It’s a pleasure for me to be here today to take part in this celebration of lay ministry in the Church. What is lay ministry? Why is this important for our diocese? Why is this important for the people who are completing the program today?

It’s a pleasure for me to be here today to take part in this celebration of lay ministry in the Church. What is lay ministry? Why is this important for our diocese? Why is this important for the people who are completing the program today?

We must look to the person of Jesus Christ for the answer to these questions. When it comes to ministry, Jesus is the one minister of God. And we share in his ministry. It is our Catholic faith that by our baptism we aremade one body with Christ and are established among the People of God. Those who are baptized are in their own way made sharers in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly functions of Jesus. They carry out their own part in the mission of the whole Christian people with respect to the Church and the world.

Ministry is to carry out this life of service which Jesus lived and which he calls us to share. Jesus allows us to share in his own mission. In the first reading today, St. Paul said that God has given us the “ministry of reconciliation.” God had sent Jesus into the world to reconcile the world to Himself. This was his mission and he fulfilled this mission by dying for all, the ultimate act of giving his life in service to all of us. This mission of reconciliation was the mission he handed on to his Church to continue. This is the mission we take up because of our baptism.

It is our faith that The Church was founded for the purpose of spreading the kingdom of Christ throughout the earth for the glory of God the Father. The church was founded to enable all people to share in Jesus’ saving redemption, and the church was founded so that through those who have been redeemed,  the whole world might enter into a relationship with Christ.This is the mission that we have been called to take up and this is why we are here today. In the exercise of this mission, Jesus continues his saving work in our world through his Church.

For ourselves personally, this is the way we enter into the holiness to which God has called us. Again, St. Paul said thatChrist died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.When I am a disciple of Jesus I am called to live no longer for myself but for him. This is a way of living that many around us would find very difficult to understand. We live in a society in which more and more people live mainly for themselves. Yet Jesus teaches us that to be truly human is to live also for others, to give of ourselves for others. That way we live no longer for ourselves but for him who died and was raised for us. We are one with Him who gives us life.

We cannot look at our society today and wonder why they know little or nothing about Jesus and the love he offers and the hope he engenders. Somehow we who are called to be witnesses to the world of the good news that is our faith have not succeeded in showing the world around us the brightness of our faith. We are the Body of Christ in our world and yet the world has not seen Him.

I do not say this to make anyone feel guilty. There are different ways of living as the Church and being the Church to our world. We now are in an in-between period. The old way is no longer effective. People have not been able to recognize Jesus in us and therefore they do not know Him. We need to be more aware of how important our witness is and set about to give that witness to benefit a world badly in need of the healing and hope that Jesus gives.

Because we follow Jesus, we don’t look at life and at our world in a simply human point of view. St. Paul said that if we are “in Christ,” if we are disciples of Jesus, if we follow Jesus as the way, the truth and the life. When we do this, we understand that we are part of a new creation.

The first creation failed because of our first parents. God created people for a union of love with him forever. Yet the result of creation was that God and the people he had created were irrevocably separated through the rebellion of Adam and Eve. Jesus is not about rebellion against God, Jesus is about union with God. Our Catholic faith is about union with God not separation from God. So in Jesus, the old creation passed away and the new creation took hold.

We were born into that new creation in our baptism. When our baptismal garment was put on us, the priest said: “You have become a new creation and have clothed yourselves in Christ.” And now we live for Christ who has given us this new life.

Our taking up the ministry and mission of the Church means that we now must work to reconcile the world to God. And we begin in our own homes, in our own parish communities and in the world in which we live.

As the Psalm reminded us, God’s steadfast love for people is as great as the heavens are high above the earth. Beginning with our own little world, let us now bring that great love to those around us. And let us never forget that this mission comes from God who has called us by name and asked made us the members of Christ’s body so that we may be ministers of that love to all.

Lumen Gentium, 31:These faithful are by baptism made one body with Christ and are established among the People of God. They are in their own way made sharers in the priestly, prophetic, and kingly functions of Christ. They carry out their own part in the mission of the whole Christian people with respect to the Church and the world.

CCC 871 “The Christian faithful are those who, inasmuch as they have been incorporated in Christ through Baptism, have been constituted as the people of God; for this reason, since they have become sharers in Christ’s priestly, prophetic, and royal office in their own manner, they are called to exercise the mission which God has entrusted to the Church to fulfill in the world, in accord with the condition proper to each one.”³⁸⁵

The Church was founded for the purpose of spreading the kingdom of Christ throughout the earth for the glory of God the Father, to enable all men to share in His saving redemption,(1)and that through them the whole world might enter into a relationship with Christ.

All activity of the Mystical Body directed to the attainment of this goal is called the apostolate, which the Church carries on in various ways through all her members. For the Christian vocation by its very nature is also a vocation to the apostolate.