A Pastoral Letter on Stewardship
Written by the U.S. Catholic Bishops, 1992

Chapter I: The Call

Chapter II: Jesus’ Way

Chapter III: Living as a Steward

Chapter IV: Stewards of the Church

Chapter V: The Christian Steward

Complete letter in printable form

Chapter V
The Christian Steward

It was sixteen years ago, but it seems like only yesterday. I was suddenly confronted with serious surgery, which I never thought would happen to me. It always happened to others. The memory is still there, and I recall vividly the days before the surgery. I really received the grace to ask myself, “What do I own, and what owns me?” When you are wheeled into a surgery room, it really doesn’t matter who you are or what you possess. What counts is the confidence in a competent surgical staff and a good and gracious God. I know that my whole understanding and appreciation of the gifts and resources I possess took on new meaning. It is amazing how a divine economy of life and health provides a unique perspective of what really matters.

–Most Reverend Thomas J. Murphy, Archbishop of Seattle

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.

In the gospel, 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). Evidently, 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 for how well or badly they do it. For if a steward wastes the owner’s goods and mistreats the other household members, “that servant’s master will come on an unexpected day and at an unknown hour and will punish him severely and assign him a place with the unfaithful” (Lk 12:46).

In the lives of disciples, however, something else must come before the practice of stewardship. They need a flash of insight—a certain way of seeing—by which they view the world and their relationship to it in a fresh, new light. “The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” Gerard Manley Hopkins exclaims; more than anything else, it may be this glimpse of the divine grandeur in all that is that sets people on the path of Christian stewardship.

Not only in material creation do people discern God present and active, but also, and especially, in the human heart.

“Do not be deceived all good giving and every perfect gift is from above” (Jas 1:16-17), and this is true above all where spiritual gifts are concerned. Various as they are, “one and the same Spirit produces all of these” (1 Cor12:11)—including the gift of discernment itself, which leads men and women to say: “We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God” (1 Cor 2:12). So it is that people have the power to live as stewards, striving to realize the ideal set forth by Paul: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God” (1 Cor 10:31).

Christian stewards are conscientious and faithful. After all, the first requirement of a steward is to be “found trustworthy” (1 Cor 4:2). In the present case, moreover, 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” (1 Cor 3:9), with their own particular share in his creative, redemptive, and sanctifying work. In this light, stewards are fully conscious of their accountability. They neither live nor die as their own masters; rather, “if we live, we live for the Lord, and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s” (Rom 14:8).

Christian stewards are generous out of love as well as duty. They dare not fail in charity and what it entails, and the New Testament is filled with warnings to those who might be tempted to substitute some counterfeit for authentic love. For example: “If someone who has worldly means sees a brother in need and refuses him compassion, how can the love of God remain in him?” (1 Jn 3:17). Or this: “Come now, you rich, weep and wail over your impending miseries. Your wealth has rotted away, your clothes have become moth-eaten, your gold and silver have corroded, and that corrosion will be a testimony against you; it will devour your flesh like a fire. You have stored up treasure for the last days” (Jas 5:1-3).

What, then, are Christians to do? Of course people’s lives as stewards take countless forms, according to their unique vocations and circumstances. Still, the fundamental pattern every case is simple and changeless: “Serve one another through love bear one another’s burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 5:13, 6:2). This includes being stewards of the Church, for, as we are quite specifically told, “the Church of the living God” is “the household of God” (1 Tim 3:15) and it is essential to practice stewardship there.

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. Like Paul, the good steward is able to say, “I am filled with encouragement, I am overflowing with joy all the more because of all our affliction” (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). They readily cry out from the heart: “Rejoice in the Lord always! I shall say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil 4:4). They look forward in hope to hearing the Master’s words addressed to those who have lived as disciples faithful in their practice of stewardship should: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world” (Mt 25:34).

After Jesus, it is the Blessed Virgin Mary who by her example most perfectly teaches the meaning of discipleship and stewardship in their fullest sense. All of their essential elements are found in her life: she was called and gifted by God; she responded generously, creatively, and prudently; she understood her divinely assigned role as “handmaid” in terms of service and fidelity (see Lk 1:26-56).

As Mother of God, her stewardship consisted of her maternal service and devotion to Jesus, from infancy to adulthood, up to the agonizing hours of Jesus’ death (Jn 19:25). As Mother of the Church, her stewardship is clearly articulated in the closing chapter of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church, Lumen Gentium (cf. 52-69). Pope John Paul II observes: “Mary is one of the first who ‘believed,’ and precisely with her faith as Spouse and Mother she wishes to act upon all those who entrust themselves to her as children” (Redemptoris Mater, 46).

In light of all this, it only remains for all of us to ask ourselves this question: Do we also wish to be disciples of Jesus Christ? The Spirit is ready to show us the way—a way of which stewardship is a part.

Genesis, telling the story of creation, says God looked upon what had been made and found it good; and seeing the world’s goodness, God entrusted it to human beings. “The Lord God planted a garden” and placed there human persons “to cultivate and care for it” (Gn 2:8,15). Now, as then and always, it is a central part of the human vocation that we be good stewards of what we have received this garden, this divine human workshop, this world and all that is in it—setting minds and hearts and hands to the task of creating and redeeming in cooperation with our God, Creator and Lord of all.

Chapter I: The Call

Chapter II: Jesus’ Way

Chapter III: Living as a Steward

Chapter IV: Stewards of the Church

Chapter V: The Christian Steward

Complete letter in printable form

For more information on Stewardship and how St. Thomas More is a parish committed to the Stewardship Way of Life, contact Steve Kliman, chair, STM Stewardship Commission.