Go? No, run!

Your Christian vocation does not take you away from any of your brothers and sisters. It does not inhibit your involvement in civic affairs nor exempt you from your responsibilities as a citizen. It does not divide you from society nor relieve you of the daily trials of life. Rather your continued engagement in secular activities and professions is truly a part of your vocation.

As lay people you know that your special apostolate is to bring Christian principles to bear upon the temporal order, that is, to bring the spirit of Christ into such spheres of life as marriage and the family, trade and commerce, and arts and professions, politics and government, culture and national and international relations. — Pope St. John Paul II

[this is an email I sent to a deacon candidate when I was teaching a class called Missiology in the lay program at Notre Dame Seminary. Pardon the length]

I am still waiting to hear in person a homily on the unique and specific mission of the laity in the world marked by their God-given “secular genius.” A homily on lay holiness as uniquely secular, distinguished by a baptismal consecration that thrusts Christian men and women out in mission to consecrate the heart of the world. A homily on a spirituality proper to laity that cultivates in them a deep love for this world, springing from an equally deep spiritual life that does not require a split-mind. A spirituality that rids the soul of any aversion to being “tightly bound up [arcte coniungunter] in all types of temporal affairs,” as Vatican II eloquently described the lay path. This is the spirituality taught by St. Francis de Sales, St. Josemaria Escriva, Pope St. John Paul II and countless more. This is a spirituality that will empower laity to resist what John Paul II called

the temptation of being so strongly interested in Church services and tasks that some fail to become actively engaged in their responsibilities in the professional, social, cultural and political world.

I know these homilies happen — I have heard tell of them. I still wait with hope for the day when I will at last hear one myself.

Fr. Jordan Aumann noted in his book, On the Front Lines, that because the vast majority of spiritual itineraries in the Catholic tradition emerged from a monastic flight from world, there is a deep-seated cultural tendency for Catholics who try to be serious about their faith to see extraction from “temporal affairs” as the only really radical, and so preferable, way. Those men and women who are more attracted to religious and church activities than to secular ones are assumed to be holier, more serious Catholics. And yet, sin aside, we should expect lay people to naturally feel a great love and strong attraction to secular professions, leisure activities and occupations. And their spiritual life should flourish that tendency and reveal to faithful men and women that to love this world with God is as mystically transformative as those who love the next world with God.

The exclusively other-worldly approach to holiness presents for the vast majority of laity a false and dangerously alienating dilemma: God or secular pursuits. The Council, on the other hand, describes a laity who

live in the world, that is, in each and in all of the secular professions and occupations. They live in the ordinary circumstances of family and social life, from which the very web of their existence is woven. They are called there by God that by exercising their proper function and led by the spirit of the Gospel they may work for the sanctification of the world from within as a leaven.

This false dichotomy also sets the stage for people saying of their secular job or family life or any secular engagement: “I just don’t find any meaning in it anymore.” Well, hello? Of course they wouldn’t! I mean, who is forming in their hearts a compelling vision of a mystically meaningful secular life??

And, doused in this world-flight spirituality, laity end up with all bad options: Stay where you are and be miserable. Fall away from the faith. Live a split life that keeps “real life” and “religious life” unmixed. Suffer from listless acedia. Succumb to a beige faith life. Craft for yourself a religion-bubble, living a life of escape from your primary duties as a citizen of this world, e.g. going on frequent retreats or church conferences disruptive of marriage, family, job, civic community engagement, etc. Or maybe just quit your secular pursuits altogether and work for a ministry or the church.

A gentleman I knew years ago, who was a successful lawyer and father of five, once said to me of a certain Catholic college he sent his children to:

Ah! Yes! [Name of college], where parents send their children full of hopes and dreams to be engineers, scientists, doctors, mechanics, school-teachers, athletes — and they come out with theology degree, with no real career future awaiting them, wandering around lost.

Now, of course, those who are genuinely called to do ministry in this way — myself included! — are doing a noble and very needful thing. Lord, yes! We need more of us, theologically educated, especially willing to embrace and commit to the humble work of parish ministry. And all the Faithful are called in different ways to engage in the life of their parish and build up Christ’s Body, e.g. help form and nourish the faith of laity.

That said, the vast majority of laity are not called to professional or dedicated church ministry, and they don’t need theology degrees to be fulfilled or equipped. They need excellent faith formation for their lives, small faith communities for support, organization for works of the apostolate. But if they begin to sense they lack meaning in their secular lives — marriage, family, career, civic engagement — realize there’s a good chance it’s in no-small part due to being drenched in the Monastic Vibes, while not being nourished with a spirituality that would show them the INSANELY DEEP meaning in this world and how to wrestle with its fallen structures to enact God’s Blueprint known as Catholic Social Doctrine.

I plead with all who, with me, serve in ecclesial ministry: next time you hear someone say, “I don’t find meaning in my job…”, blow their freaking minds with the vast vision of our faith for the mystic splendor of secular life and its labors. Shepherd the disciples of Zaccheus, whose life-changing encounter with Jesus made of him not an apostle who left his profession and sold all he had, but a just tax collector who remained in his profession, repented of his extortion, made restitution and lavishly gave of his wealth to the poor.

Pope Francis taught this vision as Archbishop in Buenos Aires:

As I have said before, there is a problem: the temptation to clericalism. We priests tend to clericalize the laity. We do not realize it, but it is as if we infect them with our own thing. And the laity–not all but many–ask us on their knees to clericalize them, because it is more comfortable to be an altar boy than the protagonist of a lay path.

The layman is a layman and has to live as a layman with the strength of his baptism, which enables him to be a leaven of the love of God in society…not from his pulpit but from his everyday life. And the priest–let the priest carry the cross of the priest, since God gave him a broad enough shoulder for this.

One day, maybe another St. Jose Maria Escriva will ascend the Ambo and say to those in the pews starving for something encouraging:

I dream — and the dream has come true! — of multitudes of God’s children, sanctifying themselves as ordinary citizens, sharing the ambitions and endeavors of their colleagues and friends. I want to shout to them about this divine truth:
If you are there in the middle of ordinary life,
it doesn’t mean Christ has forgotten about you or hasn’t called you.
He has invited you to stay among the activities and concerns of the world.
He wants you to know that your human vocation,
your profession, your talents, are not omitted from his divine plans.
He has sanctified them and made them a most acceptable offering to his Father.
The true Christian works in this world of ours, which he loves passionately;
he is involved in all its challenges, but all the while his eyes are fixed on heaven

With St. Jose, I beg especially those who work in ministry with youth and young adults, including those who work on college and university campuses, to awaken in the young a passion for God that is simultaneously radically open to a passion for the world. And these ministers would see this as one-and-the-same as a passionate labor to awaken sacred callings to Holy Orders, Religious life and Consecrated Virginity. To honor these high and sacred callings is to honor them as vocations of service of the countless lay men and women whom the Father has lovingly sunk deep into the structures of this world, on the front lines of the Church, as its royal and priestly stewards.

One Sunday in 2013, at St. Isidore the Farmer urban parish, the celebrant of the Mass chanted the words of dismissal: “Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord!” No sooner had he finished, when a parishioner yelled out as he pointed to the church’s back door: “Father! Seriously? You’re telling us to go out there? You want me to leave this holy place where God dwells and go back out into that godless world?!” The celebrant, not missing a beat, shouted back: “Yes, I am! But on second thought, I don’t just want you to Go. I want you to run into that world and love the hell out of it!” The whole congregation bolted out of the nine Fire exits, loudly singing these words from the hymn, ‘Tis Good Lord to be Here:

‘Tis good, Lord, to be here!
Yet we may not remain;
But since you bid us leave the mount,
Come with us to the plain.

Pope St. John Paul II, give us a final word:

Your Christian vocation does not take you away from any of your brothers and sisters. It does not inhibit your involvement in civic affairs nor exempt you from your responsibilities as a citizen. It does not divide you from society nor relief you of the daily trials of life. Rather your continued engagement in secular activities and professions is truly a part of your vocation.

[if you still have time, listen to St. Jose blow minds…]

(HIT CLOSED CAPTIONS FOR ENGLISH SUBTITLES)