Stewardship

It's a concept we all need to be familiar with. And I'm happy that the Cebu Archdiocese, for one, is making it its pastoral thrust this year to foster a spirituality of stewardship among the faithful. Stewardship corresponds to a crucial aspect of our life that has to do with our relationship with the material things in general. How our attitude should be toward the world, how to use the earthly things, etc., are covered by this notion.

We all need to have a clear idea of how to live stewardship in this complicated world of ours today, what relevant virtues we ought to develop, etc. Its close relation to social justice and ecology should be given special attention.

We cannot afford to be up in the air in this matter. That would be criminal, given the calamitous consequences that ignorance and confusion in this regard can cause. Evidence of this unfortunate development is all around us now.

Stewardship certainly has to be understood in the context of who and what we really are. The different elements and factors that go into our true identity and dignity have to be duly considered, since each gives a distinctive way of living stewardship that we need to integrate properly.

For example, that we are persons and not just things means that stewardship has to be lived by each one of us knowingly, freely and responsibly. In short, lovingly. It just cannot be forced on us. It has to come from inside us, thus, talking about a certain spirituality of stewardship is very timely.

That we are children of God, made in his image and likeness, means that our attitude towards material things and our use of them should be a way of worshipping God. It just cannot be some kind of an unavoidable earthly routine.

This means that God gave all the things of this world for our common good. There is such thing as the universal destination of goods, which is not supposed to be undermined by our right to private property. Thus, we have to be warned about sliding to two extremes. One is socialism and communism that exalts the rights of the state and society at the expense of the personal rights.

The other is unbridled liberalism that exalts the rights of the individual person but neglects our social duties and responsibilities. The right attitude lies where the requirements of both our personhood and sociability are met.

Thus, extensive, comprehensive catechesis on this matter is a must. In fact, this is one of the abiding areas for catechesis.

We have to understand that to be good stewards, we need to develop basic virtues like temperance, justice and solidarity.

Temperance makes sure we don't get attached to material things, exaggerating their role in our lives, making them some kind of god for us. It's the virtue that tells us that earthly goods are simply means, not ends. Temperance involves other related virtues, like austerity and simplicity, not creating needs, and developing a Christian sense of poverty. It also entails honesty, transparency, accountability.

Temperance has nothing to do with stinginess. It, on the contrary, is very compatible with generosity, but not with extravagance. It does not annul creativity. It encourages hard work and frowns at idleness.

Justice is that abiding sense of what we owe to the others. Each person we meet, we ask ourselves, what do we owe him? At the very least, we owe him our prayers. But I know that there are a lot more that we ought to give. Solidarity is the awareness that all of us form one living body, which is what a human society is all about. We have to be responsible for one another, and we work as one body to attain our common good.

It is with these virtues that we can aspire to build a civilization of social justice, so scandalously absent at present. And to think that we are supposed to be a Christian country! To be avoided and eliminated on sight are the vices of greed, dishonesty, avarice, corruption, cheating, materialism, consumerism, and the like. These truly demean us!

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