On the weekend of October 20-21, we will be having a ministry fair in the gymnasium so that everyone will get a chance to see the many opportunities available for lay involvement in the parish. This is all part of our overall effort to keep Corpus Christi the great parish that it has been over the years.

The Stewardship of SHARING -Stewards are GENEROUS people in all areas in their lives. They live a life of GRATITUDE realizing that all that we have and all that we are comes from God.  A life of Christian Catholic stewardship calls us to TITHE our time, talent and treasure. To TITHE means to give the “first fruits” of the harvest of our lives—to give 10 percent of our time, talent and treasure back to God, to His Church and to His people in need. Matthew 6:21 tells us, “For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” Where is your treasure? Where is your heart? Will you take these questions to God in prayer this week…?

This Week’s Time & Talent Thank You

With an Attitude of Gratitude we say thank you to all of our ST. VINCENT DEPAUL SOCIETY volunteers. Corpus Christi is blessed with the generous hearts of past SVDP president, Mark La Pointe and current SVDP president Ralph Nottoli.  These two “gentle”men serve and lead with kind words for all and a true example of stewardship of time and talent.  We honor all of the SVDP volunteers who serve those in need, with a welcoming smile and without judgment. We also thank Clytee Starling who is the SVDP district president for her ongoing work in this ministry of caring. If you feel “Called to Share” your gift of mercy through this ministry, please contact the church office at 770-469-0395 or email ccyouth@mindspring.com and a member of the SVDP board will contact you.

 Over the years, our various ministries have had “group leaders,” that is, someone who was responsible for seeing that a particular ministry was able to realize its purpose. In earlier days, when there was a special need, such as the renovation of the church, gathering together was the stimulus for the success of our efforts. In recent years, the group leaders have kind of fallen into the background. It is our intention to do what we can to make the group leaders once more the effective leaders they were of old. One of the ways of doing this will be to have a liaison person from the Corpus Christi staff assigned to work with each of the ministry leaders. This will help to facilitate their work and give them what they need to carry out their tasks more effectively.

                              What is Stewardship

Stewardship is a complete lifestyle, a life of total accountability and responsibility acknowledging God as Creator and Owner of all. Stewardship is responsible management of our God-given resources of time, talent, and treasure. It enhances our relationships with God and one another. Stewardship is living out a commitment to be Christ-centered rather than self-centered and involves a conversion of the heart. Stewardship is a lifelong journey with each person at a different place on the path.

Stewardship is not just a program, a fund-raising scheme, or about money and donations. But stewardship can have some programmatic elements. For example, every year parishes teaching the stewardship way of life will have an annual renewal or pledge. This opportunity allows parishioners to prayerfully discern and reflect on how much of their time, talents, and treasure they can commit to their parish and/or community over the next year.

Our faith summons us to a vision beyond our parish and our particular needs. All of us are called through Baptism and Confirmation to share the mission of Jesus in the world and to contribute our first fruits—not the leftovers—to God. This is the act of faith required.

But as good as our leaders may prove to be, our success as a "parish alive" depends on all of you. In talking about the Theology of Stewardship, Bishop Robert Morneau, Auxiliary Bishop of Green Bay, Wisconsin, emphasized:

There is no better way to feel part of the Parish

Two very important areas of parish life are liturgical music and youth ministry. Last year, we were very blessed to have Peppie Calvar directing our traditional choir. And who will forget that final concert? This year, we are fortunate to have John Brandt take over the Music Ministry to assure us that this important part of our life at Corpus Christi will continue to enrich our spiritual lives. Susanna Philips has signed on as the Director of the Children’s Choir and we are looking to see our young people get interested in church music from their very early days. We anticipate eventually having great music at all the liturgies, and we have the staff and wonderful volunteers who can accomplish this.

As I mentioned last week, I’ll be featuring news about Stewardship throughout the following weeks, and we certainly have a good example of it in the Parish Picnic last week. I hope all of you had a good time. It was encouraging to me that the first thing a number of people who were not able to be present at the picnic asked me, "How was the picnic? I wish I could have been there."

It is really a good example of parish stewardship, because it illustrates the work of salaried staff. Their task is to elicit the enthusiasm of many parishioners to volunteer and work for the community. You noticed a lot of familiar faces belonging to the people wearing the orange shirts who, with Beedee Soskin, did the grunt work of getting things organized. There were other volunteers for the cooking and the concessions who have been helping out year after year. Though they were not wearing the identifying T-shirts, you probably recognized them as faithful participants in many of our Corpus Christi community building efforts. Versatile, Marvin Soskin (Beedee’s husband) moved from serving drinks at Families of Faith to take over the Emceeing for Phoebe Bailey.

If you’re not involved in any of the activities or ministries of the parish, please accept this as a general invitation to get involved. I’d like also to encourage all of you who are in activities or ministries to extend a personal invitation to people you think might enjoy being in the group you’re in, whether it be the Choir, St. Vincent de Paul, the Men’s Club, A Gathering of Women, etc., etc. All of you have time constraints, but parish involvement, even if only for an hour or so every week or so, might be just what you need to relieve some of the stress of our over-busy world.

Seven years ago, some parishioners took the initiative of starting up Perpetual Adoration at Corpus Christi. I am sure the prayers of the many devout people (and even of some not-so-devout who may forget their hour on a Wednesday evening(!) have obtained untold blessings for our parish community. Now we have a parish family offering to take on a new parish initiative, and I’d like to encourage you to consider it for your family.

Some of our Stewardship Ministries I consider unsung heroes of Corpus Christi—all the wonderful women and spouses who form the Altar Care Society. If I mentioned them all by name, you could rightly accuse me of using an easy way to fill in the two columns of the Pastor’s Corner, because there are so many wonderful helpers. Like all those who minister at Corpus Christi, however, they have need of new volunteers. Mary Anne Creagan, who has been coordinating the activities for a number of years, has to give up that role because of anticipated difficulty in travel. In years past, we used to set up tables in the gym and have the various ministries try to recruit new helpers, but we’d like to see volunteers step forward and we might even look for people we can "ask to volunteer." Jerry DiCaro called me with a great quotation attributed to Winston Churchill: "You get what you work for, but you live by what you give."

Dr. Kemdi Ihenacho and his wife, Bridget, intend to inaugurate the Ave Maria Daily Family Rosary Society. The primary aim of the society will be to actively encourage families (all members of God’s family) to say the holy rosary everyday. People of my generation will never forget Father Peyton and his promotion of the family rosary with its motto: "The family that prays together, stays together." I would venture to say his efforts helped more families stay together than all the hollow political talk about "family values."

Some of my happiest, and sometimes funniest memories have to do with my family’s recitation of the rosary everyday. I remember the time it was my younger brother’s turn to recite a decade. Came the 10^th, the 11^th, the 12^th, the 13^th, then the 14^th and 15^th Hail Mary…till finally one of the less numerically challenged brothers shouted out, "Brian, what the hell are you doing!" His response was that his rosary was missing the small bead and he didn’t know where to stop! The family together straightened him out.

Getting back to Dr. and Bridget Ihenacho’s Ave Maria Society, Dr. Ihenacho e-mailed me: "Its members will be required to make a personal and private commitment to say the Holy Rosary daily by themselves or with their good friends, if they are single, or with members of their families if they are married. The commitment would not be a vow. It would, if you like, be a gentlemanly or gentlewomanly word of honor to strive honestly and sincerely to do what one has committed him or herself to do. Nothing will happen if for one good reason or another we are unable to say the rosary every day or ‘to score 100%’ every week or month or year as the case may be. So long as one is aware of that commitment and probably raises his or her eyes to Our Lady and Our Mother on the days that one is unable to fulfill his or her commitment."

I particularly like the attitude evident in Kemdi’s remarks. This effort to encourage the family rosary in no way wants to lay a guilt trip on anyone. It is meant to foster prayer, love of the Mother of God as our advocate, and family unity. I would add that one does not have to feel guilty if the rosary doesn’t seem to be a prayer conducive for personal spiritual growth. The rosary has the potential of helping everyone grow spiritually as does adoration of the Sacrament, but it may not be the best pious act for any given individual at any given time in his or her spiritual development. I always like to remind myself however, that should you or I forego one method of prayer because it is not attractive for us at a particular time, it is essential that we don’t forego prayer, period. God has provided many wonderful ways of recognizing His care and goodness; so let us never cease to pray.

Kemdi and Bridget want to organize the society on the Feast of the Holy Rosary, October 7^th at the 8:30 am Mass. I’ll write more next week, and they will be telling you more about it as the date approaches.

Stewardship is much more than money; though obviously that is a very important part of it. I plan to have a complete financial report to you so that you will know how your offerings are used by Corpus Christi. This year I would also like to share our budget for next year with you and spell out our needs for the parish.

On the Treasure side of stewardship, I’m going to ask you for special help this year. We have fallen short on the Annual Appeal for the last three years. Because of this, the Development Office is asking us to set up a chairperson to keep the appeal focused. What I would like to see happen is that we gather all the pledges in the first weeks of the Appeal, and that we won’t have to be begging and sending out reminders all throughout the year. You know that it is hard for me to ask for more financial help, especially in poor economic times and in the light of the many trials we have in being Catholic today. When we ask you to give to the archdiocese, we are asking you as always to give in a spirit of faith.

People who give to Corpus Christi really experience a sense of solidarity with their fellow parishioners, and their worship experience also becomes more spiritually nourishing. Parishioner Sheena Jacob, who just left for Arab Emirates, told me how warmly she was received here and what great friends she had made at the parish once she started volunteering and becoming active. Another couple, coincidently named Jacobs, Terry and Donna, said that the hardest part of moving for them was separating from the parish. Getting involved in stewardship can do that for you.

One of the blessings of good stewardship is that it creates a feeling of belonging to the parish. This is our parish. It belongs to all of us, and we want to both worship with you and enjoy each other’s company and become friends. New people can always come forward and get involved. A good example at the picnic was Laura Smallwood’s suggesting that a Talent Show would be a great idea, and it was! The folks who stayed to watch it at 8:00 pm – and there was a goodly number of us – were delighted with the volunteers, and especially four-year old Jordan who delivered the showstopper.

As good as our leaders may prove to be, our success as a "parish alive" depends on all of you. We really want everyone in Corpus Christi’s Parish to be able to repeat our motto with full conviction:

"This is my church. This is my house. This is my family." Without a doubt, the best way to feel at home in a church is to get involved in its activities. That motto developed when a writer asked the man who was chairing the church renovation committee why a person as busy as he, was willing to give so much time to his church. The motto was his answer…, so I promised him that I would engrave it in stone. What I really want to see is that it is engraved in all of our hearts. The parish staff and priests will always do their best to help you feel this way. And we are always open to any suggestions you may have on how to better Corpus Christi Church.