Archbishop’s Journal: Thinking like God’s stewards
- November 07, 2009
Archbishop George H. Niederauer delivered the following homily at St. John the Evangelist Church in San Francisco Nov. 8 and the Vigil Mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral Nov. 7.
Someone has said that the three easiest things to do are these: 1) to spend someone else’s money; 2) to spend someone else’s time; and 3) to adjust to someone else’s problems. There’s some truth to that analysis of human self-centeredness. Today in the Gospel reading Jesus begins by criticizing the scribes, the experts in the religious laws of the Jewish people. Not only are the scribes showoffs, wearing long, flowing robes and demanding front seats and special marks of respect – archbishops beware – but they also are greedy, rapacious men who rob defenseless widows. Jesus says they will receive a severe condemnation.
Jesus warns his followers – warns us – that pride and greed and selfishness are all closely related. He tells us not to seek prominence, not to seek to be served but to serve one another lovingly, just as he, our Savior, came to serve us lovingly by his life and teaching, his sacrifice on the Cross, and his resurrection. Jesus also challenges us who work in the Church, in ministry, not to use our positions of service to serve ourselves or to enrich ourselves.
Then Jesus points our attention to the poor widow who gives all that she has to the worship of God in the Temple and to the relief of the poverty of others. Jesus says that this widow gave all that she had to live on, so, in God’s eyes, she gave more than all the others together, because they would scarcely miss their donations. We need to remember that in the time of Jesus poor widows were some of the most defenseless persons in society. Only men could earn money by making a living, and the husbands of these women were gone. That widow would have had no social security, no pension, no retirement plan and no unemployment insurance. She was utterly dependent on God and the kindness of her neighbors.
In our first reading we have the story of the prophet Elijah and the widow of Zarephath. The Church has chosen this reading because the widow in the Gospel of Mark has reminded us of this story of Elijah in the Old Testament. The prophet went to this town during a terrible drought when the people were starving for lack of crops and food. The widow plans to cook one last meal for herself and her son, using the last of their flour and oil. After that they will die, she says. Elijah asks her first to prepare something for him to eat, promising her that God will give her and her son food enough to eat until the drought is over and there are crops and food again. This widow trusts the prophet, she does as he asks, and God keeps the promise Elijah made to her.
Why is this kind of generosity, this kind of putting others first, so important to Jesus? We see this emphasis in so many of his parables and in his teachings and interactions with people as well. One answer is the example Jesus sets: the Son of God has become man in order to give himself to us and for us. He has put us first, and that has led to the Cross on Calvary. He gives himself to us in this celebration of Mass, feeding us with his Body and Blood. God’s love for us has stopped at nothing in the life of his Son. Gratitude for Christ’s gift of himself is meant to move us to generosity toward one another for love of him. Everything we have that matters to us is, in some way, a gift from God: in his first letter to the Corinthians St. Paul asks the question, “What do you have that you have not received?”
This teaching goes against some of the values we hold so dear in our culture. We prize individualism and ownership. We like to say that everything we have we worked for and earned with our own two hands and our brains. That may be true, but did we create our own hands and our own brains? Are they not a gift to us that we did not earn and for which we cannot pay?
One of our most precious gifts is time. Did we create it? Do we give it to ourselves? Is not every day a gift from God? Consider the things we own: are they really going to be ours forever? No, ownership is only for a time, then all those things will belong to others. We won’t take them with us; as the Irish like to say, “There are no pockets in shrouds.”
We need to replace our attitude of ownership with an attitude of stewardship. What we have God has given us in trust for a while, to use for serving others and seeking our own eternal salvation. The widows in our two readings realized that: what they had they shared with others, and God rewarded them both.
When we think more like God’s stewards rather than owners in our own names, our attitude can change and so can our behavior. For instance, we can think of situations in which we hold onto something as our possession: perhaps it is some of our time when we are tired but suddenly we need to listen to someone who needs to talk to us; perhaps we had made plans to rest, and then someone asks us to lend a hand to someone who needs us. Those may seem like small examples, but so much of a person’s life is made up of just such small matters. The widow gave her last two coins to help others, and maybe this next week one of us will give his or her last free moments of the day to pay attention to someone who turns to them for help.
It is not easy to part with something we own because someone else needs it more; it is not easy to spend time on someone else when it seems we have so little of it; it is not easy to pay attention to the troubles of others when we have plenty of our own. Think about it, though: each of us wants to have around us generous, loving and unselfish people, people we can count on. Jesus calls each of us, his followers, to become one of those people. Let us pray that we will respond to the grace of his call, and say “yes.”
From November 13, 2009 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
