Bishop Gilmore’s opening statement from the Stewardship, Justice, and Respect Life Conference

By Bishop Ronald Gilmore

Editor’s note: The following is the opening address from Bishop Ronald Gilmore given at the Stewardship Day celebration, Aug. 25 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Dodge City. Approximately 200 people were in attendance.

You will remember the sad ending to the lyrical account of creation in the second chapter of Genesis. The Lord God therefore banished him from the Garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he had been taken (2:23). It was east of Eden that he settled them (2:24).

There Adam sought the fruit of the earth, amidst its thorns and its thistles, by the sweat of his brow. There Eve brought forth children in pain, her relationship with her husband radically dislocated. There the two of them longed … pined … for the lost Garden.

As their children, we understand them well. For in our rural America, we also find ourselves somewhere east of Eden. The ground and the thorns and the thistles and the sweat and the pain all have other names now, but they remain so many resistances to the cultivating of a land and the living of a life.

They are called the relentless concentration of ownership, now. They are called the distorting hand of a few multinational corporations. They are called the dying of our rural communities. They are called the overproduction that depletes our good earth, sucks our waters dry, and fouls the air. We grapple with these things by the sweat of our brow. We writhe in pain caught in all this grim labor. We know their longing. We know.

But can we ever satisfy that longing? Can we ever get back to the Garden?

I hope this day will help answer that question. For the day is about awakening us to be good stewards: good stewards of creation, good stewards of family, good stewards of work, good stewards of Church, good stewards of community.

It is our profound conviction that we become good stewards only in Jesus Christ. In the way he approached the material world: his eye for the lilies of the field and for the birds of the air, his favoring of the rich image of the Harvest. Only in Jesus Christ: In the way he prized human beings: his conviction that the Sabbath was for man, not man for the Sabbath, his unflagging fondness for the lost sheep. Only in Jesus Christ: In the way he died to save us: what was undone through a tree was redone through a tree, the wood of the Cross. We become good stewards only when we take on his way of seeing world, self, others, and God.

Through the wood of the Cross, he un-adamed Adam. Through the wood of the cross, he un-eved Eve. He turned them inside out, and enabled us to get back to the beginning. He re-edened Eden.

We have been east of Eden far too long now, you and I. May this stewardship day start us on the way back.