As we are looking at the topic of stewardship in our parish these next several weeks, we have two great readings at our Sunday Mass which frame this topic. In our reading from the first book of Kings, there is a poor widow in desperate circumstance who is saving her last portion of flour for her final meal before she dies. However, Elijah asks her to use her last portion of food to make something to eat for him, telling her to trust in the Lord, that the Lord will take care of her. In the Gospel, in the midst of the scribes wearing luxurious robes and sitting in the places of power and honor, using their position to take advantage of the poor and the vulnerable, a poor widow very generously puts her livelihood, two small coins, into the Temple's treasury. We see the trust, generosity, and humility of these poor widows in our readings this Sunday. What they give is a sacrifice to them, but they give with joyful hearts.
Our Little Burgundy Book reflection for the Sunday of the second week speaks about the term generosity, how it its derived from a Latin word that denotes a person of noble birth. So, one interpretation would see generosity as bestowing our own riches and treasures upon another person. But are those riches really our own? The faith perspective of stewardship sees everything as rightfully belonging to God: our time, our riches, our talents, our gifts, all that we have no matter how we got those things. It is interesting that in Spanish, there is not really a word that translates directly to English word stewardship, so I have to find a creative way to describe stewardship to our Hispanic community here at St Jude. In all that we have: How are we stewards of all those things on God’s behalf? That is a question each one of us can answer.
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