Chapter IV: Stewardship of the Church
This week we are highlighting Chapter IV: Stewardship of the Church in the USCCB Pastoral Letter on Stewardship. This chapter explores how stewardship is expressed as a community or in solidarity with each other. Many of you reading this are stewards; you pray with us on Sundays, serve during Mass or volunteer in a program, and give generously to the Parish Mission. In times of trouble, struggle, joy, or anticipation, your Parish family surrounds you with the support and prayers you need. Here at Cathedral, we offer Mass intentions, post prayer request on the Cathedral Women Facebook page, offer service to the communion through the Knights of Columbus or CCCW, we educate our youth through the Parish School of Religion or Cathedral School, we support all these important ministries and more through the generosity received in the offertory basket or at our fundraisers. We are a stewardship Parish, which calls each of us to pray, serve, and give!
Excerpt from Stewardship: A Disciple’s Response, USCCB
The Eucharist is the great sign and agent of this expansive communion of charity. “Because the loaf of bread is one, we, though many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf” (1 Cor 10:17). Here people enjoy a unique union with Christ and, in him, with one another. Here his love—indeed, his very self— flows into his disciples and, through them and their practice of stewardship, to the entire human race. Here Jesus renews his covenant-forming act of perfect fidelity to God, while also making it possible for us to cooperate. In the Eucharist, Christians reaffirm their participation in the New Covenant; they give thanks to God for blessings received; and they strengthen their bonds of commitment to one another as members of the covenant community Jesus forms.
And what do Christians bring to the Eucharistic celebration and join there with Jesus’ offering? Their lives as Christian disciples; their personal vocations and the stewardship they have exercised regarding them; their individual contributions to the great work of restoring all things in Christ. Disciples give thanks to God for gifts received and strive to share them with others. That is why, as Vatican II says of the Eucharist, “if this celebration is to be sincere and thorough, it must lead to various works of charity and mutual help, as well as to missionary activity and to different forms of Christian witness” (Presbyterorum Ordinis, no. 6).