Last Tuesday night Stephen Littleton was a guest of our parish to launch the Stewardship Program. We started with a welcome from Fr Kevin who led us in the Stewardship Prayer. Stephen Littleton then took over and summarised Christian Stewardship. He said it is primarily a personal call to renew ourselves, a call to holiness, worship, and action. Having renewed ourselves over the years it may be easier to visualise as refreshing ourselves through our prayers, our efforts, and our sharing, in love, of ourselves with others. I see Stewardship as carrying on with that which Jesus asked of us when he said: “I have called you friends” and “I chose you, and I appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain; that whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he may give it to you.”
In this same spirit Stephen Littleton went over the recent history of our parish. What had been achieved in the way of bricks and mortar at our churches and our schools and what we needed to be concerned with in the future. Things such as the pastoral care of a much greater population, the foundation of one or more schools, increased ministry to the elderly and so many other functions required by a greater and greater community. All of which costs more money than we currently have. Our expenditure on maintainance, salaries, utilities, loan repayments etc is more than our envelope collection each week. Our average envelope amounts to $8.44. The message was that in order to meet our present costs and future expansion, we need to boost our income, but as followers of Jesus. We can’t get caught up in how little some give as that’s not our concern. Remember Jesus in Luke’s Gospel with his reaction to the widow who gave all she could, small as it was. Our reaction as the friends Jesus left behind to carry on as his stewards should first be to pray about it. Maybe we could ask what we should do, ask the Father for help. As Jesus said in the Gospel of last Sunday, “enter into your inner room……..and pray to your Father”. We will be answered in some way or other. It could be to take the message to others, to ask for the help of others, to contribute more ourselves, to pray more for the parish community, to put more effort in to the workload of the parish. We also evangelise by our example.
Stephen Littleton then threw the meeting open for questions and then Fr Kevin closed the meeting with a prayer.
Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish Sunbury 