Laity's noble mission

Last Sunday the Church in Malta and Gozo celebrated the Day of the Christian Laity. The highly important event will surely help all the faithful to give collectively more tone and tune also to Lent.

Years ago one used to quip that while the Pope, the bishops, and the clergy were all together on top of the pyramid, the laity's role was at the lowest echelon, where they had to pray, pay and obey.

Nowadays it has to be pointed out that the great 19th century English theologian, John Henry Newman, always stressed that the laity's role in the Church is very important. In fact, when asked by his bishop what the clergy should think of the laity, Newman is said to have replied that "it would look rather silly without them".

Years and years later, Cardinal Newman's sharp wit was solidly confirmed by Pope Pius XII's statement that "the laity are the Church".

However, few in the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church took this sharp statement very seriously. Just before the Vatican Council, the great Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro of Bologna used to stress the need of a deep study of "l'apostolato dei laici" at the very earliest. He firmly believed much precious time has been lost to the detriment of the laity's position in the Church.

The important mission of the laity came to the surface very significantly when Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla was elected to the See of Peter.

Pope John Paul II stressed the importance of implementing Vatican II's teaching that the Church is a communio, a communion of believers, who together form the Body of Christ in the world and who all share, through baptism, in Christ's triple mission to evangelise, sanctify and serve.

Beginning in 1987, John Paul II convened three synods of bishops to work on this communio ecclesiology for the laity, the priesthood and the consecrated religious life of those who take perpetual vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

As expected, the most far-reaching in its implications for the future of the Catholic community was the Synod of the Laity held in October 1987. It was on December 30, 1988, that the Apostolic Exhortation Christifideles Laici was issued.

The Apostolic Exhortation laid out a dramatic, even radical vision of a laity living fully its noble mission in today's culture and society, as a fervent expression of its full membership in the Body of Christ. Indeed, the Pope's vision and approach to the laity is really reminiscent of Cardinal Newman, and also of Pius XII's deep statement that "the laity are the Church".

Every Christian, John Paul II insists, is called to a life of holiness in baptism, and for the laity, the call to holiness is "intimately connected to mission". The responsibility given to lay Christians is nothing else than to continue Christ's saving mission in "the world" which is "the place and the means for the lay faithful to fulfil their Christian vocation".

The sanctification of "the world" - society, culture and workplace - is the distinctly "secular" vocation of the laity.