission to love you.