Each According to Their Ability

There is a legend that when God created the universe,

he created the animals of the earth and

the fish of the sea and the birds of the air

and when the animals first got their new legs as newborns

they stumbled and fell;

and then they ran at full joy and were delighted.

The fish swam, first gasped for air

but in the water they were able to breathe

and then swam straight and as fast as they could.

But the birds,

they walked with their little feet

and they stumbled and hopped;

they complained because they could not walk very fast

and they had extra weight on their shoulders

—these appendages—that they could not figure out why

they were given so much burden.

And why their legs were so small and they could not run.

So they complained against God, “Why, Lord, why us?”

Then one day, one of the little birds stumbled

and as it stumbled forward, the appendages on its shoulders opened

and the wings lifted the bird up into the air.

And the bird started to fly and

soon all the birds soared the skies

and gave great glory to God because

now they could go anywhere at any speed.

It is a lovely little story that illustrates

that sometimes we do not realize how gifted we are.

What is our stumbling block?

What is our cross?

What is the extra weight we think

that and ends up being our wings,

ends up allowing us to soar to places we never even imagined?

We often do not realize how blessed we have been by God

and we are often not grateful to God for his goodness.

We often realize that our gifts are undiscovered within us;

that we come to bear much fruit often through,

as I say, our stumbling stone or our cross.

When we hear today’s gospel,

we tend to look at these three servants

and say that the poor servant only received one talent

as opposed to one who received five and two.

We have to understand the context.

A talent is a weight of gold or silver.

And one talent would have been about 60 pounds.

This parable is about is the outrageousness of the master

to give such ludicrous amounts of money

because 60 pounds of gold would be about $2,000,000 today.

Think about it for a moment that you were given

$2,000,000 or $4,000,000 or $10,000,000 to just take care of.

It is an extraordinary exaggeration of a gift to be given to somebody.

But of course, that is the point.

That was what Jesus was trying to illustrate;

that God, the Master, gives abundantly to all.

Yes, to some, super abundantly

but to all he gives abundantly

even the one who receives one talent receives an abundance of gifts.

But you will notice what is important here

is not what was given but

what was done with what was given.

It is how they chose to invest.

We can now understand that if we were given $2,000,000

and we buried it in the ground that is lunacy;

why would you put $2,000,000 dollars in the ground?

That does not make any sense at all.

And so that is what the Lord was trying to do for the disciples

to upset their sensibilities;

that they were all gifted with so much

and they were all asked to invest what they were given

and to return with increase to the Lord.

That is the very tenet of Christian stewardship;

that we first realize how gifted we have been,

how much God has graced us

to give us so much and to realize how much that is

and to be thankful to God.

We take so much for granted.

We have our health.

And even despite these COVID times,

so many of us are doing just fine.

We have our family and our friends.

We have our parents who love us.

Maybe our parents were not perfect

but I suspect that most all of us had parents who loved us.

We have employment.

We have a beautiful area we live in.

The list goes on my friends,

that we are truly graced by God with so much.

The first step we have to take is to be grateful;

to be grateful to God because we did not earn any of this.

Those are all unearned privileges;

unearned graces that God showers upon us.

And while some of us are graced

even more so with unearned privileges,

we are all graced with some.

The challenge for us then is to ask the question: 

How do we invest?

How do we give back

and what does that look like in giving back?

Over these last several weeks,

we have been telling you about our financial

state of the parish here at St. Simon.

Don McGovern and his finance team last week illustrated

the trend over these last several years

that we have not collected enough to cover the operating expenses.

This year we made the decision to cut back staff

to meet whatever it is that you have given us.

In other words, we are trying to be good stewards.

We will not spend what we do not have.

But it is also important to ask the Lord to help us

in what we ought to invest in

what we ought to grow

and where our need as a parish is to invest in the future

just like these good servants.

What I want to ask you today is to help me and to invest;

and to increase your giving so that

we can invest in the future of St. Simon’s here and now.

What are those investments?

There are five areas that I think we need to invest in,

that I have heard in many conversations.

Over the last 6 months, I have had with zoom meetings

with over 400 people since I have been here.

Lots of great ideas and things we are really in need.

First and foremost, which we have been doing,

is the increased resources in helping everyone

to become men and women of prayer.

We have been doing this retreat series, the Second Mountain,

that will come to an end on Tuesday.

But we know we need to do more;

that we need to continue to increase our resources

to enable people to become people of prayer.

For example, the books that we gave out,

the Give Us This Day booklets

those were given as a gift from

one of my former parishioners at Holy Spirit.

They gave $5,000 so that 200 of you could have

those booklets for the whole year subscription for free

because they believe so much in the power of prayer.

Now we have a higher demand.

People are using all 200 books, so we need somebody from the parish

to invest and to give a gift so that more people,

the next 200 people,can have that resource of prayer.

So we need to continue to pour resources into prayer.

The second area is pastoral care for the elderly.

We know in these COVID times

that the elderly are some of the most vulnerable

and their isolation and loneliness is very real.

But it goes beyond that.

The founding members of our parish are getting to the age

where they need to be cared for instead of always being

the ones to pour out themselves.

We need to ready our ministries to be the caregivers

and to give pastoral care to those who are our elders.

The third area is the young people in our parish.

Regrettably, we have had to make a change

to that staff position here for Youth Ministry.

It was regrettable because they are not just the parishioners of the future,

they are the parishioners of the parish today.

So we are rebooting the Youth Ministry this evening.

And we have over 120 who are coming.

That tells you how hungry they are for ministry.

And we need to pour resources into building up

that ministry that now is voluntary.

But we need help to do that and continue to build it up.

The fourth area that we now know we need to invest in is technology.

For the foreseeable future, we will be doing a hybrid ministry

if not exclusive ministry online.

We need more resources for technology

and cameras as well as social media.

We also need to invest in social media and our new website.

Evangelization is going online

and we need to pour resources into that.

Finally, the fifth area is something that

we have been doing very well here for a number of years

and that is Outreach to the Needy.

Through the many different organizations here in the parish,

we have been reaching out to those who are in need

from St. Vincent DePaul to the Mission to Tijuana;

and many other ministries.

But now more than ever do we need to double down on that.

We as a parish have not been affected economically

quite as much as other parishes have.

There is another parish in our diocese that 65% of its parishioners

have lost their jobs and in danger of losing their homes.

We as a parish that has done better economically right now,

we need to step up and help those who are not as well off.

Those are the five areas that I would like us to invest in

but what specifically am I asking of you?

Most of us get paid for 40 hours

even though we might work more than that,

and what I am asking for you to give is an equal sacrifice not equal gift.

I am asking for one hour,

the cost of one financial hour

and to give this as a recurring gift to the Church each week.

If you earn $20 an hour, then we ask you to give $20 a week.

If you earn $200 an hour then we ask you to give $200 a week.

Equal sacrifice, not equal giving.

Each according to their ability.

I realize for some of you that is going to be a new concept

and it is going to take you some time to build up to that level of giving

but I ask you to consider doing that and to pray about that.

Some of you are already there.

You are far beyond it and in fact giving way more than that.

And we thank you for that gift.

We ask you to continue to give at that level

and if you can increase it by 5% or 10% to help us to grow.

Again thank you for your support.

For some of you, that is just not possible.

You are on a fixed income and

there is just simply no way that you could give at that level

or that you have so many expenses with kids that it is just not possible.

We ask you to give whatever you can

but maybe what you can give is an hour of time instead.

We have many needs for volunteers.

For example, we would love to have instrumental music at every Mass.

Right now we have instrumental music at one Mass;

we would like to have it at all Masses.

If you know how to play a musical instrument

then please let us know and we will try to have you

at one of our Masses throughout the weekend.

Or if you are willing to be an Usher.

Most of our Ushers are in that age group that are vulnerable

so we pretty much have no Ushers available so we ask for people,

particularly younger people,

to become Ushers and to help continue

to get people in and out of Church safely.

Or we know we have a new tech ministry

and we need tech service at every Mass.

If you are willing to do some technology in support,

we would love to have you there.

Or, for example, St. Vincent DePaul ministry.

Most of the people who work at the St. Vincent DePaul

are also of that vulnerable age range,

and we ask and need some younger people to do

the work at St. Vincent DePaul to help them do what they do.

And there are a multitude of other ways in which you could help.

We need volunteers and we need your time.

Maybe even those who cannot give and

you may not even be able to give hours,

but what you can do is you can pray for an hour each week,

and ask the Lord to bless the work that

we do as a parish and as a community.

If we want to be good and faithful servants

then we are called to be grateful for God’s gifts

that he has already given us;

to look upon him and to ask the Lord to bless us

and to help us to invest in the future of our parish;

to make our world a better place by using our gifts

for the greater good of God and his Church.

I ask you to prayerfully consider

giving back each according to their ability.