Catholic Stewardship Formation Reflections

Saint Elizabeth Roman Catholic Church

Formation in Catholic Stewardship

Pastor’s Presentation: January 7-8, 2006

It was clearly intended as a criticism, but I took it as a backhanded compliment!  Last November, around Thanksgiving, one of the members of our parish stewardship council was speaking about our new church to friends from another parish.  One friend said with more than a little sarcasm:  “All they do up there is stewardship!”  When I heard the comment, I thought to myself: “Would that it were really true that all we do up here at Saint Elizabeth is stewardship.  Amen to that!”

I suppose what the complainer actually meant is “all they do is collect money without providing much pastoral service,” since many people hear stewardship and think fund raising or more collections.  But responsible stewardship entails much, much more than simply donating money to one’s church or favorite charity. 

Consider for a moment the words of Saint Paul in today’s second reading, when he speaks to the Ephesians about  “the stewardship of God’s grace given to me for your benefit.”  Paul is clearly not talking about money.  He is speaking about his own role in the mystery of salvation made known in Jesus Christ, his responsibility to participate in God’s plan for the salvation of all.  Paul’s stewardship has everything to do with how he lives out his faith in Jesus Christ as Risen Lord, and how others’ lives are enriched by Paul’s giving of himself in imitation of Christ.  Stewardship is rooted in Christian discipleship, in how you and I live as twenty-first century followers of Jesus Christ.   Stewardship is a way of living like Jesus so that others come to believe in him.

Catholic Stewardship is certainly not new.  Since the publication of the American Bishops’ 1992 pastoral letter, Stewardship: A Disciple’s Response, Catholic churches all across the country have developed stewardship plans for their parish communities.  A good number of you are already somewhat familiar with stewardship from your experience in another parish, including our neighbors at Saint Joseph in Downingtown, Saint Eleanor in Collegeville, or Saint Aloysius in Pottstown.

Here at Saint Elizabeth, our stewardship council has been working for quite some time to design a plan of formation in Catholic Stewardship specifically tailored for our own parishioners.  This formation plan is intended to deepen the spiritual foundation which motivates the many concrete forms of stewardship service in which parishioners are already involved and to encourage all our parishioners to make a personal commitment to a stewardship way of life.

I have invited members of our council to speak after Communion at each Mass over the next several weekends. I have asked them to offer short reflections which will help us all to develop a better and more complete understanding of stewardship.  They will speak about what it means to be a Catholic believer; about what Catholic Stewardship really is; about what it means to be a stewardship parish; and about what stewardship means in our daily lives.  Their oral reflections at Mass will be presented in a more complete form in our weekly parish bulletin and on the parish website.  

I encourage you to listen to our stewardship speakers at Mass, to read the printed material with attention, and to talk about stewardship with your family members, adults and children alike.  As you learn more about stewardship in the weeks ahead, I ask you to pray with me and to pray with one another.  Ask the Holy Spirit to motivate and empower all of us to deepen our shared commitment to be faithful stewards of the abundant gifts God has given to us here at Saint Elizabeth, so that we become ever more active participants in the mission and ministry of the Church in the world. 

Yes, it’s true: “all we do up here at Saint Elizabeth” is stewardship.  Like the magi of today’s gospel, we bring our gifts to our Newborn King, Jesus Christ, to be shared with others, both within and beyond our parish community.  May we be good stewards of God’s abundant gifts!

Saint Elizabeth Roman Catholic Church

Formation in Catholic Stewardship

Reflection 2: What Does It Mean to Be a Catholic Believer?

January 14-15, 2006

When faced with the question “what does it mean to be a Catholic steward” the members of the stewardship council realized that first we should define what it means to be a Catholic!  It sounded easy enough: “Catholic” means “go to mass on Sunday and receive Holy Communion.”  Done.

Once we realized that this wasn’t going to cut it, we turned to reading and reflecting and came to the conclusion that in its most basic terms, it is simple after all:  All who call themselves Christian share one simple belief – that salvation comes from the divine life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Scripture tell us that God wants a covenant, a relationship, with the people He created.  Therefore, living out our Catholic Faith must begin with developing a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and with participation as a member of the full body of Christian believers – the church itself.  We commit to cherishing our beliefs and living them out by our actions, in everyday activities.  There is no aspect of our daily lives from which our faith can be excluded.

By our baptism, we have become members of the body of Christ.  To be members requires action. One form of action that we take as a community of believers is to participate in the sacraments.  By gathering around the table at Mass, we experience “God with us” in two ways each and every week.  First, in the very act of gathering, for Christ promised  “where two or three are gathered together in my name there I am in their midst” (Matt 18:20).  And Second, in the Eucharist itself, when we receive the Body of Christ.  We receive the Holy Eucharist with the hope that each one of us can become more fully the body of Christ – that our hands will act as Christ’s hands in this world, that our words deliver Christ’s message.

At Mass, during the Profession of Faith, we pray: “We believe in one, holy, catholic, apostolic church.”   This statement of belief stresses several other important aspects of our Catholic Faith.

One: The notion that regardless of how many individuals, parishes and local churches make up the Catholic Church,  we are one with a common purpose, as Saint Paul affirms: “... so too we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.”  (Romans 12:5)

Holy:  Flawed though we are, we Catholics acknowledge that all humanity, created in the image of God, is essentially good. This is the basis for the value we put on human life and the dignity of every human person. Pope John Paul II put it this way:

“The vocation to holiness, that is, the perfection of charity is the basic charge entrusted to all the sons and daughters of the Church.” (CL,16)

Catholic:  The word catholic simply means universal, including the whole without limit or exception.  Our faith is just the opposite of exclusionary. Our faith especially demands that we actively seek to change the circumstances of the poor and promote justice in the treatment of all the members of the human family.

Apostolic:   While still on earth, Christ called together a community of faith founded on Peter and the other apostles. As the successors of the apostles, today’s bishops, assisted by the priests and deacons of each diocese, act as shepherds of the Christian community.   As members of the Body of Christ, lay people are also called and sent into the world as missionaries – actively helping others to discover or re-discover the Catholic Church under “Christ’s headship.”

To be an active faithful Catholic is a tall order, but we are blessed with a perfect role model in Mary our Mother.   Though fully human, Mary epitomizes trust in and faithfulness to the will of God.  Isn’t that, after all, what we are really called to be while we live on earth?

Saint Elizabeth Roman Catholic Church

Formation in Catholic Stewardship

Reflection 3: What is Catholic Stewardship?

January 21-22, 2006

The term “stewardship” is frequently misunderstood in contemporary Catholic parish life.  For many people, it just sounds like another term for fund-raising.  But stewardship embraces all aspects of spiritual giving, too.

Without realizing it, many of our parishioners already engage in stewardship throughout the course of an ordinary day:  holding a door for someone, sending a get-well card, or volunteering at a charity bake sale.  These may sound trivial, but all are examples of stewardship, for in its most basic form, stewardship is simply the act of taking care of what has been entrusted into one’s care.

On a deeper level, Catholic Stewardship is a way of living as a disciple of Jesus Christ.  It shapes one’s whole life,  and it entails a real conversion of mind and heart to a new way of understanding one’s life.  Stewardship begins with the recognition that all we have is really a gift from God, not the product of our own accomplishments.  And our generous God expects us to return a generous portion of His gift to us by sharing our time, talent, and treasure with others.  So stewardship calls us to develop a need to give, rather than merely giving to a need! 

Catholic Stewardship is not simply about something we do, but rather it is about who we are.  The spiritual way of living called stewardship can be identified in five steps: