Creation and Stewardship
Although it would be a mistake to think that stewardship by itself includes the whole of Christian life, in probing the Christian meaning of stewardship one confronts an astonishing fact: 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, furthermore, not merely by our own power but by the power of the Spirit of truth, whom Jesus promises to his followers (cf. Jn 14:16-17), and whom we see at work at the first Pentetcost inspiring the apostles to commence that proclamation of the good news which has continued to this day (cf. Acts 2:1-4).

The great story told in Scripture, the story of God’s love for humankind, begins with God at work as Creator, maker of all that is: “In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gn 1:1). Among God’s creatures are human persons: “The Lord God formed man out of the clay of the ground and blew into his nostrils the breath of life” (Gn 2:7). God not only creates human beings, however, but bestows on them the divine image and likeness (cf. Gn 1:26). As part of this resemblance to God, people are called to cooperate with the Creator in continuing the divine work (cf. Pope John Paul II, Laborem Exercens, 25).

Stewardship of creation is one expression of this. The divine mandate to our first parents makes that clear. “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and all the living things that move on the earth” (Gn 1:28). Subduing and exercising dominion do not mean abusing the earth. Rather, as the second creation story explains, God settled humankind upon earth to be its steward “to cultivate and care for it” (Gn 2:15).

This human activity of cultivating and caring has a generic name: work. It is not a punishment for or a consequence of sin. True, sin does painfully skew the experience of work: “By the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat” (Gn 3:19). But, even so, 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 the human vocation. It is necessary for human happiness and fulfillment. It is intrinsic to responsible stewardship of the world.

So, as Vatican II observes, far from imagining that the products of human effort are “in opposition to God’s power, and that the rational creature exists as a kind of rival to the Creator,” Christians see human achievements as “a sign of God’s greatness and the flowering of his own mysterious design” (Gaudium et Spes, 34). While it is lived out by individual women and men in countless ways corresponding to their personal vocations, human cooperation with God’s work of creation in general takes several forms.

Collaborators 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 them selves in serving all that preserves and enhances life.

This reverence and readiness begin with opening one’s eyes to how precious a gift life really is—and that is not easy, in view of our tendency to take the gift for granted. “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it?—every, every minute?” demands Emily in Our Town. And the Stage Manager replies, “No. The saints and poets, maybe—they do some” (Thornton Wilder, Our Town [New York: Harper and Row, 1958], p. 100). Yet it is necessary to make the effort. For Vatican II speaks of the “surpassing ministry of safeguarding life” and declares that “from the moment of its conception life must be guarded with the greatest care” (Gaudium et Spes, 51).

Partly too, stewardship of the world is expressed by jubilant appreciation of nature, whose God-given beauty not even exploitation and abuse have destroyed.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
  There lives the dearest freshness
  deep down things
And though the last lights off the black
  West went
  Oh, morning, at the brown brink
  eastward springs
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
  World broods with warm breast and
with ah! bright wings.

(Gerard Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur” in Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins [New York, Oxford University Press, 1950], p. 70)

Beyond simply appreciating natural beauty, there is the active stewardship of ecological concern. Ecological stewardship means cultivating a heightened sense of human interdependence and solidarity. It therefore calls for renewed efforts to address what Pope John Paul II calls “the structural forms of poverty” existing in this country and on the international level (Message for the World Day of Peace, January 1, 1990). And it underlines the need to reduce military spending and do away with war and weapons of war.

Especially this form of stewardship requires that many people adopt simpler life-styles. This is true not only of affluent persons and societies, but also of those who may not be affluent as that term is commonly understood yet do enjoy access to superfluous material goods and comforts. Within the Church, for example, it is important to avoid even the appearance of consumerism and luxury, and this obligation begins with us bishops. As Pope John Paul II says, “simplicity, moderation, and discipline, as well as a spirit of sacrifice, must become a part of everyday life, lest all suffer the negative consequences of the careless habits of a few” (ibid.).

At the same time, life as a Christian steward also requires continued involvement in the human vocation to cultivate material creation. This productivity embraces art, scholarship, science, and technology, as well as business and trade, physical labor, skilled work of all kinds, and serving others. So-called ordinary work offers at least as many opportunities as do supposedly more glamorous occupations. A woman who works at a supermarket checkout counter writes: “I feel that my job consists of a lot more than ringing up orders, taking people’s money, and bagging their groceries. By doing my job well I know I have a chance to do God’s work too. Because of this, I try to make each of my customers feel special. While I’m serving them, they become the most important people in my life” (Maxine F. Dennis, in Of Human Hands [Minneapolis and Chicago: Augsburg Fortress/ACTA Publications, 1991], p. 49).

Redemption and Stewardship
Everyone has some natural responsibility for a portion of the world and an obligation in caring for it to acknowledge God’s dominion. 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. We find the perfect model of such stewardship in the Lord. “For in him all the fullness was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile all things for him, making peace by the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19-20); and finally it will be he who “hands over the kingdom to his God and Father” (1 Cor 15:24).

Although Jesus is the unique priest and mediator, his disciples share in his priestly work. Baptism makes them “a royal priesthood” (1 Pt 2:9) called to offer up the world and all that is in it—especially themselves—to the Lord of all. In exercising this office, they most fully realize the meaning of our Christian stewardship. Part of what is involved here for Catholics is a stewardship of time, which should include 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 this is possible.

Participation in Christ’s redemptive activity extends even, though certainly not only, 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, 27).

Cooperation in Redemption
Penance also belongs to this aspect of Christian life. Today as in the past, the Church commends what Pope Paul VI called the “traditional triad” of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving (Paenitemini, February 17, 1966), while also encouraging Catholics to adopt penitential practices of their own choice that suit their particular circumstances.

Through penance voluntarily accepted one gradually becomes liberated from those obstacles to Christian discipleship which a secularized culture exalting individual gratification places in one’s way. These obstacles include not just the quest for pleasure but avarice, a craving for the illusion of absolute dominion and control, valuing creatures without reference to their Creator, excessive individualism, and ultimately the fear of death unrelieved by hope for eternal life.

These are consequences of sin—sin which threatens the way of life of Christian stewardship and the identity of Christians as disciples of the Lord. “Let us master this great and simple truth,” Cardinal Newman once said, “that all rich materials and productions of this world, being God’s property, are intended for God’s service; and sin only, nothing but sin, turns them to a different purpose” (“Offerings for the Sanctuary” in Parochial and Plain Sermons [San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987], 1368).

Sin causes people to turn in on themselves; to become grasping and exploitative toward possessions and other people; to grow accustomed to conducting relationships not by the standards of generous stewardship but by the calculus of self-interest: “What’s in it for me?” 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.

But if they do accept God’s grace and, repenting, struggle to change, God will respond like the father of the Prodigal Son. “Filled with compassion” at seeing his repentant child approaching after a long and painful separation, this loving parent “ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him” even before the boy could stammer out the words of sorrow he had rehearsed (Lk 15:20). God’s love is always there. The Spirit of wisdom and courage helps people seek pardon and be mindful, in the face of all their forgetting, that the most important work of their lives is to be Jesus’ disciples.

Thus, the stewardship of disciples is not reducible only to one task or another. It involves embracing, cultivating, enjoying, sharing—and sometimes also giving up the goods of human life. Christians live this way in the confidence that comes from faith: for they know that the human goods they cherish and cultivate will be perfected—and they themselves will be fulfilled—in that kingdom, already present, which Christ will bring to perfection and one day hand over to the Father.