Passionate Steward - 10th Anniversary Edition

38 THE PASSIONATE STEWARD
institutional Church, which is “at the same time holy and always in
need of being purified, and incessantly pursu[ing] the path of
penance and renewal.” 22
This has a vital bearing on stewardship. Stewardship, in so far
as it entails a generous and total self-offering of love, flows most
naturally and creatively from a state of grace. It follows therefore
that someone who is alienated from grace, whether by reason of his
or her own sin, or sin imputed to the corporate Church herself, is
unable fully to exercise the perfection of grace in free and cheerful
self-giving. Therefore, the vocation to stewardship, if it is to be
exercised effectively, cannot be undertaken apart from our vocation
to reconciliation. This is true not only of individuals, who are called
to seek peace with the Church and with their neighbors, but also of
the Church, who is called to seek peace with those against whom
the institution, including its mothers and fathers, have sinned. It is
incumbent both upon the corporate Church and its individual
members to consider what role their own conduct may have played,
or continues to play, in the decline of stewardship amongst the
entirety of the faithful.
In this regard, the Church must thoroughly re-examine its
relationship not only with the company of the baptized, and other
ecclesial communities and traditions of faith, but also with our elder
brothers and sisters in faith, the Jewish people, whom we have too
often offended by our conduct. Reconciliation is the responsibility
of all parties to a conflict or offence, not just the offender—although
the offender shares a special responsibility to seek peace. Jesus
taught, “If you remember that your brother or sister has something
against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be
reconciled to your brother or sister” (Mt 5:23–24).
22 Lumen Gentium I.8 in Walter M. Abbott, S.J., ed., and Joseph Gallagher,
trans. ed., The Documents of Vatican II (America Press, 1966), p. 24. Cf. also Unitatis
Redintegratio II.6: “Christ summons the Church, as she goes her pilgrim way, to that
continual reform of which she always has need, insofar as she is a human institution
here on earth.” Ibid., p. 350.