Called To Serve

by Editor · April 29, 2009

In this issue we examine God�s call for vocations from various angles: how that call is heard, how it is expressed in consecrated ministry, the potential for a supplementary priestly ministry, the nature of the male religious vocation, and the charism of a religious congregation.

Throughout this edition, religious orders and congregations showcase their charism, offering young people considering the consecrated life a wide range of options to meet their particular spirituality.

It is right and necessary that we must pray for vocations to the priestly and religious life. At a time, as Bishop Fritz Lobinger notes, when half of the world�s Catholics do not have weekly access to the celebration of the Eucharist, we must pray and work to raise the numbers of our priests.

And if God does not answer our prayers, then the Church should, as Bishop Lobinger suggests, consider with seriousness and due prudence alternative models of parish ministry which invest responsibility in the laity.

Internationally there has already been a dramatic rise in lay movements. These are becoming so potent that the Holy See is concerned about their hegemony, emphasising that the movements must work within the conventional structures of a local Church � parish and diocese � and not replace these.

With the numbers of priests declining, or failing to grow at the rate of the Catholic populations they serve, the laity must discern how God is calling them to serve his Church. There is a vocation in the Church for every Catholic to exercise the gifts God has given them.

Some do so in a professional capacity, or by volunteering in Christian charities. In the parish and diocese, the lay apostolate may find expression in leadership position, or in the provision of professional services, be they accounting or plumbing. The extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, the reader at Mass, the usher, the organist, the catechist, and the hospital visitor are answering God�s call to serve. Even the person who sweeps the empty church when the rest of us have gone home, fortified by the Eucharist, is consummating a vocation.

But the role of the laity in the mission of the Church must not be limited to chairing parish pastoral councils or conducting the church choir, inestimable though these services are.

The well-formed laity must engage itself in the mission of the Church, not leave it exclusively in the hands of priests and bishops (who, in turn, must encourage the laity with open hearts and ears). Vatican II�s decree on the laity, Apostolicam actuositatem (1965), said as much when it noted that �modern conditions demand that [the laity�s] apostolate be broadened and intensified�.

The document rightly stresses the laity�s call to evangelise in the secular world, individually and as part of Catholic associations. Simply by living the faith in love and charity and by giving public witness to Christ � or as Vatican II�s Dogmatic Constitution On the Church put it, �to make the Church present and fruitful in those places and circumstances where it is only through them that she can become the salt of the earth� � the laity is involved in that mission.

It is the laity which must lead the moral regeneration of society, not only in the sense of reforming its ethics, but also in addressing all that does not sanctify, especially poverty.

None of these aims can be accomplished by a laity that takes little interest in the teachings, activities and dialogues of the Church. Let the 19th century English Cardinal John Henry Newman guide us: “I want a laity�who know their religion, who enter into it, who know just where they stand. I want an intelligent, well-instructed laity. I mean to be severe, and�exorbitant in my demands.�

May we hear and discern God�s call on all of us to serve his Church.