This Sunday we will have our Stewardship Fair and Chili Cook Off. This is a great opportunity to spend time with your fellow parishioners. Every day at St. Joseph, I am reminded of your generosity and dedication. I see your commitment of time and talent to the good of your families and your neighbors. Our parish and town provide many opportunities for our young people to develop their souls, minds, and bodies. All of our work and all of our effort is a response to the goodness that is present before us. Being a good steward begins with the awareness of the gifts you have already received. If I recognize the blessings I have received, then I will have confidence to put those blessings into action. Generosity flows from a source that is unlimited. When faith and hope in God are fully alive then the power of charity can be unleashed in a soul. Where faith and hope are weak then charity will necessarily become diminished and cramped.

Four Pillars of stewardship: HOSPITALITY / PRAYER / FORMATION / SERVICE

Hospitality is an experience of kindness that lets a person know they are loved.
Prayer is the begging of the heart to receive God’s blessing.
Formation is instruction of the mind and character in the truth.
Service is the gift of our time, talent, and treasure for the good of others.

The human person is made in the image and likeness of God!

• Intellect and Will: Unlike other physical creatures, humans have the capacity to know the truth, understand moral order, and freely choose to love and do good.

• Body and Soul Unity: The human person is a single, unified reality of both body and soul. The physical body shares in this dignity because a spiritual soul animates it.

• Image vs. Likeness: Drawing on tradition and thinkers like St. Thomas Aquinas, Catholic teaching sometimes distinguishes between the image (which is an indelible mark of personhood, rationality, and freedom) and the likeness (which represents moral perfection and holiness, a likeness that can be obscured by sin but restored through grace and Jesus Christ).

• Relational Nature: As God exists in a communion of Persons (the Trinity), humans are inherently social beings made for relationship, communion, and self-gift with God and others.

• Stewardship: Humans act as royal stewards and co creators, charged with caring for creation and exercising justice, charity, and dominion.

The coin has Caesar’s face and inscription on it, so it is right to return it to Caesar.

Human beings are stamped with the image and likeness of God. Therefore, people must return themselves—their heart, soul, and entire life—back to God. If losing a metal coin causes grief because Caesar's image is lost, a person should care infinitely more about preserving God's image within their own soul.

October 15 is the Feast of St. Teresa of Avila (1515- 1582). She is a saint that everyone should know. She is a Doctor of the Church. St. Teresa is a master of the spiritual life. She is a great teacher on mental prayer and contemplation. One of her most influential works is, “The Interior Castle”.

Here are two of her profound prayers that I have always found helpful.

"Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, All things are passing away: God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices."

"Christ has no body now on earth but yours, No hands but yours, no feet but yours, Yours are the eyes through which the compassion of Christ must look out on the world. Yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He is to bless His people. Amen."

“The devil frequently fills our thoughts with great schemes, so that instead of putting our hands to what work we can do to serve our Lord, we may rest satisfied with wishing to perform impossibilities.”

“God has borne with thousands of foul and abominable sins which you have committed against Him, yet even they have not been enough to make Him cease looking upon you. Is it such a great matter, then, for you to avert the eyes of your soul from the outward things and sometimes to look at Him?”