Each of us can come up with an explanation as to why we react to a certain situation. This reaction is likely based on our knowledge of the circumstances, similar past situations, and how we are personally affected by the situation. If the outcome is a pleasant one for us personally, we might be inclined to have a favorable attitude toward this experience. If the outcome is not pleasant, we may come away with a negative attitude toward this experience.

The attitudes we possess are going to be different from many people around us and will change over time based on the present set of circumstances. Look at the newspapers today and you will find many divisive issues confronting the population, including abortion, gay marriages, health care, social security, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even the new movie about the Passion of Christ. I am the first to admit that I have attitudes, some very strong, about some of these issues. I will also point out though, that I must continue to educate myself on these and other issues if I am to truly understand all of the intricacies of these matters. Too often, I believe, we do not care enough to try to educate ourselves on the issues and how they affect our moral values as Christians and blindly follow the "crowd". Or, we are just apathetic and shy away from any discussion or involvement in these issues because we don’t want to get involved.

My column today is not to try to change your attitude about a specific topic, but rather to suggest that a part of living as a Christian steward is to have attitudes about issues based on information and knowledge of the events going on around us and our Catholic faith. We often spend only an hour of our week in church, and don’t feel compelled to supplement this time at Sunday Mass with other scripture study, personal prayer, and other ways to enrich our understanding of the Bible. In order to have a truly spiritual relationship with our God, it is necessary to spend a portion of our time, to prioritize a portion of our time, praying with God and reflecting what He is asking each of us to do in our daily lives. That is when our attitudes will begin to change, that is when we will be knowledgeable about our faith and about how we are called as Christians to deal with those events of our daily lives.

I would suggest that while the priests and parish leaderships and staffs have been given the gift of ministry to assist each of us in the development of our Christian faith, we too have the duty to assist ourselves in this Christian faith development. As we go through this Lenten season, perhaps now would be a good time to stop and evaluate how well each of us has done in developing our own Christian faith. It is not too late to begin a new discipline for our own faith development. We might decide to participate in a scripture study class at the parish, we might decide to attend the weekly Stations of the Cross services, we might decide to share more fully all of those gifts we have been blessed with by our loving God.

I pray that each of us will continue to be open in our minds and in our hearts to the will of God and that each of us can continue to transform our attitudes to be more like those of Jesus. During this Lenten season may each of us come to know and trust our loving God more deeply, and may we be the Christian stewards that we have been called to in our baptism.