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We pray your week is going well!
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Check out the
PWC Summer 2025
Calendar!
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Father’s Day Cereal Drive
to aid Matthew’s Crossing
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From now until Father’s Day, June 15, bring boxes of cereal to PWC to care for those families who are struggling economically and find it difficult to provide for their families.
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PWC Saturday Prayer Retreat
with Fr. Mike Lessard
and Tami Heinl
Saturday, May 24
from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Building 4:12
Coffee and snacks provided.
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Summer Events
“Together
in Hope”
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will return in September.
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Please contact Helen Dippre at [email protected] for more information about the Sunday Children’s Ministry, or to volunteer.
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Blood pressure checks
@ PWC
Our medical team will be providing blood pressure checks on the first and third Sundays of the month from
11:00 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. here at PWC.
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FYI -- the church office will be closed next Monday, May 26 for Memorial Day.
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Our weekly online reflections are ministering to our community each week through the written word. Check out the new reflection by Deacon Fred Pratt. Next week, there will be a reflection on the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven. Be supported in your faith life. You can even check out past reflections!
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Your generosity allows us to minister to so many who come through our doors with their spiritual, emotional, and physical needs. Thank you for your tithing and commitment to PWC! From pastoral counseling to grief support, to bible study and adult education, to providing food through Matthew’s Crossing for families who are economically struggling, to marriage enrichment and our funeral ministry -- your consistent giving makes a difference, a big change in people’s lives!
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Here are the different ways you can tithe to PWC:
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• Mail in your gift to: Praise and Worship Center, 2551 N. Arizona Avenue, Chandler, AZ 85225.
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• Sign up for monthly giving with a credit card or voided check. Just call the office at 480-649-0300 or stop by the office.
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Do you want to be inspired again by Fr. Dale or Pastor Mark? You can listen to Fr. Dale or Pastor Mark’s sermons on our podcast page. Here is the link:
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Fr. Mike Lessard is available for pastoral counseling on Monday and Wednesday mornings. Please call the church office to make an appointment at 480-649-0300.
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Are you homebound? If so, Deacon John Null can bring you communion. The only exception is if you have or are recovering from COVID. The best way to get in touch with Deacon John is by contacting the church office, at 480-649-0300, and leaving a message.
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Our Theme for Easter 2025
Holy! Worthy! Glory!
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It is based on the song
Words We Will Sing Forever
by Seph Schueter
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Check out the music video:
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A Reflection by Ronald Rolheiser
Our Attitude Towards Wealth
The rich are getting richer, and we are almost beyond surprise at how rich that is.
Every day, our newspapers, our televisions, and the internet, report financial compensations that, even just a generation ago, were unimaginable: Corporate executives receiving a hundred million dollar bonuses, an athlete signing a contract for a hundred million dollars, entertainers signing contracts for tens of millions, people in information technology earning billions, and ordinary folks everywhere joining the millionaire club.
And what’s our reaction? Difficult to judge. We express indignation and protest that this is out of proportion, even as we nurse a not-so-secret envy: I wish it was me!
We adore the rich and famous, pure and simple, and in the end, despite our envy, we grant them their due: Good for them! They worked for it. They have the talent. They deserve all they get!
But how should we view being rich from a faith perspective? Jesus warned that riches are dangerous, dangerous to the soul and dangerous to society. So what should be our attitude towards having wealth, both as this pertains to the very rich and as it pertains to us?
First, it is good to avoid a number of things: To begin with, we must never idealize poverty and see wealth as a bad thing in itself. God is rich, not poor, and heaven will not be a place of poverty. Poverty is something to be overcome, eradicated. The poor don’t enjoy being poor. Next, we must avoid too-quickly politicizing both poverty and wealth. Our lens must always be moral rather than political, though obviously both wealth and poverty have huge political implications. Finally, before attacking the possession of wealth, we must ensure that we are free from embittered moralizing which, whatever its moral guise, is little more than envy.
What principles should guide us in terms of an attitude towards wealth?
Underlying everything else, we must always keep in mind Jesus’ warning that the possession of wealth is dangerous, that it is hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Moreover, that warning should be a huge aid in helping us to accept some other principles:
First: The possession of wealth is not a bad thing of itself; it is how we use it and what it can do to our hearts that can be bad. Jesus makes a distinction between the generous rich and the miserly rich. The former are good because they imitate God, the latter are bad. When we are generous, particularly in a very prodigious way, riches won’t close our hearts. But the reverse is also true. All miserliness, all stinginess, all lack of generosity closes our hearts in ways that make it hard to enter the kingdom of heaven, or genuine human community to put in purely human terms.
And so, the challenge for all of us who are rich in any way is to continually give our wealth away. We need to do this, not because the poor need what we give them, though they do; we need to do this so that we can remain healthy. Philanthropy, of every kind, is more about the health of the one giving than the health of the one receiving. The generous rich can inherit the kingdom, the miserly rich cannot. The poor are everyone’s ticket into heaven – and to human health.
Finally, this too must always be kept in mind as we view wealth, both our own and that of the very rich. What we have is not our own, it’s given to us in trust. God is the sole owner of all that is, and the world properly belongs to everyone. What we claim as our own, private property, is what has been given to us in trust, to steward for the good of everyone. It’s not really ours.
Further still, we need to remember that it wasn’t just our own ingenuity and hard work that gave us what we view as our own. The fruits of our labor are also the fruits of other peoples’ labor. We too easily lose sight of that. Here’s how Bill Gates Sr. puts it: “Society has an enormous claim upon the fortunes of the wealthy. This is rooted not only in most religious traditions, but also in an honest accounting of society’s substantial investment in creating fertile ground for wealth-creation.
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all affirm the right of individual ownership and private property, but there are moral limits imposed on absolute private ownership of wealth and property. Each tradition affirms that we are not individuals alone but exist in community – a community that makes claims on us. The notion that ‘it is all mine’ is a violation of these teachings and traditions. Society’s claim on individual accumulated wealth is … rooted in the recognition of society’s direct and indirect investment in the individual’s success. In other words, we didn’t get there on our own.” (Sojourners, January-February, 2003)
Indeed, none of us did! If we remember that we will more easily be generous.
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Have a wonderful week rooted in the Peace of Jesus!
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Love,
Fr. Dale & Pastor Mark
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Keep up with all your PWC friends on Facebook
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Please do not reply to this email;
the sending address is not monitored.
Please reply to: [email protected]
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