{"id":36091,"date":"2022-10-26T10:01:06","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T14:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/?p=36091"},"modified":"2022-11-24T11:45:30","modified_gmt":"2022-11-24T16:45:30","slug":"aligning-faith-and-finances-a-personal-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/aligning-faith-and-finances-a-personal-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"Aligning Faith and Finances: A Personal Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"
>> Back to November 2022 Issue<\/a><\/div>\n
Above photo by Erol Ahmed, Unsplash<\/a><\/h5>\n

\"RobI grew up in a typical Irish Catholic household. My parents dutifully made sure that my siblings and I received the sacraments \u2014 Baptism, First Confession, First Communion, etc. \u2014 and that we attended Mass on major holidays and some Sundays. Other than this, my exposure to God was limited to religious education classes and an evangelical Christian missionary who lived across the street from me. Thus, my faith was not very mature in the early years of my life, but I believed in God and I loved to ask big questions.<\/p>\n

My hometown was small. This, in addition to the fact that my mother taught classes in my church, meant that our priest knew our family well. At the age of 14, while attending Christmas Eve Mass, I sensed that the priest acknowledged my presence. That simple act was enough to get me thinking about the Ten Commandments, most prominently the Third Commandment \u2014 \u201cKeep holy the Lord\u2019s Day.\u201d In response, I told my family I wanted to go to church each Sunday.<\/p>\n

Hearing the Word of God proclaimed each week at Mass marked the beginning of my journey to being a faithful Catholic and embracing more fully the teachings of the Catholic Church. Then, for my 16th birthday, in order to find answers to my big questions, I asked for the Catechism of the Catholic Church. I dove into it, wanting to know as much as I could about the social teachings of the Church.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t take long before I began to recognize some of the real-life applications of what I was learning. For instance, as I began working some part-time jobs I noticed a difference when I was treated with dignity as an employee, and when my fellow employees would in-turn pass on that same respect to our customers. This drove me to start seeking out other businesses that operated with the same kindness, and I preferred to support these businesses over some of their peers that didn\u2019t seem to take the same approach of loving their neighbors through the way they ran their business.<\/p>\n

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