Saint Anne's Saskatoon Saint Anne's

Our second reading from the First Letter of St. John tells us that Jesus conquers the world, our fiath conquers the world, and we who believe Jesus is the Son of God conquer the world. What do we mean by "world" here? And how exactly has it been conquered?

A famous singer has said, "This love left a permanent mark." This is especially true of divine love. The love that took Jesus to the Cross and the love the raised him from the grave has left a permanent mark on all of creation and on each one of us. The question is, will the permanent mark leave us Christ-centered or Chrive-haunted?

All of the readings today describe atonement. To understanding the meaning of the word, we can break it apart: at - one - ment. Atonement means making one. The whole process of atonement, in our relationships with other people and with God, consists of four parts: relationship, separation, pain of separation, and the act of atonement. The final act of atonement is to step into the pain of separation in order to make one once again. That is what Jesus does for us on the cross.

At the end of today's Gospel, after the cleaning of the Temple, we're told that many people believed in Jesus, but Jesus didn't entrust himself to them. Our translation uses two different words--believe and entrust--but the original Greek uses the same work in both placed. It's the verb pisteuo, which means: think to be true, be persuaded of, put confidence in, believe, trust, have faith in. Jesus calls us to entrust ourselves to him and he entrusts himself to us.

Our second stewardship drive homilies talks about how giving is good for us spiritually. It helps us to grow as disciples of Jesus. Practicing stewardship helps us to live by two great truths: everything is gift and happiness does not come from what we can buy.

Every two years, Saint Anne's runs a stewardship drive, where we challenge ourselves to look at our giving and see what God is asking of us. This homily looks at three models of giving for us to take to prayer so we can respond to this call.