The Facts of Life Series: The Principle of Stewardship
As Catholics, we are all called to be Jesus’ disciples. And, such disciples want and are willing to embrace this exciting existential adventure with and for God. For it is a life of demanding and determined discipline, a pursuit of virtue and service. It is a walk of humble gratitude, willing surrender, perpetual progress and saintly success. It is an adventurous life of deep relational intimacy with God and the rational, spiritual and experiential certainty of His love and grace, His goodness and beauty, even His practical provision and intervention.
While discipleship is the comprehensive calling to which we are all summoned in our individual lives, stewardship is a foundational and integral principle of all such discipleship. And, Jesus spoke many times about this explicitly and implicitly. A succinct statement of such stewardship is found in the familiar adage “to whom much is given, much is expected.”
This is a simple, yet subtle and sophisticated, statement of the operative dynamic within the principle of stewardship, just as it is an exhortation, a challenge and a command to any and every disciple of Christ. As the adage states, stewardship starts with what we are given. It begins with our rigorous recognition of what we are given; that everything we are and have is a gift and also a responsibility.
The very idea of stewardship begins with a penetrating understanding of our complete and comprehensive contingency, the fact that our very existence is the result of God’s direct intentionality and activity. Stewardship begins with a deep recognition that our ultimate existential reality, that our entire being is completely contingent on God’s action and love. Stewardship begins with the comprehensive recognition that all that we are, our inherited physical traits and talents, our intellectual abilities and inclinations, even our looks and disposition, are not the result of our efforts or decisions.
For in life, we get what we get. And, because we have no hand in our inherited constitution and our idiosyncratic potentialities or even our very existence, we are stewards of our being and our lives. For we are all contingent beings, divinely contingent on the deliberate intention of God, just as the entire cosmos is. All we have been given is not our fault or credit. But, what we do with our giftings is.
And so, we are stewards for we have been given the gift of life and our individuality by the Maker of the universe, the Creator of all truth, goodness and beauty. And, as contingent beings, our default mindset should be one of profound humility and gratitude for our existence and individuality. We also should sense a growing excitement and curiosity about this life with God, the discovery of the wonders of existence, the particularities of His plan and purpose for our individual lives and how all that plays out in the world of space and time. Yet we should also see how we are responsible to be willing and enthusiastic stewards of the life and the time, the talents and treasures we are each given.
For whatever we are, whatever we have is a direct result of God’s initial and abiding beneficence. They are His gifts. But, they are also our responsibility to use properly and purposefully, lovingly and morally. For we are not the owners of our time, our talents, our treasure. We are stewards of them. And, we should be good stewards, who use and manage all that is placed in our charge to the glory of God and for the betterment of everyone and everything in His creation.
For good stewards use their gifts in accordance with God’s generally revealed will and in response to His more particularly and personally revealed plan. For God has made His general will clear to all of us through our reason and common sense, through our moral sensibilities, through our intuitive compassion and empathy.
Just think of the parable of the “good Samaritan.” The good Samaritan helped because he clearly saw the beaten stranger’s need and responded with immediate aid, as well as comprehensive care until the stranger recovered. The stranger’s need was obvious. And, the Samaritan acted immediately without any spiritual epiphany or moral deliberation. He just knew. Good stewards respond to the obvious needs because they are obvious, even to apostates like the Samaritan.
But, good stewards also respond to God’s more directly expressed will. For He wants us to do as He commands, to do as He expects, to do as He exhorts. Good stewards are good. They follow the commandments and aspire to be virtuous in thought and in deed. They love one another just as Jesus would. They are the working and maturing embodiments of faith, hope and love and they live under the discipline of true virtue and the direction of reason and conscience.
Yet, good stewards also seek God’s more explicit personal guidance. They do so in prayer and through silence, in meditation and through adoration. For they know God is near, active and intimate because He loves us and seeks abiding intimacy with us. And, love, in its fullest sense, is an abiding intimacy. And, through this fuller loving experience with Him, good stewards know they may accurately discern His more personal will for their lives and its many nuances. And, they know their trust in Him is reciprocated with an abiding epiphanic spirituality, the hallmark of true loving intimacy with God.
So, good stewards have an abiding understanding of their complete contingency, their comprehensive dependency on God, for their existence and all that that entails. They know that their reason and common sense, their conscience and empathy are trustworthy guides about how they should use their time and talents, their vocation and their treasure. They know following God’s explicit and implicit commands is how true stewards are guided to greater usefulness and maturity in the work of the Kingdom and in the preservation of the world. And, they know good stewards are deeply intimate with God, guided by God, used by God, provided for by God in many subtle and miraculous ways. And, they know how abidingly intimate and loving God truly is.
Yet, given stewardship’s nature and significance to the depth and breadth of the full Catholic life across the life span, it is often not a very common, regular or explicit feature of church culture. Nor is it a prominent feature of most Catholics’ thinking, reflection or motivation. Stewardship is more often an implicit or inferred principle within church culture and in the daily lives of many Catholics.
Yet, its explicit absence and its benign neglect has many implications in our collective and individual lives as the disciples of Christ and as the witnesses of truth and goodness in our lost and fallen world. For it is a foundational idea in the very essence of true and daily discipleship. And from it, springs forth all manner of attitudes, ideas and actions, so critical to our personal discipleship and the mission, method and means by which we become the stronger salt and the brighter light of the world.
For by virtue of our vitality as true stewards, by the rigor of our understanding and our application of its principles, by our relentless embrace and regular use of its imperatives, we will individually and collectively become the true and trusted stewards of God’s kingdom. And, we will loudly and lovingly live as His real stewards, His real sons and daughters here on Earth, for all to see.
For true and routine stewardship leaves an undeniable impression and witness in its wake, particularly to those who observe us regularly. For it is as much an attitude as an action, a philosophy of life and living, as much as it is a way of being and behaving. And, it begins with a hearty humility, an attitude of gratitude and a ready excitement to employ our talents, time and treasure in the work of His kingdom.
And, often this humility, gratitude and excitement can be a most curious and contagious phenomenon to others, who observe such true stewards living their lives in accord with these principles and with such desire, determination and dedication, with such trust and such discerning abandon. For such a witness of true and good stewardship is hard to deny.
Perhaps this passionate, purposeful and personal stewardship was a crucial component in the early church’s witness to the world of its time? For if dying in the Roman arenas was the likely climax to the life of Jesus’ disciples, recruits would be hard to come by. And, only the reality of God’s truth, the intimacy of His love and the everyday epiphanic encounters with Him would be sufficient certainties and circumstances to subvert the natural human instincts for survival and the avoidance of pain.
Such passionate and purposeful stewardship was and is truly the most natural and effective way of enlightening and preserving the world. And, it is the surest path to evangelizing the lost and igniting the complacent, inspiring the curious and motivating the mature in our time, if we but pursue true stewardship, with the sincerity and regularity of our faith’s founding generations.
For their success as true and trusted stewards is history’s witness and our role models. So. let us awaken from our slumbering mediocrity. Let us seek a deeper intimacy with God and a stronger sense of true stewardship. And, let us each strive to be the stewards of our time as our founders were in theirs. Then will we shock the world and save it for generations to come.
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This article is part of an extended series on the “The Facts of Life” by F. X. Cronin. You can start with part one by clicking here and see previous entries by clicking here.
We also recommend Mr. Cronin’s latest book, The World According to God: The Whole Truth About Life and Living. It is available from your favorite bookstore and through Sophia Institute Press.
Photo by Ludomił Sawicki on Unsplash
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