By Nick Carney, Endowment and Legacy Giving Program Manager
On Sunday we celebrated mass in honor of the 80 members of the Society of Saint Joseph. Normally this is a private mass for Society members and their families. This year, the celebration was made public as part of the regularly scheduled 11:30 AM mass at the Cathedral of Saint Joseph. This allowed members of the public to join in as we honored our Society members.
There was a special feeling of excitement in the Cathedral because this was the first weekend since the beginning of the pandemic that parishioners had the opportunity to celebrate mass inside the church. Many members of the Society joined the celebration virtually as well. Bishop Cantú led the congregation in a beautiful homily that expressed the importance of loving the Lord with all your heart, mind and soul. This is the most important of all commandments, followed by love your neighbor as yourself. This was a fitting reminder as we celebrated our legacy society members.
The words in this gospel that stuck out to me and which speak volumes about our Society members are the words “as yourself.” I think about at our legacy society members and recognize that their gifts are some of the many ways in which they show their love for God. But even further, as people who have chosen to remember the church with a legacy gift, they are also choosing to love their brothers and sisters in faith “as themselves.” The gifts that they give through their legacy plans will not be realized until after their passing. They will not hear the grateful “thank you” from their pastor when the check from the portion of their estate plan reaches the parish. They will not hear the stories of the families who will be helped via an outreach program that received the gift from their retirement account. They will be partaking in the great rewards of heaven, and their legacy gifts are the parts of themselves that they leave behind for their community of faith.
We each leave a legacy; we get to decide how that legacy will reflect our lives, values, and ways of loving. Like the members of the Society of Saint Joseph, a beautiful part of your legacy can be a gift that enhances the organizations and ministries that have brought meaning and joy to your life.
It is a gift to celebrate the members of the Society of Saint Joseph who are not just leaving a gift, but a legacy of themselves to the ministry of Christ.
The Society of Saint Joseph is a group of generous donors who have committed a gift in their estate plan to benefit parishes, schools and ministries in the Diocese of San Jose. If you are interested in learning more about the Society, please contact Nick Carney at carney@catholiccf.org.
“Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’: aim at Earth and you will get neither.” – C.S. Lewis, author