At Our Lady of the Lakes we are going to have our first meeting on stewardship in the parish this Tuesday (8\/17\/2010), which raises the question what is stewardship?<\/p>\n
Stewardship is a word that is becoming more commonly used in Catholic Churches.\u00a0 Sometimes it is seen as just another way of asking people for money.<\/p>\n
Stewardship efforts include money but stewardship is not just about money.\u00a0 Infoplease.com defines a steward<\/a>\u00a0as “A person who manages another’s property or financial affairs; one who administers anything as the agent of another or others.”<\/p>\n Christian stewardship should be a natural part of living as God calls us.\u00a0 God created the world and gave us dominion over the world (Gen 1:26-31<\/a>).\u00a0 God also gave us free will so we are free to do as we wish.\u00a0 If, as faithful Christians, we see God’s creation as a gift to us, then we can see ourselves as managing God’s property.\u00a0 As stewards of what belongs to God, we are called to make wise use of it.<\/p>\n This is not simply a question of what we do with our money.\u00a0 True stewardship includes time, talent, and treasure. The treasure includes our money but we also recognize that each of us has different talents (the things that we are good at).\u00a0 We could use all our time and talents just to benefit ourselves.\u00a0 We could, but that would not be Christian.<\/p>\n Our faith calls us to use wisely what God has given us to take care of our needs and then to help others.<\/p>\n