In his April 1 General Audience, Pope Leo XIV reflected on the laity’s identity in the Church and the call to evangelize in the world, encouraging the faithful to be witnesses of the Resurrected Lord, following examples such as those of Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John.
Chapter four of the Dogmatic Constitution Lumen gentium aims to describe the nature and mission of the laity using positive terms, “after centuries in which they had been defined simply as those who are not part of the clergy or the consecrated life,” Pope Leo said, continuing his catechesis on the documents of the Second Vatican Council.
He spotlighted paragraph 32 of the constitution, which states that “the chosen People of God is one: ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism’; sharing a common dignity as members from their regeneration in Christ, having the same filial grace and the same vocation to perfection; possessing in common one salvation, one hope and one undivided charity.”
Before making distinctions between ministries or states of life, the Second Vatican Council affirmed the equal dignity of all the baptized as members of the Church, Pope Leo explained. The council also emphasized the laity’s mission in the Church and in the world.
The Pontiff then drew attention to the definition of laity given by Lumen gentium, which states that it means “all the faithful… [who] are by baptism made one body with Christ and are constituted among the People of God,” and sharers in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly functions of Jesus. The declaration adds that the laity “carry out for their own part the mission of the whole Christian people in the Church and in the world.”
This has profound implications and reveals the complementary dynamic of ordained priests and all the baptized, according to Pope Leo.
“The holy People of God, therefore, is never a formless mass, but the body of Christ,” Pope Leo said, later saying “it is a community organically structured by means of the fruitful relationship between the two forms of participation in the priesthood of Christ,” namely, the faithful’s common priesthood and the ministerial priesthood.
The laity’s participation in the priesthood of Christ comes with responsibilities as well. Pope Leo noted that Lumen gentium states that Jesus, the eternal Priest, “wills to continue His witness and service also through the laity, vivifies them in this Spirit and increasingly urges them on to every good and perfect work.”
The council’s writings on the laity were praised especially in 1988 by Pope Saint John Paul II, who emphasized in his apostolic exhortation Chriestifideles laici that the council wrote “as never before on the nature, dignity, spirituality, mission and responsibility of the lay faithful,” Pope Leo quoted.
Pope St. John Paul II added that the Council Fathers re-echoed Christ’s call by summoning “all the lay faithful, both women and men, to labour in the vineyard.”
Pope Leo then emphasized that the apostolate of the laity includes ministry in the Church and extends into the world, which needs the Christian witness of the risen Lord.
“Indeed, the Church is present wherever her children profess and bear witness to the Gospel: in the workplace, in civil society and in all human relationships,” Pope Leo said, “wherever they, through their choices, show the beauty of Christian life, which foretells here and now the justice and peace that will be accomplished in the Kingdom of God.”
Drawing on Lumen gentium, Pope Leo underscored the importance of the laity’s witness in permeating the spirit of Christ in the world. The Body of Christ should respond to the call to share with the world the joy of Easter, the Pope said.
Pope Francis encouraged being an “outgoing Church,” Pope Leo recalled, explaining that it is “a Church embodied in history, always open to mission, in which we are all called to be missionary disciples, apostles of the Gospel, witnesses of the Kingdom of God, bearers of the joy of Christ whom we have encountered!
“Brothers and sisters, may the Easter we are preparing to celebrate renew in us the grace to be, like Mary Magdalene, like Peter and John, witnesses of the Risen One!”