October 5 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available Click Here: September 28 Homily audio
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Sunday readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at LinC Letter
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00 on Sat and 9:30 and 11:00am on Sunday.

Whose Life is it Anyway?

This is respect life Sunday in respect life month. It proposes that every human life deserves respect and defense due to the fact that life is from God, life belongs to God, God is life.  This fact is diametrically opposed to what the secular world's proposes:  that life is one's personal possession and success in life is pain-avoiding survival.

This Sunday's gospel parable teaches the virtue or vocation of stewardship, the life of a tenant or caretaker.  How would you be different in life if you believed that your life isn't yours, that your life is on loan to you by God?

Have you ever taken responsibility for something that wasn't yours?  What motivated your good care of someone else's stuff?

How would you explain this vocation of stewardship to an elderly relative who says that she "no longer wants to live her suffering life"?  How is it that so many pregnant women in our society today believe that the child in the womb is "theirs" to dispose of?

We as a Christian community have not evangelized our own membership to the Gospel way of stewardship (tending to God's gifts for God's sake). we need to reflect on the fact that "my marriage" as we often say, is God's, not ours.  My children, as we claim on our tax returns, are not ours. My body, as we mark it up with "a lot of ink" is not ours to do with as we like.

All these gifts belong to God and ought to be "handled with care" as if they we not ours.

What do you think?