Be a Good Steward

by David Lins  |  11/19/2023  |  (Being) Catholic Matters

We are “Blessing Blind.”

Virtually all of us. We have so much—and could do so much for others.

If we weren’t so “blessing blind.”

My mother grew up at the lowest end of rural Wisconsin’s financial spectrum. My maternal grandparents used an outhouse into the eighties! When you ask mom about it, she’ll just shrug her shoulders and say, “We didn’t no any different.”

Why?

Because all her neighbors were in the same boat. And that same rule applies in the best neighborhoods.

When I was a youth minister in Newport Beach (CA), every teen lived in an area where their extraordinary homes seemed… ordinary. And they were.

And the same can be said for most of us in the northeast corner of the Phoenix suburbs.

On one hand, this can be great for humility. No matter how successful you might be, you can almost always find someone doing a bit better within a few miles.

On the other hand, this can be detrimental to generosity. It can infect us and leave us convinced we don’t have as much to give as that family down the block, so why should we give? We are fooled into thinking it is about justice, when it is really about envy.

Meanwhile, the lives, charities, and—yes—churches we could bless go on in need.

This parish is home to some incredibly generous families. We see you, and we thank you.

But there are still more—many more—who collectively are like a sleeping giant waiting to wake up and change some lives.

This Sunday, the Gospel asks what kind of steward we have been. My prayer is that we wait no longer to go about changing someone’s world. And that… will change our own.