From the Pastor – 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time
From the Pastor – 27 th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Our readings today show us that living a stewardship way of life — a life focused on serving God and His Kingdom — is not easy. They also show us that our lives belong to God, not to us, and that God will indeed bring about the fulfillment of His kingdom. We just need to have faith that He can do it and commit to our small part in His grand design. This is both our privilege and responsibility as Christian stewards.
Jesus makes this privilege and responsibility clear in today’s Gospel passage from Luke. When the apostles ask the Lord to increase their faith, He tells them that even a mustard seed-sized faith is all that is needed to move mountains (because it is God who does the heavy lifting). We need only take the tiniest step forward, and He will do the rest.
But living our lives in His service is also very much our responsibility, as Jesus explains through the parable of the unprofitable servant later in this passage. Our Lord describes a scene in which a servant has just come in from tending to the master’s affairs and asks whether it would be reasonable for the master to begin waiting on his servant. Of course, it would not be reasonable! The servant would be expected to continue to serve his master until he has completed the work the master has given him that day. Jesus says we should have this same attitude before God.
The time, talents, and treasure entrusted to us are all God’s. Our very lives belong to Him. Whatever we do on God’s behalf with our lives and our gifts is simply our God-given responsibility.
The stewardship way of life makes the privilege and responsibility of serving Christ and His kingdom a reality. © Catholic Stewardship Consultants
Pastoral Pondering – Once again we, as a Church, celebrate Respect Life Sunday. While great strides have been made in our defense of human life, much still needs to be done. The culture of death continues to fight for supremacy and, sadly, many places are embracing it fully. The following is offered by the USCCB to commemorate this special observance this year.
From the time we are knit together in our mothers’ wombs until we take our final breaths, each moment of our lives is a gift from God. While every season of life brings its own challenges and trials, each season also gives us new opportunities to grow in our relationship with God.
“Hold fast to the hope that lies before us. This we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm.” Hebrews 6:18-19
Today the gift of life is threatened in countless ways. Those who are most vulnerable, rather than receiving the protection they deserve, are all too often seen as a burden and as expendable. As new attacks on human life continue to emerge, we can be tempted to despair, but Christ instead offers us unfailing hope.
Hope is not false optimism or empty positivity. Christian hope is something much more profound and goes to the very depths of our identity as followers of Christ.
Hope is the virtue “by which we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ's promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit” (CCC, 1817).
Like us, Christ entered the world through the womb of a woman. He willingly experienced the fullness of human suffering. He breathed his last on the Cross at Calvary in order that He might save us. Therefore, “God is the foundation of hope: not any god, but the God who has a human face and who has loved us to the end” ( Spe salvi 31).
Christians know “they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness” (SS 2).
For this reason, a woman experiencing a difficult pregnancy can find the strength to welcome her precious child into the world. A man facing a terminal diagnosis can see that the end of his earthly life is only the beginning of eternal life with Christ.
The Church teaches us that “the one who has hope lives differently” (SS 2). Christ’s promise of salvation does not mean that we will be spared from suffering. Rather, the promise of salvation ensures that even in the darkest moments of our lives, we will be given the strength to persevere. By virtue of this Christian hope, we can face any challenge or trial. When the seas of life swell and we are battered by the waves, hope allows us to remain anchored in the heart of God. May we hold fast to Christ our hope, from the beginning of life to its very end.
NABRE © 2010, CCD. Used with permission. Catechism of the Catholic Church, second edition © 2000 LEV-USCCB. Used with permission. Excerpts from Spe salvi, © 2007, Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission. All rights reserved. Copyright © 2019, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Washington, D.C.
All rights reserved. Reprinted (excerpted) from Respect Life Program © 2019, USCCB, Washington, D.C. All rights reserved.