From the Pastor - 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time
The four pillars of parish stewardship are hospitality, prayer, formation, and service. Today’s readings show us the immense value of prayer and the privileged place it must have in our individual lives and in our parish community.
Our Lord Himself calls us to prayer — and persistence in prayer — in the Gospel passage from Luke. Jesus tells the parable of the nagging widow who finally wears down the judge with her unrelenting persistence in her pursuit of a just ruling from him on her behalf. Jesus goes to great lengths to describe this judge, saying he “neither feared God nor respected any human.” Yet even this corrupt judge responds with a just judgment because of the widow’s persistence.
Jesus uses this outlandish example to draw a vivid contrast between a reluctant, dishonest judge and our loving, all-merciful Father. If even a bad judge will give a good result in response to a persistent request, how much more (infinitely more) eagerly and perfectly will our good Father respond to our persistent prayers to Him.
If He delays in responding, if He provides a different response from the one we were expecting, we can remain confident and trusting in His goodness, knowing that His response, whenever it comes and in whatever form, will be the very best one for us.
Our job then, as Christian stewards, is simply to remain faithful to our relationship with God through prayer. We must lean on each other in our communities — family and parish — as we support each other in prayer. A strong pillar of prayer will make all our other our stewardship efforts fruitful.
© Catholic Stewardship Consultants, 2022
Pastoral Pondering
October is the month of Our Lady of the Rosary. Our Lady is both mother and intercessor. It is her maternal role that makes her especially powerful in the protecting of human life, especially the life of the unborn. Hence, October is also dedicated to the protection of human life. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision corrected the errors and poor jurisprudence of Roe vs. Wade and Planned Parenthood vs. Casey; however, it certainly has not eliminated the scourge of abortion in our country. Last July North Carolina Governor Cooper signed an executive order to make our state a “sanctuary for abortion-seekers.”
Recently those in the pro-life movement have been pointing out that our battle to defend the defenseless must move to the local level. It is also important to remember that defending life is much broader than simply abortion. Pope Francis made this point in Laudato si. We must realize that defending life is also about fighting the toxic culture in which we are living. Encouraging faithful Catholics to become active in local and state government, including school boards and town councils, is essential in pushing back on “the forces aligned against us” (see Eph. 6:12).
Faithful citizenship comes in many forms. Far too often we expect that “someone else will do it,” but, in truth, it is up to each one of us to bring the Gospel to bear on daily life, and to start transforming the culture slowly but surely.