For All the Saints far from view and quite unacclaimed

Happy Solemnity of the Mass-Canonization!

For those of us who look forward to the future canonization of true exemplars of the laity’s “secular genius” — laity sans any monastic or clerical hues — we already have in today’s Feast a massive treasury to draw from.

Today the Church celebrates all the People of God who have passed over into the celestial Age to Come, especially the countess lay faithful (cf. Rev. 7:9) who so loved the world that they gave themselves over in its service that the world might not perish, but have eternal life (cf. Rom. 8:18-21; Rev. 11:15). These secular saints do not kneel before the world’s rebellion, but rather kneel with (and for) the rebellious world before the world’s Redeemer that He might save the world (qua world!) by first saving them. God has willed to save the cosmos by saving the microcosm, priestly man, who is the mediating nexus between heaven and earth. And God has sealed this orderly economy by Himself becoming the Priestly Man, sunk far into the world’s rebellion — into the bowels of its Hell! — in order to free the world, through the resurrection of the body, to become what it was created to be: the translucent temple of His glory.

All effected by the world-wise laity entraining Christ into business, politics, economics, entertainment, education, medicine, waste management, street sweeping, culture, marriage and family life, and every other world-entangled activity of humanity that prevents the Church from thinking our call is to escape this godforsaken world for some unearthly paradise. Entrapped in this tangle, lost in the beauty of their secular call, Christ’s lay faithful beg the consecrating-Spirit to invade this fallen world and overthrow it by the omnipotence of non-violent, self-wasting love that was first detonated on Golgotha.

O Laity, know your dignity….

The lay faithful’s position in the Church, then, comes to be fundamentally defined by their newness in Christian life and distinguished by their secular character. The “world” thus becomes the place and the means for the lay faithful to fulfill their Christian vocation, because the world itself is destined to glorify God the Father in Christ.

The Council is able then to indicate the proper and special sense of the divine vocation which is directed to the lay faithful. They are not called to abandon the position that they have in the world. Baptism does not take them from the world at all

But the laity, by their very vocation, seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God. They 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 [LG 31].

The eyes of faith behold a wonderful scene: that of a countless number of lay people, both women and men, busy at work in their daily life and activity, oftentimes far from view and quite unacclaimed by the world, unknown to the world’s great personages but nonetheless looked upon in love by the Father, untiring labourers who work in the Lord’s vineyard. Confident and steadfast through the power of God’s grace, these are the humble yet great builders of the Kingdom of God in history.

— St. John Paul II #christifidelislaici