Deacon John’s Stewardship Blog

         When Deacon John asked me to write a letter for his stewardship column, I wasn’t sure what to write. To me, stewardship is the use of our time, talent, and treasure to serve God and our world.

Our family is involved in many of the ministries at St. Patrick Parish. My husband and I are Eucharistic ministers. My granddaughter and I are both lectors. Our oldest granddaughter sings with the choir when home from college. We have helped with the fish fries, rib dinners, and best of all, the festivals. It is important for us to be involved and give back our gifts.

There is another meaning of stewardship that I found. Stewardship is the actions used to display compassion, kindness, and love to others. In April I lost my 26-year-old niece to an overdose. The telephone call was not unexpected, but still came as a shock. That morning at the Liturgy of the Word service, I could not stop crying. Someone held me for a long time, someone else held my hand, and Deacon John did his best to console me. There were many more that morning who helped me, but these three were the first. To me, this is true stewardship, compassion, kindness, and love to others when they didn’t need to get involved. St. Patrick Parish is a community of stewards.

God bless,
Mary Lou Lazor

          Teaching children to become good stewards of their time, talent and treasure will help prepare them for a better future.

It’s never too late to start helping your children understand the spirituality of stewardship. This doesn’t mean that you pull up the bank statements and start explaining the ins and outs of personal finances. One way to help your children to become good stewards is to help them fill out their weekly church envelope and drop them into the collection basket. Teaching our children to be generous is the foundation of the spirituality of stewardship.

Our Parish School of Religion will begin on September 19. We are very blessed to have an outstanding staff who are passionate about their ministry. Teaching our children to give their time is a foundation of good stewardship. If you have not registered your child for PSR this year, please do so if possible, by Wednesday, Sept. 1, so we know how many students to order supplies for. I would like to encourage all the students and their family to give a few hours back to God each Sunday and attend the 8:30 or 11:00 am Mass before or after PSR. The few hours spent with Jesus will come back a thousand fold in blessings to your family.

Deacon John Bartos

Last Tuesday, we hosted a Meet and Greet for our Parish School of Religion. It was an opportunity for the families and catechists to meet each other. We also had our representative from Pflaum Publishing give a presentation on our curriculum, Gospel Weeklies, and how to navigate the Gospel Weeklies website to get the most use from this family resource that is available to us.

I also had a brochure from Our Sunday Visitor, called 10 Things that Make a Great Catholic Family. These pointers are also great suggestions to help us remember today’s Scripture, “For me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”  Below, I have listed those 10 pointers:
Great Catholic Families…

• Make Sunday Mass the center of their week
• Give Thanks
• Simply Give
• Let Their Lights Shine
• Fight Fair
• Make Mistakes
• Forgive Each Other (a lot)
• Remember Ritual
• Listen for Holy Moments
• Practice Lifelong Loving

May we continue to be a witness of stewardship and service to others.

God bless you,
Karen Bartos