GROWING AND GIVING
By
Dr. Jim Myers
Director of Stewardship
Diocese of Charleston
As part of the spiritual worship acceptable to God (cf. Rom 12.1), the Gospel of life is to be
celebrated above all in daily living, which should be filled with self-giving love for others. In
this way, our lives will become a genuine and responsible acceptance of the gift of life and a
heartfelt song of praise and gratitude to God who has given us this gift.

Evangeulm Vitae, 86.
An Encyclical Letter, Pope John Paul II
March 25, 1995


    We should all be familiar now with the stewardship call to share our time, talents and
treasure with our parishes, our diocese, and with those around us in need. Bishop Baker has asked
us to consider tithing a portion of our incomes to our parishes and to the Diocese. This is indeed an
important message and often repeated. The Church could not survive long without our support. And
it is both necessary and proper for us to be reminded from time to time of our need as children of a
gracious and loving God, to return in gratitude a portion of the gifts we have received. But the call to
be Christian stewards asks more of us than this. The Bishops' pastoral letter on stewardship calls us to conversion and discipleship. Conversion means change, a change in the way we live our lives.
Discipleship is a call to follow Christ. This is no easy path to follow, for it asks us to strive to adopt a
way of life that is in fact Christ-like.

    The call to conversion and discipleship and to fuller participation as Christian stewards is
above all a call to action, a call to conversion in our daily lives. This is not to say that prayerful and
contemplative activities are to be avoided. On the contrary, St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us that our
speculative intellect is precisely "ordered to the consideration of truth." But it is our practical intellect which directs human "actions and passions." St. Thomas wrote that both the speculative and practical intellects "know truth," but it is the practical intellect which "directs known truth to
operation."

    If we are to act effectively as Christian stewards to serve the Church and our fellow humans,
we must do more than think and pray about the many needs to be met and jobs to be done. We
must also do something. As the quotation above from Pope John Paul II says, we should celebrate
God's gifts to us in our "daily living" through our "self-giving love for others." This we can do in
countless small ways throughout the day by our many opportunities to engage in acts of kindness,
caring, thoughtfulness, compassion and sacrifice beginning with our families and those closest to
us. The documents of the Second Vatican Council tell us that "the forms and tasks of life are many
but holiness is one – that sanctity which is cultivated by all who act under God's Spirit" (Lumen
Gentium, n. 41). We need not despair that our lives are less heroic than those of the saintly men
and women who have gone before us. Opportunities abound daily for us to imitate the life of Christ
in our ordinary lives. John Paul II has emphasized this point on many occasions:
Therefore numerous aspects and forms of Christian holiness are open to lay people in the various circumstances of their life in which they are called to imitate Christ, and from him they can receive the necessary grace to fulfill their mission in the world. All are invited by God to walk the way of holiness and to attract to this path their companions in life and work in the world of temporal affairs. (LOR, General Audience, 11/24/93)


The First Letter of John contains these beautiful lines:
See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. (1 John, 3,1.)
If we use our speculative intellects to pray and reflect on this truth, our practical intellects should
give us the correct directions for behavior in our day-to-day lives.