Blog & Pastor Letters

When a church is raising funds for a new building or a diocese is launching a stewardship appeal, there is usually someone — or several someone’s — who serves as the face of the campaign. Maybe it’s a married couple, or a family, or a group of folks who have been particularly active in the community and can speak to the worthiness of whatever endeavor is being undertaken.

Perhaps this Lent you are working hard to stick with your devotions, avoid hamburgers on Fridays, and fight your temptations for soda since you gave it up for Jesus. You are planting seeds in your spiritual life in hopes of growing them into something beautiful and meaningful. However, you have been trying this approach now for many years, and it is hard to say that much has grown during all that time. You could deduce that what you are doing is not as worthwhile as you once believed. There is no fruit because these things don’t matter. Or you could take a real hard look at your life, see where you are planting those seeds, and finally notice what the problem has been all along. WEEDS!

Where do you live? I live in North Carolina. There I pay taxes, own a home, and belong to a parish. North Carolina is in the United States, so I also abide by federal laws, pay taxes, and vote for candidates in all sorts of elections. I identify as an American and try my best to meet certain expectations placed on me by the government, state, and fellow Americans. I do certain things because of my identity.

Lent calls us into deeper everyday stewardship because it beautifully creates opportunities to be mindful of the call of Christ in even the most mundane moments of our day.

Many of us will participate in the time-honored tradition of doing penance, or “giving something up” for Lent. When we do this, we are mimicking the Israelites who filled their baskets with the first fruits of their harvest, “and having set them before the Lord, your God, (bowing) down in his presence” (Deuteronomy 26:10).

Grocery delivery apps are all the rage these days, and I can’t deny the convenience of tapping your finger a few times and seeing your week’s shopping dropped on the doorstep. But there is one aspect of this trend that seems to make a lot of shoppers nervous — fruits and vegetables.

I sometimes spend more money than I should. I make decisions based upon my wants and not my needs. Those actions can create a financial difficulty or circumstance where more sacrifice is needed. Instant gratification or selfish impulses can create havoc in one’s bank account, marriage, or family. All these issues to deal with simply because I wanted what I wanted and I got it. Yes, it sounds like the actions of a child.

When I was a child, I often thought of the Church as something mystical and supernatural. I wasn’t wrong in my understanding of the Body of Christ, for surely the Church has these characteristics. However, even though we speak about the foundation of all we are as Church being the “mystery of Christ,” Jesus became a man so that supernatural element could break into the natural world in a profound way. What we once could not see, we now see. What we saw as a God in a distant place now dwelt among us. It is one of the aspects of Catholicism that I have grown to appreciate the most as I have matured: for a Catholic, the supernatural is natural. The communion of saints is heavenly and earthly at the same time.

Early on in my work in parish ministry, I had to deal with a tough human resources situation, letting some staff members go and stepping into a role that demanded more of my time and energy.

In moments like this, stewardship can feel burdensome. Things take a turn we didn’t expect, perhaps in spite of our best efforts. Maybe more is asked of us than we want or feel prepared to give.

The value of stewardship living is difficult to see unless we are experiencing that way of life for ourselves. You can read 100 Everyday Stewardship reflections and go to church every Sunday, but unless you are actively growing in faith and trying to live a life of generous stewardship, you cannot see the power of such a lifestyle. Like most things, we need direct, purposeful experiences to really understand.

A young couple in my parish told me they were expecting their second child, a baby boy. I knew that their five-year old only child Emma had been desperately wanting to be a big sister for years, so I said, “Emma must have been so happy when you told her the news.” “Actually,” they said, “she burst into tears. She wanted a baby sister!” How often in life God wonderfully fulfills our desires and we are sad because we don’t approve of the way he does it. We want to control the gift and the delivery method.

There are close to 7.6 billion people currently on earth. That is a lot of people! If you try to estimate how many people have collectively been born since the beginning of time, a good guess is 108 billion! It is hard to contemplate that many distinctly different human beings created by our God. In the midst of all those people, where do you and I fit? Can we really be created to make a difference in the world? One can feel very small and insignificant when reflecting on the numbers.

Perhaps you’ve heard this story, often attributed to the life of St. Teresa of Calcutta. A sick man asked her this question, as he marveled at her tireless service to himself and others in the name of someone named Jesus Christ.

“He is nothing like me,” the saint is said to have answered. “But I hope I am like him.”

“The Story of the Other Wise Man” by Henry Van Dyke was first published in 1895. It tells the fictional story of Artaban, a fourth wise man who began a journey to visit Jesus, the newborn King. Unlike his fellow Magi, he failed to make it there for the birth of Jesus because he kept pausing to help various people in need. In fact, it took him about 33 years of searching before his quest comes to an abrupt end when he is hit in the head with a falling roof shingle. His final breath takes place in Jerusalem near the place where Jesus is being crucified. As he lies dying, he hears the voice of Jesus telling him that the gifts he has given all along the way to “the least of these” he has actually given to Jesus himself.