June 22, 2008
12th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This weekend ST. ANNA’S is initiating the selling of SCRIP (retail gift cards purchased at a discount) as a means of adding to our BUILDING FUND during these times of economic downturn. The plan is basically FREE MONEY (for example, you pay $100 for a $100 Wal-Mart gift card which can be used like $100 at Wal-Mart. St. Anna’s gets to keep $2 in Free Money!) (Actually, it’s even better at Wal-Mart because if you use the Wal-Mart gift card for gas, you get 3¢ per gallon off!)

Another aspect for which to be grateful is the fact that your budget doesn’t change but St. Anna’s does!

“Thanks Be To God!”

“The practice of stewardship is not a once in a while thing, any more than our gratitude to God is a once in a while thing. Gratitude and the expression of it in word and action are supposed to be habitual in our lives.  They are part of what we are about in our day to day lives, every day. They are constituent elements of our Christian spirituality.

The thing about stewardship that we have to hang onto above all is that stewardship is about gratitude.  It's about giving thanks to the Lord for His multitudinous and continuous generosity and care for us.  Stewardship is only secondarily about helping the parishes pay bills.  It's only secondarily about providing food and shelter for the poor.  Stewardship is about gratitude.  It's about expressing in action our awareness of God's goodness to us.

The important thing is gratitude.  The important thing is being thankful to God - in thoughts and words, in attentiveness to God's care for us, in confidence that even crosses are gifts, in daily responsiveness to God's action in our lives, &, of course, in stewardship, in doing thanks.

- Most Rev. Daniel E. Pilarczyk, Archbishop of Cincinnati.