Fall Finance & Stewardship Sermon (33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time)

Dominica XXXIII per Annum C

Fall Finance & Stewardship Sermon

17 November 2019

 As a Pastor it is necessary for to me to speak from time to time about the material needs of the parish.  We can all agree it is not the most exciting topic.  Yet it is important to do.  In fact, it is a reality that the ancient Church knew and understood too.  Did you notice the second reading today (2 Thess. 3:7-12)?  It’s the very reason for today’s second reading.  St. Paul writing to a community, the Thessalonians, to speak to them about the practicalities of their common life together, and how it should be orderly.  Therefore, he needed to confront some of the disorder that was in that community.  Some are trying to eat for free, he said.  Others are not keeping busy but are acting like busybodies.  And so, his direction is work quietly and eat your own food!  I try to follow the pattern of giving a major address on parish finances and our stewardship of treasure a couple of times a year: in the early spring and again in the early fall.  I have delayed the fall talk until now so that we could first focus on our spiritual response to local reporting of abuse in our archdiocese.  But this weekend I want to turn our attention to the financial responsibility we each share by being a member of the parish of St. Monica Church.

 Since beginning my ministry as your Pastor I have initiated regular public reporting on parish finances.  These appear in the bulletin four times per year.  Upon the completion of each quarter of the fiscal year you will see a report and charts printed in the bulletin that reflect a summary of the income and expenses of the past quarter.  The consistent financial story is that we usually have a tight budget.  And there are times, as in the quarter completed on September 30, that we run a slight deficit.  I would bet the average person in the pew doesn’t have a real clear sense of what it costs to run a parish.  Thus, I want to share with you a sampling of parish expenses.  The parish Finance Council and I hope that this knowledge can serve both greater appreciation of what we do here and also serve a greater awareness of the need to share the responsibility to be sacrificial givers as stewards.  For context, I have pulled some budget numbers from the last Fiscal Year to share.

When we gather here and in the many spaces we use for worship, for meetings, formation classes, and small group events, we hope for a comfortable atmosphere with heat/air, electricity, and water.  Our annual utilities cost us a bit more than $76,000.  In addition to that cost for use, we must keep our aging heat/air units maintained and functioning.  The majority of our units date from the initial construction of our parish, meaning they are 19-23 years old.  Last year our service agreements for units cost more than $26,000 and repairs cost us an additional $16,000.  By way of a current budget number, just two months ago we had a monthly utilities bill for over $8,000.  Our facilities are heavily used and need regular cleaning and stocking.  Janitorial service and supplies cost us more than $32,000 last year.  Repair and maintenance to our buildings, including our parking lot, cost us more than $24,000 last year.  We want our campus to appear beautiful and maintained and so landscaping and gardening cost us more than $20,000 last year.  Thanks to our volunteer parishioners who work mowing teams our parish saves a lot of money that we would otherwise have to spend on paying for mowing.  However, we still have maintenance on our mowing equipment.  That, together with maintenance of our irrigation system, cost us more than $9,000 last year.

 Totaled up, this sampling of campus and facilities expenses, cost us more than $205,000 last year.  Those expenses required 16% of our annual income last year.  To give a current example: Just this week we learned that the heat unit (which is 19 years old) for our choir room isn’t working.  If all we do is repair it that will cost more than $2,000.  Or if we replace the unit that will cost $9,000.  We are on borrowed time with most of our units and we can expect a significant expense one day soon. 

 Let’s look now at the cost of some of our formation programming, the far more exciting stuff we do here.  We have many offerings for children and youth formation.  This covers high school formation, middle school formation, youth and whole family summer activities, the annual Steubenville youth conference, our discipleship groups, Family Formation, Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, and more.  We spent almost $62,000 on these programs last year.  Formation enrollment fees help us recover some of that cost, but the parish still covers the vast majority of cost, almost $56,000, out of our budget.  We serve approximately 327 children and youth in these programs.  This part of our budget means the parish spends on average about $170 per child.  We serve the women of our parish who are mothers in our Mom’s group.  That serves approximately 40-45 women.  We spent almost $4,000 last year, or about $92 per participant.  Our nursery operating expenses and supplies represents $23,000 of last year’s budget.  We serve approximately 40 men in our St. Augustine Men’s Group.  Last year we spent almost $1,400 on that program, or about $34 per participant.  Our annual observance of Our Lady of Guadalupe costs the parish over $5,000.  And our Parish Festival requires about $7,000 from the annual budget.  This sampling of our formation expenses totals about $96,000 or about 7½% of our annual budget.  From September through April each year we have invoices for a food service vendor due to our monthly pancake breakfasts and five fish frys in Lent.  Those food invoices total over $8,000 and breaks down to over $600 per event.  Clearly, you can see we are not making money on these offerings nor coming anywhere close to covering the actual cost.

We have a construction loan on the blessing of our St. Ambrose Center with a current balance of about $720,000.  I am happy to report that we have paid off around $160,000 on that loan in the past year alone.  These numbers are just a sampling of the real costs and requirements of having a parish.  I haven’t even mentioned insurance and liability costs, salaries and employee health insurance and retirement, supplies for things in church (like candles, altar bread, vestments, etc.), nor assessments that each parish pays the archdiocese for diocesan operations, priest retirement, and subsidies to the catholic schools where students from our parish attend.

 You also should know the good news that our parish tithes 10% from its own income.  I invite you to see the report of weekend collections, called “Stewardship of Treasure,” that we print in each weekly bulletin.  In that report you see not only the income we collect from e-giving and envelopes, but you can see that we pull out 10% off the top of each weekend’s collection. That money is placed in a separate bank account and is not available for our operating expenses.  Rather, from that account we make charitable gifts to local, national, and international beneficiaries to support their charitable works.  We should be proud that the parish grants around $77,000 annually in charitable gifts that come from the gifts you give in the weekend offertory.  That does not even account for additional service to the poor that we offer.  Thus, the parish itself gives the example that we ask of each member here, to be sacrificial givers and even to commit to tithing from your income.  Trust me, it would be nice to have that additional $77,000 for our regular operating expenses, but we are committed to stewardship and promoting that style of life that each disciple should strive for: to be a sacrificial giver who tithes and who takes that tithe off the top, and not from what is left over after paying other bills.   Thus, in my oversight of the parish budget and, in my own personal charitable giving, I am keenly aware of the type of giving we ask of each member here.  I also know it is possible to do.  In addition, I know you will experience blessings in forming that type of spiritualty if, whatever your current giving level is, you move in that direction of giving more and even tithing.

 We often speak by analogy that the parish, the Church, is a family.  The familial relationship is one reason why the priest is called “father” and you the flock are called his spiritual “children.”  Of course, a significant difference in this family arrangement is that the children pay the bills and it is a safe bet that all of the children who have jobs make more than the father does!  But seriously, the parish has only the money that you give.  A key area of financial health that we must always evaluate is each parishioner’s commitment to sacrificial giving, to making regular financial contributions to the life of our parish.  I want to thank the many of you who embrace stewardship and who tithe.  This parish has a higher percentage of people who tithe than the average parish does, thanks to our history and our foundation with stewardship.  I also want to thank the many of you who give sacrificially and who are still working toward the practice of tithing.  But truthfully, it is clear that a vast number of people are not in the habit of charitable giving to the parish and a surprising number give nothing.  It is important to consider that, just like the expenses of running your home, the expenses here never go down, right?  They are always on the rise.  Our common life here and our shared responsibility for this parish mean that our giving needs to keep pace with expenses.  I hope my sharing of the sampling of expenses can help you appreciate that.  With this in mind, I want to highlight regular Sunday offertory contributions.  This is the single largest source of parish income.  For a healthy parish budget, we need regular Sunday contributions to be strong and consistent.  With a greater response to this shared responsibility for the life of our parish we will be able to maintain the programs we currently offer but also be in a stronger position for ever increasing needs and costs for ongoing evangelization and the operations of our campus.  In particular, I want to promote one way of making your regular offertory contributions: Our electronic, or eGiving program, called Faith Direct.  It is a convenient way to commit to regular giving to the parish and a convenient way to manage your Sunday contributions and special gifts from wherever you are.  If you have not yet signed up for Faith Direct I ask you to consider that possibility.  There is information in your pews and out in the narthex.  Signing up and using Faith Direct is easy and is something you can control from your own computer and even your smartphone, using the Faith Direct app.  Contact the Parish Office for more information and for help in beginning to use Faith Direct, or go to faithdirect.net to sign up.  Many of you, like I do, already use Faith Direct.  Has it perhaps been some time since you considered your gift and increased it?  If so, I encourage you to enter a prayerful time of reflection and to make a new intention for your generous gifts.

 The larger reality for a disciple is that our parish giving can’t be simply about choosing a number and paying out, as if this giving is like any other bill we pay.  Rather, I am asking each of you to develop a way of the spiritual life as regards stewardship of all your resources.  I am asking you to recognize that giving to God first, and giving to care for His Church, is a practice that is really a spirituality, that shows its marks not only in numbers in your bank account but, more importantly, in all areas of your life as a disciple, in the way it transforms you as a follower of Jesus.  The foundation of this spirituality of stewardship in our financial giving is a recognition of what we all know is true: Where we put our money reveals where our priorities are.  It shows what we believe to be of value.   Jesus spoke similar words: “…where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Mt. 6:21).  In 1993 our parish was formed and its first members stepped out in faith to be stewards who built the foundations we enjoy today.  What is our response to that gift that we have inherited?  Is our response in sacrificial giving appropriate and proportional to the gift received?  Or have the ideologies of individualism and consumerism crept into our hearts and minds such that we tend to keep our gifts to ourselves or tend to view Church as a commodity or a transaction lacking a deeper personal investment of myself?  To develop a spirituality of stewardship and to evaluate your own response to our shared responsibility here, I ask you to first commit to a regular time of prayer before the Lord in our Adoration chapel.  Open your heart to him there and ask him to increase your trust, trust that he gives you gifts that you are capable to use for his glory and that you will still have what you need if you put him first.  Then from the foundation of prayer in adoration, evaluate your response to sacrificial giving.  Like the twofold Great Commandment of love of God and love of neighbor, the primary purpose and function of the parish is twofold.  We exist first of all to worship God.  It is a matter of the virtue of justice that God is owed worship from us, His creatures.  Worship is our loving response to the generous love of God for us.  Secondly, we exist for love of neighbor.  The different facets of our communal life, whether simply fraternal gatherings, educational/formational gatherings, or service opportunities, are ways in which we show love of neighbor.  Our love of neighbor must have an outward focus too, in that we are called as disciples to be on mission in this world to serve the salvation of souls by evangelization and the formation of new disciples.  Our mission here and our work is spiritual.  But, as we learned in the second reading, it is not only spiritual because it is not immune from the requirements, the organization, the order, and even the costs of the things of the “real world.”  The mission and desire of God the Father is to save us.  His Son took on our flesh to accomplish that mission.  This can serve as a reminder that our communal life and mission is also incarnate, just like Jesus.  Jesus is God, yet he took on human flesh.  He chose to live with the needs and demands of a human body, as well as its limitations, most prominent in that being incarnate in a real body made it possible for him to suffer and die.  As a parish community our mission, too, is lived out in an incarnate, concrete reality.  This means that we too have to face the needs, the demands, the requirements and limitations of being a visible community of the Lord in this place and in this time.  I ask each of you to make a response and to strive for a new moment and a new practice of the stewardship that will meet our parish needs, that will transform each of us personally, and that will transform the world we serve with the Gospel of the Kingdom of God!

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXXII per Annum C

10 November 2019

 Ideas have consequences.  We see that in the Gospel exchange today between Jesus and the Sadducees.  The Sadducees were a distinct movement or party within Judaism.  They were a rather small but influential and elite group owing to their descent from a priestly line and thus, their influence in the Temple and the functions of worship.  They were also distinct in some of their beliefs.  For example, they had a much more restrictive approach to Scripture, accepting only the Books of Moses as authoritative (the Books of Moses being the Pentateuch, the first five books of our Bible).  They did not believe in the existence of angels.  And they rejected the notion of a resurrection.  So, it was not only their aristocratic lineage that set them apart, but also their thoughts, opinions, and beliefs.  Ideas have consequences.

 With this in mind let’s look at the two Gospel lessons (marriage and angels) and see just how different popular thought in society today is from the thought formed by divine teaching from Jesus.  I’ll start with angels.  It is a popular thought in society to claim that when a person dies he becomes an angel.  At the time of funerals, you see on cards and hear in poems direct claims that the deceased is now an angel watching over us or that Heaven has gained an angel.  Pinterest will literally explode with examples of this idea.  Now that idea may be based more on sentimentality, yet it has consequences.  Based on the revelation of Scripture and philosophical reasoning, angels are distinct beings that are purely spiritual.  As such it is not proper to their being to have a body.  That’s what it means to be an angel: an intelligent personal being that is purely spiritual and not bodily.  Quite a different level of being is the human being who properly exists as a unity of body and soul.  A human being has both a bodily element and a spiritual element.  As creatures of superior intelligence, and not being limited by a body, angels are, to use less technical terms, higher on the “food chain” than a human being, just as a human being is higher on the food chain than an animal, which is higher on the food chain than a plant.  So, what is the consequence of the popular idea that after death we become angels?  Now I hope no one brought any rotten produce from your backyard garden, but I have to break it to you that, first of all, such a notion is not true, is not consistent with the Scriptures, and therefore not a belief a Catholic should adopt.  Secondly, if after death we hold that a person can go up the food chain to become an angel, then we have to accept the possibility and logical consequence that we can also go down the food chain and become a dog, or worse a cat.  No one wants to accept going down the food chain and I don’t see popular poems around death and dying making any claims when a person dies that Heaven, or Hell for that matter, has gained a cat!  But wait!  Didn’t Jesus say that in the resurrection and in the age to come we will become angels?  Be careful.  He said those deemed worthy to attain to the age to come will be “like angels” and he says that not to indicate that a dead human being changes his rank of being and joins the choirs of angels.  Rather, he says they become like angels specifically in that they no longer die.  The dead person enters immortality, like the angels, but the dead person does so awaiting to be rejoined to his resurrected body.  It’s the way we properly exist as human beings.  In other words, a human being remains a human being and an angel remains an angel.

 Switching gears to the Gospel lesson on marriage, in society, popular thought and opinion (these days anyway) is that marriage is primarily, or even only, about the adults, that it is first and foremost about the fulfillment of the adult parties.  Therefore, whatever fulfills any two consenting adults is good and acceptable; and, is as good and acceptable as what fulfills any other two adults.  There are consequences of this thought.  So, we have slogans like “love is love.”  And we have bumper stickers of a blue square containing a yellow equal sign, and a red version of the same image.  This has consequences and it leads to a completely subjective understanding of marriage that results in marriage being whatever anyone wants to make of it.  And so, the consequence of popular thought leads to two men or two women simulating marriage and doing so nowadays with legal codification.  And it would be hopelessly naïve to think that this opinion about marriage won’t easily and quickly become no longer mostly about what two people want but will become any combination of numbers or genders or transgenders.  But what the Scriptures reveal, and therefore what a Catholic holds, about marriage is very different.  The Gospel selection today gives a small glimpse of this divine lesson.  Jesus responds to the situation presented by the Sadducees.  They present a silly hypothetical case of a woman married seven times in this world.  If you believe in a resurrection, well then, whose wife will she be when she returns to a bodily life in the new world to come?  Jesus responds that those who are deemed worthy to attain to the resurrection do not marry.  This is the case because in the resurrection he says specifically that “they can no longer die.”  So, what is the consequence of that thought?  What do we learn from it?  If in the resurrection people do not marry because they cannot die that means that a primary reason for marriage in this age is precisely for procreation, the continuation of life, since we can and do die in this world.  Society’s opinion leads to the rejection of children as a primary purpose and blessing in marriage by the promotion of contraception.  And society’s opinion rejects the exclusive nature and value of the complementarity of the two sexes whose unity in marriage models the unity of God Himself whose image in creation is shown in making us both male and female.  Based on the Natural Law, based on Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition, the Catholic holds that openness to life and the unity of the spouses are the primary purposes of marriage.  Furthermore, we hold that it is precisely these fundamental purposes that are for the good of the spouses and which lead to their fulfillment and flourishing.

 Ideas have consequences.  We need to be careful about what we permit to influence our thoughts and opinions because that translates into our beliefs and our actions.  I fear that it is fashionable, especially these days and in the arena of the faith, to want quick and easy answers and to not treat seriously that Scripture and Tradition are our guides and that they need to be carefully studied.  If we are people of faith who know Jesus to be God and master of our life, then popular opinion in society needs much greater scrutiny so that we make sure we are not led astray.  For the consequence of being led astray would mean not only the possibility of being wrong but could also mean we are not worthy to attain to heavenly resurrection.

 The Maccabean brothers in the first reading give us a powerful example of just how important it is to be aware of which ideas we permit to form and influence us.  These seven brothers, together with their valiant mother, are examples of fidelity in the face of the popular and secular thinking of their time.  When societal pressure and the secular force of the king demanded they violate God’s law they refused and died for that faith.  Their witness remains for us today.  For as much as we value the present life, and we should, we can’t compromise the offer of the life to come.  If we permit ourselves to be formed by the uncritical adoption of popular societal opinion how will we ever hope, to be like the Maccabees, to provide an example of fidelity in our time?  Ideas have consequences.  We come from God and we are made for Him and we are called to return to Him.  In the meantime, we have the duty to stand as witnesses to divine truth so that others reject falsehood and share our hope for a heavenly resurrection.  As we prayed in the Collect of this Holy Mass: “Almighty God, …keep from us all adversity, so that… we may pursue in freedom of heart the things that are yours.”

Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time

Dominica XXXI per Annum C

3 November 2019

 Still on Jesus’ extended journey to Jerusalem narrated by St. Luke, in the verses immediately before today’s Gospel passage, just outside the city gate of Jericho Jesus had healed a blind beggar who wanted to see.  Now inside the city, amid throngs of people, Zacchaeus wants to see Jesus.  Zacchaeus could see with his eyes; his eyes functioned properly.  The Gospel narrative tells us important details, however, about Zacchaeus’ moral stature, not just his physical height.  Tax collectors were viewed as public sinners.  The Israelites who were tax collectors were viewed as cheats among God’s people because they cooperated with the occupying Roman government to take money from their own kind.  Added to that, tax collectors made money by taking their own cut from their own people.  Zacchaeus is not just any tax collector but a “chief tax collector AND a wealthy man.”  First century ears would hear this description and immediately hear that Zacchaeus was a very grave, dishonest, and public sinner.  The difference between the blind beggar and Zacchaeus then becomes clear: Unlike the blind beggar, Zacchaeus had the use of his eyes but he is morally blind and in spiritual darkness for he is lost and headed to eternal destruction.  The final line of the Gospel selection fills in the picture of just how important for salvation was Zacchaeus’ encounter with Jesus: “For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”

I find this Gospel account intriguing for who is doing the seeking.  The first part of the Gospel shows us that Zacchaeus had a strong desire to see Jesus.  He fights his way in the crowd but, being short, he knows he won’t be able to catch a glimpse of Jesus.  Zacchaeus desires to see Jesus and he employs whatever is necessary to see him.  But as Jesus passes by notice that the subject switches and it is Jesus who is doing the seeking.  Jesus, who is, as the first reading said, the “Lord and lover of souls,” reads Zacchaeus’ heart.  Jesus knows that despite his great sin, Zacchaeus is in the process of changing.  Zacchaeus’ desire to see Jesus is not a matter of his eyes, which function well, but of his faith and its expression in moral conversion.  And so, it is Jesus who stops and looks up at Zacchaeus.  Jesus meets Zacchaeus’ desire and Zacchaeus’ efforts, and so Jesus calls out to Zacchaeus with an invitation for more intimate life and communion with him.  “Come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.”  As the light of new life dawns on Zacchaeus he moves from being the chief tax collector who has cheated everyone to – we might say – being the chief of stewardship who now gives half of his belongings to the poor and who repays those he has extorted by repaying four times over – far more than required by Jewish law.  When you have Jesus, the greatest treasure, well, giving up material things is of comparatively little consequence.

 What are you seeking in life?  Or better yet, Whom are you seeking in life?  Is it Jesus?  Is it a relationship with him?  Is it salvation in his kingdom?  And if you want to seek Jesus are you taking a cue from Zacchaeus and using the means necessary to accomplish that goal?  Are you rising up, like climbing that sycamore tree, to place your eyes on Jesus?  Are you ready and willing to receive Jesus with joy today into your house?  If I say I seek Jesus but I’m not working to focus my way of thinking and acting to be like the Gospel, then not only am I NOT climbing that tree to see Jesus, but I’m actually descending; I’m digging a hole.  If I want to see Jesus but I won’t battle that tendency to gossip or to drink heavily, or any other sin, then not only am I NOT climbing that tree, but I’m actually digging a hole.  If I say I seek Jesus but I won’t work to eradicate lust and to live greater purity of heart, mind, and body, then I’m not placing myself in a position to see Jesus; rather, I’m digging a hole.  If I hang out in the crowd somewhere near Jesus but I don’t make the effort to pray and to confess my sins then I’m not making my way up that tree, but I’m digging a hole.  That hole won’t help me see Jesus.  But it will swallow up my body and result in seeing damnation!  The choice to let oneself be transformed by Jesus is yours and it is mine.  Ultimately, what it comes down to, as it did for Zachhaeus, is will I let myself be found by Jesus?  Will I put myself where I can be found by Jesus?

 Jericho is a place in the Old Testament where walls tumbled down so that God’s people could enter the fortified city and be victorious.  That setting in today’s passage – Jericho – is rich then.  What walls need to tumble down in our lives, walls that prevent us from seeing Jesus?  What walls in our moral life prevent us from entering deeper life with Jesus?  What walls in our spiritual life keep us distant from the Lord who seeks us and who desires us to have salvation?  Truly seek Jesus.  Truly desire life with him.  And then, like Zacchaeus, employ the effort necessary to make that happen.  And you know what?  Jesus will look up at you, tell you he’s been seeking you, and then he’ll ask to come dwell with you while the grumblers and complainers remain lost and unsaved.  The salvation that Jesus brings – the salvation that he himself is! – means that he invites us to come down from the tree while he himself climbs up the tree: not a sycamore tree, but the tree that is the wood of the Cross, where all who look upon him lifted high (cf. Jn. 3:14-15; Num. 21:8-9) find that “today salvation has come to this house.”