Editorial

Love of God is revealed in responsibility for others

“The one who loves God cannot hold onto money but rather gives it out in God’s fashion … .” Love of God leads to participation in the justice and generosity of God towards others. Love of God requires an interior freedom from all possessions and all material goods. The love of God is revealed in responsibility for others.

- Pope Benedict XVI, “Spe Salvi,” #28

We often hear it said that stewardship is not about money.

What that really means is that stewardship is not only or exclusively about money. Because, in fact, we are called to be responsible and generous stewards of all God’s gifts—including gifts of treasure: material goods, financial resources, property, possessions, money.

In First Timothy, St. Paul says that, “The love of money is the root of all evil; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many sorrows” (1 Tm 6:10).

An inordinate desire (craving) for money or material things is at the core of all our troubles. It is the root of all evil. It tempts us all to wander from our true selves, from what we know is right and true, and from the God who alone deserves our wholehearted longing and desire.

As followers of Jesus Christ, we seek God as the first object of our spiritual longing. We want to be people who love God first and foremost.

As Jesus tells us, loving God is intimately and inextricably tied to loving others (our neighbor).

And as Pope Benedict reminds us in his recent encyclical “Spe Salvi” (“Saved by Hope”), loving God is revealed in responsibility for others. We demonstrate that we truly do love God when we express this love by accepting responsibility for others.

This is a stewardship message. As the U.S. bishops say in their pastoral letter, Stewardship: A Disciple’s Response, a Christian steward is one who receives God’s gifts gratefully, cherishes and tends them in a responsible and accountable manner, shares them generously with others out of justice and love, and returns them to the Lord with increase. A Christian steward accepts responsibility for others. A Christian steward shares God’s gifts generously with others—out of a profound sense of justice and charity.

“Love of God requires an interior freedom from all possessions and all material goods,” the Holy Father tells us.

As long as we are preoccupied with money and material things, we are not free to love God fully or to serve him by accepting responsibility for others. Until we can let go of the powerful hold that material possessions have on us, St. Paul says we are forced to wander away from the truth about ourselves and our world, and to be radically unhappy.

Stewardship is not about money. It’s about discipleship and daily living. It’s about loving God first and foremost, and accepting responsibility for others.

Stewardship teaches us how to live the Gospel in a culture that is obsessed with money and material things. It helps us to resist the powerful temptation to measure our self-worth by how much we possess, by our economic or social status, or by the false values of

self-reliance and rugged individualism that are preached to us by our affluent, consumer-oriented society.

By recognizing that we are stewards—not owners or consumers—of all God’s gifts, we can develop the interior freedom we need to place God first in our lives, to love him fully and to serve others wholeheartedly as God first loved us.

Stewardship helps us love God by helping us let go of the individual and cultural cravings for money and material things that are the root of all evil.

Stewardship is not about money. It’s about loving God and serving others as free people who live in the world of material possessions, but who are not possessed by them.

Christian stewards are grateful for all God’s gifts, including money and material things. They commit to using these gifts wisely for the good of all. And they promise to share them generously with others out of justice and love.

Love of God is revealed in responsibility for others. May our good and gracious God empower us with his grace to be free of everything that separates us from loving him (and our neighbor) wholeheartedly as stewards of all his spiritual and material gifts.

—Daniel Conway