Dear Lord God, You alone are the source of every good gift and the mystery of each human life. We thank you for creation and for your tender, faithful love. Fill our minds with the Gospel of your son Jesus and fill our hearts with his compassion. Send your Spirit to grant us wisdom, that our gratitude may bind us together into a community of faith and a caring people. Give us the courage to express ourgratitude first as we discern how to be good stewards of the gifts entrusted to us, that we may do the work for your Kingdom. In your son’s name we pray, Amen!
The St. Therese Stewardship Corner shares weekly stories and reflections on how our parishioners are sharing their gifts.
Without listening together to the Spirit, he said, the church runs the risk of falling prey to ideological divisions. "But where is the Holy Spirit? Watch out, the Gospel is not an idea or an ideology, it is a proclamation that touches and changes your heart. But if you hide in an idea, you are making the Gospel a political party, an ideology or a social club."
The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. It seems that sin has two components: (1) it’s attractive and (2) it’s about us.
St. Therese currently serves over 44 zip codes. Families travel from as far as Tacoma and Everett because the new evil is “pricing communities of color” out of the very area once designated ghetto enough for us to reside in. But the community is still here, holding on within the walls of St. Therese classrooms.
In 2023 emigration is still a hot topic in the United states. As we enter Black History Month, I wanted to draw attention and remind us of one of the most tragic moments in our country's history, the Back to Africa Movement and the American Colonization Society.
If you remove from your midst oppression, false accusation and malicious speech; if you bestow your bread on the hungry and satisfy the afflicted; then light shall rise for you in the darkness, and the gloom shall become for you like midday. Isaiah 58:9-10
As we all know, the attendance at Catholic Churches (as well as many other religious communities and fraternal organizations) has declined to the point that parishes are now contracting.
You can’t always tell from the outside what people are dealing with on the inside. Our inner journey is a lot more private, a lot more personal. . . . Whenever you’re down, for whatever reason it is, there needs to be a glimpse of hope, a glimpse of life, that is refreshed in us by those around us, who care for us.
Last month we received a donation in memory of Archbishop Hunthausen. I think the Archbishop was a lamb of God for his holiness, his gentleness, the way his lived The Way and for his treatment by the Vatican. The donors wrote the following memorial: