The Essence of being a Lay Person in the Church: To be another Christ in the World

In the Philippines, when you see someone spending blessed moments inside the Church to pray daily,
you would normally rashly conclude that the subject is a priest, a ‘brother’, a seminarian, a ‘sister’ or a
nun. Perhaps this illustrates the clericalism and the religious mentality that pervade our ecclesiastical
society. The cleric or those dedicated to the religious life are in a privileged position. They are the only
models of holiness. They are seen to be the ones responsible to take the lead in all the Evangelical
endeavors. Take it or leave it. That describes the life of the Church in our country. Father Parish Priest
initiates everything. Sister Sis leads the community singing. Brother Bro distributes the communion.
Everyone who helps out in the parochial tasks wants to be called “Brother” or “Sister.”

Don’t get me wrong. Lay collaborators are needed in the Parish, and they are doing a good service. What
I am worried about is when they limit their participation in the life of the Church to these
responsibilities. When laymen confuse their tasks with those of the priests, or limit their role to helping
him administrate, or when they pattern their life with those of the religious (ie, dressing up like them),
they lose their essential characteristic: secularity—their ‘being in the middle of the world.’

The lay person is presented “two temptations [..he has] not always known how to avoid: the temptation
of being so strongly interested in Church services and tasks that [he] fail[s] to become actively engaged
in [his] responsibilities in the professional, social, cultural and political world; and the temptation of
legitimizing the unwarranted separation of faith from life, that is, a separation of the Gospel's
acceptance from the actual living of the Gospel in various situations in the world.” 1

These considerations are very important as we celebrate 2014 as Year of the Laity in preparation for the
500th year of Christianity in our nation. I opine that if we recognize this ‘power,’ this specificity of the
Laity, then Christ could be brought effectively to the four corners of our nation.

Who is the lay person anyway? Alvaro del Portillo, successor of the “pioneer of lay spirituality” (St
Josemaria Escriva)2, and an important figure in the Second Vatican Council’s preliminary Commission ‘On
the Laity’ summed up the dogmatic constitution on the Church’s description of the laity’s legal status:
“The layman is the ordinary Christian who lives in the midst of the world, undistinguished from other
citizens with whom he shares his life, goals, ambitions and interests; he is the Christian whose ecclesial
mission refers particularly to the world; he must promote the kingdom of God through his dealings with
temporal matters; he must exercise his apostolate in the world; he is asked to assume responsibility for
penetrating the temporal sphere of things with the spirit of the Gospel.” 3

What then distinguishes the lay person from the other members of the Church, ie, from the clerics or
from those in the consecrated life? Among all the Baptized who share in the common dignity because of
their rebirth in Christ, their common vocation to holiness, the lay person has something properly and
particular: the secular character. The two other legal status: the clergy (the deacon, the priest or the
1
Christifideles Laici 2.
2
G. Torello, “The spirituality of lay people”, in The Furrow, Maynooth, Vol XVII, 4 (April 1966), pp 222-235.
3
A. del Portillo, “Faithful and Laity in the Church: the Bases of their Legal Status”, Ecclesia Press, Ireland, 1972,
p.100.
Bishop), and those dedicated in the consecrated life (the religious) do not have this character, although
as members of the Church, obviously they share in Her secular dimension.

“All the members of the Church are sharers in the secular dimension but in different ways.” 4 “Clerics are
not radically isolated from secular affairs, nevertheless their function in the profane order is subordinate
to their sacred ministry;5 they may engage only in those profane activities which are in keeping with
their state, and only in so far as may be compatible with their function in the Church. However it is
important to realize that basically they do continue to be immersed in the world: there is no question of
their being isolated therefrom, but only of predominance and subordination. […] The religious, or more
precisely those in the consecrated life, by their religious profession are not transformed into human
beings who are idlers, and excused from doing manual work such as what monks do. Yet they are public
witnesses in the name of the Church and in the spirit of the beatitudes, and therefore of the new
heaven and of the new earth, and are genuinely separated from the world. It is precisely this separation
which provides and makes possible that public eschatological witness which is proper and essential to
the religious state. By their function and position in the Church, the religious separate themselves from
the natural, secular dynamism—the world—and have a particular mission to perform. Their mission is
not to build up the ‘earthly city’, but they are united with the world in the heart of Christ and cooperate
with them spiritually. In this way the work of building up the earthly city can always have its foundation
in the Lord and can tend toward him. 6 […] The layman is the Christian who is fully immersed in the
world, with all the duties and rights that result from that position; together with the rest of mankind he
is the builder of the earthly city. As a man and as a Christian he has a temporal commitment, an effective
and affective link with this world, which came from the hands of God and whose Creator found it
deserving good.”7

The religious are proud of their above-mentioned role in the Church: to give public witness to their
consecration, to wear their habit—the distinguishing mark of a person in the consecrated life. The
priests are also content with their public function, a necessary service to the ecclesial community. Their
‘being in the world’ should not distract them from their primary vocation to administer well the
Sacraments, the source of all graces, and give Spiritual Direction. When the religious—because of their
status—, and the priests—because of their function—show themselves in public and act as laypersons,
the entire People of God suffers because the confusing signals they could send. When they see the
layperson as second-class members of the Church, when they view their importance subject to their
participation in parochial initiatives, then we have a serious problem.

The Pastoral Exhortation of the Catholic Bishop’s Conference of the Philippines for the 2014 Year of the
Laity has stressed: “[the laity’s] own specific task, and the special responsibility given to [them] by the
Lord is to find [their] own sanctification in the world, and to sanctify the world and transform it so that
this world becomes more and more God’s world, God’s kingdom, where his will is done as it is in
heaven. [They] are called by Jesus to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. The Lord Jesus

4
Christifideles Laici 15.
5
Lumen Gentium 31.
6
Lumen Gentium 48.
7
p.103 Don Alvaro
told his disciples to preach the Gospel to every creature, and to make all nations his disciples. This
command to the whole Church falls especially on [them], who are in the world.”

John Paul II, in an Apostolic Exhortation would further specify: “The lay faithful is called by God in the
secular world. And his or her place is the world: to ‘live in the world, that is, in every one of the secular
professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which
the very fabric of their existence is woven’. They are persons who live an ordinary life in the world: they
study, they work, they form relationships as friends, professionals, members of society, cultures, etc.
Their condition is not simply an external and environmental framework, but as a reality destined to find
in Jesus Christ the fullness of its meaning. Indeed it leads to the affirmation that ‘the Word made flesh
willed to share in human fellowship ... He sanctified those human ties, especially family ones, from
which social relationships arise, willingly submitting himself to the laws of his country. He chose to lead
the life of an ordinary craftsman of his own time and place’.” 8

What does it mean by encountering in Jesus Christ the fullness of the meaning of ordinary life in the
world? “The lay person is concerned with His living presence in the world, involving commitment and
immersion in the temporal order. He or she has to raise up and perfect this function with Christian
charity and, by offering himself to God as a living holy and pleasing victim, he or she gives a supernatural
value to work and carries out apostolate by means of it. […] For the lay person to be a good Christian it is
essential that he be a good member of the earthly city; the Catholic doctor has a serious duty to be a
good doctor, the famer has to be a good farmer. Since man is good because of his virtues, the layman
must have and practice the human, natural, virtues—which are the bases of the supernatural ones—and
know as much as possible, within his capabilities, about his secular function, that is to say his
occupation. For this is what makes him a good member of the earthly city, through which by divine
vocation he seeks the kingdom of God.”9

Pius XII once stated that “the Faithful, more precisely the lay faithful, find themselves on the front lines
of the Church's life; for them the Church is the animating principle for human society. Therefore, they in
particular, ought to have an ever-clearer consciousness not only of belonging to the Church, but of being
the Church, that is to say, the community of the faithful on earth under the leadership of the Pope, the
head of all, and of the Bishops in communion with him. These are the Church ...”. 10

If lay persons are the Church, let us not only pray for them, but also respect them with what
distinguishes them: their secular character. The challenge is not that they are involved in the activities of
the ecclesial community but that they know their role in being another Christ where they are: in the
world. And so the next time you see someone spending blessed moments inside the Church to pray
daily, simply ask the Lord that there be many who are edified by him or her in the middle of the world,
knowing how to bring Christ in their ordinary tasks, doing them very well and leading the rest through
example.

8
Christifideles Laici 15. The Pope in this paragraph was quoting Lumen Gentium 31 and 48; Gaudium et Spes 32.
9
A. del Portillo, p 105.
10
Pius XII, Discourse to the New Cardinals, February 20, 1946: AAS 38 (1946), 149