Pastoral Plan
Parish Index	Church Index	School Index	Children Prog	Youth Prog.	Pastoral Plan Index

CELEBRATING OUR FAITH,

ENRICHING OUR COMMUNITY,

SHARING OUR GIFTS

• • • • • • • • •
Goal #3 of St. Perpetua Pastoral Plan:

REALIZE THE POTENTIAL OF PARISHIONERS BY UTILIZING THEIR TIME AND TALENT  

                  The third goal of our Pastoral Plan invites us to consider how we are spending our lives in the Lord’s service. Goal #3 states: Realize the potential of parishioners by utilizing their time and talent. In other words we are challenged to look at our talents and gifts, our time and our treasure to assess how generously and willingly we are placing them at the service of God’s Kingdom in our vocation as Christians. Faith-filled people can’t get enough of God. They’re ready and willing to offer the totality of their lives so that God can take them and use them. Listen to this Vision Statement crafted by the U.S. bishop’s committee on stewardship: A Total-Stewardship parish is alive! It is a prayerful, welcoming, Eucharist-centered community with a common vision: God is the Source of All. Its members are committed to furthering the word and work of Christ by caring for each other and all God’s creation. In gratitude, they joyfully give back a portion of their God-given gifts of Time, Talent and Treasure. Wow! That’s a pastor’s dream come true. That’s what the Pastoral Council is trying to foster through their efforts of bringing together all your ideas and dreams into Mission and Vision statements and a strategic plan for our parish.

                   The reality of our lives, however, is far from this idealized vision, as inspiring as it is. How often our hearts and minds, even our bodies, are on the other side of the coin? That place of frustration and even despair that the prophet Habakkuk bemoans in the first reading: How long, O Lord? I cry for help but you do not listen! Why so you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery? In our struggles to be faithful disciples, we often must endure periods of time, some quite short and others unbearably long, when we feel abandoned by God. Those times are difficult under any circumstances. When we’ve been intent on serving God with genuine devotion, such times are really trying. Those are the times we would we expect God to be there for us, to feel his presence.

                   Those difficult times aren’t restricted by age either. Teenagers often search frantically for meaning and identity; people in midlife crises may desperately question their life choices; the elderly can feel that everything they have held dear is either taken from them or is slipping away. A marriage can be challenged by infidelity and a spouse’s entire life feels like it’s crumbling. Illness strikes indiscriminately and death’s shadow looms over all. Each week, as I try to bring comfort to those who have lost a loved one, or in visiting a hospital room where the limitations of life are exposed and raw, I share with many of you the frustrations and pain that confront us all. Finally, we all know the tedium of life. We’ve all been worn down by it, tempted to give up, too weary to go on. Those are the moments when we stand before the doors to faith and despair, trying to decide through which one we will pass.

                   Jesus offers us, at those times and at all times, the gift of faith: If you have faith the size of a mustard seed… Once we accept that gift, we also accept the challenge and responsibility that comes with it, bearing our share of the hardship the gospel entails, as Paul reminded young Timothy. Accepting our role as servants of the Lord who are merely doing our duty as required by the Lord. I think that the Pastoral Council wisely phrased the strategy for Goal #3: Discern and understand the obstacles to fuller participation in the life of the church and invite parishioners to respond to each one’s baptismal call. What are the obstacles in your own pathway when it comes to sharing in the life of the parish? For making faith the mainstay of your daily living? For some it’s frustration with the universal Church; for others it may be a problem with the pastor or staff. For most it’s a lack of time. Discerning the obstacles to fuller participation is a very personal question. Only you can answer it for yourself, but a better understanding of genuine stewardship can help us in our examination.

                   Stewardship is not a sometime ‘thing,’ but a constant ‘theme.’ It recognizes that our lives are a gift from God, and the proper attitude for a gift given is gratitude and thanksgiving. Gospel stewardship is a puzzle made up of four pieces. The first is acknowledging God as the Source of all things. As pilgrims on this earth, we come into the world with nothing and we leave this world with nothing. All is God’s; all is gift. We hold our possessions, our talents, our energies in trust during our earthly sojourn. The second piece of the puzzle is gratitude. God doesn’t need our thanks. However, as human beings, as people of faith, as disciples of Jesus, we need to express our gratefulness for the many blessings we have received. The third puzzle piece is accountability. So many stories of Jesus in the gospels contrast the faithful and the unfaithful steward. Both are required to use their master’s property wisely and well. The message is clear: God demands an accountability for the gifts we are allowed to use between birth and death.

                   Finally, there is a fourth piece to the puzzle. We learn from the scriptures an important lesson about stewardship: Jesus expects some kind of yield on his investment in us. Recall what happened to the steward who buried the talent he had received and simply gave it back to the master upon his return. As Christ’s disciples we have an obligation to use God’s gifts and talents responsibly, develop them to their full potential and return them “with increase.” The United States bishops in their pastoral letter on stewardship a few years ago put it very succinctly and accurately: A faithful steward is one who receives God’s gifts gratefully, cherishes and tends them in a responsible and accountable manner, shares them in justice and love with others, and returns them with increase to the Lord.  This is a much more expansive definition than looking at stewardship in a parish as only financial contribution. If we do that we run the risk of losing the connection between genuine Christian stewardship and all aspects of our daily lives. But when we say that stewardship is an attitude of mind and heart – a way of life – we open ourselves to the possibility that stewardship will influence everything that we say and do – not just the way we spend our time, talent and treasure.

                   Our challenge was beautifully summed up as we sang the refrain of our opening hymn: Let us bring the gifts that differ and, in splendid, varied ways, sing a new Church into being, one in faith and love and praise. 

[Based on Sunday Scriptures: Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4; 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14; Luke 17:5-10]

Fr. John Kasper, OSFS