A former fiinance committee

    We Are a Tithing Parish

Tithing is a spiritual decision about love, 
truth and faith in God

"The true purpose of tithing is to secure not the tithe, but the tither; not the gift, 
 but the giver; not your money, but you . . . for God. "


By Father Sal Riccio, Pastor

Eucharist means "giving thanks."

After the Liturgy of the Word and at the beginning of the Liturgy of the Eucharist, we have a procession of gifts from us to God.

The priest lifts the bread and says:

"Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation. THROUGH YOUR GOODNESS we have this bread to offer which Barth has given and human hands have made. It will become for us the bread of life."

A similar prayer is said with wine.

In these prayers we acknowledge and give praise to God that all things come to us through His goodness. We also acknowledge that through our work and the cooperation of nature we have this bread, this wine, these gifts with which we have been blessed. We are acknowledging that our relationship with God and His message is a priority in our lives and that we are living accordingly.

Everything we have comes from God

A tithe is giving back to God something God gave in the first place. Everything we have comes from God, and when we give back the first 10 percent of our earnings, we're saying to Him, "Thank you, God, for letting me use the other nine tenths!"

This is a spiritual decision about our love, our trust, our faith and how central God is to our lives.

In exploring his spirituality, Wilbur Rees said this: " I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please - not enough to explode my soul or disturb my sleep, but enough to equal a cup of warm milk or a snooze in the sunshine. I don't want enough of God to make me love an enemy or pick beets with a migrant. I would like to buy $3 worth of God, please."

Listen to another man's experience:

"For many years of my adult life I thought of giving to the church much like children handle their allow aces. I 'd take care of the goodies I craved first and if any thing was left over, I'd put it in the offering plate.

"Then one day my teenage daughter gave me a half-eaten candy bar for my birthday. She said she'd spent all her money and that was all she had left.

"It didn't bother me that I didn't get something nice from her. What concerned me was that I never taught her about priorities. Her gift to me was an afterthought, a leftover. I wasn't important enough in her life to be placed ahead of all the silly things she spent her money on.

"My hurt from that experience caused me to take a long, hard look at my relationship with God. I had pretty much squeezed God out of my life, except on Sundays. God s work was not a priority in my life. God got whatever I had left.

"That s all changed now. I've grown up in my giving. I now make the church and the work of God top priority in my budget, instead of giving leJtovers. That is the prudent way. "

"The true purpose of fithing is to secure not the fithe, but the fither; not the gift, but the giver; not your money, but you . . . for God. "

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