Highlights from Stewardship: A Disciple’s Response

Complete Document: US Bishops’ Pastoral Letter on Stewardship, 1992 (pdf)

Stewardship:

  • To receive God’s gifts gratefully
  • To nurture/tend God’s gifts responsibly
  • To share God’s gifts justly/charitably
  • To return God’s gifts abundantly

The idea and practice of stewardship have the power to change our self-understanding and our understanding of the meaning of our lives.  Steward-disciples recognize God as the origin of life, the giver of freedom, the source of all they have and are.  They see themselves as caretakers of God’s gifts.  They are grateful for what they have received and are eager to cultivate their gifts out of love for God and one another.

I. The Call

The Disciple’s Vocation

The Christian vocation is essentially a call to be a disciple of Jesus. Stewardship is part of that. Christians are called to be good stewards…[to] discern, accept, and live out joyfully and generously the commitments, responsibilities, and roles to which God calls him or her.

Every human life, every personal vocation, is unique.  Yet, we’re all called to be a disciple—to follow Christ and try to live his life as our own—is the common vocation of Christians; discipleship in this sense is Christian life.

Responding to the Call

Jesus not only calls people to him but also forms them and sends them out in his service. Being sent on a mission is a consequence of being a disciple. Whoever wants to follow Christ will have much work to do on his behalf—announcing the Good News and serving others as Jesus did.

The Call to Stewardship

Becoming a disciple of Jesus Christ leads naturally to the practice of stewardship.  Discipleship and stewardship make up the fabric of a Christian life in which each day is lived in an intimate, personal relationship with the Lord.

This Christ-centered way of living has its beginning in Baptism, the sacrament of faith…Faith joins individuals and the community of Jesus’ followers in intimacy with their Lord and leads them to live as his disciples.  Union with Christ gives rise to a sense of solidarity and common cause between the disciples and the Lord and also among the disciples themselves.

Following Jesus is the work of a lifetime…Being a disciple is not just something else to do, alongside man other things suitable for Christians; it is a total way of life and requires continuing conversion.

Christians must be stewards of:

  • Their personal vocations
  • Life and health
  • Their own intellectual and spiritual well-being
  • The intellectual and spiritual well-being of others
  • Material goods and resources
  • The natural environment
  • The cultural heritage of human kind
  • The Church

The Cost of Discipleship

The way of discipleship is privileged beyond any other.  Jesus says:  I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly (Jn. 10:10). But discipleship is not an easy way.

If you wish to come after me, you must deny yourself and take up your cross daily and follow me. For if you wish to save your life you will lose it, but if you lose your life for my sake you will save it (Lk. 9:23-24).

The Lord’s way is not a way of comfortable living or of what Dietrich Bonnhoeffer, in The Cost of Discipleship, scornfully calls ‘cheap grace.’  This is not real grace but an illusion. It is what happens when people approach the following of Christ as a way to pleasant experiences and feeling good.

Bonhoeffer contrasts this with ‘costly’ grace—it is costly because it calls us to follow, and grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.  It is costly because it requires a disciple for Jesus’ sake to put aside the craving for domination, possession, and control, and grace because it confers true liberation and eternal life.  It is costly, finally, because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.

II. Jesus’ Way

The Example of Jesus

Jesus is the supreme teacher of Christian stewardship, as he is of every other aspect of Christian life…His self-emptying is not sterile self-denial for its own sake; rather, in setting aside self, he is filled with the Father’s will, and he is fulfilled in just this way:

My food is to do the will of the one who sent me and to finish his work (Jn. 4:34).

Jesus’ mission is to restore to good order the created household of God which sin has disrupted. He not only perfectly accomplished this task, but also, in calling disciples, empowers them to collaborate with him in the work of redemption for themselves and on behalf of others.

The Image of the Steward

Jesus sometimes describes a disciple’s life in terms of stewardship.

Definition of steward: An oikonomos or steward is one to whom the owner of a household turns over responsibility for caring for the property, managing affairs, making resources yield as much as possible, and sharing the resources with others.  The position involved trust and accountability.

A parable in Matthew’s Gospel (cf. Mt. 25:14-30) gives insight into Jesus’ thinking about stewards and stewardship. It is the story of ‘a man who was going on a journey,’ and who left his wealth in silver pieces to be tended by three servants…One day God will require an accounting of the use each person has made of the particular portion of these goods entrusted to him or her.

Each will be measured by the standard of his or her individual vocation. Each has received a different ‘sum’—a unique mix of talents, opportunities, challenges, weaknesses and strengths, potential modes of service and response—on which the Master expects a return. He will judge individuals according to what they have done with what they were given.

The Steward’s Reward

People trying to live as stewards reasonably wonder what reward they will receive.  This is not selfishness but an expression of Christian hope. Peter raises the question when he says to Jesus, ‘We have given up everything and followed you’ (Mk. 10:28).

…Giving up means receiving more, including more responsibility as a steward; among the consequences of living this way will be persecution; and even though discipleship and stewardship set the necessary terms of Christian life in this world, they have their ultimate reward in another life.

…To be a Christian disciple is a rewarding way of life, a way of companionship with Jesus, and the practice of stewardship as a part of it is itself a source of deep joy. Those who live life this way are happy people who have found the meaning and purpose of living.

III. Living as a Steward

Creation and Stewardship

…God wishes human beings to be his collaborators in the work of creation, redemption, and sanctification; and such collaboration involves stewardship in its most profound sense. We exercise such stewardship…not by our own power but by the power of the Spirit of truth (cf. Jn. 14:16-17).

…God settled humankind upon earth to be its steward—‘to cultivate and care for it’ (Gn. 2:15)…God’s mandate to humankind to collaborate with him in the task of creating—the command to work—comes before the Fall. Work is a fundamental aspect of human vocation. It is necessary for human happiness and fulfillment. It is intrinsic to responsible stewardship of the world.

Collaboration in Creation

One of these is a profound reverence for the great gift of life, their own lives and the lives of others, along with readiness to spend themselves in serving all that preserves and enhances life [including]:

  • Jubilant appreciation of nature
  • Active stewardship of ecological concern
  • Involvement in the human vocation to cultivate material creation—art, scholarship, science, and technology, as well as business and trade, physical labor, skilled work of all kinds, and serving others.

Redemption and Stewardship

Everyone has some natural responsibility for a portion of the world and an obligation in caring for it…But there are also those who might be called stewards by grace.  Baptism makes Christians stewards of this kind, able to act explicitly on God’s behalf in cultivating and serving the portion of the world entrusted to their care, [and involves]:

  • A stewardship of time:  setting aside periods for family prayer, for the reading of Scripture, for visits to the Blessed Sacrament, and for attendance at Mass during the week whenever possible
  • Participation in Christ’s redemptive activity…[extending to] the use people make of experiences that otherwise might seem the least promising: deprivation, loss, pain

‘Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake,’ St. Paul says, ‘and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the Church’ (Col. 1:24).

Here also one looks to Jesus to lead the way. For one’s estimate of suffering, as Pope John Paul II points out, is transformed by discovering its ‘salvific meaning’ when united with the suffering of Christ (Salvifici Doloris, no. 27).

Cooperation in Redemption

Penance also belongs to this aspect of Christian life…the Church commends what Pope Paul VI called the ‘traditional triad’ of prayer, fasting and almsgiving…while also encouraging Catholics to adopt penitential practices of their own choice that suit their particular circumstances.

Through voluntarily accepted penances one gradually becomes liberated from those obstacles to Christian discipleship…the quest for pleasure…avarice, a craving for the illusion of absolute domination and control, valuing creatures without reference to their Creator, excessive individualism, and ultimately, the fear of the death unrelieved by hope for eternal life.

…Constantly, Christians must beg God for the grace of conversion:  the grace to know who they are, to whom they belong, how they are to live—the grace to repent and change and grow, the grace to become good disciples and stewards.

IV. Stewards of the Church

Community and Stewardship

The New Covenant in and through Christ—the reconciliation he effects between humankind and God—forms a community:  the new People of God, the Body of Christ, the Church…The epistle to the Ephesians exhorts Christians to:

Live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace:  one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all (Eph. 4:1-6).

Because its individual members do collectively make up the Body of Christ, that body’s health and well-being are the responsibility of the members—the personal responsibility of each one of us…there is a fundamental obligation arising from the sacrament of Baptism…that people place their gifts, their resources—their selves—at God’s service in and through the Church.

Here also Jesus is the model.  Even though his perfect self-emptying is unique, it is within the power of disciples, and a duty, that they be generous stewards of the Church, giving freely of their time, talent and treasure.

Evangelization and Stewardship

Stewardship of the Church leads people to share in the work of evangelization or proclaiming the Good news, in the work of catechesis or transmitting and strengthening the faith, and in works of justice and mercy on behalf of persons in need.

Parents: Above all, it requires that parents themselves be models of stewardship, especially by their selfless service to one another, to their children, and to church and community needs. 

Parish: Parishes, too, must be or become, true communities of faith within which this Christian way of life is learned and practiced.  Sound business practice is a fundamental of good stewardship, and stewardship as it relates to church finances must include the most stringent ethical, legal, and fiscal standards.

Diocese: The diocese is not merely an administrative structure but instead joins communities called parishes into a ‘local church’ and unites its people in faith, worship, and service.  The same spirit of personal responsibility in which a Catholic approaches his or her parish should extend to the diocese and be expressed in essentially the same ways:  generous material support and self-giving.

Solidarity and Stewardship

The most basic and pervasive obstacle [to solidarity] is sheer selfish lack of love, a lack which people must acknowledge and seek to correct when they find it in their own hearts and lives.  For the absence of charity from the lives of disciples of Jesus in itself is self-defeating and hypocritical. If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar (1 Jn. 4:20).

Those who enter into Jesus’ New Covenant find themselves growing in a union of minds and hearts with others who also have responded to God’s call. They find their hearts and minds expanding to embrace all men and women, especially those in need, in a communion of mercy and love.

Eucharistic Stewardship

In the Eucharist, Christians:

  • reaffirm their participation in the New Covenant;
  • give their thanks to God for blessings received; and,
  • strengthen their bonds of commitment to one another as members of the covenant community Jesus forms.

And what do Christians bring to the Eucharistic celebration and join there with Jesus’ offering?

  • Their lives as Christian disciples;
  • their personal vocations and the stewardship they have exercised regarding them; and,
  • their individual contributions to the great work of restoring all things in Christ.

Disciples give thanks to God for gifts received and strive to share them with others.

The glory and the boast of Christian stewards lie in mirroring, however poorly, the stewardship of Jesus Christ, who gave and still gives all he has and is, in order to be faithful to God’s will and carry through to completion his redemptive stewardship of human beings and their world.

V. The Christian Steward

While the New Testament does not provide a rounded portrait of the Christian steward all in one place, elements of such a portrait are present throughout its pages:

  • Jesus speaks of the ‘faithful and prudent steward’ as one whom a householder sets over other members of the household in order to ‘distribute the food allowance at the proper time’ (Lk. 12:42; cf. Mt. 24:25)
  • Good stewards understand that they are to share with others what they have received, that this must be done in a timely way, and that God will hold them accountable on how well or badly they do it. (Lk. 12:46)
  • Do not be deceived…all good giving and every perfect gift is from above (James 1:16-17)
  • Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31)
  • The first requirement of a steward is to be ‘found trustworthy’ (1 Cor. 4:2)
  • Stewardship is a uniquely solemn trust. If Christians understand it and strive to live it to the full, they grasp the fact that they are no less than ‘God’s co-workers’, with their own particular share in his creative, redemptive, and sanctifying work (1 Cor. 3:9)
  • Stewards are fully conscious of their accountability. They neither live nor die as their own masters (Rom. 14:8).
  • The life of a Christian steward, lived in imitation of the life of Christ, is challenging, even difficult in many ways; but both here and hereafter it is charged with intense joy (2 Cor. 7:4).

Women and men who seek to live in this way learn that ‘all things work for good for those who love God’ (Rom. 8:28).  It is part of their personal experience that God is ‘rich in mercy [and] we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them’ (Eph. 2:4,10).