Prayer leads us on to service

	Bishop Robert J. Banks

Congratulations! Congratulations to the whole Church of Green Bay for the way we entered into the Prayer part of our Stewardship Thrust!

Related articles ... • 'Service' moves to forefront • God assigns each of us work to do • Get out your chains, prepare for your crown

From all the reports, it seems that more than 10,000 of the Little Black Book prayer books were used during this past period of Lent. Now I would not be surprised if many of those using the books did it as something for Lent. They were not focusing on Stewardship. It does not matter; prayer is prayer.

We did so well during the Stewardship of Prayer that I would like to say that now we can relax. But orders have come down to me from Bp. Morneau, Mark Mogilka and Mary Sherman, the High Command of the Diocesan Stewardship Thrust, that I have to ask parishioners to begin the next phase: Stewardship of Service. In fact, this phase has already begun. It started right after Easter and will run until June, with a special week of emphasis from May 18 to May 24.

First, let's briefly refresh our knowledge about this whole idea of Stewardship. As a Diocese, we decided, a year or so ago, that we should promote the concept of Stewardship as a way to focus on becoming better disciples of the Lord. The whole point of this Thrust would be to encourage, in each of us, a change of heart that would make us more open to finding ways to follow the Lord more enthusiastically.

Generally, love is the best way for a heart to change. So a Stewardship mentality begins with lifting up how much God loves each one of us and how good God has been to each one of us. Our first response, hopefully, is a greater appreciation of God's love and goodness, and then a deeper love of God follows and inspires us to want to do more in return.

Here in the United States and in northeast Wisconsin, it is relatively easy to think of all the ways God has been good to us. We are among the healthiest, best educated, freest, wealthiest people in the world. You do not have to be much of a believer to consider yourself blessed. But we also have the Gospel that tells us even more about God's love, a love that reveals itself in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is a love that embraces each of us in this life and the life to come. And it is a love that calls us to act in the same way toward our neighbor.

So how do we build up this Stewardship mentality, this change of heart, in ourselves? We could do it by preaching more about God's love and the impact God has on our lives. But you should already be hearing that regularly in the homilies at Mass. So the Stewardship Thrust focuses more on our response to God's love.

Our response includes three parts: prayer, service and sharing. By doing more in each of those areas, we not only respond to God's generous love, we automatically also become more aware of it.

During Lent, we centered our Stewardship response on prayer, especially the use of the Little Black Book. After Easter and through May, our focus will be on service.

Why April and May? Well, I suppose we could have chosen any months, but April and May are, for many parishes, the time when they look for volunteers for various parish activities. That is an important kind of service to our neighbor, but it is not the only kind of service. And my emphasis from the beginning of this Stewardship Thrust is that service has to be broader than volunteering for a parish activity.

Why service rather than something else Christian, like fasting or evangelizing? Because the two basic commandments given us by Jesus are love of God and love of neighbor. Service is another way of saying, "love of neighbor."

Also, on the night before he died, Jesus told us to do two things. First, he asked us to take bread and wine, his Body and Blood, in his memory. Second, after he had knelt and washed the feet of the apostles, he said, "I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do." Some say this was particularly directed to those who would have leadership in the Church, but I hear no limit being expressed by Jesus.

Another reason for service is simply that it makes us think of other people, not just ourselves. That kind of thinking is certainly at the heart of the Gospel.

What kind of service are we encouraging? Well, if your parish is looking for volunteers, that would be a great kind of service to offer. (It also is a time for a parish to think about all the new services it could be giving to others through volunteers.) But parish volunteering is not the emphasis; it is broader than that.

It is our hope that every parishioner will think of some way in which he or she can or does reach out in kindness to someone else. Cutting the grass for an elderly neighbor or baking cookies for the children next door would fit.

All of this is very general. So, just as we emphasized prayer by promoting the Little Black Book, we are going to emphasize service this year by promoting "Random Acts of Kindness" during the week of May 18 to 24.

Each parish, household and individual is encouraged to come up with at least one random act of kindness during that week. It can be to a stranger, a neighbor, a family member or whoever comes to your mind. I am thinking of Bp. Morneau.