Understanding stewardship

The Malabar Parish of Arima celebrated its second anniversary of the Stewardship Programme on Sunday, June 25. Holy Mass was concelebrated by Fr Gregory Mc Lawrence, parish priest, and Fr Michael Cockburn.

At the homily, Fr Cockburn reminded the congregation of the stewardship theme, Putting God First, and the true meaning of stewardship.

In understanding stewardship, he said, we should not see it as a fund-raising gimmick; instead you “sow a seed and God will multiply it for you”. It is really a way of managing God’s affairs, hence honesty, responsibility, gratitude and generosity are the base requirements of a steward.

Meditation dance

In stewardship, Fr Cockburn continued, the three Ts – Time, Talent and Treasure – should be seen as specifically God’s gifts to us, to be used entirely in his service. This is a challenge to total commitment – all that I have, all that I am.

Fr Cockburn further emphasised the fact that stewardship is a form of spirituality, which means an ever deepening relationship with God expressed in love for others, for without God we are nothing.

At the meditation, a dance to the song, Christ Has No Body but Yours, was performed by some members of the youth ministry. This was well received and they need to be applauded for a job well done.

No doubt, time and talent are very much alive in our parish. As for treasure, a detailed account of funds received was given by the treasurer of the Pastoral Council.

Stewardship then is a way of life. It has its own reward as we learn to trust in God and his unfailing care for us, we organise our lives in his service. 

Church gets a makeover

Undergoing a transformation is the Church of the Holy Spirit in Malabar, under the guidance of the parish priest, Fr Gregory Mc Lawrence CSSp, and with the help of some parishioners familiar with construction.

There have been three major improvements to the Church’s infrastructure. This has taken place in the last year.

The first to be done was the roof. It is well known that re-roofing a structure these days is a costly exercise. Thank God we had Z pearlings and steel beams in place from an earlier time and all we needed to do was change the old galvanise sheets, but we had a bonus thrown in - the shape of the roof over both the sanctuary and the foyer was modified.

Meditation dance. The refurbished sanctuary is in the background.

From a distance this has given our roof a new appearance. Next was the foyer. With the roof having been modified, additional improvements were made to the area.

The old wooden ceiling was replaced by a new suspended ceiling with flush panel lights. The terrazzo floor was covered with some lovely 12 x 12 inch non-skid tiles.

Our new foyer must now serve as an inspiration to our parishioners as they enter the church for worship or meetings.

The refurbishing story gets even more intricate as the sanctuary was next in line. Here we were inspired by Monsignor Michael de Verteuil who suggested, during a brief visit, that we redo the sanctuary and at the same time utilise some space from the original sanctuary for a new Adoration chapel.

Remodelling the sanctuary was a tedious job. Our “in house” contractor Peter Balkaran worked very closely with the decorator Beatrice Ramoutarsingh, with some very important inputs from Fr Gregory.

Some of the features of the new sanctuary are:
- Wider steps on the altar
- A more spacious altar base
- Beautiful buff-coloured tiles
- A brand new tabernacle
- Two stained glass panels (to be installed)
- An attractive colour scheme consisting of pawpaw (on the major wall areas), pearl white (on the two columns) and terracotta (on the arch surrounding the crucifix)
- Two new statues (the Virgin Mary and Jesus) beautify the front of the sanctuary.

So the renovating of our church continues. At the time of writing the new Adoration room is about ninety percent completed. After this we will be relocating the secretary’s office to the site of the old Adoration room.

This is to allow our parish priest to have exclusive use of the area now used by the secretary.

We thank God for all the improvements to our church and pray for his blessings on our parish priest, our generous parishioners and all those who worked on the different projects.