Father Larry Richards challenges men with question: When people look at us, do they see Jesus?
Reading from the First Letter of John, Fr. Larry pointed to the call for a person who claims to abide in Christ “to conduct himself just as he did.” For Fr. Larry, that meant setting aside the urge to promote an opinion, a group or even a conference.
“We have one thing to push. Jesus Christ. Period,” he said. “A lot of people push their agenda instead of Jesus.”
He aimed some of his sharpest words at men who post political opinions on Facebook. “Nobody’s going to change their life ’cause they read your Facebook post today,” he said. “The only thing that matters is Jesus.”
A witness people can recognize
Fr. Larry told a story of an American prisoner during World War II who shared his food with a tortured Japanese prisoner held in the same cell. When the American believed the man was dying, he spoke to him about Jesus. Fr. Larry recounted the Japanese man’s reply: “If this Jesus Christ is anything like you, I can’t wait to meet him.”
“People must be saying that about us,” Fr. Larry said. He asked whether a man’s neighbor, children or wife could say the same thing.
He followed with a story about a child who prayed that her mother would be as nice to people at home as she was to people at church. Fr. Larry turned the question toward the men in the room: Could their children ask God to make their father as kind at home as he was at a men’s conference?
“We are called to be Jesus. First of all to our children, first of all to our wife, first of all to the people in our life, but then to everybody else,” he said.
Read the Gospels with one question in mind
Fr. Larry gave the men homework: Read all four Gospels, starting with Matthew, two chapters a day. He told them to pray to the Holy Spirit and keep a journal called “Getting to Know Jesus.”
“Do you really know Jesus? I mean know him,” he asked. “You might know about him.”
As they read, Fr. Larry said, they should focus on Jesus: “What does Jesus say? What does Jesus think? What does Jesus do?” He urged them to write down what they find and pray, “Jesus, make me like you.”
He used Matthew’s genealogy to explain why that attention matters. Jesus entered a family marked by sin and struggle, Fr. Larry said, and entered the human mess rather than separating himself from it.
“First of all, it means that Jesus enters into my mess,” he said. “And then, what does he want me to do? Enter into the mess of others.”
Pray for the people you are tempted to judge
Fr. Larry described a caller to one of his EWTN programs who said he would refuse to attend his cousin’s church wedding because the couple was living together. Fr. Larry asked the caller to fast on bread and water every Friday for the six months before the wedding and pray for their conversion. The caller hung up, Fr. Larry said.
“We love to stand back in judgment of the world,” he said. “Would you sit there and fast for them to come to conversion?”
He tied that challenge to Jesus’ death for sinners. When people want to fight the darkness of the world, Fr. Larry said, they should ask how Jesus dealt with sin and hatred: “He died for it.” He called on the men to be willing to sacrifice for people who hate them, rather than stand apart from them.
“Do you pray and hope they get to sit next to you forever in heaven?” he asked of the people who have hurt them most.
Pray, love, witness
Fr. Larry closed with an order of action for men who want to bring others to Christ: “You got to pray for them, you got to love them, and then you got to witness to them.”
He told them to make a list of at least three people and pray over their names every day. Then, he said, they must love those people where they are, without conditions. Witness comes after that, through a personal account rather than a warning about someone else’s sins.
“Your job is to say this is what Jesus has done for me and this is what Jesus can do for you,” Fr. Larry said. “It’s a witness.”
He ended where he began, urging men to get themselves and their opinions out of the way so that Jesus could work through them: “We need to pray for them, love them, and witness to them.”
This talk is one of many from the Heroic Men: Future of Catholic Men 2026 Convocation. Get the replays and the PDF ebook free, here.