Stewardship calls us to distribute the gifts God has given

Intermountain Catholic

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Everybody has stuff. I don’t know whether this comes from prehistoric days when human beings had to gather food and stockpile it for their survival or not. In any case, it seems that everybody collects stuff. Just take a look at all the storage space for rent throughout the state. Rich people have stuff, poor people have stuff and even little babies have stuff (lots of it!). The key question is, "How do we relate to this stuff?" Do we own it or does it own us? And, even more importantly, how does all this stuff affect our relationship with God and others? In my past two articles, I reflected on the importance of time and talent as we embrace Stewardship, Our Way of Life. In this article, I want to speak about the place of treasure in our lives.

As with time and talent, treasure is a gift from God. Because absolutely everything that I have of a material nature ultimately comes from God, and because stewardship is based on the fundamental principle that every good gift comes from God, then it is only natural to conclude that God gives us the gift of our treasure for a specific purpose. As we have seen, every gift that God gives us is meant to draw us closer to God so that we might be happy with him forever in heaven. This is the first principle of St. Ignatius’ spiritual exercises. This means that all my possessions, my money, my material goods – everything I own – comes from God and is meant to help me to return to God. You might say that, as a steward, I am entrusted with material goods during my lifespan. I am only a temporary owner of these goods. While they are in my care, it is my Christian responsibility to use them wisely. After all, they come from God!

Moreover, I am called to share them freely with others and, in so doing, to imitate God, who first gave them to me. In this way I honor the giver of the gift by imitating God’s generosity. I also honor God because I am helping my brothers and sisters, who are created in his image.

While material goods can be used as a means to help me draw closer to God and others, they can also prevent me from doing the same. When my treasure becomes the most important thing in my life, then it owns me – I don’t own it. Furthermore, when I allow my gifts to own me, I lose my perspective and find that I am never satisfied. When I begin to hoard God’s gifts, I never have enough. I get caught up in an insatiable desire to have more and more, only to discover that I will never have enough. Ironically, it is only when I surrender and let go of any attachment to my possessions that I am capable of loving more fully and completely because I am freed of these material attachments.

A friend of mine recently shared with me a beautiful, yet challenging, truth: whatever I have and do not need belongs to the poor! I wonder what our world would look like if we all lived by this principle? There are so many who suffer because they do not have the basic necessities of life. This is not God’s fault, it is ours. God has given us plenty; we just don’t distribute his gifts properly. God is the God of more but we are often creatures who cannot get enough and hence hoard his gifts.

At the end of our lives, God is not going to ask is how much we have but how much we gave. We will be judged on how we loved and one of the best expressions of love is to give of ourselves and of our material goods. As St. Gregory the Great imagined, the righteous in heaven will inhabit houses built of golden bricks cast from the alms given in their lives. Or, put another way by James Forbes, "Nobody gets to heaven without a letter of reference from the poor." Maybe this is why they say that the takers eat well but the givers sleep well!

As we begin Stewardship, Our Way of Life, we will all be challenged to look at our possessions, our money, our material goods and to decide how best to use these gifts from God. Many have wondered how much money Rockefeller left when he died. The answer is, "All of it!" We are called to take a good look at what is ours and to keep only what we need. The rest belongs to the poor and we might as well begin to distribute it now. In Psalm 116, the psalmist asks, "What return shall I make to the Lord for all he has given me?" The faithful steward answers, "I shall return all of it!" Now that is the right "stuff!"