25th Sunday in Ordinary Time: September 20/21, 2025

There was a word that occurred in the Gospel nine times today. I don’t know if you noticed the repetition, but the word is steward: one who manages or looks after the property or possessions of another, like the steward in our Gospel who was watching after the property of the rich man, although this steward is accused of not doing a very good job, and we will get back to that.

When we hear the word steward, or stewardship at Church, the first thing that usually comes to mind is, oh, they are going to ask for more money. . . Well, first of all, stewardship in the Church is more than just about money, we also talk in terms of

offering our time and talent, for the ongoing support of our parish, running an operation like ours is not cheap as you may have seen in the financial report for 2024 in the bulletin a couple of weeks ago.

Paying good wages and offering benefits to our co-workers in the kingdom is our largest expense. . . But guess what, rather than asking for more, I just want to thank you for your continued good stewardship. It allows us to carry out our mission, especially the education of our youth in our school, and the many ways we help the poor and needy

through our food pantry and our ability to make donations to other organizations that directly help the poor, as well as our support of students in El Salvador.

So thank you, and keep up the good work.

Remembering in our diocese it is recommended that you give 5% of your time, talent, and treasure to your parish, 1% to the Diocese, and 4% to other charities of your choice.

No, today, I want to spend some time talking about a different call to stewardship, one we have been calling to mind the last several weeks as we celebrate with other faiths in an ecumenical way the season of creation, let’s consider our responsibility to be good

stewards of the earth God has given us.

As we pray when using the 4th Eucharistic Prayer as we will today:

“God: you formed humans in your own image and likeness and entrusted the whole world to our care, so that in serving you alone, the Creator, we might have

dominion over all creatures.” God made us, and God made all that surrounds us

and at the beginning of creation, God saw that it was good, and it’s our responsibility to keep it that way.

There are longstanding Christian traditions that understand one of the callings God gives us human beings is to be humble stewards of the gift of this good earth, one of our God-given purposes for just being human, is to take responsibility for the well-being of

this world: so let’s not be accused, as was the steward in the Gospel, of squandering, or mis-using, that which has been entrusted to us.

Pope Francis was the first Pope to speak out on this issue when he wrote his encyclical letter 10 years ago in 2015, Ladato Si, on the care of our common home. And yet there are many Catholics who haven’t even heard of this document, much less know what it

teaches, maybe some in this very place. So I would invite you to take a look at this encyclical from Pope Francis sometime, or to at least read a summary of its teachings.

To begin with, an encyclical is an official letter written by the Pope that provides guidance or clarification on matters of Catholic faith, morals, or discipline.

Laudato Si, speaks to all three of these. On Catholic Faith, the pope restates our call

to being good stewards of the gift of creation God has entrusted to us.

Part of holiness, which of course we are all called, is being at peace with the earth and its creatures, the nearer we are to the heart of Christ, the more humble and responsible we are toward all Creation.

On morals: anytime we are faced with a choice, it is a matter of morality. So Pope Francis states that if we are honest, there is good reason to expect we will be giving to the

children of the next generation a much more depleted, and severe earth than the earth we received indicating we have made bad choices.

Pope Francis also ties this in to our care for the poor, for as we, in our first world countries continue to build bigger barns that consumes more and more of the

worlds resources, it is usually done at the expense of those living in 3rd world countries we have a moral obligation to be sure that everyone shares equally in the gifts of creation.

So how do we do better, by making better choices and that’s a matter of discipline things

don’t happen on their own and they usually are not easy, so we have to be disciplined enough to carry through on our commitment to a better world even if that makes our lives a little less easy and convenient.

So perhaps a modern day parable might go something like this:

God had stewards who were reported to him for squandering their gift of creation.

Not wanting to be removed from their stewardship, humanity thought, I know what we should do. . . We can begin to make better choices, we can be sure to recycle, re-use and reduce our consumption. We can find better and more efficient ways to generate electricity, like Iceland, Costa Rica and Norway who operate on nearly 100% renewable

energy. We can awake every morning with gratitude in our hearts for another day and take time to appreciate the beauty around us in sunrises and sunsets, the changing of the seasons, and chose to protect such wonders.

We can do simple things like plant more flowers to sustain honeybee colonies needed for pollination as their population has decreased by 40% in recent years. And can do much harder things like walking more and driving less, and driving more efficient cars.

And after doing these things, and many more, God will commend us for acting prudently. . .

As we move very quickly to the end of this liturgical year, we will hear other readings about being good stewards by taking care of the poor and being grateful for God’s blessings, as well as the tools we will need to be good stewards, like increasing our faith

through prayer and persistence, and following after the saints.

But as we continue with our Eucharistic celebration, let us ask for God’s grace to be good

stewards, to help us live honestly with integrity before God, with ourselves, with other people, and with all of creation.