Laity Vocation: Let Us Build the Earthly City

St. Augustine wrote of two cities that men on earth have built. “Two cities have been formed by two loves,” he said. “The earthly by the love of self, even to the contempt of God; the heavenly by the love of God, even to the contempt of self.”

I would like to write about the secular city being built by the laity by love of God and neighbor.

Addressing his fellow U.S. bishops in St. Louis on June 20, 2003, Cardinal Francis George said that “The greatest failure . . . of the post-Vatican II church is the failure to have formed and to call forth a laity engaged in the world in order to change it, a laity engaged in the world politically, economically, culturally and socially, but on faith’s terms, not just on the world’s terms.”

The Vocation of the Laity

To develop a bit what I think Cardinal George had in mind, I would like to review some key points from Chapter IV, “The Laity,” from The Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, Vatican II’s Lumen Gentium. (The entire chapter deserves slow, repeated readings.)

Two principles that underlie the Church’s teaching about the laity are the universal call to holiness and the secular nature of the laity’s vocation. Laypersons have a vocation to sanctity just as much as clerics and religious and they pursue this call in the world.

The key statement from Lumen Gentium is rather long and I’d like to quote it in full before commenting.

But the laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God. They live in the world, that is, in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven. They are called there by God that by exercising their proper function and led by the spirit of the Gospel they may work for the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven. In this way they may make Christ known to others, especially by the testimony of a life resplendent in faith, hope and charity. Therefore, since they are tightly bound up in all types of temporal affairs it is their special task to order and to throw light upon these affairs in such a way that they may come into being and then continually increase according to Christ to the praise of the Creator and the Redeemer.” (§ 31)

Key Points:

• We laity engage in all legitimate temporal affairs and order them according to the plan of God. In other words, we perform them on faith’s terms—as Cardinal George put it—not the world’s terms. This approach means doing them both well and good, that is, competently and honestly: for example, a plumber ought to able to plumb and not be a crook.
• Our secular world is every legitimate profession and occupation and marriage and family life. You cannot seek the kingdom of God in organized crime or as a “sex worker.” You can as a checkout clerk or janitor. While some of the laity have a vocation to the single life, they still have their families of birth, but most of us are called to marriage, procreation, and the formation of our children.
• Our arena is ordinary life. What we sanctify is right in front of our faces and in reach of our hands at every moment. It is the current task and the person we are encountering.
• The vocation to sanctify the world and ourselves through our temporal affairs is from God. God calls us to this and accompanies us with his grace.
• We make Christ know to others, even before we say anything, through our life of virtue, especially the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity (and, I’d add, of the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, since grace builds on nature).

Witnesses of Christ in the World

A second point, which confirms what has been said so far, is that no priest or religious can bring Christ where we can bring him. “Now the laity,” the Council says, “are called in a special way to make the Church present and operative in those places and circumstances where only through them can it become the salt of the earth” (§33). An anesthesiologist can bring Christ to the operating room. A tow-truck driver can bring Christ to a stranded motorist. A mother can bring Christ to her children. A coach can bring Christ to his team. A student can bring him to his classmates.

The Council then develops how the laity share in the prophetic, priestly, and kingly offices of Christ. For example, the laity share in the eternal priesthood of Christ:

“For all their works, prayers and apostolic endeavors, their ordinary married and family life, their daily occupations, their physical and mental relaxation, if carried out in the Spirit, and even the hardships of life, if patiently borne—all these become ‘spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ’” (§ 34).

Recall how wise and simple religious sisters used to tell their students to “offer it up.” But not just crosses and contradictions can be offered up, but enjoyable work, playing sports, and conjugal relations can be a sharing in the priesthood of Our Lord. We can make this priestly offering anytime and all of the time. An especially important time is at the offertory at Mass when we can mentally place on the paten and in the chalice all these ordinary occupations. We can offer up everything except our sins. And though we cannot offer sins back to God, we can humbly offer the weakness and vulnerability that incline us to sin.

Secularity

A final point I’d like to draw out is the goodness of secularity. In connection with the kingship of Christ, the Council fathers say, “The faithful . . . must learn the deepest meaning and the value of all creation, as well as its role in the harmonious praise of God” (§ 36). All of creation is good in itself and original sin has not changed that.

“By their competence in secular training and by their activity, elevated from within by the grace of Christ, let them vigorously contribute their effort, so that created goods may be perfected by human labor, technical skill and civic culture for the benefit of all men according to the design of the Creator and the light of His Word” (§ 36).

It is not just bread and wine “that earth has given and human hands have made”—to cite the Offertory of the Mass—but every creation of human work.

The Council says “the temporal sphere is governed by its own principles, since it is rightly concerned with the interests of this world”; however, “in every temporal affair [the laity] must be guided by a Christian conscience, since even in secular business there is no human activity which can be withdrawn from God’s dominion” (§ 36). In our work, whatever it is, we must discover, learn, and master the principles, whether it is the principles inherent in baking bread or in the investigation of quantum physics. We work according to the principles found in the things themselves, put in them by the Creator. Yet, because we are moral agents, we must not do moral evil by those discoveries but rather contribute to the common good.

Righting an Evil

To conclude, we can note how prophetic the Council was for our day, today: It warns about “that ominous doctrine which attempts to build a society with no regard whatever for religion, and which attacks and destroys the religious liberty of its citizens” (§ 36). Our religious liberty is certainly under attack all over the world, but it is principally the laity who have the responsibility to right this evil.

Yet for the laity to right this evil and to carry out our proper mission and apostolate, the pastors of the Church must finally do what Cardinal George decried has not yet been done adequately. They must do their part to form and “call forth a laity engaged in the world in order to change it . . . politically, economically, culturally and socially, but on faith’s terms, not just on the world’s terms.”

This world is that secular city being built by the love of God and neighbor.