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Get into the ring! How this works...

This is easy! Each week on Thursday I post my homily idea...my main focus for preaching this coming Sunday. What I am hoping for is a reaction from people in the pews. Does my "focus" connect with your daily life, faith, and experience? Or not? Either affirm the direction I am going in (by giving me an example from your life) or challenge me, ask for clarification! Questions are the best! Reaction rather than reflection is what I'm looking for here. Don't be afraid, get in the ring. Ole!



Saturday, September 21, 2013

Homily Prep September 22

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
 -This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
 -I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00 Sat, 8:00 and 12:30 on Sunday

Handle with Care!

Do you have the experience of  tending or caring for something, a gift, that is or was obviously God's?  This is stewardship.  How did your recognition of that gift as belonging to God affect the way you "tended" to it?

What if you recognized more and more of your life and experience as gift of God?  You might more and more handle all of life as a good steward....with tender care.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

How beautiful.
Your words are so true to my heart as when I saw God hand me the most precious gift in this world, a gift that is His, handing it me so gently, so lovingly for me to care for, I treated that gift with such sacredness, such gentleness, such love and continue to share it with Him.

anon 1 said...

When the second of our two children left home for college – leaving our nest empty – I wept. I wondered if I had done everything I could do as a mother. Was I the best for our children that I could be in that limited time of them being in our care – or had I taken them and that time with them for granted?

Relationship to my children serves as good reflection material for me when I analyze my role as a steward of God’s creation. While I know they are treasured possessions of God’s, I love them as if they are my own! I am grateful for them in my life; I care for them and continue to nurture them in whatever ways a mother can positively support grown adult children.

So, when I heard the Matador’s reflection about stewardship, that image came back to me of my reaction when our second child left home. It encouraged me to remember that if I’m not careful, it is possible to take for granted the “prized possessions” in my life – and the cost of that is great. I do believe that everything in life is “gift” – and the challenge before me is to remember to see it all as such. I am considering this role of steward that the Matador describes as one filled with responsible and loving action. Do I enthusiastically care for these gifts in my life? Do I cherish and cultivate them? Am I grateful for them? Do I hoard them for myself – or do I share them, and even give them away, so that others around me can also be drawn into the goodness of God through them? That last challenge is perhaps the hardest one for me, yet it’s only by all of those stewardly actions that these gifts of mine can be effective in bringing about the Kingdom right here and now.

JoyFuralle said...

Like your focus, very different take on this Gospel. And ten bucks bets you half the Church can't define mammon.

Stewardship seems to be a newer word in the Catholic life...don't know that it's understood; and definitely not understood or lived as the USCCB writes.

Love the TLC. And that same ten bucks bets you that sentimentality/emotion will be remembered over stewardship.