TEN registration scholarships are available to attend the Region IX Stewardship Conference, Year of Faith, being held Friday, April 19, at the Savior Pastoral Center in Kansas City, Kansas. This is a great opportunity for you or your parishioners to deepen their understanding of Stewardship.  This year there are TWO Keynote addresses: Msgr. Gregory Mikesch from the Archdiocese of St. Louis will be the morning keynote speaker with his session “The Grateful Heart has been touched by Love”.  The afternoon session will be Casting Nets (Tony Brandt & Christ Stewart) who will speak on “Sharing The Faith with The Seven Pillars of Evangelization". Mass will be celebrated with the Region IX Bishops at 11:45 a.m. Please contact Syndi in the Stewardship office at 785-827-8746 for detailsand for information on scholarships. Click here for the brochure.  This conference is open to all Priests and laity of the Diocese.  You can register online at www.dcdiocese.org/stewardship

Experience of God is about extremes because it is an experience of infinity. God’s love for us knows no bounds. Its highest expression, in physical terms, was the cross. It is interesting that the only way God could show us the height of his love and of his glory was through one of the lowest, cruelest forms of capital punishment ever devised.

Meditation on the cross has always been central to Christian prayer. One can never exhaust its meaning. The cross is extreme. It demonstrates a divine life laid down for people whom Jesus called friends, not slaves. It was laid down freely, willingly, out of love, by a compassionate God in order to free humans from the trap of sin that they had set for themselves.  The crucifix is central to the liturgy. Every altar must have a crucifix. It can be placed on the altar, be the processional cross or be on the wall behind the altar. It serves as a reminder of what we are celebrating at the altar, the sacrificial death and resurrection that redeems us and calls us to everlasting life with God.  Created in God’s image, we are called to the same extremes of love. The spontaneous compassion we feel for suffering people around us is but a sign of that divine spark that ignites our hearts and motivates us to act. That is part of our human nature. However, our Christian faith impels us beyond that spontaneous human response toward a more divine one. 

By Jane Rutter

Director of Stewardship and Planned Giving

Diocese of Jefferson City, Missouri

You never know where life will take you, how one opportunity or one decision will change the course you are on and render obsolete the singular vision you have adopted as the path to fulfill your purpose. This is the way of Jesus.

When he says, “follow me”, he is offering us the chance of a lifetime.  Drop your nets - whatever it is that scoops you up and catches you in its clutches – and begin this great adventure of awakening the Spirit of God in those you meet.  Come walk the dusty roads, come knock on doors, come offer Light to all.

There is a stirring in our souls that yearns to be called, to be inspired, to throw out all the useless stuff we have gathered and time we have wasted and say “Yes” to Christ.  “Yes, I will come and follow you.  I am done possessing. I am finished with time.  Come and fill my anxious, tired heart. Let me give as you have.”

The Catholic historian Gary Wills once defined Christianity in America as a battle between the head and the heart.  On the one hand you have the rational faith of the founding fathers, Transcendentalists and the Social Gospel, and on the other you have the tradition of emotional spiritual renewal as embodied in the Great Awakenings, evangelicals, and charismatic movements.  Both impulses play out over and over again in our history, says Wills.

But in the last twenty-five years, I would argue that American Christianity has moved away from the head and the heart to a battle between the tongue and the feet.  The explosion of the internet, talk radio, and other interactive media has produced an endless stream of talking about religion.  Sadly, most of this talking (and often yelling) has involved explaining why the speaker is right and everyone else wrong about matters of faith and church.

The result of all this chattering has been the diminishment of the religion of the feet, of going out and living our faith in meaningful ways.  Why participate and risk the wrath of the tongues ready to dissect your every action and to call any gesture into question?

Jesus had the same problem.  His every act of mercy and grace met with a choir of tongues happy to inform him of what was wrong his behavior, his ministry of the feet.  Healing a man with a life-long physical disability? Sorry it’s the Sabbath (Matthew 12).  Having your busy feet anointed in an act of sacrificial love? What a waste of the budget (Mark 14, Luke 7).  Going out to eat with tax collectors and other low-lifes? We don’t even know where to begin (Matthew 9).

It is a happy coincidence that we are beginning our shared reading and reflection on the U.S. bishops’ pastoral letter, “Stewardship, A Disciple’s Response” this week. I call it a happy coincidence because this week happens to be Vocation Awareness Week as well.

When we think about stewardship we may think of many things. It is an unfortunate but undeniable fact that most people probably think first about money. One of the things that we probably do not think about at all, however, is vocation, that is, God’s call. But this is where we have to begin. Christian stewardship flows from our response to Christ’s call to discipleship.

Jesus said, “I came that they might have life, and have it more abundantly” (Jn 10:10). Jesus calls us by name to live the life God deeply desires for us. God creates us for life — a full, rich and abundant life. Though sin has brought disorder into the world and into our lives, Jesus comes to redeem us and calls us through faith to live life with new eyes and a new heart. The call to discipleship opens new horizons and possibilities for those who accept Jesus’ invitation to follow him.

Of course, we can reject his call as the rich young man does in St. Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 19:22). He turned his back on Jesus and “he went away sad.” We can choose to go it alone. Our choices have consequences, however, both for ourselves and for others. The first responsibility of a Christian steward is to be accountable to Jesus for our personal calling in life, our vocation, our call to discipleship. Do we respond with the readiness of Mary of Nazareth or with the indifference of the rich young man?