Sometimes I wonder what this world will look like when my children get to be my age. Everything seems to be changing so rapidly and much of that change doesn’t seem to be for the good. I do think in some ways the Church is experiencing resurgence and a strengthening, but it will have to in the face of an increasing culture of atheism and selfishness.
Of course, I bet my parents wondered the same thing when I was a child. As much as things change, they remain the same. When Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount, I would guess some parents there were having the same kind of worries. But Jesus proposed a way of life in the beatitudes that was countercultural then and is countercultural now.
In his book, Life of Christ, Fulton Sheen said this: “The Sermon on the Mount is so much at variance with all that our world holds dear that the world will crucify anyone who tries to live up to its values.” Living a stewardship way of life means bringing the beatitudes into our daily lives in a profound way. However, it also means living in a way that others may not understand or they may even turn away from us because of it. But with the reward in the end being the kingdom of heaven, the choice is really a matter of life and death, eternally speaking.
Tracy Earl Welliver, MTS