Stewardship - Be a Good Steward of the Lenten Season

Let’s start off this Lent not as a time to “give something up” but rather to “give something back” - the gift of time to look inward to ourselves.
 
Saint Ignatius of Loyola offered us these words of wisdom, which seem particularly relevant as we enter the season of Lent 2023: “He who goes about to reform the world must begin with himself, or he loses his labor.”
 
A Christian steward is by nature a reformer. We attempt to live our lives in a way that makes the world a better place. We vote. We contribute to charities that we believe in. We build up our parish so that we might shine the light of truth into our weary world. 
 
We work to alleviate poverty and injustice. We await the New Jerusalem. Many of us work in areas or for organizations where we bring a passion for reforming our world. Christian stewards who work in other environments endeavor to bring our values into the workplace and the marketplace.
 
Lent doesn’t ask us to stop any of these efforts. But, as we hear “the voice of one who cries in the desert” proclaiming the beginning of Lent, we know that the Church in her wisdom has given us a beautiful season to look inward, to seek quiet time in our own desert. Saint Ignatius, Saint John the Baptist, and the season of Lent remind us that trying to change the world will not work if we don’t first of all change ourselves.