My Friends,

   On this Stewardship weekend, we take some time to reflect on the gifts God has given us and how we can use them to carry out the ministry of the Gospel. These gifts include our time, talent and treasure. We are richly blessed and need to make a return to God. We talked last week on how you responded to the mission of St. Mary’s with your treasure. Much good has been accomplished through your financial generosity. Hopefully, you will be able to continue or even increase your financial support to the parish. But I have come to understand that the financial gift depends on the engagement of the parishioner in the life of the parish. When people are actively involved in the life of their parish, they are more often then not, willing to support it with their financial contributions.

   I hope that you will take seriously our invitation to become more involved in the ministries and activities of the parish. A couple of weeks ago we hosted a ministry fair in the Weigand room to help you realize all that is going on in the parish. We have compiled a list of most of the parish ministries and organizations. I encourage you to give some serious thought on how you might become more involved. If you are not able to fill out the form today, take some time to pray over it. Maybe there is something not on the list that you would like to get started. If everyone found just one thing to get involved in, downtown Elyria would not know what hit it! The energy in our parish would overflow into the life of our community.

   As we speak of people who have given generously of themselves to St. Mary’s, I want to thank those who worked so hard on the Corvette raffle. While I am grateful to all of the members on the committee, there are two couples who have made it their life’s work. There was hardly a weekend that went by that we were not out selling raffle tickets. It was Gary and Sue Toich and Jim and Nancy Knuff who spent countless hours taking the car to events and selling raffle tickets. I suppose if you like driving around in a Corvette it was not all work. But the raffle would not have been a success without their generous involvement. Thanks goes out to all who worked to sell the tickets. Your support is what made it possible to present such an upbeat financial report last weekend. God has given you a gift to share with the people of God. Don’t be stingy!