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The
Laity
45. As
the Second Vatican Council clearly indicated, the vocation of lay people sets
them firmly in the world to perform the most varied tasks, and it is here that
they are called to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ. 219 By the grace
and call of Baptism and Confirmation, all lay people are missionaries; and the
arena of their missionary work is the vast and complex worlds of politics,
economics, industry, education, the media, science, technology, the arts and
sport. In many Asian countries, lay people are already serving as true
missionaries, reaching out to fellow Asians who might never have contact with
clergy and religious. 220 To them I express the thanks of the whole
Church, and I encourage all lay people to assume their proper role in the life
and mission of the People of God, as witnesses to Christ wherever they may find
themselves.
It is the
task of the Pastors to ensure that the laity are formed as evangelizers able to
face the challenges of the contemporary world, not just with worldly wisdom and
efficiency, but with hearts renewed and strengthened by the truth of Christ.
221 Witnessing to the Gospel in every area of life in society, the lay
faithful can play a unique role in rooting out injustice and oppression, and
for this too they must be adequately formed. To this end, I join the Synod
Fathers in proposing the establishment at the diocesan or national level of lay
formation centres to prepare the laity for their missionary work as witnesses
to Christ in Asia today. 222
The Synod
Fathers were most concerned that the Church should be a participatory Church in
which no one feels excluded, and they judged the wider participation of women
in the life and mission of the Church in Asia to be an especially pressing
need. "Woman has a quite special aptitude in passing on the faith, so much
so that Jesus himself appealed to it in the work of evangelization. That is
what happened to the Samaritan woman whom Jesus met at Jacob's well: he chose
her for the first expansion of the new faith in non-Jewish
territory".223 To enhance their service in the Church, there
should be greater opportunities for women to take courses in theology and other
fields of study; and men in seminaries and houses of formation need to be
trained to regard women as co-workers in the apostolate. 224 Women
should be more effectively involved in pastoral programmes, in diocesan and
parish pastoral councils, and in diocesan synods. Their abilities and services
should be fully appreciated in health care, in education, in preparing the
faithful for the sacraments, in building community and in peacemaking. As the
Synod Fathers noted, the presence of women in the Church's mission of love and
service contributes greatly to bringing the compassionate Jesus, the healer and
reconciler, to Asian people, especially the poor and marginalized. 225
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