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When the Parish Stewardship Program was launched a few years ago, there were many calls for the Archdiocese to change the name of the Catholic Stewardship Appeal to avoid confusion between gifts to the parish and gifts to the diocese. The name didn't change, however, and for very good reason. Our hope is for Catholics to embrace the concept of stewardship fully and understand that stewardship is a way of life, a way to give back what God has blessed us with. This giving back isn't limited to the parish or the diocese. It encompasses both and much more.
A rich description is found in the 1993 pastoral from the National Conference of Catholic Bishops entitled Stewardship: A Disciple's Response. The bishops call us to:
- Receive God's gifts gratefully;
- Cultivate them responsibly;
- Share them lovingly with others; and
- Return them with increase to God.
Stewardship includes the concept of safeguarding -- using wisely and justly -- our human and financial resources. It is frequently expressed as a call to give our time, talent and financial resources to God, especially through the Church.
Advocating stewardship does not mean we ask people to relinquish all of their possessions. Stewardship does require education and the effort to connect it with our relationships. Stewardship education is about how we care for the possessions that God has entrusted to us. Stewardship calls us to nurture our relationships with God, our families, our Church, our workplace, our environment, our suffering neighbors and our world.
Stewardship is a personal response as Christians to the Gospel call to conversion of mind and heart. Stewardship is a faith response to share all we have and thus participate fully in God's plan for our world.
Stewardship is an expression of discipleship -- how we understand and live out our lives. Whatever we are and possess is in actuality God's gift that we hold in trust. God calls us to be collaborators in the work of creation, redemption and sanctification. Jesus enjoins us to live in witness to His love with such an enthusiasm that we freely and gratefully share our gifts with others.
Stewardship is part of our Catholic tradition and who we are as a Church. God is the source of all we have and are, and we can learn to see ourselves as caring in the work of God by the way we live, by the way we use our time, talents and financial resources. Stewardship calls for commitment and for some of us that might mean a radical conversion. We need to avoid the temptation to make giving an end in itself -- it is part of something much larger.
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