Everything we have is a gift! The Father entrusts His gifts to us in the measure we are capable of receiving them. If we wish to receive greater gifts from God, we need to prove ourselves trustworthy and capable of receiving them. I think of Jesus words in John 17:24, "Father, they are Your gift to Me" which reminds me that people are the gifts whom God entrusts to us. As every spouse and parent understands, the entrustment of persons is an exceptional gift that calls forth the great responsibility of love. To receive the gift of a person requires tenderness, gratitude, and compassion. Paraphrasing St. John Paul II, people are only ever meant to be loved for their own sake, never used as a means to an end.

When Jesus speaks of dishonest wealth in today's Gospel, I think He means using the gifts of God in a disposable way: always grasping for more, consuming without ever being satisfied, and even using other people for our own ends. Such misuse of God's gifts harms our human family, especially the poor and voiceless who don't have someone to stand up for them. Indeed, using people in this way treats them as disposables rather than unique and unrepeatable gifts from the Father. This misuse of our God-given freedom grieves our Father's heart.

Jesus says that we cannot serve both God and mammon. Mammon stands not just for the things of this world, but for the all-consuming attitude of greed our fallen human nature is prone to take towards them. We cannot serve both God and mammon for the same reason we cannot be both generous and greedy at the same time. We need to choose our master to serve: God whose mastery is generous and sets us free, or the consumptive greed whose mastery is cruel enslaving. The Catechism of the Catholic Church #2339 soberly states in the Church's teaching on chastity, "The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy." Far more than the virtue governing our sexual appetite, chastity is the attitude of the heart which sees as God sees and calls us to rightly be the master of our passions and desires rather than letting our desires master us. Chastity gives true freedom to be excellent for God and for others.

The fundamental question is whether we will we serve God or greed as our Lord? Serving God will make us generous and set our hearts free to do much good for the Kingdom. Serving greed will make us slaves to our desires. My prayer for all of us is to choose to serve the Lord in freedom this day, that we may commit our lives and our gifts to His providential care and guidance.

“Faithfully United” Stewardship Commitment Weekend
Last week, all parish families received a brochure introducing our “Faithfully United” Stewardship Program. In my homily, I invited our families to prayerfully discern the Lord's call to support our mission and ministries through involvement and financial support. As we celebrate Commitment Weekend today, we welcome the Alic family who will offer a lay witness talk at our Masses, followed by my appeal for us to renew our commitment to support St. Mary Parish. With a view to being installed as the 15th pastor of St. Mary Parish, I am proud to be "all in" with renewing and increasing my personal and financial commitment to all of our parish families and those who come through our doors in need of the grace and mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. I hope you all are eager to do the same!

All parishioners should complete a Commitment Card which was mailed to you in your brochure. An electronic commitment card is available online at www.stmarychardon. org/faithfully-united or by scanning the QR code below. Additional brochures and commitment cards are available in the parish office. You can drop your commitment card in the collection basket at this weekend's Mass, mail it to the church, or complete the electronic commitment card on our website. Please be sure to include any prayer intentions you wish to share. My staff and I will pray for these intentions collectively over the next few weeks. Please indicate on your commitment card if you would like to speak to a priest so we can be in touch with you.

Our goal is 100% participation! God cannot be outdone in generosity, so thank you so much for your own response of generous support to St. Mary Parish.