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CATHOLIC STEWARDSHIP FROM SUNDAYS READINGS

On this, First Sunday of Lent, we are called to continue our 40-day Lenten journey with most of it before us. For us it is 40 days of preparation for the Resurrection of the Lord, during which we are called to prepare through prayer, penance, repentance, almsgiving, and self-denial. Traditionally, we, as Catholics have tended to focus on the denial aspects of Lent — that is, we give things up; we make an effort to make sacrifices, particularly in the area of foods, to give ourselves a sense that Lent is a time when we need to show these signs to God that we are willing to avoid things we like as a tribute to the Lenten season — to the fact that Jesus made the supreme sacrifice for us.

However, in recent years, even though these kinds of self-denial are important, it is equally essential that we make active efforts to deepen our faith, to gain a greater understanding of what it means to truly believe.

From a stewardship outlook, every day is filled with temptation. There is the temptation to view our many gifts as ours, not God’s. While we are tempted to share what we see as feasible after we have met our own needs and wants, we should be focusing on sharing our first fruits.

Jesus was confident in His Father; He trusted Him and was thus able to resist the temptations presented Him by the devil. We need to develop that same kind of trust. The last sentence of the Gospel makes it clear that the devil is not done with the Lord, nor with us: “And when the devil had tried every temptation, he departed from him for a while.” It is “the while” against which we need to be prepared.

Copyright © 2013 www.TheCatholicSteward.com

CATHOLIC STEWARDSHIP FROM SUNDAYS READINGS

Each of the readings for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time makes reference to people being “called.” Of course, each of us is called by God to be a disciple. The challenge for us is to hear that call, understand it, and then to respond to it with action.
The first reading from Isaiah reminds us of a hymn based upon that reading most Catholics have sung and heard for the past few decades — “Here I am Lord.” The hymn portrays Isaiah’s response to God calling him. The lyrics in the refrain, known to many, are “Here I am Lord. It is I lord. I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, where you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.”
The Gospel from Luke is a story known popularly — of how Jesus told Peter and James and John to go out in Peter’s boat and fish again, even though they had caught nothing previously. The catch was enormous and it was a changing point in the vocations of those men. They were fishermen, and had probably been fishermen since they were boys. Fishing was their vocation, but Jesus called them to something higher — to be “fishers of men,” and they responded by changing vocations from fishermen to apostles — messengers.
Some of us, like Isaiah, are called to vocations of discipleship which function parallel to our life’s vocation, our jobs. Others, like Peter, are called to lifetime vocations — holy orders. The point is not which vocation we follow — it is that as good stewards we recognize we have a vocation — a role — in building the Kingdom of God. Are we prepared and are we responding in the way we should?  “Here I am Lord… I will go, Lord, where you lead me.”

Copyright © 2013 www.TheCatholicSteward.com