We are all stewards of life. “Thus should one regard us: as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Now it is of course required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.” (1Cor 4,1) Life is a mystery of God. “In him we live and move and have our being.” (Acts 17,28) Life is a gift, a trust that is given to us. “The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom 6,23) We are given the raw stuff of life and we are meant to cooperate with God’s grace and bring that life to perfection. A well lived life is one that bears fruit in abundance. “I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.” (Jn 10,10) Jesus is the way to eternal, abundant life. (Jn 14,66) “Now this is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and the one whom you sent, Jesus Christ.” (Jn 17,3) Only in a personal relationship with God, the Father, through Jesus, the Son in the Holy Spirit can we have true life. Jesus tells his disciples, “Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me.” (Jn 6,57) and, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you do not have life within you. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.” (Jn 6,53) The good steward is a servant of Christ Jesus and uses his gifts of time, talent and treasure to serve others in communal life.
In the parable of the steward, the steward is commended for being prudent. He trades things, money and commodities, for relationships. He realizes that people are more important than things. Certainly the most important relationship we have in life is with God, our Creator and loving Father. We enter into that relationship through a relationship with Jesus who is the visible face of the invisible God. “No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him.” (Jn 1,18) We can’t serve both God and mammon. We must place our relationship with God above all other things. We serve God by serving Christ in a life of discipleship and we must serve Christ Jesus by serving the least of our brothers and sisters. “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.” (Mt 25,40) We can’t buy our way into heaven, but we can love our way there. “If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.” (1Jn 4,20f)
To be good stewards we must not squander our lives but use the time that we have wisely to grow in relationship with God. From the beginning, God has asked one thing of us: holiness. “For I, the Lord, am your God; and you shall make and keep yourselves holy, because I am holy.” (Lev 11,44) And, “but, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in every aspect of your conduct, for it is written, “Be holy because I am holy.” (1 Peter 1,15f) How much time do we spend on holiness? We spend a lot of time taking care of our own needs, eating, drinking, sleeping, working, and entertaining ourselves but we spend very little time growing in our relationship with God. Even an hour on Sunday seems like too much of a burden for a lot of us. Personal holiness should be our greatest concern. The good steward is holy and seeks the will of God in all things. It is the small things that we do every day to be faithful in our relationship with God that prove our stewardship. “The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones;” (Lk 16,10) We are given a small amount of time in this life to grow into a trustworthy steward of the mysteries of our life in Christ. Don’t squander that precious time with careless living.