Take this key, and put it to good use

Do you remember the first key you ever possessed?

Mine was our house key. Mom and Dad gave me one when I was in middle school – old enough to go out on my own while they were away. My next two keys were to my car (for getting to high school), and to Dad’s plumbing shop (because I was old enough to go to work).

Keys do more than unlock things. They give authority; they provide access to the interior; they allow one the freedom to act; they bestow a kind of possession.

Well, today, I want to share a key with you.

Among the many things I have enjoyed about being the vicar for evangelization, discipleship, and stewardship is the deep thinking in which I have engaged since assuming this role. During my years as a pastor in Clonmel and at St. Francis, I have preached, taught, written, prayed, discerned, and articulated these three concepts in many ways. I was even blessed to study the New Evangelization at Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit, where I wrote my thesis on their relationship: “A Grateful Response to God’s Abundant Gifts.”

All of this has formed a cornucopia of content from which I now draw. But in these past months as vicar, I have had the opportunity to revisit it all with fresh prayer and discernment, seeking to apply what I have received to what I am now entrusted with. What a joy it has been to go deeper into the intersection of these three realities. There have been moments of clarity, such as seeing stewardship as a response to social poverty, or evangelization as rooted in the family and sent ad extra into society.

But most recently, a central awareness has emerged – one I consider a key. It is a hermeneutical key: a central tenet that unifies meaning and unlocks the interior logic of these three realities.

As with any key, when applied rightly, it gives authority, access, freedom, and a kind of possession of the interior meaning and interrelatedness of these concepts. As a hermeneutical key, it opens up the “breadth and length and height and depth” (Eph 3:18) of these truths.

And what is this key?

Evangelization invites relationship.

Discipleship forms communion.

Stewardship embodies solidarity.

Just like a key, this is small, but it opens these concepts into a whole world of interrelatedness and mutual self-revelation. When seen through this lens, they begin to take on a vibrant and richer meaning.

• Evangelization invites relationship through the hospitable outreach of the faithful, offering to anyone open a place in the Body of Christ. 

• Discipleship forms communion through the shared love of the Triune God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – lived in the family of the Church, the People of God. 

• Stewardship embodies solidarity, where people “put their gifts at the service of one another” (1 Pet 4:10, NABRE) and “carry one another’s burdens” (Gal 6:2, NABRE), so that everyone in a parish family has the moxie to make it through this mixed-up, messed-up, crazy world of ours. 

If we look even more deeply, we begin to see that this pattern is not something we have invented – it is something we have received. It reflects the very life of God himself.

• Evangelization invites relationship because the Father is always the One who invites – who calls his children to himself, who takes the initiative in love. 

• Discipleship forms communion because the Son draws us into communion – into his own life, his own body, his own relationship with the Father. 

• Stewardship embodies solidarity because the Holy Spirit binds us together – moving us to share our gifts, to bear one another’s burdens, and to live as one. 

In other words, this “key” is not simply pastoral; it is Trinitarian. It opens for us not only a way of life, but a participation in the very life of God.

So today, I give you a key – a hermeneutical key.

Pray with it. Memorize it. Teach it. Live it.

And when you consider evangelization, discipleship, and stewardship, let it give you authority, access, freedom, and possession – so that you may delve ever deeper into this beautiful way of life we share in the Diocese of Wichita.

P.S. As I wrote this article, I noticed the date: April 10 (4/10). That caught my attention, because 1 Peter 4:10 is a central passage for stewardship: “As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace.”