The word “stewardship” seems to have become the new buzzword in the Catholic Church. You almost can’t do anything in the Church without hearing about the need to be good stewards, and what Catholic hasn’t had the “Three T’s” drilled into their head (in case you’ve never heard of the Three T’s, they’re Time, Talent, and Treasure).
I don’t want to denigrate the stewardship work being done in the Church. it is necessary for us to be good stewards of he Church, to use our time and talent to build up the Church physically and spiritually, and to use our treasure to fund the temporal needs of the Church. In the discussion of stewardship, I think one aspect is missing: being stewards of the Catholic Faith that has been passed on to us.
Today’s Gospel reading is from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 21, the parable of the wicked tenants. Focusing on the Gospel, the reflection in the Magnificat Lenten Companion says that “we must be the kind of disciples who are careful stewards of creation and careful stewards of our lives.” As part of being stewards of our lives, are we doing everything we can to be careful stewards of the Catholic Faith? The chief priests and elders were not good stewards of the Jewish Faith, and thus were being criticized by Our Lord.
As Christians, we can fall into the same trap, and I would argue that we have over the past 50 years or so. I’m not going to point fingers and put blame on this person or that idea, but I will say that we haven’t been good stewards of the Catholic Faith. Look at the state of the Church today: a great many Catholics don’t know the basic elements of the Faith, and many don’t even bother to go to Church once a week. At least two generations of Catholics have basically no understanding of what it means to be Catholic. A large number of priests, religious, and laity have erroneous and contrary beliefs to the Truths revealed by Christ, and a number of prominent Catholic laity and religious cause public scandal by repeatedly opposing the bishops and the teachings of the Church. We must seek to do better.
If we wish to be good stewards of the Catholic Faith, we must not focus on how things went wrong and start assigning blame. Understanding what happened in the past is good for the purposes of avoiding the same errors in the future, but it’s all too easy to fall into the “blame game” while trying to justify our actions (or lack thereof). Instead, we need to dedicate ourselves to the task of stewardship. We need to make every effort to learn the Catholic Faith, and to allow the teachings of Christ to influence all areas of our lives. We also need to make every effort to spread the teachings to the next generations of Catholics who don’t know the Faith, to those who are weak in their practice of the Faith, and to those who have not heard the Gospel.
Being a good steward of the Catholic Faith is not an easy task. There will be pushback and arguments. Friendships may be broken, and families divided. We live in a culture that has all but abandoned its Christian roots. If we’re to recover our Faith and bring the world to Christ, we have to be willing to go through that suffering, offering it up in union with the suffering of Our Lord on the Cross. After all, Our Lord didn’t say being a steward would be easy, just that those who are faithful would be rewarded.
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