1.      A new awareness of the prophetic mission of the laity

Along through history a tension has often been noticed between consecrated persons and laity.

Even the terminology has not been helpful. Talking about consecrated persons has not rarely created in the laity the suspicion of being considered almost as “unconsecrated.” If those who make public vows become religious, are the lay faithful perhaps less religious? The view of consecrated life as a state of perfection has led to a tacit, but almost consequent, opposite: a state of imperfection or of not full perfection of the laity.  Still on the eve of the Council the current opinion was that the Gospel offered a double way of salvation: that of the precepts which oblige every Christian, and that of the counsels, reserved for some.  This latter, prerogative of consecrated persons, was considered superior, leaving others in a state of inferiority. Igino Giordani, one of the great lay protagonists of the 20^th century, whose cause for beatification is about to open, complained that the lay state was being considered the proletariat of the Church. Here we do not want to enter into the evaluation of the theology underlying terminology. Suffice it to note how it, in fact, has caused a certain discomfort and misunderstanding for which we still feel the consequences.

            Practice, too, has contributed to a mutual distancing between vocations in the Church. Monks and religious have often withdrawn into their world, with their own liturgical life detached from the local Church, with their own works, a cloister that emphasized distances, with a lifestyle that removed them from that of other Christians to the point of making them feel too remote, almost unreachable. Here, too, we are not talking about the legitimacy, or not,  of certain forms of life, of the sense of withdrawal from the world, of solitude, cloister, but only about some negative effects that a certain way of living these values has generated and that continue to feed a sense of discomfort in relationships.

            The recalling of this past is not purely academic. After the ecclesiological conquests of Vatican Council II, is this mentality, once in vogue, truly overcome? Or can we not notice revivals for the restoration of a certain clerical superiority? 

            However we cannot deny the great change that came about in the Church by the becoming aware of “the universal call to holiness”.  Yes, also the laity, for the fact of being Christians are called to holiness. This fact, notes Starting Afresh from Christ, “can become an added motive for joy for consecrated persons. They are now  closer to the other members of the People of God with whom they share a common path in the following of Christ, in a more authentic communion, in mutual respect, without being superior or inferior.” (n. 13)

            We have overcome, at least from the doctrinal point of view, a dual temptation that is always recurring along the Church’s history. The first is to restrict the circle of those who are called to live the Gospel in its integrity. The laity would be the first to be “exempt” from certain Gospel pages, perhaps precisely those which Jesus spoke to the “crowds”, to “all”.  It is a temptation that we find already in the early times of the Church and which John Chrisostom already opposed by championing the wholeness of the Gospel text for all the laity. Speaking to the people he expressed himself as follows: “Some of you say: ‘I am not a monk’… But it is here that you are mistaken, because you believe that the Scriptures regard only monks, while they are even more necessary for you faithful who are in the midst of the world.” He reproves those who “maintain that is not worthwhile for them to read the divine Scriptures”, because they “live with a wife or fight in the army, or because they are concerned about their children, or take care of the relatives or have commitments in other businesses.”

            The second temptation is to restrict the area of Christian life to the interior life, almost as though it regards only the spiritual dimension. Laity, being engaged in the world, would live a lesser Christianity. To be Christians of the first category they have to live in the “interior world” like consecrated persons. Consequently it is not rare, even today, to identify “promotion of the laity” with their access to the liturgical and catechetical environment; you put a stole on the layman, have him do the readings at Mass, make him an extraordinary minister of the Eucharist, entrust the catechesis to him… and there he is, “promoted”… to a quasi clerical state. For the woman especially, “promotion” would mean access to the “clerical” state.

            Today, anyway, we  are living a fortunate era in which the laity’s fully Christian status has been recognized. The experience of Catholic action and other lay associations, the theology of the laity which developed along the whole first part of the 19^th century, and the teaching of Vatican Council II have definitively opened a new understanding of the lay Christian’s vocation and a new ecclesial practice. It would suffice to recall the point reached with the Exhortation Vita Consecrata, where, responding to the question about the relationship between baptismal consecration and “religious” consecration, it writes: “By virtue of their rebirth in Christ, all the faithful share a common dignity; all are called to holiness;  all cooperate in the building up of the one Body of Christ, each in accordance with the proper vocation and gift which he or she has received from the Spirit.” (31)  New relationships were born of this: “The vocations to the lay life, to the ordained ministry and to the consecrated life … are at the service of one another, for the growth of the Body of Christ in history and for its mission in the world.” (31)

            It would be necessary to read especially Christifideles laici which sees “…clergy, men and women religious, the lay faithful…At one and the same time they all are the goal and subjects (agents) of Church communion as well as of participation in the mission of salvation”.  To each and all charisms are recognized, and different and complementary ministries that allow them to work in the one and common vineyard of the Lord. (cf. n. 55) There are no longer vocations of series A or series B… There are different ways of living the one vocation and one mission.

            This ecclesiological view opened the road to a new relationship of communion between consecrated persons and the laity. Already the general superiors, when, in preparation for the Synod they wondered about the elements of greatest newness that were emerging in the experience of their institutes, spoke of the relationships being established with the laity as an authentic sign of the times. Among all the ecclesial components, the laity seemed to them the ones with whom communion was most developed; with them a genuine collaboration and sharing of co-responsibility was being established.³

            Who are these lay people, concretely? We can comfortably say: all the Christians that we meet in our daily life. All Christians, with an infinitely small exception made up of clergy and consecrated persons. For the so-called Christian countries the relationship with laity is identified as a relationship with each neighbor, the one we meet in our parishes, in our educational and charitable institutions, including the employee at the bank, the clerk at the store, the bus driver, the neighbors next door, and public administrators…

            Will it be simplistic if I recall that Jesus taught us that a relationship with the neighbor consists in always loving? The religious-lay relationship is resolved by beginning with the word of the Gospel: whatever you did to your neighbor you did to Christ. Who is the other for me? (and the other, I repeat, in general is a lay man or woman). It is Jesus--to love, to serve, to listen to, to help… With him and with her I can share my experience of life, as I can accept his pain, his joy, his testimony of life. It is the giving and receiving required of all Christians. There is abundant literature about lay-religious relationships, but we can never dispense with the a,b,c of the Gospel: love your neighbor as yourself; do unto the other as you would wish done to you; love each other…We rediscover ourselves brothers/sisters in solidarity on the journey  of holiness, and in zeal for evangelization.

            Naturally, unity in ecclesial and missionary communion does not mean uniformity. Ecclesial richness results precisely from the diversity of vocations and ministries. Vatican Council II courageously reaffirmed the prophetic character of the laity and their specific vocation to bring Christ into human social structures “so that the power of the Gospel might shine forth in their daily social and family life,” and that it can be expressed “also through the framework of secular life”. (Lumen Gentium 35) The way to live the one Gospel and the way to carry out the one mission are different. For this reason we are indispensable to each other and cannot live in watertight compartments.

            Starting Afresh from Christ observes that “a new type of communion and collaboration within the various vocations and states of life especially among consecrated persons and laity is beginning”, and indicates some concrete lines: “Monastic and contemplative Institutes can offer the laity a relationship that is primarily spiritual and the necessary spaces for silence and prayer. Institutes committed to the apostolate can involve them in forms of pastoral collaboration. Members of Secular Institutes, lay or clerical, relate to other members of the faithful at the level of everyday life.” (n. 31)

            One can enter into communion also with the laity…of the so-called “lay” world, or with those who profess to be non-believers or of non-religious convictions. A relationship with them can help us to value, for example, their sense of duty, justice, work, as well as many other deeply human values. In addition, their questions oblige us to go deeper into our faith.