A Steward makes God's love visible by imitating Jesus. Being a steward permeates everything we do, what we say, how we act. It is infused in our prayer and relationship with Jesus and one another. Everyone has a role to play in the building up of the kingdom, and nobody else can do it like you are called to! Stewardship, quite simply, is recognizing that everything we have and everything we are is a gift from God and being grateful and generous with those gifts. If we believe stewardship is just a fancy way a parish asks for more in the collection basket, Fr. Roman and our Parish Stewardship Committee are inviting us to take another look. Walk with us as we discover more fully how to answer God's call to live as faithful stewards and active disciples!
O Lord, giver of life and source of freedom,
I know that all I have received is from your hand.
Gracious and loving God, You call us to be stewards of Your abundance,
thecaretakers of all you have entrusted to us
Help us to always use Your gifts wisely and
teach us to share them generously.
Send the Holy Spirit to work through us,
bringingYour message to those we serve.
May our faithful stewardship
bear witness to the love
of Jesus Christ in our lives.
We pray with grateful hearts, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The Christian vocation is essentially a call to be a disciple of Jesus. Stewardship is part of that. Even more to the point, however, Christians are called to be good stewards of the personal vocations they receive. Each of us must discern, accept, and live out joyfully and generously the commitments, responsibilities, and roles to which God calls him or her. The account of the calling of the first disciples, near the beginning of John’s Gospel, sheds light on these matters. John the Baptist is standing with two of his disciples— Andrew and, according to tradition, the future evangelist John—when Jesus passes by. “Behold,” John the Baptist exclaims, “the Lamb of God!” Wondering at these words, his companions follow Christ. “What are you looking for?” Jesus asks them. “Rabbi,” they say, “Where are you staying?” “Come and you will see.” They spend the day with him, enthralled by his words and by the power of his personality. Deeply moved by this experience, Andrew seeks out his brother Simon and brings him to Jesus.
The Lord greets him: “You will be called Kephas”—Rock. The next day, encountering Philip, Jesus tells him: “Follow me.” Philip finds his friend Nathanael and, challenging his skepticism, introduces him to the Lord. Soon Nathanael too is convinced: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the King of Israel.” This fast-paced narrative at the beginning of John’s Gospel (see Jn 1:35-50) teaches a number of lessons. For our purposes, two stand out.
One is the personal nature of a call from Jesus Christ. He does not summon disciples as a faceless crowd but as unique individuals. “How do you know me?” Nathanael asks. “Before Philip called you,” Jesus answers, “I saw you under the fig tree.” He knows people’s personal histories, their strengths and weaknesses, their destinies; he has a purpose in mind for each one. This purpose is individual vocation. “Only in the unfolding of the history of our lives and its events,” says Pope John Paul II, “is the eternal plan of God revealed to each of us” (Christifideles Laici, no. 58).
Every human life, every personal vocation, is unique. And yet the vocations of all Christians do have elements in common. One of these is the call to be a disciple. In fact, we might say that to be disciples—to follow Christ and try to live his life as our own—is the common vocation of Christians; discipleship in this sense is Christian life. The other lesson that John’s narrative makes clear is that people do not hear the Lord’s call in isolation from one another. Other disciples help mediate their vocations to them, and they in turn are meant to mediate the Lord’s call to others. Vocations are communicated, discerned, accepted, and lived out within a community of faith which is a community of disciples (cf. Pope John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, no. 21); its members try to help one another hear the Lord’s voice and respond.