How magnificently rude Our Lord can be. He refuses Peter the luxury of comparison. Peter wishes to turn Christianity into a committee meeting about succession plans, personnel charts, and future projections; Christ turns it back into a pair of footprints on a shoreline. The Gospel ends not with a blueprint, but with a command: Follow me.
2. Meditatio
I spend an astonishing amount of time being concerned about things that are not mine to carry. I peer over Christ’s shoulder trying to glimpse the future as though salvation depended upon my administrative abilities. I ask who will continue the work I have begun, who will care for the sheep, who will remember these Lectio Divinas, who will carry forward the strange little works God has permitted me to attempt here at The Glenn.
I resemble a child anxiously attempting to hold up the walls of his father’s house while the father himself built the thing.
The terrible truth is that much of my “concern” is merely disguised vanity. I wish not only to follow Christ, but to guarantee the permanence of my own footprints in the dust behind Him. Yet Christ never commanded me to preserve the future. He commanded me to follow.
There is something deeply comic about a Christian worrying whether Christianity will survive after his death. The Church has survived emperors, heresies, plagues, revolutions, corrupt bishops, foolish saints, clever atheists, and even committees. It shall probably survive me.
The sheep at The Glenn teach me this lesson daily. I feed them, guard them, mend fences for them, yet they existed before me and will likely continue after me. The work belongs to God before it ever belonged to me. I am not the architect of the Kingdom; I am merely one laborer permitted to carry a brick for a little while.
And perhaps that is why Christ answers Peter so abruptly. Comparison paralyzes discipleship. Concern about another man’s road keeps me from walking my own. The question is never “What will happen after me?” but “Am I following Him now?”
For the Kingdom of God is not held together by my anxieties. It is held together by the risen Christ, who has already conquered death and therefore has no difficulty conquering my little fears about legacy.
3. Oratio
Lord Jesus, deliver me from the exhausting burden of trying to manage the future You never asked me to control.
When I become concerned about outcomes, remind me that You asked only for fidelity. When I compare my path to another’s, turn my eyes back toward Your footprints. When I fear that the work will die with me, remind me that it was never mine in the first place.
Teach me the freedom of holy smallness. Teach me the joy of carrying only today’s cross. Teach me to follow without demanding explanations.
And when my concerns multiply louder than grace, speak again those liberating words:
Modern man is perpetually concerned because he has mistaken himself for Providence.
He believes the cosmos to be a machine held together by his nervousness. He imagines that if he ceases worrying for ten minutes, civilization shall collapse like a badly stacked hay bale. Thus he spends his life anxiously rearranging deck chairs upon a ship commanded by Christ Himself.
The saint, by contrast, is not unconcerned because he is lazy; he is unconcerned because he knows God is alive.
A farmer plants seed without standing in the field screaming at the wheat to grow. A shepherd sleeps because he trusts both the fence and the dawn. So too the Christian must learn that concern is only holy when it leads to charity, not when it becomes a substitute for trust.
Christ did not tell Peter to understand the future. He told him to follow. And there is a marvelous liberation in discovering that discipleship is not a strategic plan but a pilgrimage.
5. Actio — In Light of Laudato Si’ and Synodality
In 1971, eight years after Pacem in Terris, Blessed Pope Paul VI referred to the ecological concern as “a tragic consequence” of unchecked human activity: “Due to an ill-considered exploitation of nature, humanity runs the risk of destroying it and becoming in turn a victim of this degradation”.[2]
A united couple (including children united to their parents) can better reflect and discern the way to make right choices and respond to the Pope’s invitation to grow in happiness and holiness. Since discernment is also grace (cf. 170), it is important to pray and to listen to God’s word (172). In their marriage, spouses have the grace available to grow in holiness together by their concrete testimony of life with their children and in their environment. GE insists on patience and perseverance, self-giving, tenderness and meekness, understanding and forgiveness, and sharing the sufferings of others. These elements help the couple and family to mature, flourish, grow in mutual love and advance in holiness. They foster a human and moral climate that enables the couple and family to contribute to the life of society and to care for our common home.
Pope Francis warned in Laudato Si’ that modern humanity suffers from the illusion of control — believing every uncertainty must be mastered through systems, predictions, and management. Synodality reminds me instead that the Church walks together not because we possess certainty about tomorrow, but because we trust the One who walks before us.
Action:
Today my action is this: to release one unnecessary anxiety about the future and replace it with one concrete act of faithful presence.
Perhaps that means feeding sheep instead of forecasting disasters. Perhaps it means praying the Rosary instead of doom-scrolling. Perhaps it means listening to another person without trying to solve their entire future.
Synodality is not collective panic. It is walking together while trusting Christ to remain Lord of the road ahead.
A song for the modern soul pacing circles in the kitchen of uncertainty. Christ’s answer to every spiraling anxiety may simply be: Follow Me first, and let tomorrow worry about itself.
A story about wounded people searching for meaning while trapped inside their own emotional concerns. The Gospel reminds me that redemption begins when I stop obsessing over everyone else’s story and finally answer Christ’s invitation in my own.
Most of my anxieties come from trying to manage futures God never placed in my hands. Christ did not command me to preserve the universe. He commanded me to follow Him today.
The Church survived before me. It will survive after me. My task is not control — but fidelity.
