Highlights from Stewardship: A Disciple's Response

Week 1

Reflections on Stewardship adapted from the US Bishops' Pastoral Letter on Stewardship

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

Week 2

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.

Week 3

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.

Week 4

I. The Call

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.

Week 5

I. The Call

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.

Week 6

I. The Call

The Call to Stewardship

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.

Week 7

I. The Call

The Call to Stewardship

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

Week 8

I. The Call

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).

Week 9

I. The Call

The Cost of Discipleship

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.

Week 10

I. The Call

The Cost of Discipleship

Bonhoeffer contrasts last weekends reflection 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.

Week 11

I. The Call

Reflection Question-

Reflect on “giving” the best portion of time, talent, and treasure to the Church. What might be your “best portion”?

Week 12

I. The Call

Reflection Question-

In what sense is stewardship more radical that the sharing of time, talent, and money?

Week 13

I. The Call

Reflection Question-

What are some of the reasons why you might hesitate to respond to the Lord’s call?

Week 14

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.

Week 15

II. Jesus’ Way

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.

Week 16

II. Jesus’ Way

The Image of the Steward

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.

Week 17

II. Jesus’ Way

The Image of the Steward

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.

Week 18

II. Jesus’ Way

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).

Week 19

II. Jesus’ Way

The Steward’s Reward

...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.

Week 20

II. Jesus’ Way

The Steward’s Reward

...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.

Week 21

II. Jesus’ Way

Reflection Question-

If you were preaching a sermon on stewardship, which one of Jesus’ parables about stewardship would you emphasize the most?

Week 22

II. Jesus’ Way

Reflection Question-

What are the ways by which Jesus set an example of being a perfect steward?

Week 23

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).

Week 24

III. Living as a Steward

Creation and Stewardship

...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.

Week 25

III. Living as a Steward

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.

Week 26

III. Living as a Steward

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).

Week 27

III. Living as a Steward

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.

Week 28

III. Living as a Steward

Cooperation in Redemption

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.

Week 29

III. Living as a Steward

Cooperation in Redemption

...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.

Week 30

III. Living as a Steward

Reflection Question-

How do you relate Christian stewardship to ecology, to your personal care of the environment?

Week 31

III. Living as a Steward

Reflection Question-

How do you react to the idea of “being our brother’s keeper,” of being involved in efforts to curtail consumerism so that God’s good things will benefit not only some but all people?

Week 32