Passionate Steward - 10th Anniversary Edition

74 THE PASSIONATE STEWARD
would continue to have care until he was well, promising even to
ransom him from any debts he might incur during his recuperation.
In thus choosing to help, the man we remember as the “Good
Samaritan” engaged in the fullness of stewardship: he gave of his
time, his talent, and his treasure in the aid of another, and in so
doing, according to the “expert,” actually fulfilled “the Law.”
Stewardship is therefore analogous to the ancient Greek
concept of philanthropy. For the Greeks, philanthropy was not
restricted to charitable giving but was a virtuous goal which guided
people’s lives and to which the virtuous person aspired. In this
sense, the classical Greek concept of philanthropy, as espoused by
the philosopher Aristotle, shows that when it comes to the love of
humanity, a reasoning society can end up sharing the same values
as a religious community. Without knowing it, Aristotle pointed in
his day to the fulfillment of philanthropy in the birth, death and
resurrection of Jesus just as surely as the Hebrew Scriptures and
wisdom literature did. After all, at base, the love of humanity is the
a priori motivation for Christ’s salvific acts of love, and his ultimate
sacrifice. Philanthropy in its literal and proper sense is the “love of
humanity,” and as such it is at the very heart of each well formed
human soul, and therefore the Church.
It follows then that as people called to the imitation of Christ,
the more perfectly we embrace the loving intent of the stewardship
Jesus described in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the more
Christ-like we become. The truth is, the more we enmesh ourselves
in the human condition the more likely we are to be charitable. There
is no better place to do this than the Church, which encourages us to
embrace our individual humanity and to place it at the service of all.
For this reason, the Church needs to place the promotion of tax credits
in its proper context. We cannot allow “professional fundraising
experts” to co-opt our message of love and compassion—
stewardship—into a simple business transaction for the purposes of
preserving wealth (which is, after all, at the heart of all tax planning).