Stewardship Of God’s Grace

October 22: Wednesday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Ephesians 3:2-12; Canticle: Isaiah 12:2-3, 4, 5-6; Luke 12:39-48

Click here for the complete text of today’s readings.   

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support  Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life... Step Five)

 

Stewardship Of God’s Grace

 “My insight into the mystery of Christ.” (Ephesians 3:4).

Paul understood his ministry as a “stewardship” (oikonomia) of the particular insight into “the mystery of Christ” that was given to him. That insight was “that the Gentiles are coheirs [with the Jews], members of the same Body, and copartners” in everything given and promised in the Good News. Elsewhere he summed up the Good News in three words: “Christ in you.”

Paul’s responsibility as a “steward of the grace given to him” was to distribute to the world “the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27).

We are all stewards, all responsible for managing the particular insights into “the mystery of Christ” given to each of us. This is the “portion of food” that each of us as a “faithful and wise steward, whom the master set over his household” is charged to give to others at the proper time (Luke 12:42).

Jesus said, “Much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more of the person entrusted with more.” How much we know is not the issue; if we don’t share it all, we will be held responsible for dereliction of duty.

If we love God and others, the Responsorial promises we will enjoy sharing what we know.

PRAY: “Lord, let me “draw water joyfully from the springs of salvation.”

PRACTICE: Identify your special insights about the Good News. Share them.

Stewards Of Strategy

October 21: Tuesday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Ephesians 2:12-22; Psalm 85:9, 10, 11-12, 13-14; Luke 12:36-38

Click here for the complete text of today’s readings.   

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support  Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life... Step Five)

Stewards Of Strategy

“Kindness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss” (Psalm 85:10).

Zeal for truth can make us unkind, and thirst for justice violent. But Jesus came and “preached peace” to those both near to and far from truth and justice. He came to “reconcile both with God, in one Body.” How?

The key is, “through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”

We seek to be led by the Spirit, and to recognize how others both “far and near” are being led. The goal is united listening to the Spirit. Surrender, not victory.

We are stewards of this strategy. The reign of God has begun. There are no victories but his, won through obedience. “In him” we are all “being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.” The responsibility of those who know this is to stay aware of it and keep others aware.

How? “Kindness and truth must meet; justice and peace must kiss.” If we seek one without the other, we are “unfaithful stewards” of “the multi-faceted grace of God” (1Peter 4:10).

Pope Francis wrote: “Within the Church differing currents of thought in philosophy, theology and pastoral practice can enable the Church to grow, if people are open to being reconciled by the Spirit in respect and love (Joy of the Gospel 40).

The same holds for truth in general. Be open to everybody.

PRAY: “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.”

PRACTICE: Encourage dialogue.

October 20: Monday of Week 29 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Ephesians 2:1-10; Psalm 100:1-2, 3, 4, 5; Luke 12:13-21

Click here for the complete text of today’s readings.   

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support  Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life... Step Five).

Redeemed, Raised, Seated

“He made us, we are his” (Psalm 100:3).

Fear minus fright equals perspective. “Fear of the Lord” (a gift of the Holy Spirit) is not being scared of God, but having a keen sense of perspective: how big he is, small we are; wise he is, foolish we are; good he is, sinful we are; kind he is, selfish we are. This kind of fear is the “beginning of wisdom” (Psalm 111:10; compare Proverbs 9:10).

“Wisdom” (another gift of the Holy Spirit) is the gift of “seeing everything in the light of our last end” that gives us a “taste for spiritual things” (sapientia, wisdom, is from sapor, savor).

The readings urge the perspective of our past, present and future. We were redeemed by Baptism, our sins annihilated. We live now as the risen body of Jesus, to let Christ live and do “good works through us, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” Already, in God’s time, he has “seated us with him in the heavens.” The reward of victory is ours. But if we “store up treasure for ourselves but are not rich in what matters to God,” the Gospel says, “You fool, this night your life may be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?”

“Blessed is that wise steward whom his master finds at work when he arrives.”

PRAY AND PRACTICE the WIT prayer: “Lord, do this with me, in me, through me.”

Steadfast Stewardship

October 19: Twenty-Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time:

Isaiah 45:1,4-6; Psalm 96:1, 3, 4-5, 7-8, 9-10; 1Thessalonians 1:1-5; Matthew 22:15-21

(Click here for complete readings...)

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support  Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life... Step Five).

Steadfast Stewardship

“I have called you… giving you a title” (Isaiah 45:4)

The Responsorial invites us: “Give to the Lord the glory due his name! Bring gifts!”

What better gifts than the ones he has given us? How “bring” them better than by using them in his service?

God “called” each of us and gave us several “titles”: “son, daughter of the Father,” “prophet,” “priest,” “steward” (manager) of Christ’s kingship. Our all-inclusive title is “Messiah,” since by Baptism we “became Christ” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 795).

Paul gave “thanks to God” for the way the Thessalonians used their gifts of faith, hope and love: “calling to mind your work of faith and labor of love and endurance in hope of our Lord Jesus.”

“This is the work (ergon) of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (John 6:9). The “action” (ergon) of faith is to show love (agape) by “laborious toil” (kopos), and to persevere in it with steadfastness or “patient endurance” (hupomone) through the gift of divine hope and “expectation” (elpis).

This is stewardship.

This recalls the “steadfast love” of John 1:14, usually translated as “grace and truth” or, by the Jerome Biblical Commentary (1968), as “kindness and fidelity” (Hebrew: hesed, emet, Greek: charis, aletheia), adding: “These terms are the characteristic of the God of Israel’s covenant. In Exodus 24:6 they appear together as a virtual definition of God.”

Faithful stewardship is being like God.

PRAY: “Lord, keep me faithful!”

PRACTICE: Use your gifts. Persevere.

The “Messiah Team”

October 18: Saturday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II

Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist:

2 Timothy 4:10-17; Psalm 145:10-11, 12-13, 17-18; Luke 10:1-9

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life... Step Five).

The “Messiah Team”

“Your friends make known the glorious splendor of your Kingdom” (Responsorial).

The Messiah is a team: the body of Jesus with many members, each charged to act in a special way for the common good by using the “gift of the Spirit.”

Jesus sent seventy-two to announce the Good News as “evangelists” whose lifestyle—“no money bag, no sack, no sandals”—accredited them as “witnesses” (prophets). Their converts, to become disciples, needed “teachers.” To persevere and grow, they needed a community with “gifts of healing,” and various kinds of “helping ministries,” including “leadership” (1Corinthians, chapter 12). These are the “laborers” we “ask the master of the harvest” to activate in his Church. Unfortunately, though “the harvest is abundant,” Jesus said “the laborers are few.”

To remedy that, who needs to do what?

Most “vocation posters” are counterproductive. By only promoting priests and nuns, they reinforce the root of the problem, which is clericalism—the blindness that “overlooks the responsibility of the laity, grounded in their Baptism and Confirmation,” “neglects the formation they need to take on important responsibilities,” and “distances them from decision-making.” But “lay people are the immense majority of the people of God. The clergy are a minority ordained to serve them” (Joy of the Gospel 102).

So we need to focus on getting and letting the laity save the world.

How? It is spelled out in Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life…” A short, easy read.

PRAY: “Lord, send laborers; send me.”

PRACTICE: Check out www.immersedinchrist.org.

The Enemy

October 17: Friday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Ephesians 1:11-14; Psalm 33:1-2, 4-5, 12-13; Luke 12:1-7

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life... Step Five).

The Enemy

“Beware of the Pharisees” (12:1)

Jesus warned his stewards—that is, us—about what is probably the most serious threat to his Church: “Beware of the leaven–that is, the hypocrisy–of the Pharisees.” In Matthew (16:12) the disciples understood this to mean “the teaching of the Pharisees.” Are these the same thing?

Hypocrites pretend to be what they are not. Pharisees, without acknowledging it—even to themselves, in most cases—reduce religion to law observance. They serve the law, not God. This is idolatry.

By justifying blind conformity to the law, Pharisees—who fight against prophetic voices today as they did against Jesus and Paul—dispense themselves from taking responsibility for trying to understand God’s will. They avoid personal interaction with Christ—and with the other Christians they criticize. Phariseeism is hypocrisy because it is a way of life that pretends to be love of God while it is actually designed for and by those who want nothing to do with him.

Francis (Joy of the Gospel 93) calls it “a subtle way of seeking one’s own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.”

Since it is based on carefully cultivated appearances, it is not always linked to outward sin; from without, everything appears as it should be. But if it were to seep into the Church [and it has], “it would be infinitely more disastrous than any other worldliness which is simply moral.

PRAY: “Lord, give us your Spirit.”

PRACTICE: Act to keep Phariseeism from “seeping in.”

Project Managers

October 16: Thursday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Ephesians 1:1-10; Psalm 98:1, 2-3, 3-4, 5-6; Luke 11:47-5

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support Reaching Jesus... Step Five).

Project Managers

“His plan: to sum up all things in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:10).

Jesus warns unfaithful stewards: “This generation will be charged…! Woe to you, scholars of the law! You have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter.”

To be “good stewards of the multi-sided grace of God” (1Peter 4:10) every baptized one of us must:

1. enter into the word of God entrusted to our keeping;

2. “bring out of our storeroom what is new and what is old” (Matthew 13:52);

3. “give to God’s household their portion of food” in our time (Luke 12:42).

To us, gifted with faith in his words, “the Lord has made his salvation known”: his “plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.”

Knowledge is responsibility. We who know his plan must proclaim it and work to fulfill it.

First step: enter into the mystery. What does it mean to “sum up all things in Christ”? Think about that. It is our mission. How do we do it?

First, we have to bring everything in our own lives into clear and conscious relationship with Jesus. How do we interact with him in all our family, social, professional and political activities? Then, how do we as “stewards of his kingship” bring everything in the world under his reign, in recognized relationship to the Father?

PRAY: “Thy Kingdom come!”

PRACTICE: Learn, live and give.

Clear Choice

October 15: Wednesday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II

Feast of Saint Teresa of Ávila:

Galatians 5:18-25; Psalm 1:1-2, 3, 4, 6; Luke 11:42-46

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support Reaching Jesus... Step Five).

Clear Choice

“If we live in the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit” (Luke 11:46).

We have to choose our guidance system: the law or the Spirit. Paul says, “If you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.” But adds: “Those who belong to Christ have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.” The Spirit asks more than the law, not less. But treats us as partners of Jesus, not slaves.

When we were children, the law was our “pedagogue” (child-guider). But we needed to grow up. To only keep rules, stunts growth. Worse: it can set us up to hate the spirit of Jesus and close our minds to his Spirit. The Pharisees went from saying, “A good Jew keeps the Law” to saying, “Keeping the Law makes one a good Jew.” They killed Jesus for requiring more.

“Blessed the one who… delights in the law of the Lord and meditates on his law,” seeking to understand the mind of God. Meditation makes religion relationship, not just law-observance. We can only live in “grace” (divine life) by interacting personally with God in relationship, because God’s life is relationship, interaction between the Father, Son and Spirit.

Living by Law leaves God out of the picture. Though the laws come from him, we don’t have to go to him to keep them. That is idolatry.

PRAY: “Send forth your Spirit, Lord, and our hearts will be regenerated.”

PRACTICE: Find and obey God’s heart in every law.

Two Yokes

October 14: Tuesday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Galatians 5:1-6; Psalm 119:41, 43, 44, 45, 47, 48; Luke 11:37-41

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support Reaching Jesus:5 Steps to a Fuller Life... Step Five).

Two Yokes

“Do not submit… to the yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1).

The Pharisee was amazed that Jesus broke the law. Paul preached later: “Do not submit” to the “slavery” of keeping religious rules.

Yet the Psalm says: “Take not the word of truth from my mouth… and I will keep your law… walk in liberty… delight in your commands.”

The key word here is “truth.” Paul says: “You who are trying to be justified by law—who think religion consists in keeping rules—are separated from Christ, have fallen from grace.”

The “truth” is that we should keep the rules insofar as they help us live by the divine truth and love of the divine life we received in Baptism. Jesus applied this even to the Sabbath observance: “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath… If you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy…’ you would not have condemned the guiltless” (Mark 2:27; Matthew 12:7; see 9:11).

Pope Francis says Jesus and the apostles made “very few laws,” and Church laws today should be applied “with moderation,” rather than make our religion a burden or new slavery, because “God’s mercy wills that we should be free” (Joy of the Gospel 37, 43).

Christ’s “yoke is easy, and his burden light” (Matthew 11:30).

As “stewards of God’s manifold grace,” we are duty-bound to insist on freedom from inappropriate laws.

PRAY: “Lord, teach me mercy.”

PRACTICE: Look for truth and mercy in every rule.

The Sign Of Jonah

October 13: Monday of Week 28 of Ordinary Time, Year A-II:

Galatians 4:22-24, 26-27, 31-5:1; Psalm 113:1-2, 3-4, 5, 6-7; Luke 11:29-32

What is Jesus saying to us as stewards of his kingship? 

(To support Reaching Jesus: 5 Steps to a Fuller Life... Step Five).

The Sign Of Jonah

“Something greater than Jonah here” (Luke 11:32).

Jesus based his credibility on the “sign” of his resurrection, previewed by Jonah’s emergence alive from the fish after three days. But the similarity ends there.

“At the preaching of Jonah the people repented.” But “there is something greater than Jonah here.” Jesus preached repentance, but only as a preliminary to believing “the good news” (Mark 1:15). The Good News is not that Jesus calls us to stop sinning and live upright lives. What is it?

It is not “the wisdom of Solomon,” or having the right answers to all doctrinal questions. There is “something greater than Solomon here” also.

Those who preach and teach a Christianity of orthodoxy and orthopraxy (worth googling) are suppressing the Good News.

The Good News is the New Life, the New Law, the new wine that Jesus gives, made visible in his rising from the dead. It became ours when we were “baptized into his death… so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:3).

Jesus rose to "make all things new” (Revelation 21:5)—our goals and understanding of life; our definition of ourselves; of family, social, business and political life, and of “religion.” Those visibly renewed are “the sign of Jonah,” the Good News made visible.

PRAY: “Jesus, do this with me, in me, through me.”

PRACTICE: Say the WIT prayer (above) all day.