Supplement Your Faith

June 2, 2008

Monday of the Ninth Week in Ordinary Time

By Beth De Cristofaro

…make every effort to supplement your faith with virtue, virtue with knowledge, knowledge with self-control, self-control with endurance, endurance with devotion, devotion with mutual affection, mutual affection with love. (2 Peter 1: 5-7)

A man planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenant farmers and left on a journey. At the proper time he sent a servant to the tenants to obtain from them some of the produce of the vineyard. (Mark 12: 1-2)

Piety

In me there is darkness,
But with you there is light;
I am lonely, but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace...
Lord, whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Study

http://www.usccb.org/nab/readings/060208.shtml

Supplement your faith, says the writer of 2 Peter. Supplement your faith …so that through them you may come to share in the divine nature, after escaping from the corruption that is in the world because of evil desire. (2 Peter 1:4) God has graced us with so many gifts. With these there is responsibility and a freedom to be who we are. God trusts us, as does the vineyard owner, to care for those gifts and the author of 2 Peter shows us how to do so.

Last week we celebrated the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. God’s greatest gift to us is himself. God as man knows the sorrows and joys of humanity. How pierced was Jesus’ heart as he described the leaders of Chosen People in the parable of the tenants to the Pharisees and Saducees? He knew that they, like the tenants, based their actions on greed and the desire for power. He knew what they were planning. He knows what I am planning each and every day. But he trusts me to supplement my faith and cultivate my life so that it bears fruit abundantly in praise and thanksgiving.

How am I supplementing my faith? When things don’t go my way do I “beat” those who oppose me into agreeing with me? Do I run my life for ‘me’ rather than stewarding the gifts God has given to me – temporary gifts which I can’t take with me? Do I imagine that I’ve earned my life or do I realize that God has graced me with it? Although these questions can cause me to be shameful or sorry, God rather offers me the chance to be remorseful, penitent and grateful as I make the choice to supplement my faith.

Action

Growing concerns in the vineyard today include availability of drinkable water; the price of oil; environmental degradation. Bottled water touches all of these. Did you know that:

- Water supplies serving less-developed countries are being used by large corporations. “The United Nations estimates that more than 1 billion people worldwide currently lack access to safe drinking water and that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will not have access to drinking water.”

- “Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water required the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil last year and generated more than 2.5 million tons of carbon dioxide.”

- “Each year, 4 billion pounds of polyethylene terephthalate plastic bottles which are recyclable end up in landfills or as roadside litter” rather than being recycled.

(statistics quoted from National Catholic Reporter, January 11, 2008, page 9).

Give up buying bottled water. By saving water we might instead irrigate the vineyard and care for God’s loving tenants.