Last week I completed a five-part homily series on Stewardship. (If you want to see the series go to: https://st-peters.ca/video-library/ and click “weekend homilies”, beginning with October 13th). In these homilies I stated we are to sew the fabrics of Service, Evangelization and Worship together with the thread of our finances.

The next three perspectives will concentrate on the theology of financial stewardship by studying 2 Corinthians 8-9, the most detailed treatment in the New Testament on money.

St. Paul teaches that we give in response to Jesus’ generosity who: “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2nd Cor. 8.9). When we give our money to the work of the local Church, we are extending the generosity of Jesus in a practical way. St. Paul begins the chapter by describing how in Macedonia, where the Philippian Church was located, they were financially very generous. Like the poor widow in Mark (12:41-44), the Macedonian Church’s financial gifts expressed “their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of liberality on their part” (2nd Cor.8:2). They were joyful in Jesus’ grace-filled love, so they gave “according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own free will. (2nd Cor.8:3)”