Stewardship is such an integral part of the fall and early winter holiday season. CROP walks, Thanksgiving food drives, and Giving Trees create a bustling of busy hands and happy hearts. All this giving of our time and treasure is usually not all that difficult. Most of the time, it is considered more of a chain of annual events on the calendar instead of a strenuous, life-giving sacrifice. Yet when we stop to ponder why we participate in these stewardship events, our minds eventually turn to the people supported by these efforts.
One of my favorite “Catholic stories” is about the time the Southern writer Flannery O’Conner was taken by the poet Robert Lowell to a dinner gathering with the well-known author, Mary McCarthy, a proud “lapsed” Catholic.