Sacrificial Giving...An On-going Conversion
Nobody knows exactly who sacrificed the first lamb to the gods or how the poor lamb seemed to acquire more sacrificial prestige than goats, textiles or produce. We do know, however, that many thousands of years before Christianity, while false gods roamed rampant through the curious minds of early man and gained fame in the annals of mythology, history recorded again and again the common act of personal sacrifice to a deity.

As time went on, most civilizations adopted a terminology and protocol for offering gifts to God. In Greek terminology it was known as eleemosune. The Anglo-Saxon term was thythe. In the Catholic Church we know it as Sacrificial Giving.

Sacrificial Giving, and its partner, stewardship, are fairly recent additions to our religious vocabulary. The impetus for reintroducing stewardship, the act of offering our life, time, talents and resources to God, came from a Pastoral Letter from U.S. Bishops entitled, "Stewardship: A Disciple's Response". Over the past decade this document has slowly begun to have a dramatic and unique impact upon the life of the Church in Western Washington and the people who comprise it.

When I was growing up in the Midwest, we didn't talk much about Sacrificial Giving. Nor did we consider the act of faith which was behind it. We simply received each year a big box of chronologically dated envelopes, sized slightly larger than a dollar bill, and decorated with drawings of Jesus and his apostles depicted in some moment of conversion. It was our responsibility to place dimes and quarters in these envelopes each Sunday, after which we would reluctantly hand them over during mass.

Shortly before his death, Archbishop Murphy addressed the Northwest Regional Stewardship conference here in Seattle and shared a vision of stewardship that would dramatically change what we do and who we are by recognizing us as partners with God. He defined a vision which demands far more than my childhood recollection of the weekly envelope ritual.

Stewardship demands that we as mature disciples in our faith, make a conscious, firm decision, carried out in action, to be followers of Jesus Christ. It is this connection with God that Archbishop Murphy reminded us has the power to change how we understand and live out our lives. More than just an intellectual commitment, stewardship is a way of life which requires us to see the face of God in others, to generously and responsibly share our personal possessions with God and His church, and to serve others with the graciousness which Christ showed to us when He knelt to wash the feet of the disciples. As we sit here on the edge of the millennium, the notion of stewardship that has evolved in the Catholic Church is an all-embracing challenge; it dares us to live those words which we proclaim in the Eucharist each week.

It is not a fund-raising campaign or a convenient tax deduction. Through the daily acts of His son, God has shown us that stewardship is an on-going conversion.

Mary Ann Millican is the Director of Development for St. James Cathedral.

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