A Word from your Pastor - November 16

Dear Parishioners:

This week we hear about the call to Stewardship.  This is a universal call, sent out to all of us as individuals and collectively as a community of disciples.  What we have received we are to give as a gift.  As a sign of our acknowledgement that we are grateful for what we receive from God, we give first to God and to His Church.  This is the Biblical concept of Tithing – giving to God first from the fruits of our labor.  We give to God from our first and best, and then apply ourselves to other responsibilities.  Of course our current culture has this backwards, telling us always to be “looking out for number one,” namely ourselves.

We are called to share our Time, our Talents and our Treasures.  The measure of our giving is not so much an external yardstick as a check of our interior attitude.  “God loves a cheerful giver.”  (II Corinthians 9:6-7)  We make choices about our sharing of ourselves in friendship and relationships of all kinds.  The attitude of a Steward is the realization that all belongs to the Master and that we are making use of something that ultimately is on loan to us.

November reminds us first of the Communion of Saints.  Then it invites us to be thankful.  The weeks ahead will be full of activities that prepare us for family celebrations of the holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day – and that call to mind memories of past seasons.  May we be ever mindful of our duty to be stewards and disciples, ready to return in gratitude to God what we have received.

Last weekend, we had seven teams of New Evangelizers walking our neighborhoods.  They went out full of zeal and returned in jubilation.  We thank the seminarians of the Josephinum for their efforts in our parish and we are grateful too for those who have responded from among our parishioners to join them in walking or to pray for their success.  The Gospel is alive and it is being taken to our streets.  May it continue to grow in our hearts.

New Evangelization Door-to-Door Ministry

St. Timothy Church

November 9, 2014