I Live to Give

The fifth principle of stewardship is that I live to give life and gladness to others; we give to live a filled-full and joyful life.

Jesus gave his followers an everlasting reminder of his life, teaching, and ministry in the Holy Eucharist: bread and wine, mystically transformed into his Body and Blood.

At the Last Supper Jesus used wheat bread and grape wine. Some might say he had to because that’s what the Law of Moses required. Maybe. 

It could be that Jesus would have used bread and wine anyway, as a way to express his central message of the Kingdom of God, and to provide a memorial of it.

Wheat is ground to make flour, baked into bread to be the basic food to keep us alive. Grapes are crushed for their juice, fermented into wine, to make our hearts merry.

Wheat and grapes don’t have a say in the matter, but if they did, they would give themselves happily, for that is their fulfillment – they live to give life and gladness.

That expresses what Jesus did: To die for love of you is why I came, Jesus said; in other words, to live to give, even his very self in order to bring life and gladness to others.

This also captures Jesus’ teaching that, to be his follower, you have to deny yourself, and take up your cross. That can’t mean we’re to suffer and die – who would follow?

But Jesus took up his cross to do what we couldn’t do for ourselves: to put ourselves in right relationship with God. Our cross is to do for others what they can’t do for themselves.

We’re to live to give life and gladness to others, no matter who it is, or if they say please and thank you. And if there’s suffering, it’s from the work of serving, or the loss of sharing.

This is the message of the Kingdom of God, expressed in wheat and grapes, bread and wine: find your fulfillment and joy in living to give life and gladness to others.

In 2013, Harvard University affirmed the teaching on biblical stewardship with a scientific study, reported in the Grant Study: a happy, fulfilled life is the result of living for, giving to, helping out, sharing with, serving, even sacrificing self for another.

Live to give life and gladness to others. Give to live a filled-full, happy life yourself.

 

This is part of a teaching document written by Archbishop Michael Jackles titled,
"How to be the Church of the Poor, for the Poor, Stewardship as a Way of Life"
which was published in August of 2021.

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