As disciples of the Lord, the lay faithful share in the Church’s mission of evangelization to establish God’s kingdom throughout the world

At the General Audience of Wednesday, 9 February, the Holy Father continued his catechesis on the role of the laity in the Church's life. In today's talk he discussed their participation in Christ's kingly function, pointing out that the faithful are called to work for the development of the temporal order in accordance with God's plan. The Pope's address was the 83rd in the series on the mystery of the Church and was given in Italian.

1. The kingly office is one of the offices proper to Christ that we described previously in the Christological catecheses. It is an office foreseen and foretold in the messianic tradition of the Old Testament. The Church Christ founded was given a share by him in this kingship, as we explained in the ecclesiological catecheses. Now we can and should cast on the laity the light of that doctrine regarding the Church, the mystical and pastoral unity that continues the work of redemption in the world. If lay people are part of the Church, and indeed are the Church, as Pius XII said in his famous address in 1946, it follows that they too are incorporated as it were in the kingship of the Church's supreme Shepherd.

2. As the Second Vatican Council recalls in the Constitution Lumen gentium, after Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man for our salvation, had completed on earth the work of redemption, which culminated in the sacrifice of the cross and the resurrection, before going up to heaven he said to his disciples: "Full authority has been given to me both in heaven and on earth" (Mt 28:18). He himself linked this assertion with his conferral on the disciples of the mission and authority to preach the Gospel to all nations, to all people, and to teach them to observe all his commandments (cf. Mt 28:20): their sharing in his kingship consists in this. Indeed, Christ is a king inasmuch as he reveals the truth he has brought from heaven to earth (cf. Jn 18:37) and which he entrusted to the Apostles and the Church that they might spread it in the world in every age. Living in the truth received from Christ and working to spread it in the world is thus the task and duty of all the Church's members, including the laity, as the Council stated (Lumen gentium, n. 36) and the Exhortation Christifideles laici emphasized (n. 14). 

3. The latter are called to exercise their "kingship as Christians" (Christifideles laici, n. 14) by inwardly living the truth through faith and by their outward witness of charity, working diligently so that through them as well faith and charity may become the leaven of new life for everyone. As it says in the Constitution Lumen gentium: "The Lord desires that his kingdom be spread by the lay faithful: the kingdom of truth and life, the kingdom of holiness and grace, the kingdom of justice, love and peace" (Lumen gentium, n. 36). 

Laity spread Christ's kingship in temporal order 

Again according to the Council, the laity's sharing in the growth of the kingdom is carried out especially by their direct, concrete activity in the temporal order. While priests and religious are dedicated to the more specifically spiritual religious sphere for the conversion of individuals and the growth of Christ's Mystical Body, the laity are called to be involved in spreading Christ's influence in the temporal order, working directly in this order (cf. Apostolicam actuositatem, n. 7). 

4. This fact presupposes that lay people, like the whole Church, have a vision of the world and, in particular, an ability to evaluate human affairs that recognizes their positive value as well as the religious dimension already expressed in the Book of Wisdom: "In your wisdom you have established man to rule the creatures produced by you, to govern the world in holiness and justice" (Wis. 9:2-3). 

The temporal world cannot be considered as a self-contained system. This immanentist, "worldly" conception cannot be maintained at the philosophical level and was radically rejected by Christianity, which learned from St Paul, echoing Jesus, the order and purposeful dynamism of creation as the setting of the Church's very life: "All these are yours", the Apostle wrote to the Corinthians, as if to highlight the new dignity and power of Christians. He immediately adds however: "You are Christ's and Christ is God's" (1 Cor 3:22-23). This text can be accurately paraphrased by saying that the destiny of the entire universe is tied to this belonging. 

5. This view of the world, beginning with the Christ's kingship shared by the Church, is the foundation of an authentic theology of the lay state regarding the Christian role of lay people in the temporal order. As is stated in the Constitution Lumen gentium: "The faithful must... recognize the inner nature, the value and the ordering of the whole of creation to the praise of God. By their secular activity they help one another achieve greater holiness of life, so that the world may be filled with the Spirit of Christ and may the more effectively attain its destiny in justice, in love and in peace. The laity enjoy a principal role in the universal fulfillment of this task. Therefore by their competence in secular disciplines and by their activity, interiorly raised up by grace, let them work earnestly in order that created goods be more suitably distributed among all and in their own way may they be conducive to universal progress in human and Christian liberty. Thus, through the members of the Church, will Christ increasingly illuminate the whole of human society with his saving light" (Lumen gentium, n. 36). 

Laity must nourish the world with spiritual fruits 

6. And again: "Moreover, by uniting their forces, let the laity so remedy the institutions and conditions of the world when the latter are an inducement to sin that these may be conformed to the norms of justice, favoring rather than hindering the practice of virtue. By so doing they will impregnate culture and human works with a moral value" (ibid.; cf. CCC, n. 909). 

"Each lay person must be a witness before the world to the resurrection and life of the Lord Jesus, and a sign of the living God. All together, and each one to the best of his ability, must nourish the world with spiritual fruits. They must diffuse in the world the spirit which animates those poor, meek and peacemakers whom the Lord in the Gospel proclaimed blessed. In a word: 'what the soul is in the body, let Christians be in the world' " (Lumen gentium, n. 38). 

This programme for enlightening and enlivening the world goes back to the earliest period of Christianity, as attested for example, by the Letter to Diognetus: today too this is the royal road to be followed by the heirs, witnesses and co-workers of Christ's kingdom.