The
Mission of the Lay Faithful in the World
delivered by
Most Rev. William K. Weigand
November 1, 2000
to Saint Thomas More Society, Sacramento, CA
This morning we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints. This feast is an ancient one, and of Irish origin; it probably was celebrated first in the 7th or 8th century of our era. Most likely, it developed out of the Christianization of the even more ancient Celtic festival of Samhain [sow-win], that celebrated each year the interpenetration of this world by the other world — a festival unhappily transmogrified into the grotesqueries of Hallow E’en in Anglo-Saxon cultures.
We are certain that the feast was celebrated on the European continent by the year 800, and we know that Pope Gregory III consecrated a chapel in St. Peter’s in honor of all the saints in 731.
While other Christian cultures celebrated feasts in honor of all the martyrs, this one was specifically dedicated to all the faithful who had died in the Lord, even though their names were not known.
The unheralded lives of quiet virtue of this great multitude, working in quiet patience, like the leaven in the Gospel, in the midst of world, to transform it, is admirably portrayed by the readings of our Mass today.
The first reading and the Gospel have been used in this setting since the feast was initiated. The gospel reading presents us with St. Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes: there, he stresses the quiet, ordinary virtues of meekness, mercy, peacemaking, poverty in spirit and the like — the simple virtues of ordinary people, that yet so powerfully change the world.
The more recent selection from Saint John’s first letter for our second reading reminds us that it is precisely these virtues that make us true children of God our Father, progressing in hope to be pure as He is pure.
We are given assurance that this our hope is not in vain by the splendid vision of the seer of Revelation presented in the first reading, shot through, as it is, with that optimism, confident in the blood of our Saviour Lamb, that is the mark of the true Christian. It is not a specially-gifted, carefully chosen elect, few in number, who are saved, but rather, as Revelation puts it, “a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue” — God wills all people to be saved — and we all may well be confident that relatives and friends of each one of us are rejoicing as members of those white-robed throngs.
How they attained that beatitude is elucidated for us well by Our Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, in the Apostolic Exhortation he sent to all the faithful on December 30, 1988, entitled “‘Christifideles Laici’ — The Lay Members of Christ’s Faithful People.” Pope John Paul describes there what he calls “the proper and special sense of the divine vocation, which is directed to the lay faithful”; he does it in this way, “They are not called to abandon the position they have in the world.... On the contrary, God entrusts a vocation to them that properly concerns their situation in the world. The lay faithful, in fact, ‘are called by God so that they, ... might contribute to the sanctification of the world, as from within like leaven by fulfilling their own particular duties’.” [Vat. II, Lumen Gentium, 31] [Christifideles Laici, U.S.C.C. Translation §15, pp. 36-37]
It was by living out faithfully this vocation — “in faith, in hope, and in charity” that our friends and relatives attained the beatitude they enjoy this day.
Their example summons you to live out that same vocation, as lay members of Christ’s faithful people, in that same way in your own life.
In the exhortation, which discussed the vocation and the mission of the lay faithful in the Church and in the world, the Pope continues: “... in the situation [of the lay faithful] in the world God manifests his plan and communicates to them their particular vocation of ‘seeking the Kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God’.” [Vat. II, Lumen Gentium, 31] [Christifideles Laici, U.S.C.C. Translation §15, p. 37]
For the Pope, “the prime and fundamental vocation” of the lay faithful is the vocation to holiness. This call is rooted in Baptism. It “requires each one to follow and imitate Christ, in embracing the Beatitudes, in listening to and mediating on the Word of God, in conscious and active participation in the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church, in personal prayer, in family or in community, in the hunger and thirst for justice, in the practice of the commandment of love in all circumstances of life and service to the brethren, especially the least, the poor and suffering.” [Christifideles Laici, U.S.C.C. Translation, §16, p. 41]
In Our Holy Father’s view, “... the vocation to holiness is, at the same time, intimately connected to mission and to the responsibility entrusted to the lay faithful ... in the world .... Holiness must be called a fundamental presupposition and an irreplaceable condition for everyone in fulfilling the mission of salvation.... [It] is the hidden source and the infallible measure of the works of the apostolate and of the missionary effort.” [Ibidem §17, p. 43] Pope John Paul goes on to add, “[This holiness], the dignity as a Christian, ... becomes, at the same time, the hidden dynamic force in the lay faithful’s apostolate and mission.” [Ibidem §17, p. 45]
While the Pope goes on to elaborate the obligation of a layperson to exercise the call to mission and apostolate in the communion of the diocesan church, of the parochial church, and in other forms of participation, nevertheless he lays great stress on “the fact that each Christian as an individual is “unique and irrepeatable’,” that in consequence “God calls the individual in Jesus Christ, each one personally by name” (Ibidem §28, p. 76], and that, as a result, “each member of the lay faithful should always be fully aware of being ... entrusted with an unique task which cannot be done by another ...” [Ibidem §28, p. 77] “Such an individual form of apostolate”, he asserts, “can contribute greatly to a more extensive spreading of the Gospel, [because] it can reach as many places as there are daily lives of individual members of the lay faithful .... [making] the spread of the gospel ... particularly incisive, because in sharing fully in the unique conditions of the life, work, difficulties and hopes of their sisters and brothers, the lay faithful will be able to reach the hearts of their neighbors, friends and colleagues, opening them to a full sense of human existence, that is, to communion with God and with all people.” [Ibidem §28, p. 78]
Thus does Our Holy Father bring us to that apostolate that is utterly unique to the lay faithful, and has been called the apostolate of the marketplace or the apostolate of the workplace.
The Second Vatican Council addressed this responsibility by proposing this mission for laypeople in its Document on the Apostolate of the Laity, Apostolicam Actuositatem. In Section 13 of that document it states: “The apostolate in one’s social environment endeavors to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality and behavior, laws and structures of the community in which one lives. To such a degree is it the special work and responsibility of lay people that no one else can ever properly supply for them. In this area lay people conduct the apostolate of like towards like .... It is amid the surroundings of their work that they are best qualified to be of help to their brothers, in the surroundings of their profession, ...” [Vatican II, Apostolicam Actuositatem §13]
But the Council does not content itself with uplifting exhortations. It goes on to make proposals of a rather practical kind. It continues that same section by saying, “The laity accomplish the Church’s mission in the world principally by that blending of conduct and faith which makes them the light of the world:
by that uprightness in all their dealings which is for every person such an incentive to love the true and the good ...;
by that fraternal charity that makes them share the living conditions and labors, the sufferings and yearnings of their brothers, ...;
by that full awareness of their personal responsibility in the development of society, which drives them on to perform their family, social, and professional duties with Christian generosity.
In this way their conduct makes itself gradually felt in the surroundings where they live and work.... [For] it is a fact that many people cannot hear the Gospel ... except through the laity they associate with. [Vatican II, Apostolicam Actuositatem, §13]In other words, you are called to be the soul that animates your working-community by accepting the simple invitation of Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount, “Let your light shine before men, so that, seeing your good works, they may give praise to your Father in heaven.” [MT 5:16] You are to be like the leaven mixed into the flour, quietly and gently leavening it all through. [See MT 13:21; LK 13.21]
Again, it is Pope John Paul II who sums it all up in his Exhortation, “To such an end the lay faithful must accomplish their work with professional competence, with human honesty, and with a Christian spirit.” [Christifideles Laici, U.S.C.C. Translation §43, p. 128]
I put it to you that these are the ways and these are the means of the apostolate of the workplace, the apostolate of the marketplace.
In the Exhortation, Our Holy Father enumerates eight fruits to be looked for from the co-responsibility of the lay faithful in their mission in the world:
—Promotion of the dignity of the person
—Respect for the inviolable right to life
—Freedom to call upon the name of the Lord
—The centrality of the family in society
—The growth of mutual charity
—Participation in public life for everyone and by everyone
—The centrality of the individual to socio-economic life as its focal concern
—The evangelization of culture and the cultures of humanity
I suggest that for you as lawyers and members of the Society of Saint Thomas More, that great defender of the inviolable integrity of the human person, the fruits that fall most particularly to your responsibility are those that burgeon from the dignity of the person, that dignity itself, the person’s inviolable right to life from conception to natural death, the focal centrality of the family to society, and of the individual to socio-economic life, the duty and the right of each and every one to participate in public life.
We of the culture that is rooted in Western Europe quite often pride ourselves, quite superficially and unreflectively, on our heritage of human rights, the rights of the person, as a bequest from Ancient Greece, especially from the democratic polity of Ancient Athens.
But how well-founded is that assumption? In a scholarly book published during this past year, entitled “The Greek Achievement: The Foundation of the Western World,” Charles Freeman, an English scholar with Oxbridge roots, quite properly calls in question that assumption. He writes:
“The flaw of the Greek political system was that it never developed a theory of human rights. Rights and duties were assigned not on a universal basis but on the grounds of status and sex. It is in the Christian tradition with its emphasis that each soul is of equal interest to God that the possibilities of such rights lay, even if they were not fully articulated, as “natural rights”, before the eighteenth century.”
The Greek Achievement
(Penguin Books/Viking, U.S.A., 2000) p. 443
“It is in the Christian tradition”: that is the tradition of the high, enlightened civilization of the Catholic Middle Ages and Scholasticism; that is your heritage as Catholics; that is the tradition which Lord Chancellor More so prudently and so courageously upheld — and died for in the end.
That is why I propose that it is the mission responsibility of you, as lawyers who are Catholic, in the places where you exercise your distinguished and honorable profession — it is your special responsibility to promote among your peers, day in day out, by your exemplary living, the centrality of the dignity of the person, with all the blessings and freedoms that flow therefrom.
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