Brothers and Sisters in Christ, peace, and I pray that God, besides for the entire world, grant you and your family and friends every grace and blessing.
I wanted to share some thoughts with you about creating a culture of service in our Catholic Church and why I think God is calling us all today to commit to at least 1 hour of service monthly, and to commit at least 1% of our income to support the Church and Her operations.
Let’s start with what I mean by service. This type of service is born of the Lord Jesus’ commandment to love from the gospel of John, chapter 13: we are to love one another as God has loved us, sacrificially. This service is primarily characterized by giving of ourselves freely for the benefit of others. The Lord Jesus definitely gave of himself freely for our benefit, for the highest benefit we could possibly have: the forgiveness of our sins and the birth to everlasting life. The service I exhort us all to is of this nature: to benefit God, the Church, our parish, and humanity through freely giving of ourselves.
In this day and age, and maybe even in your local parish, with busier work and (sometimes) school schedules, meaning people feel like there is less time to “give” in this way, there likely is strong need for liturgical ministers, people who staff the masses through the week. These ministers are ushers, readers, altar servers, extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion, sacristans – these are the people who either directly perform the liturgy, like reading scripture (readers), helping the priest, especially in preparing the altar sacrifice (altar server), or the behind-the-scenes people who make sure everything is ready for the mass (sacristan) – the mass books are marked appropriately, preparing the mass vessels the priest will use, there are enough bread hosts, etc – or those who make sure that people are able to find seating and that there is an orderly line when Communion is distributed (ushers). Some parishes between Saturday vigil and Sunday have more than 5 masses, and all or most positions are volunteer based!
Similarly, also due to a chiefly capitalist American culture and the different financial demands and goals we have in our lives, we can also feel like we don’t have much spare money to give. Should this be a widespread response in our culture, we can quickly determine that this means that our Catholic churches are receiving less to support her operations like staff, building maintenance, ministry, etc.
In this article today, I call for us to address these trends of feeling as if we have little to give – time and money – as the Lord Jesus asks us to: sacrificially. Should we not address, and the current cultural trends continue, there are logical consequences: less-staffed, subpar masses, and smaller parish budgets. In terms of the finances: at best, the parish is run efficiently and leanly; at worst, there are deficits and the parish is unable to meet its needs.
Let us give our time and money to God and His church sacrificially, even if it hurts. This sacrifice, like the Lord’s, would bear rich fruit for those around, and for the one who sacrifices, God glorifies him, exalts him, just like Jesus was, as He is now seated at the right hand of God (Luke chapter 22).
Let us also be those who make room for Christ in our lives, and thus declare that we do indeed believe that Jesus is King of Heaven and Earth, and our King; by offering time and money, even when it makes us uncomfortable, we are submitting our schedules and finances to His rule, which is a very holy act and one God asks of us, as in the First Commandment revealed to Moses, “You shall not have other gods besides me (Exodus chapter 20).”
Let us consider giving an hour a month to our parish, and at least 1% of our income to God and His kingdom through our parish; and it’s OK if it takes some weeks or months to adjust our lives to this effort. And next year, why not try to double that to two hours and 2%? Creating a culture of service like this has huge benefits for those around us – our parishes will thrive, and we too will be full of fervor for God. God too will exalt us because of our humility before Him. And let’s not forget, should you have young children, to teach them too to give freely of themselves for the benefit of others. An act like this will guarantee the flourishing of our parishes for generations to come.
To volunteer at your parish, please call your parish office as they should be able to direct you to the appropriate people at the parish. Should there be delays in you being able to volunteer, please don’t get discouraged! This sometimes happens.
In terms of how to give monetarily to your parish, your parish office should also have more information.
In Christ, and please be assured of my prayer for you and yours:
Juan
What does 1% look like?
Let’s get an idea. Someone earning $36k annually translates to $3000 per month. One percent = $30 per month. This is less than $10 a week.
We can do this …. You can do this.
Also you can “give of yourself” with a kind word, a kind gesture, or a welcoming smile. We are all children of God, all members of one family. None of us is perfect so let us encourage each other. We do not know what problems other people are dealing with.