Stewardship Reflection – November 1

November 1, 2020 — Thirtieth Sunday in Ordinary Time

RV 7:2-4, 9-14; PS 24:1B-4B, 5-6; 1 JN 3:1-3; MT 5:1-12A

On this Feast of All Saints, we have the profound joy of celebrating our big brothers and sisters in Christ: the saints! This is an especially meaningful feast for us as Christian stewards.

At our Baptism, we all receive the call to holiness and discipleship — in other words, the call to sainthood. If we wish to go to Heaven, we must strive to become saints! Thankfully, through the stewardship way of life, we can each discover our unique path to do just that.

In our Gospel passage from Matthew, Jesus reveals His Beatitudes. In them, our Lord lays out the characteristics that mark His disciples, His saints-in-the-making. As we examine, tweak, and update our commitments to the stewardship way of life, we must always keep these Beatitudes in mind as a measure of our progress towards saintliness.

The “blessed” that our Lord speaks of are not the different types of good people who get to go to Heaven. Rather, the “blessed” are the characteristics of the disciples of Christ. These characteristics — poor in spirit, mourners, meek, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, merciful, clean of heart, peacemakers, persecuted for the sake of righteousness, and insulted — can only be obtained with an abundance of grace. But we are children of God, so we have access to the infinite treasury of God’s grace.

Armed with that grace and the stewardship way of life, we can have firm hope that one day we will join our big brothers and sisters in the never-ending joys and celebration of Heaven.

— Stewardship Reflections by Catholic Stewardship Consultants