of Gratefulness and Stewardship…
After my stewardship report of a few weeks ago, a parishioner put it upon herself to start the “21 Club” to help reduce the deficit. In her own words, she said: “All I could think was this, if 21 people gave $1000 it would cure the deficit. If 42 people gave $500, if 84 people gave $250 we could reduce the deficit. I know people from St. Ann’s have big hearts and are very generous.” So she sent some emails to people in her address book and encouraged them to forward on to others, and already a few people have made that generous pledge. (Thanks so much!)
I confess, I was not expecting anything like that. My ‘ask’ in the stewardship report was not about ‘curing the deficit’ (though that never hurts) but about people looking to what God has given them and, on an ongoing basis, to up their weekly contributions at whatever level they feel God allows them to do so. (And if every family who uses envelopes could increase their weekly donation going for-ward by $5 per week, that would indeed go far to put our parish/school on stable footing.)
That being said, Stewardship at its heart, is less about ‘curing deficits’ and more about making an act of faith and a gift of love to the God who has been so good and generous to us. It is one way we acknowledge to our God that “everything we have has been given to us…our time, our work and leisure, our talents and skills, our family and friends, and our financial and material resources. When we joyfully return our gifts to God with gratitude, we come to realize that we are His sons and daughters, and we deepen our love for our brothers and sisters.” That is why I invited people to a prayerful discernment of an ongoing gift in-stead of a one-time gift – it is a concrete way to put our faith into action and to remind ourselves on a regular basis how good God is always to us.
Don’t get me wrong. I am VERY grateful to those who stepped up to the plate and made that sacrificial gift. Those gifts will help to replenish our cash reserves depleted by last year’s deficit. And whether you increase your stewardship to God via the one time extra large gift or a weekly extra ongoing gift, the result is the same. So thanks for all who have indeed made a pledge to increase their stewardship – by either the 21 club or your weekly parish envelopes.
People of St. Ann, indeed, have been very generous in responding to the invitation to increase their stewardship. Once we have a month’s worth of collections in as our ‘sample size’, I’ll let you know where we are at. In the mean time, as we hear in today’s gospel, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s but to God, the things that are God’s.” Matthew 22:21