Jun 19 Mon
What is the vocation of the laity? First of all, it is not equivalent to lay ecclesial ministry. To fulfill your vocation as a lay person, you do not have to become a lector or an extraordinary minister of Holy Communion or a catechist for the religious education program. Those are some ways of helping the priest to fulfill his mission in the Church, but they are not typical ways of fulfilling your mission as a lay person in the Church.

Don’t get me wrong; priests often need help with various things around the parish in order to fulfill their mission, and they are tremendously grateful for the assistance that lay people can provide.

But assisting the clergy is not the primary vocation of the laity. The laity have their own mission in the Church and in the world, for which they are better equipped than the clergy or the religious. That mission is to sanctify, evangelize, and Christianize the secular world:

“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.

“In this way, they may make Christ known to others, especially by the testimony of a life resplendent in faith, hope, and charity.

“Therefore, since they are tightly bound up in all types of temporal affairs, it is their special task to order and to throw light upon these affairs, in such a way that they may come into being and then continually increase according to Christ, to the praise of the Creator and the Redeemer” (Second Vatican Council, Lumen Gentium 31).